Tools for thought

Tools for thought is a phrase used to describe a range of note-taking, annotation, and synthesis tools, coined by Howard Rheingold in 1985. It returned to popularity in the 2010s, applied to wiki and outlining tools.

Projects

Editors

Historical shifts: word (perfect + less-so), emacs, OOO, G

Outliners

Historical: More

Ecosystems

Historical: Lotus

Wikis

Historical: pattern repository, single-file (tiddly), networked (usemod/MW)

Personal knowledge bases

Roam, Obsidian, Logseq, ...

Knowledge embeddings

Modern NLP, DL models: easy metrics for 'closeness' + classification into fixed topics, more complex ones for automatic dimension discovery + classing

Events and discussions

Augment Minds 2021

A 2021/7/25 unconference, supported by open collective.

• Helpful links for the event; schedule
• List of related sites, notes, gardens: Anagora links, notes
• Related sessions + code: External aids, internal tools; loom