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Colophon#

Colophon, a fancy term for sharing information about the publication of this "book". A way to track the thinking behind the evolution of this site.

What is this?#

Vannevar Bush writing in 1945 imagined a device he called Memex as

a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

Early and likely never started or finished work on memex-v2

Decades later and there are systems (e.g. Obsidian and Notion) and concepts like personal knowledge management which echo this vision. This is my attempt to build my own Memex using Foam and over time move beyond that.

  • Raw dog the open web

    Jason Velazquez discusses an alternative to the big-tech monoculture where corporate algorithms control what we see online. That alternative being as simple as exploring the open web beyond the algorithm and publicly curating a collection of links. Taking "off the latex wrapped around our digital spaces" - Patterns for Personal websites

    One of the links shared by Jason. Provides a collection of patterns for personal websites grouped by" content, structure, time, navigation, and technology.

  • Smallest Federated Wiki as an alternate version of the web

    Mike Caufield delves into the how the Smallest Federated Wiki (SFW) - aka Federated Wiki - offers to improve the basic web into something a little more informed by insights from Ted Nelson and beyond.

Why and what to do with it?#

I needed to get better at learning, creating, and sharing. At obtaining information and learning effectively by working into sensible schema. A schema I could use to do interesting, fun, and possibly helpful activities. Activities that would produce artefacts, insights, and products that would provide benefit to others through sharing. For too long, my approach to this is disconnected, ad hoc, and generally ineffective.

See this blog post for more of the initial work. I need to think and write more about this and the connection with ideas-events-people

What?#

Version 2.0 - Foam + Material for MkDocs

Version 2.0 combines Material for MkDocs - to improve the user-interface for navigation/reading - with the Obsidian/Roam/Notion type authoring/curating functionality provided by Foam

Timed with an increased focus on leveraging this site for my personal learning environment

To do list#

Other examples#

Random examples of what others have achieved using Foam combine with other technologies

History#

Version 1 - Initial implementation with Foam using PKM (July 2020)#

Version 2 - Adding mkdocs - (2nd half 2023)#

Support#

[ideas-events-people]: <../sense/quote collection/ideas-events-people> "Great Minds Discuss Ideas; Average Minds Discuss Events; Small Minds Discuss People"