A conversation about spatial computing and the power of operating in a spatial environment with the founder of Softspace, Yiliu Shen-Burke, and John Underkoffler of Oblong Industries.
Yiliu Shen-Burke, founder of Softspace
John Underkoffler, creator of G-Speak
Host: Jerry Michalski
This week, I show you my conversation with Bryan, a philosopher, writer, and researcher. He's a very thoughtful individual, with a fascinating mind. We talked about his work, writing, music, and much more.
- 00:00 ~ Introduction
- 01:10 ~ Thomas Khun
- 05:55 ~ Bryan's relationship with ideas
- 11:02 ~ Note-taking
- 17:20 ~ Health model of Inquiry
- 20:41 ~ Bryan's current questions
- 26:00 ~ Meditation
- 33:00 ~ Change and Modern Golden Age
- 42:15 ~ Speaking, writing and thinking
- 50:43 ~ Original Sources and influences
- 55:20 ~ Intellectual and creative Humility
- 1:06:03 ~ Classical composers and jazz musicians
- 1:08:30 ~ Types of writing
- 1:10:00 ~ Practices in MGA
- 1:18:00 ~ The kind of person that allows for an MGA
- 1:21:00 ~ Values in a Modern Golden Age
- 1:23:12 ~ Where can you find Bryan?
The “monastery” to “metropolis” discussion of the development and nurturing of an idea is an interesting analogy for pedagogy and learning as well as scaffolding. Having a supportive environment with trust is similar to most learning environments and particularly a difficult one for second language learners to find as the paradigm changes based on age.
I wish there had been more improvisation here with respect to the conversational portions, but instead the interviewer kept going back to a script of pre-formed questions instead of exploring the ideas as they came. I was surprised to see references to David Krakauer and Stefan Zweig pop up here.
Stefan Zweig (reference? his memoir?) apparently suggested that students translate authors as a means of becoming more intimately acquainted with their work. This is similar to restating an author in one’s own words as a means of improving one’s understanding. It’s a lower level of processing that osculates on the idea of having a conversation with a text.
Drinking game using the phrase: “I do believe.” 😅
Rating: 2 of 5; this was in my wheelhouse, but provided no real insight for me. Unlikely to listen to others in this series.
Manton and Daniel talk about payments from the Small App Developer settlement against Apple. Why does Manton refuse to accept free money, and are there valid reasons to opt out of the settlement? Then they reflect on the wave of opportunity from Twitter’s drastic downfall, and whether Manton and Daniel can “catch it”. Finally, Manton remembers the IndieWeb principles about plurality and monoculture, and they discuss how that might relate to Mastodon.
“We’re extremely powerful when it comes to making sense and finding connections, doing it visually instead of with a page.” Howard Rheingold is an eminent author, maker, and educator. His work has explored and defined key aspects of digital culture, including the use of computers as tools for mind augmentation, virtual communities, and social media literacy. In this conversation, we discuss computers as extensions for our minds, Douglas Engelbart’s unfinished revolution, basic literacies for interacting in information environments, and the resurgence of Tools for Thought.
Jorge Arango from The Informed LifeMark Bernstein is chief scientist of Eastgate Systems, Inc. He’s been writing hypertexts and developing hypertext authoring software since the late 1980s. Mark is the creator of Tinderbox and other tools for thinking that “harness the power of the link.” In this conversation, we discuss thinking through connected notes.
representational talkback; the design of taking notes in the present when you’re not sure how they’ll connect to ideas in the (imagined) future; The Tinderbox Way; by force, all research is bottom up.
In yesterday’s post on Chris Aldrich’s overview of zettelkasten techniques, I asked about seeing the zettelkasten itself. He replied saying most of the content was in his Hypothesis account, and sent me a pointer to an entry. I read through a bunch of pages on zettelkasten stuff yesterday, ...
Katie Benner, Justice Department reporter at The New York Times, joins with takeaways and the latest news from the release of the affidavit in the FBI search of former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Kevin Marks (kevinmarks.com)This week John Borthwick put out a call for Tools for Thinking: People want better tools for thinking — ones that take the mass of notes that you have and organize them, that help extend your second brain into a knowledge or interest graph and that enable open sharing and ownership of the “knowl...
I’ll always maintain that Vannevar Bush really harmed the first few generations of web development by not mentioning the word commonplace book in his conceptualization. Marks heals some of this wound by explicitly tying the idea of memex to that of the zettelkasten however. John Borthwick even mentions the idea of “networked commonplace books”. [I suspect a little birdie may have nudged this perspective as catnip to grab my attention—a ruse which is highly effective.]
Some of Kevin’s conceptualization reminds me a bit of Jerry Michalski’s use of The Brain which provides a specific visual branching of ideas based on the links and their positions on the page: the main idea in the center, parent ideas above it, sibling ideas to the right/left and child ideas below it. I don’t think it’s got the idea of incoming or outgoing links, but having a visual location on the page for incoming links (my own site has incoming ones at the bottom as comments or responses) can be valuable.
I’m also reminded a bit of Kartik Prabhu’s experiments with marginalia and webmention on his website which plays around with these ideas as well as their visual placement on the page in different methods.
MIT MediaLab’s Fold site (details) was also an interesting sort of UI experiment in this space.
It also seems a bit reminiscent of Kevin Mark’s experiments with hovercards in the past as well, which might be an interesting way to do the outgoing links part.
Next up, I’d love to see larger branching visualizations of these sorts of things across multiple sites… Who will show us those “associative trails”?
Another potential framing for what we’re all really doing is building digital versions of Indigenous Australian’s songlines across the web. Perhaps this may help realize Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly’s dream for a “third archive”?
Some 425 ICM employees will join CAA, with 105 expected to be laid off as the Department of Justice allows the acquisition after an antitrust review.
Mayhem breaks out in the fifth grade when the Venice Menace bullies his classmates into letting him become a regular guest on "Kidsview," the school's radio program.
On Thursday Matt Mullenweg responded to an inquiry on Twitter from Jeff Matson, a Pagely employee, about whether Automattic’s Newspack platform had all open open source components or some pro…
Working over many years with several Indigenous Elders, Duane has published The First Astronomers, a complete overview of traditional First Nations star knowledge.
In her new book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, Anderson traces racial distinctions in Americans’ treatment of gun ownership back to the founding of the country and the Second Amendment, which states:
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The language of the amendment, Anderson says, was crafted to ensure that slave owners could quickly crush any rebellion or resistance from those whom they’d enslaved. And she says the right to bear arms, presumably guaranteed to all citizens, has been repeatedly denied to Black people.