The idea of artificial intelligence taking over the world is at least as old as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which was published in 1818. Public figures such as Stephen Hawking and Bill Gates have warned us against the reckless creation of superintelligent machines. In June 2020, OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory based in San Francisco, …
Many tools for thought offer a single-player experience centered on storing and retrieving information, and don’t integrate well with the biggest multiplayer platform of all time: the Internet. Part of the problem is that we have been idle when it comes to its foundation: the hyperlink. In more than 30 years, the way we link …
Roam is a note-taking tool for networked thought which I find incredibly powerful. One of the exciting aspects of using Roam is joining a community of curious minds interested in metacognition and thinking in maps. While Roam is a pleasure to use out of the box, this community has created many browser extensions to improve …
One of the most exciting aspects of Roam Research is metaprogramming: the ability to modify Roam’s behaviour inside Roam itself, without ever touching the source code. This ability opens the door for building custom algorithms for thoughts, and designing a thinking environment as close as possible to the way your mind works. Using CSS to …
Read moreRoam themes: how to style Roam Research with custom CSS
Many people asked me how I built my digital garden. Here is a short step-by-step guide to create your own. The final files are here. We will not cover styling—there are lots of great resources to learn CSS out there. What’s the difference between a digital garden, a note-taking app, and a blog? You can …
Since I started using it a few months ago, Roam has become an integral part of my workflow. I use it for interstitial journaling, to outline articles, and in general to seed my mind garden. If, like me, you spend a lot of time inside of Roam, you may want to add some productivity shortcuts …
It’s extremely easy to change TiddlyWiki’s appearance so it better suits your taste and your workflow, but there is no central place to explore all the myriads of themes created by the community. Here are a few which create a calm working environment. To install these, drag the files listed by the theme creator, then …
TiddlyWiki is an amazing tool for thought. It’s free, open source, and extremely modular. If you gave it a quick try and want to take things a bit further, you’re in the right place. We’re going to look at TiddlyWiki as a static website generator. Static websites are fast, they’re easily indexed by search engines, …
Read moreHow to use TiddlyWiki as a static website generator in 3 steps
If you are looking for an open source alternative to Roam Research, TiddlyWiki is your best bet. Because it’s self-hosted—meaning you keep your data private—it may seem a bit more daunting to get started. So here is a guide which will take you from complete beginner to completely in love with TiddlyWiki in three steps. …
Read moreGetting started with TiddlyWiki: a beginner’s tutorial
Last update on July 16th, 2020. As you may know by now, I’m a massive fan of Roam Research. It’s a fantastic tool for thought and has the potential to become a powerful enabler of collective intelligence. But for various reasons, you may not want to rely on a SaaS to save your notes. For …
Read moreOpen source and self-hosted alternatives to Roam Research