The Man Who Wrote Down Every Thought He Had | Hacker News Reader

The Man Who Wrote Down Every Thought He Had

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90 pointstimtadh53 comments

It still bugs me that computers (and digital devices in general) are not good for taking notes. They work wonderfully for displaying information and entering raw text, but as soon as you want to do any kind of meaningful editing, markup, or diagramming, your hands are tied.

One reason I got so excited about the iPad and get so frustrated at the people who claim it's "only for consumption" is that it helps break down the diagram barrier. However, it sacrifices text input, which again moves it away from an ideal note-taking environment. If I owned one, I could perhaps make some statement about its use in conjunction with a bluetooth keyboard, but that analysis is pending experimentation.

I do think that the screen may be too small to provide an ideal note-taking experience.

Does anyone else have tablet note-taking experience?

I have experience, and it happened well before the iPad.

I have a Lenovo X61 notebook/tablet w/Pen. Combined with Microsoft OneNote it allowed me to take notes on my computer, even in my engineering classes.

For a while I had experimented with taking all of my notes with a plain laptop since I can type much faster than I can write with the added bonus of not having legibility issues.

For some classes this worked just fine but being an engineering student, it ultimately proved impossible. Try taking physics notes, at speed, with Word and it's equation editor and you'll get it pretty quickly. Trying to keep a notebook of paper diagrams and typed notes on my computer synchronized was also proving to be a pain.

Then my laptop died and I purchased a Lenovo X61 tablet. It changed everything.

Being able to type notes in a lecture then flip the screen over and start copying over diagrams drastically increased my efficiency by reducing everything to one medium. I could now do typed notes, hand written notes, homework assignments completely on my computer and even in one program. The only paper I relied on was printing some assignments as needed.

Conversion tablets have been around for a while and have both a touch screen and a keyboard, allowing for a very wide range of user input. Coupled with programs like OneNote and some diagramming/mind-mapping software I can quickly sketch out just about anything I can think of.

Trying to use word to do anything at speed is a bad idea. (Or frankly, to do anything at all with it – except perhaps exchange documents with other people who use word – is a bad idea.)

With training though it is possible to TeX notes at the same speed as handwritten notes, including commutative diagrams and all kinds of complicated formulae. I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen, when I was trying to hurry.

>I know this because there was a guy in my math course 5 years ago who could TeX notes substantially faster than I could write them with a pen

I knew a guy who could juggle 7 balls in cascade.

Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it (that one would take many years of concerted effort, but you could learn to juggle 5 balls in a few months if you really wanted to).

My point is that with some training it is possible to take math (& therefore most of physics/engineering/etc.) notes at high speed using LaTeX, if you practice and set up some shortcuts for yourself. Personally I don’t want to put in the effort practicing to do it, but it’s not unreasonably difficult either (try to transcribe stuff in TeX with an emphasis on speed for a couple hours a week for a few months and you’ll end up quite good at it).

>Yes. And if you thought you needed to juggle seven balls, you could also learn to do it.

I can juggle 3 balls. However, I think even if my life depended on it I couldn't possibly do 7, my reaction times are too long and my coordination is too poor.

My point, in case anyone missed it is that this looks like an edge case to me.

Can you post some examples?

I'll flip though some things when I get home this evening.

So, looking back through my notes it turns out I just wrote things out much more frequently than I used the keyboard. Negating the legibility bonus.

Here's a page from my Signals and Systems class notes from '08 http://www.scribd.com/doc/40684255/Signals-and-Systems

As someone else who has been using tablets for a long time (going back to Windows 3.11 for Pen on a Compaq Concerto), the key difference between these devices and the iPad is their choice of a reasonable input device: a pen. Mushing around with your fingers on a surface you have to otherwise actively avoid touching (such as by resting your wrist on the surface), implying your fat hands and fingers are covering the thing you are trying to draw/write and you are relying on the fine posture control of one or two fingers for precision input (something many users don't have, and which I can already feel slipping away at the relatively young age of 28) is utterly ineffective.

I tried using a Newton back in the early 90s and...it did not work too well, except at distracting other people in class.

I think the big value in managing notes with a computer is in the re-writing of paper notes after class/meeting/etc. Not only do you get an editable/searchable/printable/re-orderable version of your notes, re-entering them reinforces the memory and gives you a chance of viewing it from a perspective not rushed by the need to get something down on paper while your prof is whizzing through material.

The iPad + GoodReader, Papers, iThoughts HD, and occasionally Evernote work pretty well for search and presentation, although I wish there were one good memex system.

To be honest, I don’t think they’re very good for “displaying” text information, when that includes anything you want to read closely and interact with, either. I underline and scribble marginal notes all over everything I read seriously, and current electronic devices don’t come close to keeping up.

It’s really tragic, because it seems like with the proper software a device like the iPad (esp. one also supporting pen input, but even just with finger touch) would be really great for reading, and for marking up/hyperlinking/etc.

I have a Livescribe pen, which records the audio in the room with the text you write in the notebook. It works great and was a nice tool to have in my classes, and is now a great tool for meetings in my job.

Great for discussions which includes a lot of drawing and explaining, with no need for writing down everything as it can just be replayed afterwards.

I just had to Google that after reading this comment and WOW, this concept blows my mind.

Of course, my first thought was "How in the hell does that even work" but it turns out there are identifying symbols in the paper so I guess they just have to store a mapping of PAPER POSITION -> TIME INDEX to make it work.

Still a brilliant idea and execution.

Also available as a toy - look for Fly pen.

Does anyone else have tablet note-taking experience?

I don't think that current computing devices will ever be able to capture the utility and aesthetic of pen on paper. Though I am a bit of a writing snob. Taking a stylus to a screen feels a little like trying to take a sports car on a frozen lake to me.

Wow. Can't believe no one's mentioned Bucky Fuller yet. He documented his life every 15 minutes from 1920 to 1983.. It's archived at Stanford. :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymaxion_Chronofile

http://www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/spc/fuller/about.html

That's fascinating. If someone as accomplished as Fuller has done it and most people haven't heard of it, let alone read the archives themselves... it shows how vain it is to hope that anyone will be interested in the marks we leave behind.

That's right. It is the sum of our life, or possibly only a few moments, that the world may remember.

We may be known for a program we wrote, or how we treated our friends, or the three movies we acted in superbly. But the thoughts and daily gestures we make are largely unremembered.

I think this might help make the case that we need to live for today.

Lion has more information about this on his own web site: Map of Every Thought you Think - http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/nb/

Lion is also behind some other cool things like Saturday House, a (now defunct?) weekly hacker/tinkerer gathering in Seattle: http://www.saturdayhouse.org/

The next off-shoot of Saturday House is Jigsaw Renaissance: http://www.jigsawrenaissance.org/

"Lion's system, painstakingly explained in his book (which can be downloaded for free from his website, see Internet links on the right)"

Off-topic, but is anyone else bothered by this? They could simply use "his book" as the anchor text to the link, but that would be too... web-like?

This is from 2004; these web-like things we take for granted now weren't always so used.

Pretty sure "HyperText-style" was already fairly widely used on the web in 2004 ;)

It's a combination of things.

Primarily, it's part of the "House Style" or "House Design" to have the off-site links not in the main body, but to list them in a separate box so that people know they are taking you somewhere else, and an appropriate warning given. Without that warning people complain.

Really, they do.

Since writing releases additional thoughts, that is impossible.

Right on. If someone really wrote everything that crossed its mind, that person would end up in some kind of infinite feedback loop:

"I'm tired writing." (write it down) "Ok, now I gotta stop writing." (write it down) "I wish I could stop thinking so I could stop writing." (write it down) "Ok, I'm stopping now." (write it down) "Let's try to do something impulsive next time without thinking." (write it down) "Yea, it worked! I stopped thinking... Oh sh..." (write it down), etc.

Thats a theoretical question.

Point is, writing down a very large part of what goes on in your mind, and then being able to mine it for stuff can be worked upon.

I find the idea very interesting. I end up ignoring a lot of thoughts that come to my mind, and I usually get most of the ideas when I'm not working very hard. Probably it would be great to take 10 days off work, do nothing, and just write down whatever comes to mind. I'm going to try this.

It's turtles all the way down.

You have a point. It's the Heisenberg principle at play here. By making the observation, you change what you are observing.

Two things fascinated me about the article: 1) the inability of computers to model his thought process and 2) the experience of thinking deeply.

Computers are great writing aids but I am continuously frustrated by them for textual research purposes. They cannot model what occurs when I use pencil, paper, and write in the margins. The experience of Kimbro (the man in the article) reminded me a bit of Ted Nelson with his book Computer Lib. Ted couldn't write the book using a computer because it wasn't possible for computers at that time to layout such a complex book. I think this article raises similar issues.

Second, thinking deeply is a challenging exercise which is often ignored for more pressing concerns. Thinking, writing, teaching, and asking questions are the basis of learning. Reading and listening can only take you so far. I often find I do not truly understand something until I can either write about it or teach it. For algorithms I experience this most acutely: I never understand them until I have implemented them.

I think that Ted Nelson's complaints about computerized layout processes are not quite relevant to Kimbro's situation. While it is true that Nelson could not effectively lay out Computer Lib digitally, it was more a problem of the layout systems' inability to support efficient editing of complex layouts and content rather than the computer's inability to capture his thought process, which was probably kept in separate notes.

I haven't seen a good solution to the layout problem either, though my experience is limited to TeX and word processing applications.

Interesting, I thought this was going to be about Samuel Pepys. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pepys)

Pepys did write a lot of things down, but mostly not thoughts.

Speaking of Pepys, here is a wonderful plaque that hangs on the "Hung, Drawn and Quartered" pub in London. I was wandering around the neighborhood and happened on it once:

http://s0.geograph.org.uk/photos/38/18/381862_cbced004.jpg

A perfect specimen of the British wit we can never, ever have enough of.

Instead of using a loose binder, I would recommend Circa: http://www.levenger.com/PAGETEMPLATES/NAVIGATION/Products.as... , or Staple store's rebranding of it - rolla (couldn't find in at staples.com, but they still have it in my local store few months ago).

It's flexible like a binder, but easy-writable like a notebook. Comes in 2 sizes, 5.5x8, or 8.5x11, with leather feel cover (at least the rolla ones).

The European equivalent would be Atoma: http://www.atoma.be/en/

They're good and I love them. While the rings sometimes get in the way of my hand when writing, it's still the best notebook for my uses.

I am more interested in how his thought process change and help him solve problem than his notebook system.

His thoughts here: http://speakeasy.org/~lion/weird.html

Doesn't really seem like that many thoughts. In fact, it was only 11,156 words.

I guess the emphasis is on quality rather than quantity, the specific quality being "writing everything down." I don't think that's especially uncommon, though. I often scribble ideas in notebooks.

Or am I missing the point?

OK, I see the point now is to have some structure around your stream of ideas (also, to get them out of the back of your mind.)

FWIW, I really like drawing mind maps. Either on paper, or using a tool like FreeMind.[1] It doesn't scale to quite this level of inclusiveness, though.

[1] http://freemind.sourceforge.net/

TheBrain got close and then managed to stuff up the UI for the past 400 years or however long it has been around.

FreeMind is nice but it starts getting ugly when linking between subtrees.

I guess this is the spot where someone says,"semantic web!" and invokes Husserl.

That's not the thoughts the article was talking about. Those were written down on paper, with hand-drawn mind-maps for navigation, stored in binders.

wow, you have flattr.com right there:

"Economics Free CompensateArtists

Voluntary Adjustable Background Tip Jar

You say, "$20.00/month" on tips. You decide how much you want to tip on a given month. Each participating site that you go to gets a share of that tip jar, in direct proportion to the time you spend at that page.

You can also make an extra to a particular site if you want, with a built in tip button of some sort.

Before payments go out at the end of the month, you can adjust them as you like. "

This guy's a light-weight :P Someone once told me "you don't own an idea until your write it down."

I've written down every creative idea I've had for the past 18 years. It's now a collection of RTF documents that fills over 4 gigabytes.

I don't think writing down literally every thought it particularly productive, I only keep the good ones :P

4gb worth of text? That sounds impossible. How many words/pages is that!? What are you going to do with all that? What's your plan? What types of creative ideas have you written down? How do you define creativity - "constructive original" thoughts, or "original" thoughts in general?

Longer interview:

http://gilest.org/luvly/20040322-lion.html

If time is precious and every moment is worth preserving, who is going to spend time reading these records?

That's the beauty of the web combined with search engines. An inbound link allows crawlers to find it and index it, then if it is needed in the future, it will show up in a search result.

If you think of it as reference material, then sure. But if you think of it as art or history or philosophy, consider this example. If you record every minute of your life on video camera to preserve it so you can remember it all later, ... when exactly do you plan on watching the 80 years of footage?

He seems to be a philosopher, which I encourage, although his method is a bit extreme. But I do something similar. Any time I have an insight that seems worth keeping, I type it into a text file. As I am prone to thinking about philosophical issues, this typically happens several times a day. If it's a particularly good one and meets other criteria (such as appropriateness), I write it into Twitter. I've been doing this for a long time and have many such files. I promote comparable behaviors as I believe most people live their lives without adequately philosophizing.

The idea sounds kind of interesting, but I was a little underwhelmed by the "new ways" his experience allowed him to think in. "How do we communicate?" is hardly a novel question.

I think it is a very important question. There are many advanced fields like linguistics, NLP etc studying communication. But the idea is to explore his understanding of communication from his perspective.

I appreciate the attention.

The way I keep notes has changed a lot since I wrote the book, and my experience of notes has changed a lot.

The comments here that are most in line with my deeper experience:

* [sliverstorm:] "If time is precious and every moment is worth preserving, who is going to spend time reading these records?"

This is a very good question, and one that my notebook systems have pivoted around in their evolution.

This is about the purpose of notes, and how that turns into their organization.

I estimate that by my present notekeeping system, 1 in 15 pages of my notes are revisited even after 1-2 years time. I arrive at this figure by opening a notebook from 2 years ago, and asking myself, "How many of these pages do I still regularly revisit?"

I think this is actually an unusually high value -- I'd put most notekeeping systems somewhere in the 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 100,000 range, if they have any pages at all that are regularly revisited after 2 years.

The question is, "What are you keeping notes for?" And this is where the ethic of developing thought comes in.

Which segues straight into these two comments:

* [timtadh:] "Two things fascinated me about the article: 1) the inability of computers to model his thought process and 2) the experience of thinking deeply." * [kiba:] "I am more interested in how his thought process change and help him solve problem than his notebook system."

I've taught several classes on keeping notes now, and I've found that the main distance between what I'm talking about, and where people are at, is in terms of the ethic of incubating thought.

Our thoughts appear chaotic and unruly, going in all directions at first, but with time, themes and patterns emerge. A programming idea that fascinated you 7 years ago still continues to fascinate you, 3 years later, and then 4 years later again.

Can you develop a thought across time? Everything works by accumulation.

The answer to these questions is to prioritize the development of thought, to make space for additional thought, and to focus on editing and annotation, rather than the focus we see today on the ability to find what has already been written.

That is, today we focus on the question, "Can I find a prior thought?" An important question, but I have solutions to that problem.

The deeper question is, "How do I extend the prior thought?"

And here is where user interface makes or breaks the experience. If you cannot layout the scene, if you cannot apply visual techniques transparently, if you cannot position your thoughts, -- you're dead in the water.

Editing ASCII text files definitely does not function here. There is no annotation capacity. You cannot write "in the margins." You cannot diagram. You cannot vary your font with ease. There are so many ways in which our user interface fails us.

Yes, yes, -- we can make up stopgap "fixes" to these problems, but the problem remains: it's nowhere good as what we have with a pen and paper, even given the capacity to erase, copy, transfer, etc. If a stellar page is revisited only 100 times in its life, (whether computer paper or real paper,) then you really aren't getting much of an advantage from all these sophisticated computer capacities. But the difference in "user interface" is extremely relevant.

* [naner:] "Taking a stylus to a screen feels a little like trying to take a sports car on a frozen lake to me."

I love my computers and my iPhone, but touch, mouse, keyboard, and (today's) pen computer are still no match for a pen and paper.

More recent thoughts on notebooks that I've written online are at: http://lion.posterous.com/tag/notekeeping

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