Same
57 karma · joined August 19, 2020
I wonder what we will work and if we will work at all in such an environment. Maybe some people still like consuming and copy different designs and products and because of the Blockchain you have to give them something in exchange or everything is open source and it is free for you to take.
I wonder whether such life would contribute to humanity making further progress or make it stagnate (or possibly decline)?
Interesting times. I think we are close to the times of the moon landing. Which had an immense Impact on humanities culture.
I have no programming skills and always wanted to have a self hosted website that is quick, small, without any fluff where people can download my stories. Maybe to interact with me and with each other too. End of story.
But when I googled "website programming" it's mostly generic advice for design (everything looks like everything else) and bloated (slow) code.
I love that it has just four buttons: dark/light mode, download *.txt, eraser and full screen. Your piece of software made me instantly concentrate with laser sharp focus. Usually, I'm quite overwhelmed by my writing and the more I write, the more annoyed I get. So much to edit. Blah. The app achieves exactly what you've promised!
As a sidenote, something beautiful happened, I started playing around with long and short sentences. I even found some of my sentences beautiful. Something that had never happened before because I was constantly overwhelmed by all the other stuff, paragraphing, coherence and whatnot.
I was a bit irritated first that the program allowed me to erase multiple lines (it violates a bit the no-editing mindset) but later I found this option quite helpful when I needed to change the beginning of a sentence to steer in another direction that flowed better.
What I would love the program to have is, from the perspective of a writer, to know that the text I've written is somewhere safely stored on my computer like a backup file or something. That way, I wouldn't need to worry about the system breaking down and me losing all my work. For a serious writer, knowing that the text is securely stored somewhere in a backup file and readable with any program, would erase the fear and enhance the flow of writing. Furthermore, at first, I wondered if there is a limit of how many words I can write before the software breaks down or tells me I reached the maximum capacity. I think I'm allowed to write as much as I want, 100.000 words or 1.000.000 words, right? However, it would be super nice if you would communicate that.
Even though I love the word count because it gives me a sense of space and time, I would like to be able to turn it off, so I can enter a true flow state. Forgetting about space, time, and word count. https://endel.io/ for example uses infinite soundscapes to create flow states. That way, the human mind doesn't get jolted out of the experience, the science says. Maybe the same approached could be applied to your program, too? Anything that gives you a sense of time and space should be avoided to enable the writer to be fully immersed in writing. Because every so often I looked at the bottom right of the screen and saw that I've written 1000 words and started to wonder if I've already written enough, but in reality, I shouldn't have to worry about those kinds of things. I should just write.
Does this help?
I'm a hobby writer and like your idea a lot! I love that you also make the text downloadable in a txt file.
I always feel overwhelmed seeing the text I have written, being aware of what will await me when editing. I would love to have a program on my computer like yours (I'm using windows). Nothing special just an IDE that works exactly the way your website works (I'm not a programmer and love HN for content and comments like yours) I would even happily pay for it.
Let me know if you're planning on doing an app and need a beta tester.
Can't find any information on the website but based on the footnotes it seems they are created thoroughly by a human, which is an exceptional display of human creativity!
After University, I wanted to approach the same rigor to the topics I care about. Becoming the next Humboldt, Goethe and alike but all note-taking systems I have used over the past couple of years (PARA, Cornell Notes, Zettelkasten, Obsidian, Anki, recording audio files, simply writing in a text file, physical Journal, hope of simply remembering information etc.) always seemed promising first but eventually, I ran into the following problems:
1. Too time-consuming to maintain 2. Too detailed or too extensive to be useful to future me 3. Too constraining (Learning for me is a mix of organic accumulation [coming across same/similar topics over time] and guided thinking) and foreign to the way my brain operates 4. Not enough time for revision (big one)
... and probably many more problems I haven't discovered yet.
Since then, I've created my own system:
1. Using any text editor or pen and paper 2. I jot down my dominant feeling or dominant feelings after reading a piece of information (for example, I feel X after I've read Y) 3. Writing down answers to a couple of Why questions until I have found the root of feeling X 4. Writing out a thought experiment (if variable Z of [causes or root of feeling X] changes, how would it effect feeling X?)
A note-taking system should help you reflect on the information you take in and since we reflect in different ways, designing your own system will help you understand and remember information better. Occasionally wondering about the same topics over and over again and then remembering that you have already written about it a couple of times already, will start an inner dialogue that will get you further into a topic than you would have expected.
Learning for life and studying for a profession, is vastly different. It depends on whether you want to just know or to apply, and then throw as much time at it as you possibly can, in a way that enables you to differentiate between the important and irrelevant bits. Any note-taking system is just a platform for this process.
Thank you for this wonderful thought! I always struggle with mortality and my place in the world. You offered me a window into the grander scheme of things, that doesn't fall back on God or you are just a small speck in the grander scheme of things.
We are all here to keep our species going and hand over the marathon stick to the next generation and then step aside.
I find this topic incredibly interesting but lack access to good and sound strategies. Most of it are medium style "hacks" I despise.
My problem with my writing usually is, it's too scientific, too elaborate, and the best part usually comes at the end (inverted pyramid might help with this one).
Thanks!
The learning curve is still steep and I'm not sure of the end product will come close to what I have in mind (informational knowledge base).
All I want is a simple website, that runs on multiple devices without being convoluted by plug-ins.