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> I understand that emacs is a big ask for someone to learn Developing a PWA for it (basically bikeshedding) is much more painful than learning Emacs. Right n

> I understand that emacs is a big ask for someone to learn Developing a PWA for it (basically bikeshedding) is much more painful than learning Emacs. Right now, any vim user can jump into emacs with very little friction -- Doom Emacs comes fully configured with evil-mode ootb, and is easily customizable. I think the reason for the glut of personal kb apps is the relatively high interest of most "tech" people in these things. Unfortunately, most people bow out of their systems very often -- they either don't handle enough data or they give up on old data (or have it ineffectively categorized). This app (aka "this week's personal knowledge manager") is the same as every other one out there. There's some trying to use GPT-3, but honestly, I don't want my apps parsed by an internet-slurry model. When (if, really) it gets good enough, one wouldn't need to take notes in the first place.

afarrell 4y ago
The reason for the glut of these apps is that people have a drive to create.
- terminal_d 4y ago
  It's a very damning thing to say, you know, if all that information management systems lead to is more information management systems.
veidr 4y ago
> This app (aka "this week's personal knowledge manager") is the same as every other one out there That take is just... wild. I've been following this space intently for two decades. The past couple years have seen revolutionary, fantastical advances. Obsidian 1.0 like just came out in September of this year! A huge milestone, but with Logseq chasing them and seeming only a months behind them (and more open source to boot). Even the slow, web-bound proprietary dinosaurs they are replacing — Notion, Roam, etc — are only a few years old, and in their time (which is now over) those represented huge advances over clunky Evernote, OneNote, and their ilk. All building on the shoulders of ancient, more limited tools like nvAlt, VoodooPad, Tiddlywiki, etc etc etc. We're right on the cusp of having a bunch of choices that can help manage all your notes, including your own and your collections of other people's, with images and video and audio and PDF etc, storing it all in non-proprietary open formats, on your own infrastructure (if you want, or cloud if you prefer), with familiar and easy GUI clients for all your devices, that stay synchronized whether you prefer to pay to make that easy or prefer to leverage the open standards and do it all yourself... and we're just getting started with the potential integrations and do-it-yourself add-ons that are enabled by the basis in common/open standards. I think has been and continues to be one of the most interesting spaces in all of computing. (Sure GPT-3 and friends are interesting, but emerging solutions in this space are also useful, and to a huge number of people to boot.)
- terminal_d 4y ago
  This isn't a new field -- there have been people who have now closed shop for longer than they were ever active. It's just the influx of a large number of interested people online that have discovered digital tech that's pushing people to make more of these interfaces. None of these organizational structures are inventive or the end-all -- they all use the same methods to store and organize data, the only difference is how well they reduce the friction required for data entry. There's nothing these systems do that couldn't have been replicated 20, 30 years ago. Really, they hardly ever move past the paper paradigm. GPT-3 et al are a different thing though, and I reckon when they're good enough to be frictionless, the majority of people will stop taking notes altogether. The popularity of this field is solely based on how long it takes for people at OpenAI and others (Stability) to drive down costs to deliver ~1M words/mo to the average customer. These will all go the way of the phonebook. There'll be "look how my model tears your markdown notes" contests.
  - veidr 4y ago
    > None of these organizational structures are inventive or the end-all Sure, but that isn't the important thing. The organizational structures and theories/philosophies are already mainly "good enough". The important thing is making that power available in a useful form. It's the software around them that has never been good enough — not even for just entering the images/data/notes/ideas. And you can't derive any value later from data that wasn't entered in the first place. > nothing these systems do that couldn't have been replicated 20, 30 years ago Hard disagree. One of my important use cases is: "paste PNG/JPEG image data from the clipboard, and instantly display it where pasted — while, behind the scenes converting that to an image file on disk and the (open) standard markup to make this data compatible with 1000s of other tools — and sync all of that to all other devices within a few hundred milliseconds" You couldn't do that even 5 years ago. With any tool, AFAIK. (And I was looking.) It's about the software, not the organizational structures. It is revolutionary in precisely the same way as having good cameras in smartphones is. Many, many people take 1000x more photos today than they did in 2002 — and with good reason! It's super easy. And it's now easy — as opposed to basically impossible — to make use of them later. Can't remember where you bought that thingamajing? Just search for the snapshot of the receipt you took 4 years ago on your phone. This generation of tools is bringing this kind of organizational power to people who have never had it before — not because they technically could't have used the older, more cumbersome, slower, less capable system — but just because they don't need it badly enough to make the investment of doing that. Making it easier — lower friction to adopt, easier to derive the benefits from — is almost the entire point.
soulofmischief 4y ago
This take fundamentally ignores the web-based aspects of this project, as well as its attention to a lower-common-denominator modern UX that works intuitively, without surprise, confusion or a barrier to entry.
- terminal_d 4y ago
  Eh the intuitiveness is useful for the first few hours. Almost all "modern" PKM systems are web-based.
  - soulofmischief 4y ago
    The first few hours can determine if someone sticks with something or not. Emacs might best benefit the power user, but normal users need simple products too.
    - terminal_d 4y ago
      I don't care about that. If they can't learn a (non-"simple") system then they won't have a good knowledge base anyway.
      - asoneth 4y ago
        I'm not sure how ability to learn Emacs and ability to construct a good knowledge base are more than weakly correlated. I know dozens of people who use Emacs and dozens of people who have well-organized knowledge bases and while a few people have both that's about what I might expect based on random chance.
      - soulofmischief 4y ago
        Some people might want to help their grandmother organize themselves better as they age, why do they need to learn a DSL and ecosystem instead of just downloading an intuitive app with modern UX sensibilities? Is that offensive to you?

afarrell 4y ago

The reason for the glut of these apps is that people have a drive to create.

terminal_d 4y ago
It's a very damning thing to say, you know, if all that information management systems lead to is more information management systems.

veidr 4y ago

> This app (aka "this week's personal knowledge manager") is the same as every other one out there That take is just... wild. I've been following this space intently for two decades. The past couple years have seen revolutionary, fantastical advances. Obsidian 1.0 like just came out in September of this year! A huge milestone, but with Logseq chasing them and seeming only a months behind them (and more open source to boot). Even the slow, web-bound proprietary dinosaurs they are replacing — Notion, Roam, etc — are only a few years old, and in their time (which is now over) those represented huge advances over clunky Evernote, OneNote, and their ilk. All building on the shoulders of ancient, more limited tools like nvAlt, VoodooPad, Tiddlywiki, etc etc etc. We're right on the cusp of having a bunch of choices that can help manage all your notes, including your own and your collections of other people's, with images and video and audio and PDF etc, storing it all in non-proprietary open formats, on your own infrastructure (if you want, or cloud if you prefer), with familiar and easy GUI clients for all your devices, that stay synchronized whether you prefer to pay to make that easy or prefer to leverage the open standards and do it all yourself... and we're just getting started with the potential integrations and do-it-yourself add-ons that are enabled by the basis in common/open standards. I think has been and continues to be one of the most interesting spaces in all of computing. (Sure GPT-3 and friends are interesting, but emerging solutions in this space are also useful, and to a huge number of people to boot.)

terminal_d 4y ago
This isn't a new field -- there have been people who have now closed shop for longer than they were ever active. It's just the influx of a large number of interested people online that have discovered digital tech that's pushing people to make more of these interfaces. None of these organizational structures are inventive or the end-all -- they all use the same methods to store and organize data, the only difference is how well they reduce the friction required for data entry. There's nothing these systems do that couldn't have been replicated 20, 30 years ago. Really, they hardly ever move past the paper paradigm. GPT-3 et al are a different thing though, and I reckon when they're good enough to be frictionless, the majority of people will stop taking notes altogether. The popularity of this field is solely based on how long it takes for people at OpenAI and others (Stability) to drive down costs to deliver ~1M words/mo to the average customer. These will all go the way of the phonebook. There'll be "look how my model tears your markdown notes" contests.
- veidr 4y ago
  > None of these organizational structures are inventive or the end-all Sure, but that isn't the important thing. The organizational structures and theories/philosophies are already mainly "good enough". The important thing is making that power available in a useful form. It's the software around them that has never been good enough — not even for just entering the images/data/notes/ideas. And you can't derive any value later from data that wasn't entered in the first place. > nothing these systems do that couldn't have been replicated 20, 30 years ago Hard disagree. One of my important use cases is: "paste PNG/JPEG image data from the clipboard, and instantly display it where pasted — while, behind the scenes converting that to an image file on disk and the (open) standard markup to make this data compatible with 1000s of other tools — and sync all of that to all other devices within a few hundred milliseconds" You couldn't do that even 5 years ago. With any tool, AFAIK. (And I was looking.) It's about the software, not the organizational structures. It is revolutionary in precisely the same way as having good cameras in smartphones is. Many, many people take 1000x more photos today than they did in 2002 — and with good reason! It's super easy. And it's now easy — as opposed to basically impossible — to make use of them later. Can't remember where you bought that thingamajing? Just search for the snapshot of the receipt you took 4 years ago on your phone. This generation of tools is bringing this kind of organizational power to people who have never had it before — not because they technically could't have used the older, more cumbersome, slower, less capable system — but just because they don't need it badly enough to make the investment of doing that. Making it easier — lower friction to adopt, easier to derive the benefits from — is almost the entire point.

soulofmischief 4y ago

This take fundamentally ignores the web-based aspects of this project, as well as its attention to a lower-common-denominator modern UX that works intuitively, without surprise, confusion or a barrier to entry.

terminal_d 4y ago
Eh the intuitiveness is useful for the first few hours. Almost all "modern" PKM systems are web-based.
- soulofmischief 4y ago
  The first few hours can determine if someone sticks with something or not. Emacs might best benefit the power user, but normal users need simple products too.
  - terminal_d 4y ago
    I don't care about that. If they can't learn a (non-"simple") system then they won't have a good knowledge base anyway.
    - asoneth 4y ago
      I'm not sure how ability to learn Emacs and ability to construct a good knowledge base are more than weakly correlated. I know dozens of people who use Emacs and dozens of people who have well-organized knowledge bases and while a few people have both that's about what I might expect based on random chance.
    - soulofmischief 4y ago
      Some people might want to help their grandmother organize themselves better as they age, why do they need to learn a DSL and ecosystem instead of just downloading an intuitive app with modern UX sensibilities? Is that offensive to you?