And this also brings us to the why now and and why is this hard if this is the fully generalized form of digital documents, why didn't software start this way? I think a big part of it is just that it's hard. We talked about how it's hard to write a text editor, but what if you now need to write a text editor and image editor, a video editor and... See more
I think we’ll see communities of users craft downloadable ITEs specific to certain kinds of work or workflows. [...] These kits are a kind of “hypertemplate.” They provide a kind of pre-fabricated foundation for knowledge work that users can share to help others get started. At the same time, power users will use these to capture many aspects of... See more
A scientist is a spectator whose goal, at least in theory, is to detach their identity from the scientific process. The person’s will is constrained to looking for truths that are universal, certain and timeless. The scientific method is constructed to rid its output of human context and distortion, so that in theory, anyone should be able to... See more
The book is not designed for reading at a single sitting, but for several days or weeks. Therefore, the book should have a structure, reference tools and some mechanisms for gradual assimilation and learning.
@softspaceninja Not a criticism of the demo! more a comment on the shortcomings of text as an interface. I want to be able to take some text and squish it to get a summary; smash two together to get some AI-inferred conclusions or list of disagreements. Text today is very opaque to most software
With this experiment, we wanted to explore the uniquely dynamic capability of software, which are hard to replicate in a printed, linear medium, for writing.
You want to start with a problem or question when you’re reading. And again you want to read books together in groups, and you want one of the early books to make the whole thing real or emotionally vivid to you. If you travel to a place that’ll do it automatically, but if you’re not traveling you want the book to do it, so your early book choice... See more