18 ms·

Memex is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed (2020)

227 points by samwillis 3y ago

samwillis 3y ago
The key connecting element of a lot of the examples of "Memex" is the web platform - http, html, css, js, etc. - and that it is both a document and app delivery system. That is the secret that has made it work. All the examples of file sharing still have a http interface to connect to. As he touches on, the missing, or a least somewhat disjointed, element is local data and connecting to that from other web destinations. My hope, and belief, is that we are breaking down those local <-> server barriers with newer JS APIs for better file like local storage. It's just a pity in a way that the web browser and web server were not combined into one element from the start. It's still too hard to make content available on the network from your personal device without a server. His conclusion about the need to cognitively organise such trails/collections though could well change in the coming years - and potentially sooner. It's clear the LLMs are good at organising and summarising text and data. I'm expecting us to be using tools that will ingest all our work activity (documents, meeting, email, calls, browsing) and automatically curate and file it with a chat based ui to extract that data. We just desperately need that to be local and not server based.
- pintxo 3y ago
  Didn’t Netscape Navigator have a server included? And an email client and an HTML Editor?
undebuggable 3y ago
Check the original article on memex in Life magazine. Something like 25% of the real estate of the article are ads interrupted by five full page ads and followed by another two full page ads. Prophetic. It's actually difficult to extract the article itself while reading.
- amelius 3y ago
  At least these were not user-tracking ads.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
When I think about memex, I think about being able to share my “trails.” On this matter, I’m often irritated by how little value I get for my carefully developed web browsing history. Why is it so hard to extract personal value from our histories?
- undebuggable 3y ago
  It's not limited to your web history. File paths are URIs as well, and so is a path to a specific page in a PDF or to a tab in a spreadsheet. Nothing prevents you from composing both local and web URIs and reopening them automatically at any time. The value you extract depends on the quality and reliability of the content you picked to bookmark.
  - dr_dshiv 3y ago
    True. Closest to this I know was Gelernter’s lifestream
    - DonHopkins 3y ago
      David Gelernter's tired old plagerized Lifestream and Mirror Worlds ideas (which he illegitimately patented) were hardly original or unique (which even Leonardo da Vinci and Bob Graham invented long before he did), and now he (and his son Daniel Gelernter) have degenerated into yet another couple of dime-a-dozen foaming at the mouth batshit crazy alt-right extremist Trump boot licking big lie spreading climate change denying misogynistic racist birtherism promoting sociopaths, who are religiously and sexistly against women in the workforce, and angrily think working mothers harm their children and should stay at home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming#Before_lifestreaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming#Before_lifestrea... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gelernter#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gelernter#Politics >Politics >He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center. In 2003, he became a member of the National Council on the Arts.[21] Time magazine profiled Gelernter in 2016, describing him as a "stubbornly independent thinker. A conservative among mostly liberal Ivy League professors, a religious believer among the often disbelieving ranks of computer scientists..."[22] >Endorsing Donald Trump for president, in October 2016, Gelernter wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling Hillary Clinton "as phony as a three-dollar bill", and saying that Barack Obama "has governed like a third-rate tyrant".[23][24] In his capacity as a member of the Trump transition team, Peter Thiel nominated Gelernter for the Science Advisor to the President position; Gelernter did meet with Trump in January 2017 but did not get the job.[25] >In 2018, he said that the idea that Trump is a racist "is absurd."[26] In October 2020 he joined in signing a letter stating: "Given his astonishing success in his first term, we believe that Donald Trump is the candidate most likely to foster the promise and prosperity of America."[27] >Gelernter has spoken out against women in the workforce, saying working mothers were harming their children and should stay at home.[13] Gelernter has also argued for the U.S. voting age to be raised, on the basis that 18-year-olds are not sufficiently mature.[28] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/trumps-science-advisor-candidates-both-question-climate-change/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/trumps-science-advis... https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/01/25/gelernter-denies-man-made-climate-change/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/01/25/gelernter-denies-m... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/david-gelernter-donald-trump-why-liberals-hate-trump-op-ed.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/david-gelernter-... https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/donald-trumps-shadow-president-in-silicon-valley-235372 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/donald-trumps-shadow-... https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/08/why-i-need-an-ar-15/ https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/08/why-i-need-an-ar-15/ https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/who-would-you-shoot https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/who-would-you-shoot
heckerhut 3y ago
Check https://memex.garden/ https://memex.garden/
eviks 3y ago
This approach where even the basics are broken - links require full manual management (what happens when you rename some target file) - is another 50 years away from Memex
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- undebuggable 3y ago
  Well... URIs, URI fragments, URLs, URL shorteners, hyperlinks, symbolic links. With good will and some effort, it could be fixed I guess.
  - input_sh 3y ago
    Or you use something like Obsidian, Logseq, Notion and so on that have already abstracted this problem away. You rename a file or move it to some subfolder and every single reference to it gets auto-updated without you having to do anything. I'd argue that this sort of interlinking flexibility (alongside easy-to-use plugins) is what separates the current era of note-taking apps over alternatives that people seem to (ab)use: a folder of Markdown notes edited via VSCode, a Google Docs folder, or even a static site generator.
  - eviks 3y ago
    After wasting much time on fixing the bookeeping you'd get to the next basic issue - content search across devices. Then to tracking changes done by various people. Then... backtracking a couple of steps and dropping the whole thing
coldblues 3y ago
We definitely need open source tools. I personally use Logseq and have a lot of notes. I want to use AI to better search and make connections, using something like ChromaDB. Logseq is mainly for text. What My Mind (mymind.com) does for "smart bookmarking" is really great. No folders, collections at most if you really need it. Making the most use of digital knowledge is something that really needs to be focused on. It can accelerate a lot of things. And we must stop doing this with yet another cloud note-taking app with OpenAI integration with a bunch of (personally) useless collaborative features. I want my own mind that works for me and in my interest.
- brazzy 3y ago
  First time I heard of My Mind. Looks really nice, but how is it not yet another cloud note taking app? To me, the biggest problem of this kind of tool is that if you use it to its fullest potential, it necessarily becomes a crucial part of your daily life, something that will cause very serious problems if you lose it. And that means anything proprietary or closed SaaS is an absolute no go. My Mind's promise to respect privacy and stay independent of outside influence is nice, but worthless. They can change their mind at any time - or get bought up, or go bankrupt. Being a paid service might reduce the likelihood, but does not eliminate it, especially not over a timespan of decades. So at an absolute minimum, such a tool needs to be able and willing to export all of my data in an easily processible format. This is far more important than shiny features. My current solution is a self hosted TiddlyWiki. It may not have all the shiny features, but it is mine, and always will be, even 50 years from now. The worst case scenario is that it stops working on new browsers and nobody maintains it anymore - but I still have the data. Easily processible text files are actually its internal storage format.
- v3ss0n 3y ago
  try anytype.io , a lot better logseq its opensource too. It will also have realtime sync and sharing in next milestone
  - jcstryker 3y ago
    https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md this appears to be source available not open source
amelius 3y ago
Shows that inventing things is more about being at the right place and time than about anything else.
andyjohnson0 3y ago
At the risk of diverting this into yet another discussion of note taking apps... I'm using Notion. Its ok, but I'd like to have a way to snapshot documents to incorporate into my notes. And lately I feel like I'm paying for all their new AI stuff that I just don't use. So help me HN: whats a good open source, self-hostable, replacement with decent desktop/mobile tooling and a practicable migration path from a Notion export/backup?
- johnnyworker 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by snapshots, and it's not open source -- but if you haven't tried it yet, check out Obsidian. "Vaults" are self-contained, just markdown files in folders, with an extra folder for the Obsidian stuff, i.e. all settings and state and even the plugins. Plays great with SyncThing etc. And there are so many great community plugins, which is where the real magic of it is for me.
  - jgalt212 3y ago
    I really do like the data model of obsidian. For the most part the data (markdown files) and the meta data (the .obsidian directory) stay out of each other's way.
- jddj 3y ago
  Logseq is as close as it gets. In my humble opinion these tools aren't quite there yet, which is not to say they aren't polished, but that they don't disappear from view like good tools should. There's still a noticeable impedance mismatch due to having to use their editor, for example, which has its quirks and is different enough to a standard text editor to cause a context switch. But it's open source and it's pretty good.
- cobertos 3y ago
  Used to use Notion. I haven't found any good open source alternatives either. I was using Typora for a while, before Obsidian got better. It was just a tree of Markdown files and a _really_ nice Notion-like editor. I had to write https://github.com/Cobertos/notion_export_enhancer https://github.com/Cobertos/notion_export_enhancer to get my data out of notion in an actual nice tree-like structure. I tried Obsidian again recently and their editor caught up to Typora's (and it was faster than the last time I used it). I'm trying to switch to it now, as the tree is more "file-y" than Typora (which removes blind spots for me, as I save PDFs and other stuff in my note tree). I've resorted to writing my own though now. Notion, Typora, and Obsidian are great for one specific type of management (documents, markdown-like), but I think there's a higher level abstractions here.
throwuwu 3y ago
Congrats, you just reinvented the early web and made no improvements. You just have an index of documents with no hyperlinks. Even Notion is a step up from this and it’s no where close to having the features of a memex. I’m always amazed that people completely miss the entire point of the trail feature.
- DennisP 3y ago
  What would you say is the entire point of the trail feature?
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    A trail (IIRC) charts a journey through a set of documents, or perhaps sections of documents. Think about a case where you are trying to figure out a problem based on a bunch of error messages. You search the web for solution to the first message, then the second message and so on, until you arrive at the root cause and the solution to that. You then save this as a trail (or the memex does this for you automatically, using some fancy ML method). Now, imagine you encounter a similar or identical issue 6 months down the line. You remember that 6 months ago you searched for a solution, and that you found one. Maybe you forgot to bookmark it. Not a problem, you find the original trail using some simple heuristics (how long ago it was, the keywords from the error message), and then you follow it to the end. Solution found, reasonably quickly.
    - filiph 3y ago
      Yes, and until we have the fancy ML method, one way to do it is to have something like a Google Doc where you document your search by copypasting from the source documents and linking to them. That was my point with the original article. I'm with you that it would be fantastic to have memex that's described in 'As we may think' (only better), but until we do, I'm doing it the hard/manual way.
      - selfhoster11 3y ago
        I was surprised to recently find out that Google Chrome in fact already has that fancy ML method for chunking history into trails. Nothing wrong with doing this manually, but I do think that having the Memex do some of the thinking re: how the data is organise would save a lot of time.
sambapa 3y ago
A nice counterpoint to this idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137751
tkiolp4 3y ago
I usually prefer a Google Doc shared among the team to work on a given problem or feature instead of the so popular Miro. Diagrams are nice, yes, I agree, but they are not a substitute for actual text. Engineers think that because they draw boxes and lines and add little notes here and there the design is Done. Product managers usually like this approach too because “we don’t have time to read a whole page of text”. Drives me nuts.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  The diagram is a thinking tool, or a supplement to written text, but not the whole thing.
- hermanradtke 3y ago
  The import from URL feature on Google docs is perfect for importing mermaid.live diagrams to accompany the text. A mermaid.live URL contains the complete diagram state, which allows anyone to follow the original URL, make modifications and update the Google doc.
  - metaphor 3y ago
    That's a hard sell for those who work in companies that prohibit dependencies on free 3rd-party web services to discuss business confidential ideas in an unsecure way.
- Hendrikto 3y ago
  You know what drives me nuts? People spending two pages on a convoluted description of what could have been a simple diagram. It goes both ways.
  - 39 3y ago
    Agree, most people cannot write concisely, sequence diagrams are generally a safer bet.
  - quaddo 3y ago
    "A picture is worth a thousand words" or some such. That said, I've certainly heard that different people prefer different ways of learning/consuming knowledge. I myself will choose video for some things, illustrations/graphs/images for other things, and text/tables for yet others. I do have a fondness for well done images, though. Even the style of text can have an impact. Bullet points for providing instructions, instead of a long paragraph of sprawling text. Another thing I picked up some 15 years ago is borrowed from newspapers: the concept of "above the fold"; get the main points out there near the top, and keep it concise.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Yep I have a folder called Obsidian in my Dropbox with markdown files I edit with VSCode :-)
nologic01 3y ago
> On the other hand, memex is something that will give you an edge Umm, no. That is the problem really. An "edge" is something defined in societal context. Rightly or wrongly society is largely unaware of memex and its gifts. Memex, hypertext, wikis, semantic web etc. These are just early visions of plausible ways we can capture, organise and share knowledge at scale, using digital technologies. Alas it is a catalog of paths that the digitally interconnected society did not opt for. Why this (on the face of it) irrational behavior? The very short answer is that "an edge" is only loosely coupled to superior knowledge management. In the vast majority it is obtained by proximity to existing power structures. The proverbial rolodex rather than the memex.
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  > The very short answer is that "an edge" is only loosely coupled to superior knowledge management. In the vast majority it is obtained by proximity to existing power structures I somewhat disagree. A memex is effectively the plain old notebook/wiki, with the potential capability raised to the second or third power. Does a personal diary, calendar, home budget, or a small library help you get into places of power? For average people, no. But it does make organising life, and figuring out where you are, and charting how to get to where you want to be, much easier than it would be for your peers without such tools. So yes, it gives you an edge. Whether that edge has anything to do with power is a completely orthogonal concern.
  - nologic01 3y ago
    I would readily admit that my analysis of memex's (non-)edge is a bit of a quick extrapolation, weaving together some broader themes as potential explanatory factors. There is an empirical fact though, that begs for some explanation: These tools are not used as much as one would think is commensurate to their (potential) added value. There is no virtuous cycle that would fund more development, create sharper "edges" etc. The connection with "power" might appear remote but consider e.g. why powerpoint (no pun) - a manifestly inferior piece of software - became so succesful.
selfhoster11 3y ago
It's interesting how the author settles on plain old files as the data access paradigm. A file cannot be yanked from under your feet, like a link can. It remains where it is indefinitely until deleted, it does not change (so cannot be tampered with or damaged by the author), it normally is not subject to artificial access restrictions a la logins or DRM. It's an artifact that can actually be archived for the rest of your natural life. I don't see any reason why the folders in question should necessarily be shared, though. I get the impression that as defined by Bush originally, the memex is first and foremost a memory expander for your private memory, and any sharing would take place infrequently, or on a narrow subset of data contained within.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  What do you have available to you when the internet is down? (It was for me last week, for pretty much a whole day.) That's the point (or at least one of them) of personal control. What do you have available to you after a hard drive failure? That's the point (or at least one of them) of having stuff in the cloud. How do you balance the two? Local, personal storage backed up in the cloud?
  - frizlab 3y ago
    As much as I can locally, with Time Machine for backups. I have access to everything and do not fear hard drive failures.
    - fragmede 3y ago
      What's your plan for a natural disaster like a fire that takes out your house?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - frizlab 3y ago
        I did not mention, but I also have off-site backups.
ByThyGrace 3y ago
I am pretty sure wikimedia addresses this use case entirely. Some extensions may be needed.
fit2rule 3y ago
[dead]
ccozan 3y ago
To be honest, I find JIRA + Confluence(+ lets say Gitlab) a strong memex system. You can link everything very easily, the software is happy to create the links for you as well. Adding Gliphy as well ( for charts and other usages ).
- foobarian 3y ago
  Heh the further I read the blog post the more Jira and friends sounded like what the author was describing.
mikewarot 3y ago
There were 3 main features of the Memex that we just don't have. Annotation - The ability to mark up hypertext... yeah... HTML claims to do it, but you can't change a document once it's read only. You should be able to layer annotations on top of a document. HTML simply is not a Language for the Markup of Hypertext Documents. [Edit/Extend] - Annotation is anything you could do with a printout, at minimum. Circle something, highlight a section, black something out, attach links, etc. It's not just tagging a file as a black box. Trails - the ability to store a trail of annotations, linking up parts of two documents together, or more. Like a stack of bookmarks, except bookmarks can't anchor to part of a document. Publication - One of the crucial features of the Memex was the ability to output a collection to allow sharing with others. It could spit out a copy of everything linked to a trail, all the files, all in one dump. Copyright holders would have a huge problem with Memex if it were implemented as originally shown. I think it should be possible to build a proxy that records ALL local http(s) traffic, and thus record all the sources to documents you've seen... and then only keep those that you've tagged or linked to after a few months, purging the rest. A private Memex, but it couldn't even be an open source project, as copyright holders would work to squash it.
- k__ 3y ago
  I think, the Permaweb comes pretty close. You can annotate any upload (arbitrary data, files, or collections of files) with tags and since the data is permanent, your links don't break. Publication is possible too, and with the Universal Data License, copyright holders can define the terms for their part of the publication right at upload time.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- euroderf 3y ago
  I would think that Apple has the level of integration that would make this possible, but then... where's the potential profit that would make it worth their while ?
  - brookst 3y ago
jimmySixDOF 3y ago
The physical desk surface as a clean interface motif hiding all the internal complexity is a big part of the Memex that people tend to skip over in the conversation about how hyperlinks solved this all years ago. The use of windows as an approximation for physical depth perception allowing something to be 'on top' is still only a very limited implemention of what is digitally possible.
coliveira 3y ago
The big problem with files is that they are linear. Up to computers, the standard interface for people to work is the sheet of paper, which is a two dimensional surface. In fact, it was even better because you can organize papers into books or collections, which gives a 3rd dimension. Files, being linear, make it difficult to parse and analyze, which is always the problem we need to solve with computers. This problem is much easier to solve when we can work on 3 dimensions and organize data spatially (this is the guiding principle of charts and tables).
- cobertos 3y ago
  I disagree. The linearity is super helpful for scanning and finding quickly, by time, by name, etc. Id argue that any app that makes the interface "spatial first" will have to add these linear features on top of what they're doing to find things fast, at a minimum for full-text search. I do think spatial organization can help for human consumption of not easily orderable datasets >1000 items, but I think that's a niche case for everything ive interacted with so far.
  - donkeybeer 3y ago
    >I do think spatial organization can help for human consumption of not easily orderable datasets >1000 items, but I think that's a niche case for everything ive interacted with so far. What did you have in mind?
    - cobertos 3y ago
      Well, when the data gets above 1000 items, you have to start filtering, finding, or revisualizing it to be useful. You can no longer keep the whole dataset comfortably in your head, or even on screen. For revisualizing, it might be comfortable to plot it on a 2D map or to simply graph an interesting scalar. For revisualizing in a 3D spatial setting... I haven't seen any actual good 3D spatial layout of data. Disregarding "experiences" (like art galleries, which lay out data in a way to promote interest in a topic and fractal-like amounts of subtopics, but is human curated, like Saganworks[1]), the only one I guess is like the high level "portal" to categories of data. Like "Documents", "Downloads", etc but think 500+ categories of more granular entity types. Everything is non-comparable apples and oranges (except for perhaps shared common data like timestamp) and there's no way to quickly scan it (5 or so seconds to find alphabetically perhaps), so spatial might help to quickly locate your entity type with muscle memory. I haven't seen another use case, but would love to explore what others are doing in this space! [1]: https://saganworks.com https://saganworks.com
kykeonaut 3y ago
Is it me, or a Git repository, (either externally hosted or self-hosted) sounds like could work as a memex? You have a shared folder backed by version control. You have projects which can serve as memex projects, and issues which you can edit via markdown and link to the files in the repo. Plus you got CI-CD that allows you to have access to a cloud environment to perform work.
- throwaway4aday 3y ago
  I agree, version control is absolutely necessary when you are copying documents from other sources and modifying them. You need to know if the document has changed upstream since you cloned it and you need to be able to see the diff of the changes you made.
winter_blue 3y ago
I think it should be possible to build a Chrome/Firefox extensions that adds annotation and editing to pages (storing a superset copy of the page somewhere), adding links/trails to pages, and sharing these deltas wit others, etc.
harrego 3y ago
The openness of this approach will allow for great recall potential with GPT models when we eventually get them running locally. Dave Winer has already been experimenting with this (admittedly not locally) based on his large backlog of blog posts and has found it effective[1]. [1] http://scripting.com/2023/08/06/131842.html?title=miriamIsGreatAtSummarizing http://scripting.com/2023/08/06/131842.html?title=miriamIsGr...
multicast 3y ago
The need to adapt it for the average user is mentioned. The average person uses a pc (if ever - good luck with this on mobile) mostly for work (ms office + some ERP) and in some cases for private uses (e.g. news, e-banking, mails, important administrative work). If you go a bit deeper maybe reddit and video games. An average user would never want to link around stuff on the web with a hundred arrows and multiple colors. He simply does not care. The author and the old guy in the video he linked to behave almost cult-like, especially the old guy: He literally claims that this IS the best method for working with documents ever, the www is a fork of his idea based on a "dumbed-down in the 70s at brown university", he does not understand why it has not already taken off and he thinks its the most important feature for the human race. Really? If people really see potential in this and work in spaces like journalism and academic research there would be already big programs out there. Yes it is good to have passion about something and yes it is good if someone has a real need for this and his delivered with a solution, but this will never go mainstream. And in my opinion not even in the segment of technical skilled people like engineers. This is the typical invention that fits the "I know it is the best thing, I love it and almost pressure people to use it, but it has not taken off the lightest for decades" case.
- patterns 3y ago
  The old guy in the video is Ted Nelson, the man who coined the term hypertext, made significant contributions to computer science, inspired two generations of researchers and continues to inspire as his works are being rediscovered. There have been "big programs" but when the web came, fundamental hypertext research and development on other systems came to a grinding halt. Ted Nelson, and many other researchers, predicted many of the problems that we now face with the Web, notably broken links, copyright and payment as well as usability/user interface issues. I don't know what an average user is, but what a user typically does or wants to do with a computer is somewhat (pre)determined by its design. Computer systems have, for better or worse, strong influence on what we consider as practical, what we think we need and even what we consider as possible. (Programming languages have a similar effect). One of the key points of Ted Nelson's research is that much of the writing process is re-arranging, or recombining, individual pieces (text, images, ...) into a bigger whole. In some sense, hypertext provides support for fine-grained modularized writing. It provides mechanisms and structures for combination and recombination. But this requires a "common" hypertext structure that can be easily and conveniently viewed, manipulated and "shared" between applications. Because this form of editing is so fundamental, it should be part of an operating system and an easily accessible "affordance". The Web is not designed for fine-grained editing and rearranging/recombining content and has started as a compromise to get work done at CERN. For example, following a link is very easy and almost instantaneous, but creating a link is a whole different story, let alone making a collection of related web pages tied to specific inquiries, or, even making a shorter version of a page with some details left out or augmented. Hypertext goes far deeper than this. Although a bit dated, I recommend reading Ted Nelson's seminal ACM publication in which he touches many issues concerning writing, how we can manage different versions and combinations of a text body (or a series of documents), what the problems are and how they can be technically addressed. [1] "Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate" https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800197.806036 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800197.806036
cobertos 3y ago
I think files are too limited to be the base for a memex. I've been managing a lot of my data recently in my custom built "memex" and have found them a poor abstraction in many cases. An example is my music collection. I have 2000+ songs, of which I have music metadata, metadata for myself (added date, found source), and the music itself. Bundling this into the mp3 is unideal. A json file per song is also not great, doable but overwhelming at 2000+. My ideal is a json file for all of it and then linking to the path of the mp3. The abstraction I've made allows you to pick arbitrary positions in the data "tree" when to break from a file tree abstraction to a intra-file data format (JSON, YAML, etc...) I also think the interoperable argument breaks down when you want to do anything off the beaten path. The author mentions how you might have a folder with a presentation or document. But attaching any kind of nonstandard data for the format is impossible, and requires the format parsing clients to know about it. You're limited by what each format supports and the total number of available, mature formats with mature parsers/editors.
- fluidcruft 3y ago
  My system is basically to emphasize easy rebuild of a database. So I have directories that contain a text file that can be easily parsed to build databases or process workflows. I have found this works extremely well even in draconian IT environments.
  - cobertos 3y ago
    That sounds nice. I've diverged a bit from actual files on disk (even though I wanted my system to stay there for simplicity) into an abstract tree structure with a fs-like API. Though you can get back to plain files by just using a single FSTree (in my system). Would love to hear more about the structure of those plain text files you use for regeneration I think it's very important to have the ability to work directly with files, for draconian environments you describe, but just because it's the simplest, stable, most portable, least-time to _something_ abstraction. It just has to be balanced with more complex functionality files alone can't handle.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  Whats overwhelming about the json per file? You need to fill up all that data either way whether you divide it up into a json per mp3 or a single mega json.
Whatboard 3y ago
| the reason those shiny new apps don’t stick is interoperability. Shameless reference to Whatboard.app where we are working hard to address this issue. Admittedly, we are over-focused on sales, and less intra-document linked. Much work ahead for us, and several enhancements in the pipeline. www.whatboard.app if you want check us out. Reach out if you have interest in getting involved with us.
OO000oo 3y ago
Honestly this sounds like a terrible platform for advertising.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

227 points by samwillis 3y ago

The key connecting element of a lot of the examples of "Memex" is the web platform - http, html, css, js, etc. - and that it is both a document and app delivery system. That is the secret that has made it work. All the examples of file sharing still have a http interface to connect to. As he touches on, the missing, or a least somewhat disjointed, element is local data and connecting to that from other web destinations. My hope, and belief, is that we are breaking down those local <-> server barriers with newer JS APIs for better file like local storage. It's just a pity in a way that the web browser and web server were not combined into one element from the start. It's still too hard to make content available on the network from your personal device without a server. His conclusion about the need to cognitively organise such trails/collections though could well change in the coming years - and potentially sooner. It's clear the LLMs are good at organising and summarising text and data. I'm expecting us to be using tools that will ingest all our work activity (documents, meeting, email, calls, browsing) and automatically curate and file it with a chat based ui to extract that data. We just desperately need that to be local and not server based.

pintxo 3y ago
Didn’t Netscape Navigator have a server included? And an email client and an HTML Editor?

undebuggable 3y ago

Check the original article on memex in Life magazine. Something like 25% of the real estate of the article are ads interrupted by five full page ads and followed by another two full page ads. Prophetic. It's actually difficult to extract the article itself while reading.

amelius 3y ago
At least these were not user-tracking ads.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

When I think about memex, I think about being able to share my “trails.” On this matter, I’m often irritated by how little value I get for my carefully developed web browsing history. Why is it so hard to extract personal value from our histories?

undebuggable 3y ago
It's not limited to your web history. File paths are URIs as well, and so is a path to a specific page in a PDF or to a tab in a spreadsheet. Nothing prevents you from composing both local and web URIs and reopening them automatically at any time. The value you extract depends on the quality and reliability of the content you picked to bookmark.
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  True. Closest to this I know was Gelernter’s lifestream
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    David Gelernter's tired old plagerized Lifestream and Mirror Worlds ideas (which he illegitimately patented) were hardly original or unique (which even Leonardo da Vinci and Bob Graham invented long before he did), and now he (and his son Daniel Gelernter) have degenerated into yet another couple of dime-a-dozen foaming at the mouth batshit crazy alt-right extremist Trump boot licking big lie spreading climate change denying misogynistic racist birtherism promoting sociopaths, who are religiously and sexistly against women in the workforce, and angrily think working mothers harm their children and should stay at home. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming#Before_lifestreaming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifestreaming#Before_lifestrea... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gelernter#Politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gelernter#Politics >Politics >He is a former national fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and senior fellow in Jewish thought at the Shalem Center. In 2003, he became a member of the National Council on the Arts.[21] Time magazine profiled Gelernter in 2016, describing him as a "stubbornly independent thinker. A conservative among mostly liberal Ivy League professors, a religious believer among the often disbelieving ranks of computer scientists..."[22] >Endorsing Donald Trump for president, in October 2016, Gelernter wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal calling Hillary Clinton "as phony as a three-dollar bill", and saying that Barack Obama "has governed like a third-rate tyrant".[23][24] In his capacity as a member of the Trump transition team, Peter Thiel nominated Gelernter for the Science Advisor to the President position; Gelernter did meet with Trump in January 2017 but did not get the job.[25] >In 2018, he said that the idea that Trump is a racist "is absurd."[26] In October 2020 he joined in signing a letter stating: "Given his astonishing success in his first term, we believe that Donald Trump is the candidate most likely to foster the promise and prosperity of America."[27] >Gelernter has spoken out against women in the workforce, saying working mothers were harming their children and should stay at home.[13] Gelernter has also argued for the U.S. voting age to be raised, on the basis that 18-year-olds are not sufficiently mature.[28] https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/trumps-science-advisor-candidates-both-question-climate-change/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/02/trumps-science-advis... https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/01/25/gelernter-denies-man-made-climate-change/ https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2017/01/25/gelernter-denies-m... https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/david-gelernter-donald-trump-why-liberals-hate-trump-op-ed.html https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/david-gelernter-... https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/donald-trumps-shadow-president-in-silicon-valley-235372 https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/donald-trumps-shadow-... https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/08/why-i-need-an-ar-15/ https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/08/why-i-need-an-ar-15/ https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/who-would-you-shoot https://morningshots.thebulwark.com/p/who-would-you-shoot

heckerhut 3y ago

Check https://memex.garden/ https://memex.garden/

eviks 3y ago

This approach where even the basics are broken - links require full manual management (what happens when you rename some target file) - is another 50 years away from Memex

deleted 3y ago
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undebuggable 3y ago
Well... URIs, URI fragments, URLs, URL shorteners, hyperlinks, symbolic links. With good will and some effort, it could be fixed I guess.
- input_sh 3y ago
  Or you use something like Obsidian, Logseq, Notion and so on that have already abstracted this problem away. You rename a file or move it to some subfolder and every single reference to it gets auto-updated without you having to do anything. I'd argue that this sort of interlinking flexibility (alongside easy-to-use plugins) is what separates the current era of note-taking apps over alternatives that people seem to (ab)use: a folder of Markdown notes edited via VSCode, a Google Docs folder, or even a static site generator.
- eviks 3y ago
  After wasting much time on fixing the bookeeping you'd get to the next basic issue - content search across devices. Then to tracking changes done by various people. Then... backtracking a couple of steps and dropping the whole thing

coldblues 3y ago

We definitely need open source tools. I personally use Logseq and have a lot of notes. I want to use AI to better search and make connections, using something like ChromaDB. Logseq is mainly for text. What My Mind (mymind.com) does for "smart bookmarking" is really great. No folders, collections at most if you really need it. Making the most use of digital knowledge is something that really needs to be focused on. It can accelerate a lot of things. And we must stop doing this with yet another cloud note-taking app with OpenAI integration with a bunch of (personally) useless collaborative features. I want my own mind that works for me and in my interest.

brazzy 3y ago
First time I heard of My Mind. Looks really nice, but how is it not yet another cloud note taking app? To me, the biggest problem of this kind of tool is that if you use it to its fullest potential, it necessarily becomes a crucial part of your daily life, something that will cause very serious problems if you lose it. And that means anything proprietary or closed SaaS is an absolute no go. My Mind's promise to respect privacy and stay independent of outside influence is nice, but worthless. They can change their mind at any time - or get bought up, or go bankrupt. Being a paid service might reduce the likelihood, but does not eliminate it, especially not over a timespan of decades. So at an absolute minimum, such a tool needs to be able and willing to export all of my data in an easily processible format. This is far more important than shiny features. My current solution is a self hosted TiddlyWiki. It may not have all the shiny features, but it is mine, and always will be, even 50 years from now. The worst case scenario is that it stops working on new browsers and nobody maintains it anymore - but I still have the data. Easily processible text files are actually its internal storage format.
v3ss0n 3y ago
try anytype.io , a lot better logseq its opensource too. It will also have realtime sync and sharing in next milestone
- jcstryker 3y ago
  https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md https://github.com/anyproto/anytype-ts/blob/main/LICENSE.md this appears to be source available not open source

amelius 3y ago

Shows that inventing things is more about being at the right place and time than about anything else.

andyjohnson0 3y ago

At the risk of diverting this into yet another discussion of note taking apps... I'm using Notion. Its ok, but I'd like to have a way to snapshot documents to incorporate into my notes. And lately I feel like I'm paying for all their new AI stuff that I just don't use. So help me HN: whats a good open source, self-hostable, replacement with decent desktop/mobile tooling and a practicable migration path from a Notion export/backup?

johnnyworker 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by snapshots, and it's not open source -- but if you haven't tried it yet, check out Obsidian. "Vaults" are self-contained, just markdown files in folders, with an extra folder for the Obsidian stuff, i.e. all settings and state and even the plugins. Plays great with SyncThing etc. And there are so many great community plugins, which is where the real magic of it is for me.
- jgalt212 3y ago
  I really do like the data model of obsidian. For the most part the data (markdown files) and the meta data (the .obsidian directory) stay out of each other's way.
jddj 3y ago
Logseq is as close as it gets. In my humble opinion these tools aren't quite there yet, which is not to say they aren't polished, but that they don't disappear from view like good tools should. There's still a noticeable impedance mismatch due to having to use their editor, for example, which has its quirks and is different enough to a standard text editor to cause a context switch. But it's open source and it's pretty good.
cobertos 3y ago
Used to use Notion. I haven't found any good open source alternatives either. I was using Typora for a while, before Obsidian got better. It was just a tree of Markdown files and a _really_ nice Notion-like editor. I had to write https://github.com/Cobertos/notion_export_enhancer https://github.com/Cobertos/notion_export_enhancer to get my data out of notion in an actual nice tree-like structure. I tried Obsidian again recently and their editor caught up to Typora's (and it was faster than the last time I used it). I'm trying to switch to it now, as the tree is more "file-y" than Typora (which removes blind spots for me, as I save PDFs and other stuff in my note tree). I've resorted to writing my own though now. Notion, Typora, and Obsidian are great for one specific type of management (documents, markdown-like), but I think there's a higher level abstractions here.

throwuwu 3y ago

Congrats, you just reinvented the early web and made no improvements. You just have an index of documents with no hyperlinks. Even Notion is a step up from this and it’s no where close to having the features of a memex. I’m always amazed that people completely miss the entire point of the trail feature.

DennisP 3y ago
What would you say is the entire point of the trail feature?
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  A trail (IIRC) charts a journey through a set of documents, or perhaps sections of documents. Think about a case where you are trying to figure out a problem based on a bunch of error messages. You search the web for solution to the first message, then the second message and so on, until you arrive at the root cause and the solution to that. You then save this as a trail (or the memex does this for you automatically, using some fancy ML method). Now, imagine you encounter a similar or identical issue 6 months down the line. You remember that 6 months ago you searched for a solution, and that you found one. Maybe you forgot to bookmark it. Not a problem, you find the original trail using some simple heuristics (how long ago it was, the keywords from the error message), and then you follow it to the end. Solution found, reasonably quickly.
  - filiph 3y ago
    Yes, and until we have the fancy ML method, one way to do it is to have something like a Google Doc where you document your search by copypasting from the source documents and linking to them. That was my point with the original article. I'm with you that it would be fantastic to have memex that's described in 'As we may think' (only better), but until we do, I'm doing it the hard/manual way.
    - selfhoster11 3y ago
      I was surprised to recently find out that Google Chrome in fact already has that fancy ML method for chunking history into trails. Nothing wrong with doing this manually, but I do think that having the Memex do some of the thinking re: how the data is organise would save a lot of time.

sambapa 3y ago

A nice counterpoint to this idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34137751

tkiolp4 3y ago

I usually prefer a Google Doc shared among the team to work on a given problem or feature instead of the so popular Miro. Diagrams are nice, yes, I agree, but they are not a substitute for actual text. Engineers think that because they draw boxes and lines and add little notes here and there the design is Done. Product managers usually like this approach too because “we don’t have time to read a whole page of text”. Drives me nuts.

quickthrower2 3y ago
The diagram is a thinking tool, or a supplement to written text, but not the whole thing.
hermanradtke 3y ago
The import from URL feature on Google docs is perfect for importing mermaid.live diagrams to accompany the text. A mermaid.live URL contains the complete diagram state, which allows anyone to follow the original URL, make modifications and update the Google doc.
- metaphor 3y ago
  That's a hard sell for those who work in companies that prohibit dependencies on free 3rd-party web services to discuss business confidential ideas in an unsecure way.
Hendrikto 3y ago
You know what drives me nuts? People spending two pages on a convoluted description of what could have been a simple diagram. It goes both ways.
- 39 3y ago
  Agree, most people cannot write concisely, sequence diagrams are generally a safer bet.
- quaddo 3y ago
  "A picture is worth a thousand words" or some such. That said, I've certainly heard that different people prefer different ways of learning/consuming knowledge. I myself will choose video for some things, illustrations/graphs/images for other things, and text/tables for yet others. I do have a fondness for well done images, though. Even the style of text can have an impact. Bullet points for providing instructions, instead of a long paragraph of sprawling text. Another thing I picked up some 15 years ago is borrowed from newspapers: the concept of "above the fold"; get the main points out there near the top, and keep it concise.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Yep I have a folder called Obsidian in my Dropbox with markdown files I edit with VSCode :-)

nologic01 3y ago

> On the other hand, memex is something that will give you an edge Umm, no. That is the problem really. An "edge" is something defined in societal context. Rightly or wrongly society is largely unaware of memex and its gifts. Memex, hypertext, wikis, semantic web etc. These are just early visions of plausible ways we can capture, organise and share knowledge at scale, using digital technologies. Alas it is a catalog of paths that the digitally interconnected society did not opt for. Why this (on the face of it) irrational behavior? The very short answer is that "an edge" is only loosely coupled to superior knowledge management. In the vast majority it is obtained by proximity to existing power structures. The proverbial rolodex rather than the memex.

selfhoster11 3y ago
> The very short answer is that "an edge" is only loosely coupled to superior knowledge management. In the vast majority it is obtained by proximity to existing power structures I somewhat disagree. A memex is effectively the plain old notebook/wiki, with the potential capability raised to the second or third power. Does a personal diary, calendar, home budget, or a small library help you get into places of power? For average people, no. But it does make organising life, and figuring out where you are, and charting how to get to where you want to be, much easier than it would be for your peers without such tools. So yes, it gives you an edge. Whether that edge has anything to do with power is a completely orthogonal concern.
- nologic01 3y ago
  I would readily admit that my analysis of memex's (non-)edge is a bit of a quick extrapolation, weaving together some broader themes as potential explanatory factors. There is an empirical fact though, that begs for some explanation: These tools are not used as much as one would think is commensurate to their (potential) added value. There is no virtuous cycle that would fund more development, create sharper "edges" etc. The connection with "power" might appear remote but consider e.g. why powerpoint (no pun) - a manifestly inferior piece of software - became so succesful.

selfhoster11 3y ago

It's interesting how the author settles on plain old files as the data access paradigm. A file cannot be yanked from under your feet, like a link can. It remains where it is indefinitely until deleted, it does not change (so cannot be tampered with or damaged by the author), it normally is not subject to artificial access restrictions a la logins or DRM. It's an artifact that can actually be archived for the rest of your natural life. I don't see any reason why the folders in question should necessarily be shared, though. I get the impression that as defined by Bush originally, the memex is first and foremost a memory expander for your private memory, and any sharing would take place infrequently, or on a narrow subset of data contained within.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
What do you have available to you when the internet is down? (It was for me last week, for pretty much a whole day.) That's the point (or at least one of them) of personal control. What do you have available to you after a hard drive failure? That's the point (or at least one of them) of having stuff in the cloud. How do you balance the two? Local, personal storage backed up in the cloud?
- frizlab 3y ago
  As much as I can locally, with Time Machine for backups. I have access to everything and do not fear hard drive failures.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    What's your plan for a natural disaster like a fire that takes out your house?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - frizlab 3y ago
      I did not mention, but I also have off-site backups.

ByThyGrace 3y ago

I am pretty sure wikimedia addresses this use case entirely. Some extensions may be needed.

fit2rule 3y ago

[dead]

ccozan 3y ago

To be honest, I find JIRA + Confluence(+ lets say Gitlab) a strong memex system. You can link everything very easily, the software is happy to create the links for you as well. Adding Gliphy as well ( for charts and other usages ).

foobarian 3y ago
Heh the further I read the blog post the more Jira and friends sounded like what the author was describing.

mikewarot 3y ago

There were 3 main features of the Memex that we just don't have. Annotation - The ability to mark up hypertext... yeah... HTML claims to do it, but you can't change a document once it's read only. You should be able to layer annotations on top of a document. HTML simply is not a Language for the Markup of Hypertext Documents. [Edit/Extend] - Annotation is anything you could do with a printout, at minimum. Circle something, highlight a section, black something out, attach links, etc. It's not just tagging a file as a black box. Trails - the ability to store a trail of annotations, linking up parts of two documents together, or more. Like a stack of bookmarks, except bookmarks can't anchor to part of a document. Publication - One of the crucial features of the Memex was the ability to output a collection to allow sharing with others. It could spit out a copy of everything linked to a trail, all the files, all in one dump. Copyright holders would have a huge problem with Memex if it were implemented as originally shown. I think it should be possible to build a proxy that records ALL local http(s) traffic, and thus record all the sources to documents you've seen... and then only keep those that you've tagged or linked to after a few months, purging the rest. A private Memex, but it couldn't even be an open source project, as copyright holders would work to squash it.

k__ 3y ago
I think, the Permaweb comes pretty close. You can annotate any upload (arbitrary data, files, or collections of files) with tags and since the data is permanent, your links don't break. Publication is possible too, and with the Universal Data License, copyright holders can define the terms for their part of the publication right at upload time.
deleted 3y ago
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euroderf 3y ago
I would think that Apple has the level of integration that would make this possible, but then... where's the potential profit that would make it worth their while ?
- brookst 3y ago

jimmySixDOF 3y ago

The physical desk surface as a clean interface motif hiding all the internal complexity is a big part of the Memex that people tend to skip over in the conversation about how hyperlinks solved this all years ago. The use of windows as an approximation for physical depth perception allowing something to be 'on top' is still only a very limited implemention of what is digitally possible.

coliveira 3y ago

The big problem with files is that they are linear. Up to computers, the standard interface for people to work is the sheet of paper, which is a two dimensional surface. In fact, it was even better because you can organize papers into books or collections, which gives a 3rd dimension. Files, being linear, make it difficult to parse and analyze, which is always the problem we need to solve with computers. This problem is much easier to solve when we can work on 3 dimensions and organize data spatially (this is the guiding principle of charts and tables).

cobertos 3y ago
I disagree. The linearity is super helpful for scanning and finding quickly, by time, by name, etc. Id argue that any app that makes the interface "spatial first" will have to add these linear features on top of what they're doing to find things fast, at a minimum for full-text search. I do think spatial organization can help for human consumption of not easily orderable datasets >1000 items, but I think that's a niche case for everything ive interacted with so far.
- donkeybeer 3y ago
  >I do think spatial organization can help for human consumption of not easily orderable datasets >1000 items, but I think that's a niche case for everything ive interacted with so far. What did you have in mind?
  - cobertos 3y ago
    Well, when the data gets above 1000 items, you have to start filtering, finding, or revisualizing it to be useful. You can no longer keep the whole dataset comfortably in your head, or even on screen. For revisualizing, it might be comfortable to plot it on a 2D map or to simply graph an interesting scalar. For revisualizing in a 3D spatial setting... I haven't seen any actual good 3D spatial layout of data. Disregarding "experiences" (like art galleries, which lay out data in a way to promote interest in a topic and fractal-like amounts of subtopics, but is human curated, like Saganworks[1]), the only one I guess is like the high level "portal" to categories of data. Like "Documents", "Downloads", etc but think 500+ categories of more granular entity types. Everything is non-comparable apples and oranges (except for perhaps shared common data like timestamp) and there's no way to quickly scan it (5 or so seconds to find alphabetically perhaps), so spatial might help to quickly locate your entity type with muscle memory. I haven't seen another use case, but would love to explore what others are doing in this space! [1]: https://saganworks.com https://saganworks.com

kykeonaut 3y ago

Is it me, or a Git repository, (either externally hosted or self-hosted) sounds like could work as a memex? You have a shared folder backed by version control. You have projects which can serve as memex projects, and issues which you can edit via markdown and link to the files in the repo. Plus you got CI-CD that allows you to have access to a cloud environment to perform work.

throwaway4aday 3y ago
I agree, version control is absolutely necessary when you are copying documents from other sources and modifying them. You need to know if the document has changed upstream since you cloned it and you need to be able to see the diff of the changes you made.

winter_blue 3y ago

I think it should be possible to build a Chrome/Firefox extensions that adds annotation and editing to pages (storing a superset copy of the page somewhere), adding links/trails to pages, and sharing these deltas wit others, etc.

harrego 3y ago

The openness of this approach will allow for great recall potential with GPT models when we eventually get them running locally. Dave Winer has already been experimenting with this (admittedly not locally) based on his large backlog of blog posts and has found it effective[1]. [1] http://scripting.com/2023/08/06/131842.html?title=miriamIsGreatAtSummarizing http://scripting.com/2023/08/06/131842.html?title=miriamIsGr...

multicast 3y ago

The need to adapt it for the average user is mentioned. The average person uses a pc (if ever - good luck with this on mobile) mostly for work (ms office + some ERP) and in some cases for private uses (e.g. news, e-banking, mails, important administrative work). If you go a bit deeper maybe reddit and video games. An average user would never want to link around stuff on the web with a hundred arrows and multiple colors. He simply does not care. The author and the old guy in the video he linked to behave almost cult-like, especially the old guy: He literally claims that this IS the best method for working with documents ever, the www is a fork of his idea based on a "dumbed-down in the 70s at brown university", he does not understand why it has not already taken off and he thinks its the most important feature for the human race. Really? If people really see potential in this and work in spaces like journalism and academic research there would be already big programs out there. Yes it is good to have passion about something and yes it is good if someone has a real need for this and his delivered with a solution, but this will never go mainstream. And in my opinion not even in the segment of technical skilled people like engineers. This is the typical invention that fits the "I know it is the best thing, I love it and almost pressure people to use it, but it has not taken off the lightest for decades" case.

patterns 3y ago
The old guy in the video is Ted Nelson, the man who coined the term hypertext, made significant contributions to computer science, inspired two generations of researchers and continues to inspire as his works are being rediscovered. There have been "big programs" but when the web came, fundamental hypertext research and development on other systems came to a grinding halt. Ted Nelson, and many other researchers, predicted many of the problems that we now face with the Web, notably broken links, copyright and payment as well as usability/user interface issues. I don't know what an average user is, but what a user typically does or wants to do with a computer is somewhat (pre)determined by its design. Computer systems have, for better or worse, strong influence on what we consider as practical, what we think we need and even what we consider as possible. (Programming languages have a similar effect). One of the key points of Ted Nelson's research is that much of the writing process is re-arranging, or recombining, individual pieces (text, images, ...) into a bigger whole. In some sense, hypertext provides support for fine-grained modularized writing. It provides mechanisms and structures for combination and recombination. But this requires a "common" hypertext structure that can be easily and conveniently viewed, manipulated and "shared" between applications. Because this form of editing is so fundamental, it should be part of an operating system and an easily accessible "affordance". The Web is not designed for fine-grained editing and rearranging/recombining content and has started as a compromise to get work done at CERN. For example, following a link is very easy and almost instantaneous, but creating a link is a whole different story, let alone making a collection of related web pages tied to specific inquiries, or, even making a shorter version of a page with some details left out or augmented. Hypertext goes far deeper than this. Although a bit dated, I recommend reading Ted Nelson's seminal ACM publication in which he touches many issues concerning writing, how we can manage different versions and combinations of a text body (or a series of documents), what the problems are and how they can be technically addressed. [1] "Complex information processing: a file structure for the complex, the changing and the indeterminate" https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800197.806036 https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/800197.806036

cobertos 3y ago

I think files are too limited to be the base for a memex. I've been managing a lot of my data recently in my custom built "memex" and have found them a poor abstraction in many cases. An example is my music collection. I have 2000+ songs, of which I have music metadata, metadata for myself (added date, found source), and the music itself. Bundling this into the mp3 is unideal. A json file per song is also not great, doable but overwhelming at 2000+. My ideal is a json file for all of it and then linking to the path of the mp3. The abstraction I've made allows you to pick arbitrary positions in the data "tree" when to break from a file tree abstraction to a intra-file data format (JSON, YAML, etc...) I also think the interoperable argument breaks down when you want to do anything off the beaten path. The author mentions how you might have a folder with a presentation or document. But attaching any kind of nonstandard data for the format is impossible, and requires the format parsing clients to know about it. You're limited by what each format supports and the total number of available, mature formats with mature parsers/editors.

fluidcruft 3y ago
My system is basically to emphasize easy rebuild of a database. So I have directories that contain a text file that can be easily parsed to build databases or process workflows. I have found this works extremely well even in draconian IT environments.
- cobertos 3y ago
  That sounds nice. I've diverged a bit from actual files on disk (even though I wanted my system to stay there for simplicity) into an abstract tree structure with a fs-like API. Though you can get back to plain files by just using a single FSTree (in my system). Would love to hear more about the structure of those plain text files you use for regeneration I think it's very important to have the ability to work directly with files, for draconian environments you describe, but just because it's the simplest, stable, most portable, least-time to _something_ abstraction. It just has to be balanced with more complex functionality files alone can't handle.
donkeybeer 3y ago
Whats overwhelming about the json per file? You need to fill up all that data either way whether you divide it up into a json per mp3 or a single mega json.

Whatboard 3y ago

| the reason those shiny new apps don’t stick is interoperability. Shameless reference to Whatboard.app where we are working hard to address this issue. Admittedly, we are over-focused on sales, and less intra-document linked. Much work ahead for us, and several enhancements in the pipeline. www.whatboard.app if you want check us out. Reach out if you have interest in getting involved with us.

OO000oo 3y ago

Honestly this sounds like a terrible platform for advertising.

deleted 3y ago

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