Roam Patrol!

Posted by bartb
Oct 13, 2020 at 10:49 PM

Hmm ... HyperCard. That’s actually a pretty good analogy! HyperCard is long gone .... but there are plenty of alternatives .... https://hypercard.org

Daly de Gagne wrote:
This discussion brings to mind a program Apple shipped with the early
>Macintosh (I believe, in 1987) called HyperCard. I haven’t heard much
>about Hypercard for many years, but I have thought about it periodically
>as I learn more about these new programs. It seems to me that the
>potential of Hypercard, which I hadn’t really thought of at the time, is
>being realized in programs such as Obsidian, Roam, and others. I use
>Dynalist a lot, and am seriously considering Obsidian.
> >Daly
> >bartb wrote:
>“The question that fascinates me about all this “new”
>>interest is “why now—what changed”. ” .... Exactly!
>>IMHO: think one indicator is the sheer volume of data people want to
>>track and research is growing too fast for the current toolsets to keep
>>up.
>>
>>Paul Korm wrote:
>>The technology of Roam or Obsidian is not new—the developers are
>>>using existing off the shelf components. What’s “new” is that the
>>>business of linking “notes” (or something more granular within a note)
>>>is bringing broader awareness of the uses of hypertext theory and
>>>information theory dating back decades.
>>>
>>>The question that fascinates me about all this “new” interest is “why
>>>now—what changed”. Obsidian or Roam could have been written a
>>>decade or more ago. And if then, they probably didn’t generate much
>>>interest. (How many people bought Storyspace when it was first
>>>published 33 years ago—Storyspace then, and now, has the same goal
>>as
>>>these new toys.)
>>>
>>>I read in Obsidian’s forums very detailed posts about ZKs, PKMs, and
>>>MOCs, and PARA and blah blah. Underlying the efforts behind these
>>>trends seems to be a general feeling of being overwhelmed by
>>>“information” (or data, really—it’s just data) and trying to make
>>>connections between “everything I think about .. everything I read ...
>>>everything I worry about”. It’s seductive.
>>>
>>>