matuschak-2019-can-we-develop

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Matuschak, Andy; Nielsen, Michael; Matuschak, Andy; Nielsen, Michael. How can we develop transformative tools for thought?. 2019. https://numinous.productions/ttft

‘tools for thought’ is an interesting terminology that may be directly useful for me to adopt in this research. They cite Kenneth Iverson for originating the term but extend their definition to sometimes refer to it as a medium of thought. Interestingly in my fist iteration writing live-coding-a-phd I talked about computation as a intermidiary material, so there may be some crossover in thinking here

they talk about a protoype tool for thought called the mnemonic medium a user interface to help people remember concepts and new ideas more easily

the following paragraph feels important:
Our experience is that many of today’s technology leaders genuinely venerate Engelbart, Kay, and their colleagues. Many even feel that computers have huge potential as tools for improving human thinking. But they don’t see how to build good businesses around developing new tools for thought. And without such business opportunities, work languishes.

this as well
Put another way, many tools for thought are public goods. They often cost a lot to develop initially, but it’s easy for others to duplicate and improve on them, free riding on the initial investment. While such duplication and improvement is good for our society as a whole, it’s bad for the companies that make that initial investment. And so such tools for thought suffer the fate of many public goods: our society collectively underinvests in them, relative to the benefits they provide

another important excerpt:
Culturally, tech is dominated by an engineering, goal-driven mindset. It’s much easier to set KPIs, evaluate OKRs, and manage deliverables, when you have a very specific end-goal in mind. And so it’s perhaps not surprising that tech culture is much more sympathetic to AGI and BCI as overall programs of work.

But historically it’s not the case that humanity’s biggest breakthroughs have come about in this goal-driven way. The creation of language – the ur tool for thought – is perhaps the most important occurrence of humanity’s existence. And although the origin of language is hotly debated and uncertain, it seems extremely unlikely to have been the result of a goal-driven process. It’s amusing to try imagining some prehistoric quarterly OKRs leading to the development of language. What sort of goals could one possibly set? Perhaps a quota of new irregular verbs? It’s inconceivable!

Similarly, the invention of other tools for thought – writing, the printing press, and so on – are among our greatest ever breakthroughs. And, as far as we know, all emerged primarily out of open-ended exploration, not in a primarily goal-driven way. Even the computer itself came out of an exploration that would be regarded as ridiculously speculative and poorly-defined in tech today. Someone didn’t sit down and think “I need to invent the computer”; that’s not a thought they had any frame of reference for. Rather, pioneers such as Alan Turing and Alonzo Church were exploring extremely basic and fundamental (and seemingly esoteric) questions about logic, mathematics, and the nature of what is provable. Out of those explorations the idea of a computer emerged, after many years; it was a discovered concept, not a goal. Fundamental, open-ended questions seem to be at least as good a source of breakthroughs as goals, no matter how ambitious. This is difficult to imagine or convince others of in Silicon Valley’s goal-driven culture. Indeed, we ourselves feel the attraction of a goal-driven culture. But empirically open-ended exploration can be just as, or more successful.

There’s a general principle here: good tools for thought arise mostly as a byproduct of doing original work on serious problems.