What's next for augmented intelligence
The operating system of the global brain is booting up
The augmented intelligence space has been building momentum over the past few years. At first, the focus was on what tools you should use for note taking. I jumped around and tried a bunch of tools. However, in the process, I began to realize that note taking was the least interesting part of the possibility space that computer-aided knowledge work can enable. Digital notes serve as a useful memory aid but it’s only a slight improvement over the paper notes we had before. Regardless of the markdown editor you choose to capture your thoughts, there are a suite of powerful augmentations that can be built on top of your notes that I hope we begin to explore in this next phase.
Computer as thinking partner
For a computer to become an effective thinking partner, it’s useful to consider the ways computers are more capable than humans.
As Engelbart captured in his augmentation system, computers are pattern matching magicians. They can take data and display it a hundred different ways. Each representation highlighting different patterns in the data that can help us understand and form predictive mental models.
When you take notes, you collect all the quotes, snippets, passages and thoughts that interest you. Over time, this becomes a digital twin of who you are. If you don’t already know, the things you care about and the problems that are most important to you are probably somewhere in there. A digital thinking partner could help us reflect and answer the hard questions around finding meaning. Who am I right now? What do I want to do with my life? What activities make me feel most alive?
Computer as workshop
Hidden within our notes are the seeds for stories that haven’t been told, papers that haven’t been written and ideas that haven’t been shared. What if we had a space to transform these notes into new forms? A kind of dynamic digital workshop that could give us access to all the tools we need.
Let’s say you want to write an essay in your digital workshop. You start by reviewing and searching through your notes clipping any quotes, links and ideas that you might want to reference. Then, pulling in a text editor tool, you assemble an outline for the essay from your clippings. You might realize a diagram could help explain an idea better so you insert a new canvas inline and create your visual. A copy of the diagram is saved back to your notes for future reference and remixing. As the essay evolves, the computer might surface relevant snippets from your notes moving the writing process along by reducing writer’s block.
The key to the workshop is having your notes and tools in one place. You can transition seamlessly from viewing your notes to transforming them into any medium that you’d like. The dynamic workshop can even observe your intent and surface relevant information to assist you in that goal.
Computer as connector
It’s almost cliche now to say that computers have connected the world. But have we really connected everyone? Are the people who share the same values or who want to work on the same problems talking to each other? If we are the neurons of the global brain, then we’ve only just begun growing the connections between us.
Twitter and other social networks are a start. They allow us to asynchronously get to know each other and the things we each care about. But after that, how do we deepen those relationships?
Aaron’s idea gives like-minded individuals a chance to regularly encounter the same people. Computers can help create these little serendipitous opportunities that nurture friendships and trust over time. Imagine you are exploring some topic and discover there are two other people in your social sphere who are exploring the same thing. With a click of a button, you could all jump into a collaborative workshop space to chat further. A conversation ensues with tools at the ready to create and explore further if the group would like.
There are many exciting things on the augmented intelligence frontier to explore. I’ve only touched on a small sampling. Computers and the internet have given us abundant information and a medium for people to connect. Now we need computers to help us make sense of that information, together.
If you’d like to discuss anything in this essay further, send me a message on Twitter. Ideas incubated through conversations with Azlen Elza and Jorge Zaccaro. 謝謝你！
Spontaneous communities based on shared interests are a powerful idea to explore, but my thinking around their permanence and conversation design is a bit different. Yet, it's something that I'll try to bring to life and see if it works out.
I like the point about the human collective intelligence as coined by Doug Engelbart is just booting up, we are still not very much connected, twitter example is a great idea and solution to that problem now seems to be 'Twitter Spaces'. For note taking, tools like 'Notion' have really combined knowledge base with rich media content into a single space. A lot more is need to be done but we seem to be making progress slowly but steadily.