One could easily get the idea that recent proposals for “a second brain” or “smart notetaking” and related implementation tools such as Obsidian or Roam represent radical innovations for using technology to extend human cognition. This is not the case and after thinking about the recent interest in such concepts and tools I am left wondering why there has been such a lull in the development and implementation of such ideas.
I trace my own interest in similar ideas to reading Vannevar Bush’s Atlantic article As we may think and his proposal for a device for augmenting cognition he called a memex (if you search for memex you may find that others are not trying to implement some of his ideas). Steve Jobs proposed that the personal computer could serve as a “bicycle for the mind” noting that when using the technology of a bicycle a human could drastically increase their speed of movement.
I good source for some of these early ideas can be found in Howard Rheingold’s Tools for Thought (1985). Rheingold sat for a recent interview talking about Tools for thought and even noting links to more recent tools for augmented cognition. If you unfamiliar with this history and interested in the topic, I encourage your attention to Rheingold’s comments.
