The Weak Link

I enjoyed reading this article, written by Ethan Marcotte. It makes some interesting points, aligns with my own cognitive bubble and provides some deeper insight into areas of stuff that I find interesting. Taken together, these parameters create a piece of writing that generally makes for a 'good read'. Food for thought. Worth remembering.

Except, I won't remember it. Perhaps I'll find it inspiring or important enough to cross-post it, save it to Pocket, blog about it, highlight it in Evernote or employ one of the other myriad ways I've setup to somehow archive information. But will I ever look at it again? If not, what's the point?

In a sense, these are all systems intended to enhance or expand my own limited storage space, to break the barriers biology has created. Archived information, though, is effectively forgotten if the archive lacks an easy and intuitive means of recovering it again. If a year passes and I suddenly find myself wanting information on pattern libraries, will I be able to cross reference my archive and pull back Ethan's article? Will it even be relevant for the questions I'm asking at that time, or will it be discarded as white noise. What if I forgot to add that particular reference point or search the wrong archive?

Some of these systems are ones I've personally constructed, such as this website or my old Tumblr. These systems were designed by me, specifically so that I could find information quickly and intuitively. The problem is, they don't really work. They just shift the required memory space away from the contents of the article, or video, or whatever else I'm trying to store and replace it with the keywords, tags or categorisation I've stored it under. If I'm lucky, future me will remember enough of these to pull back the right information at a later date, but the sticky issue is that if I don't, the system breaks down and I will never know about it.

Honestly, I'm not sure a system can exist that does what I'm hoping to find. I want a means of quickly and easily adding to, maintaining and cross-referencing a database of information. I don't mind a little upkeep, but preferably adding content would be near instantaneous and filtering it highly flexible. At this point I have nearly a dozen such systems, from online resources like Evernote to application specific solutions like bookmarks folders; even offline, meat-space concepts like notebooks. The reason I have so many is that none of them have worked. They are all either too personal, too restrictive in their access or have become too burdensome.

It's borderline ironic that the web hasn't magically answered this need, given that the entire technology is built on the concept of linking and cross-referencing information. In a way, I guess it could be argued that the web solved the reference issue but forgot about the index. Services like Google and Bing have attempted to fill that void but they can only do so much and will never be able to create the personalised experience I require.

Perhaps the future holds some answers or perhaps I have to just learn to accept that forgetting is, well, okay.

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  • I enjoyed reading this article, written by Ethan Marcotte. It makes some interesting points, aligns with my own cognitive bubble and provides some deeper insight into areas of <em>stuff</em> that I […]
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