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Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

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Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#11

Post by skybrian »

walterbell wrote: post #2

> Personal Library Science is the leverage of LLM technology, applied to a personal library. A personal library differs from a impersonal library in the fact that a personal library is an interpretation of a source material. These interpretations include: photographs from different photographers at the same event, or favorite scenes from a movie, or favorite passages from books, parts of songs that bring you to tears…

I imagine an LLM could work well for doing autocomplete while saving and annotating documents. But it’s not personal unless you edit the result to say what you want to say.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#12

Post by walterbell »

openrisk wrote: post #10

Personal computing has stagnated for such a long time, it creates substantial uncertainty about what state it might evolve to if and when the next step actually happens. In this respect local LLM's are simply the tip of the iceberg, pointing out the vast amount of personal information processing that is available in principle but does not actually happen.

One could argue that personal computing (desktop) software piracy lead to web-based SaaS subscription licensing. In theory, mobile app stores solved device software piracy, at the cost of high distribution fees, policy restrictions and telemetry.

Thanks to Linux being used at scale in Android and WSL, it's now maintained and capable on the desktop, as a hypothetical foundation for personal computing innovation. But even there, native GUI toolkits took a backseat to web and CLI. Remember Chandler? http://www.osafoundation.org/

Investors poured small fortunes into cauldrons of smart devices, wearables and AR/VR, with little to show as nascent ecosystems failed to achieve escape velocity, due to closed hardware and software that forestalled the experimentation which birthed personal computing.

Apple Silicon has reinvigorated walled laptops. Hopefully next month's derivative Qualcomm SoC from PC OEMs can offer good price/performance/watt for Apple-competitive-yet-open Arm laptops and tablets that can run any Linux distro, with retail SSDs and RAM, plus AI silicon roadmap.

A modular Framework Arm laptop would be a good start to rebooting PC innovation.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#13

Post by walterbell »

_bramses wrote: post #9
mistrial9 wrote: post #4

there may be an important divergence implied by this essay .. people here ask about using an LLM.. but the essay refers to "different photographs of the same scene from different photographers" or other personal collection items that are related but subjective or not-authoritative There is a rush in public to condense and summarize many authoritative publications to find patterns, or to replace a human expert with au…

> There is a rush in public to condense and summarize many authoritative publications to find patterns, or to replace a human expert with automated results.. yet that is fundamentally different than taking multiple incomplete perspectives to add to a human library-owners knowledge and investigations. It is subtle to speak it but not subtle in its implications.. taking "data as facts" and condensing them or reordering…

There's lots of interesting work that came out of BCL in 1960s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_Computer_Laboratory

> The focus of research at BCL was systems theory and specifically the area of self-organizing systems, bionics, and bio-inspired computing; that is, analyzing, formalizing, and implementing biological processes using computers. BCL was inspired by the ideas of Warren McCulloch and the Macy Conferences, as well as many other thinkers in the field of cybernetics.

On cybernetics, https://www.pangaro.com/definition-cybernetics.html

> Artificial Intelligence (AI) grew from a desire to make computers smart, whether smart like humans or just smart in some other way. Cybernetics grew from a desire to understand and build systems that can achieve goals.. it connects control (actions taken in hope of achieving goals) with communication (connection and information flow between the actor and the environment).. Later, Gordon Pask offered conversation as the core interaction of systems that have goals.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#14

Post by idle_zealot »

walterbell wrote: post #12
openrisk wrote: post #10

Personal computing has stagnated for such a long time, it creates substantial uncertainty about what state it might evolve to if and when the next step actually happens. In this respect local LLM's are simply the tip of the iceberg, pointing out the vast amount of personal information processing that is available in principle but does not actually happen.

One could argue that personal computing (desktop) software piracy lead to web-based SaaS subscription licensing. In theory, mobile app stores solved device software piracy, at the cost of high distribution fees, policy restrictions and telemetry. Thanks to Linux being used at scale in Android and WSL, it's now maintained and capable on the desktop, as a hypothetical foundation for personal computing innovation. But e…

How does slightly improved laptop hardware relate to re-invigorating desktop software? Surely desktop computing has stagnated because most users are primarily or exclusively mobile users. In Mac land Apple has been progressively dumbing down their interfaces, in Windows land Microsoft is more focused on extracting maximum value from their users than trying to meaningfully improve their platform. In Linux land there are some interesting things happening with Nix/Guix around declarative system configurations, and around Fedora with its layered images+Flatpak distros for making systems more reliable, and System76 may be doing something novel interface-wise with Cosmic marrying powerful tiling/tabbing window layouts with intuitive controls and the niceties of an all-in-one desktop environment. From my perspective desktop computing is definitely advancing, but only for hobbyists, not for mainstream desktop operating systems.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#15

Post by A_D_E_P_T »

I work in a very interdisciplinary, and somewhat niche, tech/engineering field. For the past 15 years, I've been saving every relevant PDF that I can find -- mostly studies of the sort published by Elsevier and Springer, but also books and presentations. I now have around 10k, which probably makes it the largest private library focused on this particular domain of expertise.

It has been extremely useful, especially because it's text-searchable and the really important papers are properly categorized.

A local LLM will make it 100x more useful. Also, it might not even need be "local." If I make it available via the web, I can probably sell access to other scientists and engineers in my field.

Recent advances really benefit data hoarders out there.

I'd add that these days it totally makes sense to download libgen's entire archive, because (1) storage has never been cheaper, and (2) you can use it to train local LLMs.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#16

Post by walterbell »

idle_zealot wrote: post #14
walterbell wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that personal computing (desktop) software piracy lead to web-based SaaS subscription licensing. In theory, mobile app stores solved device software piracy, at the cost of high distribution fees, policy restrictions and telemetry. Thanks to Linux being used at scale in Android and WSL, it's now maintained and capable on the desktop, as a hypothetical foundation for personal computing innovation. But e…

How does slightly improved laptop hardware relate to re-invigorating desktop software? Surely desktop computing has stagnated because most users are primarily or exclusively mobile users. In Mac land Apple has been progressively dumbing down their interfaces, in Windows land Microsoft is more focused on extracting maximum value from their users than trying to meaningfully improve their platform. In Linux land there a…

> How does slightly improved laptop hardware relate to re-invigorating desktop software?

If Arm SystemReady laptops with good performance/watt have an open security foundation (declarative, immutable OS at EL2) to support multiple competing "app store" equivalents on Linux, the resulting revenue and competitive market can reward innovative desktop software - open, closed or hybrid. Without an Apple tax on storage and memory, funds can be redirected to a competitive market of smaller ISVs.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#17

Post by hervature »

A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #15

I work in a very interdisciplinary, and somewhat niche, tech/engineering field. For the past 15 years, I've been saving every relevant PDF that I can find -- mostly studies of the sort published by Elsevier and Springer, but also books and presentations. I now have around 10k, which probably makes it the largest private library focused on this particular domain of expertise. It has been extremely useful, especially b…

> If I make it available via the web, I can probably sell access to other scientists and engineers in my field.

Out of curiosity. Does this statement come from complete ignorance of or complete disregard to copyright of the author?

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#18

Post by throwaway11460 »

hervature wrote: post #17
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #15

I work in a very interdisciplinary, and somewhat niche, tech/engineering field. For the past 15 years, I've been saving every relevant PDF that I can find -- mostly studies of the sort published by Elsevier and Springer, but also books and presentations. I now have around 10k, which probably makes it the largest private library focused on this particular domain of expertise. It has been extremely useful, especially b…

> If I make it available via the web, I can probably sell access to other scientists and engineers in my field. Out of curiosity. Does this statement come from complete ignorance of or complete disregard to copyright of the author?

If it's research it very probably is at least partially publicly funded. Regardless of whatever the law says, I don't think it's immoral to take it and offer better services around it that will be useful enough that someone decides to pay.

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#19

Post by walterbell »

hervature wrote: post #17
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #15

I work in a very interdisciplinary, and somewhat niche, tech/engineering field. For the past 15 years, I've been saving every relevant PDF that I can find -- mostly studies of the sort published by Elsevier and Springer, but also books and presentations. I now have around 10k, which probably makes it the largest private library focused on this particular domain of expertise. It has been extremely useful, especially b…

> If I make it available via the web, I can probably sell access to other scientists and engineers in my field. Out of curiosity. Does this statement come from complete ignorance of or complete disregard to copyright of the author?

> complete ignorance of or complete disregard to copyright

A question that could be appended to many LLM discussions!

Re: Personal computing paves the way for personal library science

#20

Post by hervature »

throwaway11460 wrote: post #18
hervature wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I make it available via the web, I can probably sell access to other scientists and engineers in my field. Out of curiosity. Does this statement come from complete ignorance of or complete disregard to copyright of the author?

If it's research it very probably is at least partially publicly funded. Regardless of whatever the law says, I don't think it's immoral to take it and offer better services around it that will be useful enough that someone decides to pay.

Do you not see the hypocrisy in stating that someone should be able to take something partially publicly funded and profit from it while the creator of said work should not retain some rights over said profit? By extension of the transitive property of the nebulous "partially", the LLM wrapper should be provided for free with complete disregard to the wrapper's creator since it is a derivative of partially publicly funded work.
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