Malcolm Ocean's roamblog

omnitext

created 2021-02-08 · edited 2021-02-08 · open in Roam
  • Qiaochu's idea
  • Relevant to all of
  • Notes from this call
    • QC > Some sort of system that lets me indicate with knobs etc, what's on my mind
      • M > I think you've got it a little backwards - some of this can be inferred just from what you're typing. You just want to open up and start typing.
        • ThreadHelper does a bit of this
    • QC > so if I imagine it being a really good assistant
      • I open up my Roam Daily Notes page and start typing
      • and it's like, here are:
        • some of your old notes
        • some old bookmarks
        • some tweets from your friends
        • some emails, blog posts, etc
        • some music you might wanna listen to
          • MO > could even be as simple as "play the same music I listened to last time"
      • there are many entities on which I would like to perform operations
      • assistant anticipates what I might want to do with the text as well
        • > A piece of software has good EI if it responds the way you expect it to, and even better EI if it anticipates your needs and makes it easy to accomplish your goals. When our technology does this, we adore it, and when it fails to do so, we abhor it.
      • could do tag cloud stuff, tagging with project context etc
      • and sometimes it makes sense to send the text to someone else
        • which might be me indicating that
        • or might be a suggestion from the AI/assistant
        • MO > could also be you start typing to a person
          • like "Yo @Malcolm, I'm having design thoughts"
          • and then a few things happen
            • your assistant would prioritize showing you stuff from me
              • blog
              • tweets
              • my roam blocks
              • etc
            • it sends me that text with some sort of temporality
            • if Malcolm is online at the same time, then we could be doing something equivalent to chatting
              • spotify has like "what your friends are listening to"
      • QC > in slack, channel identity & participation is static rather than dynamic
        • MO > what the fuck is a channel, anyway? where's that shit metaphor from - Conversation App Design ("slack but good")
          • [...wikipedia investigation into IRC...]
            • > It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed.
            • > (Internet) A particular area for conversations on an IRC network, analogous to a chat room and often dedicated to a specific topic.
              (Internet) An obsolete means of delivering up-to-date Internet content.
          • MO > I think the metaphor comes from how with radio channels, you need a groove between them so they don't intermingle
            • literally the lack of intertwingledness is implied by the metaphor
            • which is not how Conversation As Medium works
  • Related:

5 linked references

December 28th, 2023

December 7th, 2021

Open Letter to Twitter re Conversational Design

Design Elements › Algo › R > why, when I land on the timeline, do I just see rando… › instead of "hey, how are you, what's on your mind?" and t…

February 22nd, 2021

Qiaochu sent me

February 7th, 2021

co-watching / co-learning Doug Engelbart's Mother of All … › paused at 18:30
  • QC > fully-frictionless product - omnitext
    • I want to type in text and I want that text to go where it's supposed to
    • and receive text that I want to read
    • re tuning
        • Qiaochu > I want my computer/browser to know where I'm at emotionally
          • 2 metaphors
            • tuning a radio
              • nice little analog metaphor
              • and lets
            • emotional attunement
              • Malcolm > this is you living in the future
                • not with respect to ML / whether or not it's possible, per se
                • but like, you know what it feels like to interact with a system that's attuned to you
                • and you think it's reasonable to expect that of a computer
                • (I think Nick Winter had an old piece of software that did webcam mood analysis)
          • this
        • design metaphor of being able to specify something like a mood or
          • serves them to you at the right time
          • context-dependent
            • there should be a much richer way to describe you context to your browser
              • and then it goes to the giant repository of links that you have and serves you the right ones
              • M > relates to my concept of tags in optimal streaming-music player & organizer
                • QC > like how spotify serves you a song and you like/dislike
                  • what if it, or twitter, could let you say "this is not the thing I'm in the mood for"
                  • QC > tiktok I think is good at this?
          • Malcolm > old blog post of mine