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Jerry Michalski: Lessons from 15 years using TheBrain
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Posted by PIMfan
Jan 19, 2014 at 06:58 PM
Bumped into a fascinating presentation by Jerry Michalski on his use of TheBrain for 15 years: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQkJ4lleKk
I found it to be a very interesting and thought-provoking video, regardless of your views of the underlying application platform. Highly recommended!!
His 15-year TheBrain model can be accessed online at http://www.jerrysbrain.com/
A couple of notable points for me:
13:22 Reliance on Wayback machine vs. importing and creating a massive local index
14:02 The view of tools like TheBrain as an instrument and not as an appliance
22:36 Collaborative Sense-making
23:36 The impact of the business models of “industries of culture”
Enjoy!
PIMfan
Posted by tradercclee
Jan 19, 2014 at 10:25 PM
Cool presentation, thanks for sharing!
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 20, 2014 at 09:52 PM
Thanks, PIMFan. Very interesting.
Jerry mis-stated that there is no semantic meaning in the plex, as the area where the thoughts reside is called. In fact it has a definite geography. At the center is the active thought. Directly above this are its parent thoughts. To the right are sibling thoughts—that is, thoughts that share at least one parent with the active thought. Below the active thought are child thoughts. And to the left are jump thoughts, those thoughts that you consider related to the active thought but not in a hierarchical way. This aspect, in and of itself, is very powerful.
You can also label links to add meaning to the connections. That may have been an addition to the app made after this presentation was recorded.
Steve Z.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jan 20, 2014 at 11:48 PM
An interesting aspect of how Jerry uses TheBrain is that he rarely adds any content to his thoughts. They frequently have URL attachments, but no files or notes or meta data in the form of tags or thought types. He mentioned that this was an artifact from using the first versions of TheBrain, which didn’t have all those extra features, but he also said or implied that he eschews adding that extra information because it would a.) inhibit his willingness to drop information into TheBrain, and b.) he was fearful it would slow TheBrain down.
I am absolutely certain this is atypical, but I can also see the appeal. Still, having the ability to combine all that information in one thought is one of TheBrain’s strengths. But it is food for thought (pardon the pun).
Steve Z.
Posted by quant
Jan 21, 2014 at 10:22 PM
I didn’t find the presentation interesting at all, he seems to be just dumping all webs in there as he crawls the net (and links only at that).