●area
Tools for Thought
Software that changes the shape of what you can think — Engelbart, Nelson, Bret Victor's lineage, today's ramifications.
The genre that called this site into being. I care about it because most software for knowledge work is unconsciously hostile to thinking — it’s optimized for capture, not for reflection.
Within this area, I’m especially curious about:
- Reading interfaces that treat a reader’s attention as the precious thing, not the click.
- Composable workspaces — programs you can rearrange while you’re using them.
- Memory as a first-class material, not as a settings sub-menu.
Some pole stars: Andy Matuschak, Ink & Switch, Bret Victor’s Inventing on Principle.
Threads
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Gesture set v2
Second draft of the gesture vocabulary for Margin, after the first prototype. -
Andy Matuschak
A working understanding of Matuschak's stance on tools for thought, attention, and the role of the reader. -
Notes vs. marks
Two different annotation primitives, often confused, with very different design implications. -
A reader's stance
On reading as an active, aggressive thing — and why the tools we have mostly assume otherwise. -
Reading on paper vs. screen
My current best understanding of why reading on paper feels different — and what of that can be ported to screens. -
Margin
An experiment in marginalia as a primary writing surface — what happens when the side-note is more important than the main text. -
Evergreen notes
A note about a kind of note. Recursion intentional. -
Locust
A small offline-first reading client that syncs across devices via CRDTs — a testing ground for ideas in Local-First Software. -
Reading Room
An attempt to design a "reading mode" worth using — paused while I figure out whether it's a feature, a tool, or a stance.