Collective intelligence with Alexandra Elbakyan
[Ancient religions had gods of information (such as Hermes, Thoth, of Nabu) and in the Bible, the Word of God is a proxy for the information which creates the world.
Collective intelligence with Alexandra Elbakyan
[Ancient religions had gods of information (such as Hermes, Thoth, of Nabu) and in the Bible, the Word of God is a proxy for the information which creates the world.
Half-assing it with everything you've got
[To save your energy by directing perfectionism not at unachievable or insignificant things but at the process, which you can control and apply to other things even if the current project fails.]
[Working hard to be lazy is about succeeding without wasting motion.]
[A creative project that designs a system probably needs to start as a cathedral to coordinate everything, and eventually transition to a bazaar when the foundations are secure so that the details can be perfected.]
[One way for someone to grade themselves is to provide three ways they succeeded and three ways they failed.]
[A name that means something is a commitment to a specific explanation, whereas a meaningless name commits to nothing.]
[Procrastinate and come back when it's easy.]
[Teaching it is more important than fixing it, which is more important than making it useful.]
[It's designed to achieve decentralization, not to be born with it.]
[A young network requires central governance so that it acts as a unit.]
The Poisoned Chalice of Hashtag Activism
[Twitter can be considered the opposite of a public square because it is the platform of a private company with the power to evict, censor, obscure as they see fit.]
A desperate activist tweets. An aspiring activist uses Facebook. A fledgling organizer uses email. An established organizer has phone numbers. A successful organizer is offered addresses.
Platform Decay, Decentralized Marketplaces, and Urbit
[Ad-supported web dominates because banks failed to make micropayments and other 'real money' infrastructure accessible.]
[As centralized marketplaces secure most of the vendor marketshare, the long-tail loses prominence to paid 'premium' placement because the deal has a greater impact on earnings - the vendors become competition.]
[Ad sales incentivize the 'sharing' or 'renting' economy because people are less likely to return after buying to own.]
[When search results make it difficult to buy a hammer, it causes the culture of 'building things' to suffer.]
[The test of any tool is its ability to shape the world.]
[Calm commerce follows naturally from calm computing.]
The Princess Rescuing Application: Slides
[Games can be played immediately and they steadily increase your skills over time, shortening the learning curve.]
[Games are fun because they employ exploratory learning: there is a goal with no indications of how to achieve it, players can faill and be told that they failed, they can also succeed and it feels good when they figure it out alone, during the learning process they explore the possibility space.]
[Games are built of STARS atoms that create learning feedback loops: Stimulate the player to experiment with Skills to discover Tools and Actions that play out within the environment's Rules.]
[Games assume that the people change, that the player at the beginning is not the same as the player at the end because of the skills they picked up along the way. Apps could adapt themselves to the dynamic people who use them, rather than providing a static set of tools for everyone.]
[Apps could be organized into levels based on the experience of who uses it, people advance through gated environments where they can safely practice important skills, they continue after mastering.]
[Rather than presenting all possibilities the same way forever, games employ a 'items' or 'powerups' or 'widgets' or 'addons' or 'extensions' pattern that celebrate modular bits of functionality earned with experience.]
[Quests are easy to understand and provide to reason to try each activity. LinkedIn has 'profile completeness' and prompts people to 'add a picture' and 'ask for a recommendation'.]
[The score provides a simple always-visible metric of progress.]
[Some games progress from a more guided 'advancement' mode to an 'elder' mode where the player needs to figure more out on their own.]
[Games have three skill types: 'pre-existing' are used in the first few minutes and help the interface feel intuitive; 'rewarded' are finite and not initially known but taught through STARS atoms via punishment and reward; 'emergent' are potentially infinite and not rewarded.]
[Gamification is profitable because it combines delightful experiences with ease-of-use and depth.]
"Skip": exponential-backoff deferral mechanisms and fuzzy inboxes
Some techniques can help up front: don't "stockpile" material for some future day; avoid writing prompts in response to a feeling of "should"; write about connections, consequences, implications—not just about facts; avoid tangential "orphan questions"; etc. But this isn't enough. Review sessions need ongoing grooming to stay interesting. If you don't add anything new for a while, your sessions will feel stale. If you often forget an answer, you must refactor the question or risk future eye-rolls.
[To build systems that fail gradually enough for recovery efforts to be effective.]
[Effort balancing is to ensure that the computational cost of a request is greater than that of producing a response.]
[The Internet Archive is effectively a collection of samples. Some data loss adds noise, but there are enough samples that it won't really make a difference.]
[The more random a system is, the harder it is to attack.]
[The social media stream is a form of television: highly visual; auto-playing videos; advertising; short snippets of unrelated content; centralized; just scroll.]
When I log on to Facebook, my personal television starts. All I need to do is to scroll: New profile pictures by friends, short bits of opinion on current affairs, links to new stories with short captions, advertising, and of course self-playing videos. I occasionally click on like or share button, read peoples' comments or leave one, or open an article. But I remain inside Facebook, and it continues to broadcast what I might like. This is not the web I knew when I went to jail. This is not the future of the web. This future is television.
Replace Your To-Do List With Interstitial Journaling To Increase Productivity
[The most pragmatic path to genius is to break problems into pieces your brain can handle than your brain.]
[Part of interstitial journaling is to clarify the next action.]
[To make information free, it is necessary to make the production of information free: a society where basic needs are taken care of and there is no need to be paid to produce.]
[Free information is incompatible with corporations profiting off of the commidification of information.]
Fools and their time metaphors
[Digital calendars misrepresent time as a blank slate asking to be filled in.]
How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing
[Everyone publishing incomplete thoughts may lead to the proliferation of half-baked opinions and wild theories, but it also opens the ideas to scrutiny, testing, and debate.]
[The unwritten thought does not count for anything, whereas the shared notes, homework, emails count as public knowledge.]
[Feedback received from publishing can become a motivation to publish more.]
What advantages of non-standardized capture does the "notes as a shipping container" analogy fail to value?
The physical organization of Zettelkasten prompts you to reflect on the relationship between ideas in the moment of filing. How would this imperative be simulated in software without resorting to spatial interfaces?
[When a topic is researched extensively, a 'bird's eye view' becomes necessary.]
Structured distraction: how to make the most of your breaks at work
[Think about the kind of break you take: a 'movement break' do do something physical with your body; a 'mental break' to meditate or let the mind wander; a 'social break' to connect with others; a 'nature break' to get some sun or be around trees; a creative break to be artful in a non-goal oriented way.]
[The UNIX command line is a success story of software extensibility because it efficiently allows for infinite combinations of smaller programs to create a workflow.]
[The spreadsheet and scratch do not require mental abstractions because the workings of the program are made apparent through visual embodiment.]
[The spreadsheet and the developer tools console shorten the save/build/run loop until it no longer exists, thus allowing someone to interact with a living system that responds in real-time.]
[In-place tool-chains allow users to leverage familiar concepts from everyday use and extend their experience.]
The Importance Of Making Everything Easier
[Means testing ultimately creates bureaucracy that impedes those in need while the wealthy continue to pay their way ahead.]
Stack Exchange's Ana Noemi Defines the Five Ingredients of an Enduring Community
[Give without a transaction and contribute to the commons.]
[Create a reason for members to self-identify as part of the community.]
[Clarify what are the shared values and coordinate around these.]
[Encourage customs and rituals to enable more shared experiences.]
[Empower individuals instead of centralizing government.]
Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer.
[Surrender to the truth in the very moment you realize you are resisting.]
As your mind becomes more silent you hear more noise.