Where PKM leads
"Writing is easy. All you have to do is cross out the wrong words."
-Mark Twain
In this brief article, I want to explore how I want to build PKM software and some ideas about the next generation of machine-human interactivity.
Personal Knowledge Management has recently become central to the work that I do. As a programmer, a writer and a cinephile, my greatest asset is my mind. Now to gain ideas and explore different concepts, I not only need to read extensively but also need to record and transmit this information to the Keane of the future. He will need some insights and concepts that Keane today has never heard of. PKM is the solution for now.. Mind gardening with knowledge management.
I propose a binary classification of the current state of note-taking software:
- Tools
- Conduits
In this essay, I would like to propose that the future of PKM lies in the integration of these two factions. A big influence on this essay has been the writings of Linus from thesephist.com. I read a lot of his work and highly recommend it too, especially Knowledge tools, finite and infinite and Designing a better thinking-writing medium.
Tools, tools, tools
In this day and age, with the market saturation of knowledge-base products, we are flooded with options for tools. Tools address the needs of the human faculty by amplifying a single capability. What is this capability you say? For PKM tools, it is memory. (By this definition, paper is a PKM tool - WHICH IT IS) For hardware tools, it is power or dexterity. Note that tools only amplify our abilities in a unidimensional way. They are very good at what they do and only at what they do. If you boil Notion and Obsidian down, they're essentially great big pieces of paper.
Note that the iPhone or any other phone is NOT A TOOL. They are devices. There is a salient but important difference in terms of technological affordance here.
Can we use these tools as a mode of thought? No. Why not? One word - Boundaries.
To Infinity and Beyond
Google, YouTube, Wikipedia and recently ChatGPT are conduits. Conduits are things that allow you to dip a finite bucket into a seemingly infinite well. They are pipelines of "infinite" information (that explains the name) that allow you to tap into them with a finite probe. A sentence on Google, reveals 100 or more links to explore each with 10+ hyperlinks embedded. Rabbitholing a topic on Wikipedia can be endless (trust me on this one.). I would like to stress that conduits are not a 21st-century concept. Libraries are conduits. So are conferences. Universities. Schools.
I've found Metaphor Systems is the latest addition to this line of conduits.
Why am I talking about conduits? Because they are the perfect outlet for curiosity. Can you use Metaphor or YouTube as a PKM system? No. Why not? One word - Distance.
Integrations galore
Tools have boundaries. Since they are single-faceted and finite, we are limited by the application's limits and your use of it. You can't learn about the Peace of Westphalia from your Obsidian vault if all you take notes on is '60s Blues music. Conduits are distant forms. They don't have a lot of personalization. Sure, you have the 'Related' and 'For You' tabs but that caters to the consumer hedonist, not the intellectual. You need something that has the context of your learning journey, a slice of your learning aspirations and the vast expanses that conduits afford.
Integrating these two forms seems to be the way forward. To curate and nurture your mind garden in the safety and structure of a tool but to have the ability to access infinities with a neatly placed conduit interaction that can give you results relevant to your vault.
PKM For Me
In his essay Fashionable Problems, Paul Graham says "The best protection against getting drawn into working on the same things as everyone else may be to genuinely love what you're doing. Then you'll continue to work on it even if you make the same mistake as other people and think that it's too marginal to matter.". With that very spirit, I intend to build in the PKM space with this very model in mind. Not because I need to but because I can't think of anything better to do. I love learning. But what I love more is helping others learn.
And there you have it. The tool-conduit charter.