A casual tools-for-thought / weird-interfaces / future-of-personal-computing unconference to kick off the new year!
When: Sunday, Jan 29; 9AM-12PM PST [2023-01-20 18:47:21 +0000 UTC View Post
Reflecting on my work with the mnemonic medium, I notice that I’m making good progress on questions of breadth and scale, but not nearly enough along the much more important axes of depth and impact. That’s not for lack of trying—my attempts to explore the latter keep fizzling. But I think I understand better now why that is, and at least partially what to do about it. In the new year, I’d like to aggressively reorient my work towards traction on this central question: how to make...
2022-12-27 21:55:14 +0000 UTC View Posttl;dr: join me on Dec 24 at 9AM PST to discuss Bret's latest talk. Please watch the talk before attending; bring your noticings, wonderings, and ideas. [2022-12-15 21:50:48 +0000 UTC View Post
A consistent challenge in my development as a researcher has been: how to cultivate deep, stable concentration in the face of complex, ill-structured creative problems?
In roles oriented around operation and execution, I benefited enormously from standard “productivity” advice. Task managers and time-planning tools were essential. But now, task managers and calendars only help with the least important pieces of my work.
Bill Thurston 2022-11-30 21:37:04 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm trying something new! Work with me on a research project of mutual interest; get six months of funding and mentorship.
Details here (apply by Nov 25): https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Research_fellowship
If you know someone who might be a great fit, please send them that link! Copying the overview from that page here for convenience:
Who:
Join me and author Joshua Horowitz on Oct 29 from 9-10AM PDT to discuss Engraft, a new system for composable live programming from Joshua Horowitz (formerly of Dynamicland, now a PhD student at UofW). Pleas...
2022-10-21 20:49:43 +0000 UTC View PostTrying office hours again this month (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
Over the past few weeks, I’ve run twenty live observation sessions for my most recent mnemonic medium prototype, and I’ve read through a stack of diaries from asynchronous testers. I’d like to share some of what I’ve learned, and where I might go next.
For better or worse (and we’ll see a bit of both), I had trouble with tester screening during this iteration. I suspect a lot of peop...
2022-10-14 19:00:39 +0000 UTC View PostLast month’s mnemonic medium design is now a live prototype. After a dozen live observation sessions with test readers, I’ve already learned a great deal—but I need more sessions and more distance before I can write thoughtfully about what I’m seeing.
For now, I’d like to share the prototype with you all. There’s a lot more design work necessary to make these elements introduce themselves to reade...
2022-09-29 02:09:52 +0000 UTC View PostSummary: Join me on Sep 24 from 10-11AM PDT to discuss Webstrates, a research project with striking ideas for making software much more malleable. Please read the 2015 paper before joining; see also 2022-09-21 01:23:04 +0000 UTC View Post
In this talk, I present a new round of primitives for the mnemonic medium, focused on the issues and opportunities I distilled out of the last round of prototyping (see that talk here).
For those who aren't interested in this specific project, you may still find it interesting to see me unpack how I think about iteration on the architecture of an unusual design problem like this one.
Feedback is very we...
2022-08-26 20:34:06 +0000 UTC View Post
Another event experiment!
This Sunday, I'll be hosting a casual unconference for patrons, 11AM-12:30PM PDT in Gather, a spatial video chat platform. To join, visit this URL in a desktop browser on Sunday.
If you've never attended an unconference before, the big idea i...
2022-08-16 01:49:19 +0000 UTC View PostRelatively soon—maybe in our lifetimes, maybe next century—we’ll have full duplex input and output links from our brains to computers. We’ll have synthetic telepathy. We may find ourselves augmented with an effectively unlimited working memory. What will “collective intelligence” mean when the boundary between your thoughts and mine can be controlled by software?
The details here will depend enormously on understandings of the brain which we don’t yet have, and on the phys...
2022-07-31 21:42:51 +0000 UTC View Post[Edit: oof, I accidentally recorded with no sound! Apologies! Thankfully, all who sent me questions came live, at least. We'll try something different next month…]
Hello, all! This Friday (July 22) at 2PM PDT, I'll be hosting a live Q&A session. [2022-07-18 21:12:34 +0000 UTC View Post
I designed something new, and I’ve spent much of the past few weeks watching people use it. Those sessions have been generative and energizing. They always are. There’s something magical about this part of the design process, in both the sense of delight and of mystery.
Rocket scientists have it easy. Well, at least along one narrow axis. When you’re trying to launch a rocket,...
2022-06-30 20:28:42 +0000 UTC View PostMaking the demo/talk on the new mnemonic medium last month really helped me refine my ideas. The next step of course was to see how people actually behave. I turned the smoke-and-mirrors prototype in the video into something usable—for people already familiar with SRS and the mnemonic medium, at least.
I've been learning a great deal from live sessions with test readers in the pas...
2022-06-24 18:24:13 +0000 UTC View PostAnnouncing office hours for June! Note that the first one is this Friday (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
Announcing office hours for May! Note that the first one is tomorrow, this Friday (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
Last year, I worked with authors to test the mnemonic medium (i.e. Orbit) in a bunch of contexts beyond Quantum Country. And… it didn't work nearly as well! Since late last year I've been working on redefining the primitives in response to readers' experiences. This demo/talk presents a new framework for the mnemonic medium in the context of a textbook, two non-technical essays, encyclopedic refe...
2022-05-12 20:23:49 +0000 UTC View Post
Hi, all! First, a timely reminder that the second April office hours is tomorrow (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
Just sending out this reminder of office hours for April; note that the first one is this Thursday (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
The best scientists, entrepreneurs, and engineers I know pour themselves into their work. You couldn’t capture their working hours on a timecard. Their creative gears turn restlessly, and insights produced in the shower or on walking conversations are no less valuable than those produced at the office. Yet I’ve noticed that top knowledge workers relate to their skills quite differently than top athletes and performing artists do.
Competitive athletes, musicians, and dancers work tir...
2022-04-01 05:24:22 +0000 UTC View PostJust sending out this reminder of office hours for March; note that the first one is tomorrow (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
Now equipped with several years of data and the results of several controlled experiments, I’ve spent the last few months making sense of what’s happening on Quantum Country. I’d like to discuss some of what I’ve found along the way, and some of what still confuses me.
Please note: this is an informal discussion of data from Quantum Country. The analysis is preliminary and shouldn’t be cited or excerpted in other work. I’m 2022-03-01 06:08:27 +0000 UTC View Post
Continuing the office hours experiment in February and March (Google Calendar link; iCal URL):
URL for the "official" public version of this post: https://andymatuschak.org/2021
The boundary of a year is arbitrary, sure. But that doesn’t stop rituals from yielding wisdom and warmth. I begin each year by reflecting on what I’ve learned in the previous one. In the spirit of last year’s essay, I...
2022-01-26 18:25:35 +0000 UTC View PostHappy new year, all! The office hour experiments last month were intriguing enough that I'd like to experiment with twice-monthly office hours, at least for a few months. I'll alternate times to try to cover both hemispheres.
This month's times, if you'd like to join (Google Calendar link; 2022-01-07 21:47:17 +0000 UTC View Post
“It is the destiny of computers to become interactive intellectual amplifiers for all people pervasively networked worldwide.
— J.C.R. Licklider
If you want to help make good on this destiny—to invent human-computer interfaces which radically expand human cognition and creativity—then what do you actually need to do? How does progress happe...
2022-01-01 04:41:57 +0000 UTC View PostI hope you all are having a peaceful and bright holiday season. This isn't one of my usual "letters from the lab"—more a time-sensitive invitation.
tl;dr: I'm holding "office hours" next Monday and Wednesday (12/27 and 12/29) from 2-3PM PST. Come by and ask questions, pose problems, or offer work for feedback. https://meet.google.com/bby-nmzu-apx
I've noticed that my mental energy falls into a trough in...
2021-12-24 16:59:46 +0000 UTC View PostSince 2019, I’ve been running a series of randomized controlled experiments on Quantum Country readers. The main reason I haven’t published these is that I don’t understand what’s going on. Readers are forgetting very slowly. Too slowly! I’ve been crossing off theories with each experiment, but the data seem to defy a core assumption of memory systems: that we forget more and more over time, along a steep curve. This h...
2021-12-01 06:35:19 +0000 UTC View Post