Auteur: mdr

The Memex

This is the first post in a series about legendary tech inventors. I will write about inventors on the cutting-edge of knowledge (work) and technology.

In the Atlantic in 1945 the article ‘As We May Think’ from Vannevar Bush was published. At that moment he was the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development where he had the coordination over six thousand American scientists. All working for the same cause in WWII.

“a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge” – Vannevar Bush

Dr. Vannevar Bush encourages his scientist colleagues to turn to the massive task of making the amount of knowledge accessible. He saw that the physical power of man had extended with new inventions, but not the power of the mind. The first objective after the war should be the development of instruments that will give man access to and command over the knowledge of ages. In his paper he calls for “a new relationship between thinking man and the sum of our knowledge”. Knowledge evolves when ideas or records continuously are extended and consulted.

For that period of time Vannevar had forward-looking ideas. At that moment there was a growing availability of tools, but also with high production costs. There were multiple ways available for storage of data like film, photo, typewriting, stenotyping and a predecessor of speech recognition.

As a use case he describes a scientist in his laboratory who photograph and directly add comments where the time is automatically recorded to tie the records together. When the scientist is in the field a radio is connected to his recorder. In the evening he can talk his comments again into the record. His typed records and his photographs could be used later for consulting. In this use case Vannevar writes about the recording of data, computation and consulting of data.

Another use case is to compress the amount of the famous Brittanica Encyclopedia or a library of a million volumes into a desk.

He made an important distinction between creative and repetitive thoughts. This is still relevant. Repetitive thoughts are static and creative thoughts are continiously growing and changed.

Further in the article Vannevar thinks about logic for analysis, finding relationships in the amount of data and how to make automatic selections. He also thinks about the comparison to the human brain which operates by association instead of indexes.

The Memex: A future device for individual use: a mechanized private file and library

One of the most important concepts in the essay is the Memex (Memory extender). Which he described as a future device for individual use: a mechanized private file and library.
A list of features he describes:

• Storing of books, records and communications
• Mechanized
• Consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility
• A desk which could be operated from a distance
• Screen where the material can be projected
• Keyboard and a set of buttons and levers
• In one end the material is stored
• Possibility for insertion of data like books, pictures, newspapers and business correspondence
• Bookmarking by the storage of frequently-used codes

An essential feature he mentioned is to approach associative thinking. Which is created by the user to build a trail where multiple items could be permanently joined. For example an article in an Encyclopedia and then inserts his own comment.

Nowadays this is used in knowledge work and is also known as the ‘Second Brain’. A name coined by Tiago Forte in his corresponding book.

Walter Isaacson writes in his book The Innovators that Vannevar Bush with the Memex, and inventors that followed, worked on a personal connection between human and machine.

Later on, on these ideas where inventions build and inspired like Wikipedia (like the use case of the whole library or Brittanica Encyclopedia), the personal computer, and the world wide web. The next article in this series will be about the inventor of the WWW: Tim Berners-Lee.

Focus on what matters the most on a natural pace.

Slow Productivity is the latest delivery by Computer science professor and deep life thinker Cal Newport. He is the writer of one of my favorite books ‘Deep Work’ and focuses on the cutting edge of knowledge work and digital life.

Slow Productivity, Slow Media or Slow Coffee: Focus on what matters the most on a natural pace. 

The book starts with 3 key principles to embody Slow Productivity: Do fewer things, Work at a natural pace and Obsess over quality. Each of these principles are supported by, so called, propositions and real-life case studies.

To start with the problem; the measurement of productivity in knowledge work. The term Knowledge work was introduced by Peter Drucker in 1967. It’s a variety of work with always a different approach and it defers in a “complicated and constantly shifting workload” to other forms of work. Thereby a knowledge worker cannot be checked in detail.

Nowadays the visible activity during the day is used as a proxy to productivity. Mostly busyness: “doing lots of stuff in a visible manner.” What Newport called pseudo-productivity. Rather than the actual output.

Knowledge workers struggle with the amount of tasks, meetings and projects and are often overwhelmed in a slipstream of emails and calls in noisy offices. Many knowledge workers had already pushed tasks to the max of their threshold. The result is a decline of output and creativity.

The main goal of the slow productivity idea is reorient (knowledge) work so the work has a source of meaning instead of overwhelm. While it still has the ability to produce a valuable output.

Now we will dive deeper in the principles as proposed in the book.

Do fewer things could best described as: don’t stack tasks and reduce obligations. Finish a task before starting the next one. Also obligate to a couple of projects that matter the most to you or your business.

Work at a natural pace is to vary a high intensity period of work with a period of more relaxed way of working. Work in phases with seasonality. As Newport says:
“avoid working at a constant state of anxious high energy, with little change, throughout the entire year.”

As started from the Industrial Revolution, life and especially work had transformed into day-continuous, monotonous work with little variation.
We have to bring back the season changes and rituals. One of the things to accomplish this is to switch from working environment. Then add a small ritual for every specific space.

“Effective space for your work is to match elements of your physical surroundings to what it is that you’re trying to accomplish.” – Cal Newport

Adventure work: A podcast about this specific topic
Deep Life Podcast (Spotify)

The last proposition that support slow productivity is Obsess over quality. Don’t focus on activity but on quality. You have to slowdown to produce of what actually matters. Give it some time and the slowness rewards. This key idea is not about perfection, but about giving the work the attention it’s actually needs.

Knowlegde workers has the flexibility to reorientate their way of working. You have more control over your work than you think.

RSS is still part of my personal knowledge system. It’s an old technique, with its origin in the 90’s, to subscribe to content like blogs and podcasts.

The readers view
The core idea of the technique is still relevant. It’s one of the methods to get out of the endless stream of information. With advantages like lightweight plain text (simplicity) and distraction free (no ads) to focus on the content curated by yourself. An easy method to unclutter your information stream without any influence of algoritms.
As a content consumer you can read the content you are interested in when you want to. Another advantage is that you don’t have to visit the original webpage or app. Because of that, with RSS there is no behavioural tracking and is therefore more privacy-friendly.

“The internet is a mess. Ignore the algorithm, and distill the web down to the things you actually care about.” — Wired

Also the founders of the new reading app, Reader (from Readwise), mention that RSS is in a ‘renaissance’. Feeds are a fundamental component of their app.

Publishers opinion
In the early years of RSS, Content Publishers made RSS feeds for specific subjects, called channels. Tailor made summaries and headlines on a specific topic.

Nowadays, Publishers want to keep the visitor in their ecosystem. To target, personalise and track behaviour. For advertising and customisation of the news feed. There is no place anymore for a function like RSS, where you jump out of the ecosystem.

Personal publishing apps like Medium and Substack still support this technique. With Substack RSS you can read publications and notes from the publishers you follow and with the Medium feed you can subscribe to authors, publications and specific topics.