Note Taking in 2021

I use org-mode with standard unix search solutions, such as the interactive ugrep. On mobile, I use WorkingCopy (a git frontend), or my web front end (https://notes.lilf.ir/), both of which offer search. I can also use emacs via SSH, but I haven’t done that.

Org-mode is, in the end, just a better markdown with a lot of elisp extensions available. You don’t need to know everything about it to start using it. Worst case scenario, write your intended text in some format pandoc understands (e.g., markdown, html), and see how it is converted to org-mode. The IRC channel #org-mode and https://org-roam.discourse.group/ are also helpful.

In grad school I was for a year part of a small study group. We shared notes, on paper and aloud. It made each of us far, far better at the subject than we could have been on our own. And we were at most 7 people (sometimes only 3).

When developing Hode[1], and when helping develop Semantic Synchrony[2], I imagined some kind of mind-meld utopia where superbeings would not just frolic in but also tend each others' knowledge gardens. (Brandon Toner on Twitter[3] even introduced me to a hashtag for them ... which I can't remember ...)

Reading nonlinearly is a faster way to accumulate knowledge than reading linearly. That's is why people who really care prefer newspapers to watching the news on TV. And a format that lets lots of people contribute their input can potentially convey more than a format that locks you into reading a single author. Alas, the potential for noise is higher too -- but still, this is why Wikipedia has been so wildly successful.

One might ask, "We've already got Wikipedia; what possible improvement on that do you see?" The thing about Wikipedia is it presents what the author(s) consider(s) settled knowledge. It is a place for record, not a place for debate. A good shared knowledge base would by contrast also resemble Twitter -- but more organized, more navigable.

In practice the personal knowledge bases I've seen look much more like silos. I once frolicked for an afternoon through Andy Matuschak's[4], which was quite enjoyable. But it was mostly about ... can you guess? ... how to build a knowledge base.

If someone finds a scheme that scales, I believe it could be much more powerful than what we currently call AI.

[1] https://github.com/JeffreyBenjaminBrown/hode

[2] https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/

[3] https://twitter.com/brandontoner

[4] https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Knowledge_work_should_accret...

As a user, we are all trained to be vigilant about locking ourselves into services/companies because of circumstances. In this IT landscape, users are not just limited to Windows or Mac or iPhone. The base set of expectations have gone up, particularly when there are passable alternatives that are farther than the incumbent in features.

For a note-taking app,

MacOS App Windows App iPhone App Android App web interface (for all others including Linux users)

ought to cover it. I realise how much of work that is. But, that is the playing field when competing against apps that do different subset of the above list.

Staying away from resource hungry electron app will make me happily pay for it (just my opinion).

The pen mode is pretty good because it does OCR on your writing and indexes it the same as plain text. What I don't like is that it happens asynchronously. When I was testing it, I could search and find notes from yesterday, but not today.