Spent a while watching (listening, mostly — video of some group's Zoom call is not so fascinating) a meetup of the ToolsForThoughtRocks crowd in which they had Howard Rheingold as a guest. "Extending Tools for Thought". Was well worth the time in that it triggered some Interesting Thoughts. In no particular order:
- note-taking v note-making seems a neglected distinction
- Howard would like to see a taxonomy of the many, many tools proliferating like mushrooms after rain. I strongly suspect that the proliferation is more a function of the space having attracted the attentions of VC money than of actual bold experimentation in making better tools.
- Devon Think sounded interesting. Turns out I've already tried to look at it. It's Mac-only, and I am Mac-zero. See the next point!
- Different people respond to/like different tools, all with good reasons. So! It's essential that those tools interop, otherwise groupwork becomes forced, unnatural, inconvenient.
- i.e. ActivityPub is more important than Obsidian. And Roam is a dead loss, being totally a walled-garden.
- Visibility/transparency of thought process v opacity of (e.g.) AI answers => trust
- Legibility matters!
- Book: The Extended Mind
- Collaboration is a conversation coming to concensus
- They talked a lot about trust. BUT. It's arguably more interesting/important to consider groupwork where there is NO/LITTLE trust. e.g. the UN. Cabinets. Contract negotiation. Conflict resolution.