The second post (in which we indicate our intention for this online journal.)
I'd like share the way we use MyHippocampus and to share a bit of the vision for the site. MyHippocampus focus is a bit broader then some of the other sites out there and it can take more than a first glance to see what we're trying to accomplish here.
MyHippocampus is an organic tool. We don't have lists, milestones, and other artifacts of a standard business architecture. This is because we don't want you to have to conform. It's your hippocampus. You get to do what you want here. While this is really exciting, it can also be a little confusing at first. Let's face it, we all do quite a bit of conforming (or at least I do) and it can be tough to know what to do without out. With MyHippocampus, you're met with a big 'ocean of the mind' & it's your job to fill it up with the things that are important to you. Sadly, these aren't questions that we get to ask ourselves very often and a lot of us are a little out of practice with intellectual self-actualization ;) Happily there's no real rush, and failing is encouraged (and arbitrarily defined) but that still leaves a lot of us wondering? So... what do I put in my ocean?
This blog is going to be a place where we can share different things people are putting in their mental oceans. Of course everything you put in there is for your eyes only, so it will only be things that users tell us about or that we're doing ourselves. If the hippo is changing your life make sure to let us and everybody else know!
Saturday, November 18, 2006
First Post!
Hmm, I imagine that joke is a little tired, though I'm not exactly one who spends enough time trolling the blogosphere to be on the front lines of that particular issue. More to the point, this is the first post of the MyHippocampus blog. To be honest the only user of this site is currently moi, but I had a realization this morning that it's not too early to start the blog if I'm already getting value out of the site and since that's the case, well, here we are.
The developments of the past two weeks have included full-text search, a nailed down version of the firefox plugin and a good way to import my del.icio.us links. Now that that's complete I'm cutting the del.icio.us umbilical cord and going full hippo. And it feels nice.
My realization of the morning came after looking at my newly discarded copy of "Fooled By Randomness." About a week and a half ago I started using these little red sticky 'flags' in everything I read. You know the type of thing I'm talking about, little colored post-it style markers? They're something I've never really used before because I haven't seen the point. Ok, maybe they help you look up a quote for a paper you're about to write, but when you've let the book lie for a couple months what do your little markers really gain you? You still have no constructive overview of what was in the book. You can't search it. And your memory is just whatever vague, blended, half-fogged, reminiscence your addled mind can come up with.
So how am I going to use the little red flags + MyHippo to change all this? How are they going to help me bridge one of the most serious gaps in the MyHippocampus plan? That gap is of course the fact that I don't like reading a book with a laptop on my knee, ready to index and categorize new information. Clearly I'm not alone, but I've struggled with how to make MyHippocampus, a service that promises to help your retain and reuse this contextual information, but that is bound to the world of laptops, blackberries etc, bridge this gap. Well, it's not all that amazing, but my new plan is to flag things I like, then to go in and enter them into MyHippocampus at my leisure. Not exactly Web 5.0, but here's where it gets unexpectedly good.
The effect on my reading has been fantastic! Now when I chuckle at a little tidbit, discover a new connection etc, I flag it and know that I won't be forced to forget it over the course of time. How many amazing and fantastic little tidbits of information have you read and then immediately relegated to the dustbin of your mind? For me it's essentially everything. Everything that wasn't rigorously tied down by continued exposure, exposition, or use in regular life and I'm not joking when I say that that's really almost everything. What a waste! And the great thing experiencing now that I've got a system to remember all this, is that it's amazing how much more involved I can be in the book. I didn't even know I had it, but I now see that there was a latent sense of futility that has markedly colored my intellectual activities up until this point. Is that too bold? All I mean is that I think a lot of the reason I couldn't concentrate in History 24 "The Irish Diaspora" was that I knew none of it was going to stick. I'm an efficient guy and the knowledge that the work I'm doing is futile is a pretty powerful disincentive.
So yes, taking over the world proceeds. Or at least my world. Can't wait until everybody else gets their own MyHippocampus.
-j
Hmm, I imagine that joke is a little tired, though I'm not exactly one who spends enough time trolling the blogosphere to be on the front lines of that particular issue. More to the point, this is the first post of the MyHippocampus blog. To be honest the only user of this site is currently moi, but I had a realization this morning that it's not too early to start the blog if I'm already getting value out of the site and since that's the case, well, here we are.
The developments of the past two weeks have included full-text search, a nailed down version of the firefox plugin and a good way to import my del.icio.us links. Now that that's complete I'm cutting the del.icio.us umbilical cord and going full hippo. And it feels nice.
My realization of the morning came after looking at my newly discarded copy of "Fooled By Randomness." About a week and a half ago I started using these little red sticky 'flags' in everything I read. You know the type of thing I'm talking about, little colored post-it style markers? They're something I've never really used before because I haven't seen the point. Ok, maybe they help you look up a quote for a paper you're about to write, but when you've let the book lie for a couple months what do your little markers really gain you? You still have no constructive overview of what was in the book. You can't search it. And your memory is just whatever vague, blended, half-fogged, reminiscence your addled mind can come up with.
So how am I going to use the little red flags + MyHippo to change all this? How are they going to help me bridge one of the most serious gaps in the MyHippocampus plan? That gap is of course the fact that I don't like reading a book with a laptop on my knee, ready to index and categorize new information. Clearly I'm not alone, but I've struggled with how to make MyHippocampus, a service that promises to help your retain and reuse this contextual information, but that is bound to the world of laptops, blackberries etc, bridge this gap. Well, it's not all that amazing, but my new plan is to flag things I like, then to go in and enter them into MyHippocampus at my leisure. Not exactly Web 5.0, but here's where it gets unexpectedly good.
The effect on my reading has been fantastic! Now when I chuckle at a little tidbit, discover a new connection etc, I flag it and know that I won't be forced to forget it over the course of time. How many amazing and fantastic little tidbits of information have you read and then immediately relegated to the dustbin of your mind? For me it's essentially everything. Everything that wasn't rigorously tied down by continued exposure, exposition, or use in regular life and I'm not joking when I say that that's really almost everything. What a waste! And the great thing experiencing now that I've got a system to remember all this, is that it's amazing how much more involved I can be in the book. I didn't even know I had it, but I now see that there was a latent sense of futility that has markedly colored my intellectual activities up until this point. Is that too bold? All I mean is that I think a lot of the reason I couldn't concentrate in History 24 "The Irish Diaspora" was that I knew none of it was going to stick. I'm an efficient guy and the knowledge that the work I'm doing is futile is a pretty powerful disincentive.
So yes, taking over the world proceeds. Or at least my world. Can't wait until everybody else gets their own MyHippocampus.
-j
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