I Stopped Taking Notes

There are several tipping points concerning this topic and a few of them warrant deeper consideration. One that has become apparent to me is how file-over-app dovetails with a cessation of note-taking.

I’ve been groping for the perfect note-taking app for almost forty years. I’ve concluded it doesn’t exist, and now – it shouldn’t exist. Here’s why…

In the late 90s, humans spent trillions of hours classifying email messages. We spend endless time moving messages into folders despite the reality that Email is Where Knowledge Goes to Die. It was vastly wasted energy.

Then, April Fools Day 2004 arrived, and with it, the launch of Gmail. For me, it ended the desire to organize email because with it came Google Search. I could dump everything into GMail and find anything I needed without a classification taxonomy.

The same pattern is emerging for note-taking. Imagine if your PC recorded everything you said to anyone. It captured every text you ever wrote in any app you use. As this message is being composed, it is being “noted” in real-time. I can recall the nature of this message at any point in the future. A SaaS platform or AI in some far-flung data center does not make it possible. It is on my Mac laptop.

For me, there is no need for note-taking, just as there has been no urgency to organize email messages. It’s over. The note-taking ship has sailed. In its place is just-in-time knowledge available with the help of generative AI and some other tools that record every moment of every day, and every keystroke and every person’s interaction.

This emerging pattern is at the intersection of File-Over-App.

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Doesn’t this assume all of your knowledge is written down or transcribed? If you can find me an ai capable of transcribing my thoughts for me, then I can end my search for a perfect note taking app. Until there’s a generative ai (or even a control-f) for our brains, note taking is necessary.

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I think an important part of this discussion is “What is a note?”

Is it taking down random thoughts so you don’t forget them? Is it making notes for a research project? Designing a product? Software or otherwise?

a key aspect of such a continuous note-taking system is the need for it to run across all my devices; my desktop, my laptop, my tablets, my phones, my wristwatch, my TV screens, my smart speakers, even my bluetooth headsets. and to record voice as well as text.

again, the term; “ubiquitous” comes to mind - a key strength of grammarly’s technology

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This sounds like a privacy nightmare for those you interact with! Do you tell them that your calls and texts etc are being transcribed?

ScreenPipe is currently running only on my desktop, but I think there are others who run it on iOS and Android as well.

When you make a local screenshot of a Zoom meeting, do you advise everyone you made such a capture?

Yes, but that is assumed since you are engaging in conversations or writing about your topics anyway.

It’s not only written text. It’s audio, video, images, etc. The world of knowledge is multi-modal and this is something no note-taking approach has ever tried to tackle.

Ha ha! Yes, it would probably serve us well to have a clear definition. However, I’m increasingly of the opinion that this is mostly a contextual definition that has as many variants as there are people.

I tend to separate the idea of notes from tasks that might be served well if I had notes to help achieve those tasks. I think we have attempted to curate notes to help us later on. This is a strategic relationship between that which we see, observe and experience – and that which we want to recall and synthesize to apply our knowledge and skills to accomplish stuff.

If you can eliminate the note-taking step and instead dynamically recall and synthesize anything you’re seen, heard, or written, isn’t that more likely to achieve your objectives and tasks without the limitations of only being able to draw upon that which you actually notated?

Yes, if their names/faces are included.

And for audio I would never record/transcribe without consent. It’s not the same thing to give an ai access to the full call transcript as it is to take your own notes!

Yeah, so it’s an interesting legal question, and there are certainly nanny states (11 of them now) that require two-party recording and likeness agreements.

But, I tend to take a more rational approach. At the outset, anyone who is in a meeting with me, is a trusted relationship and subject to screen, audio, and transcripts.

I sometimes joke that my brain’s shelves are too full and I need to offload everything into a database, but unfortunately, that technology doesn’t exist yet. As for automatically transcribing all my conversations—let’s just say that sounds like something out of Black Mirror. That said, my brain already does a pretty good job of keeping track of things. Actually recording and logging all conversations? That’s where I’d say we clearly work in very different fields. If I’m on Zoom or a call with someone I trust, there’s an implicit understanding that nothing is being recorded without mutual consent—regardless of legal requirements.

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That superproductivity that Bill describes is very tempting, but as @AJM points out, it comes at the expense of everyone’s privacy around you and poses a huge risk for yourself - you’re one data breach away from exposing absolutely everything about your life to the public, if not done properly.

Unfortunately, I think sooner or later we’ll be forced to follow this approach even if it’s just to stay competitive with those using it. Sounds like a race to the bottom on privacy.

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I think that’s an accurate description of this trajectory. However, my drive is encrypted. The odds of a breach are non-zero but exceeding low. The odds of high value and high benefit are exceedingly high.

And to be clear, the parties in my conversations have a vested interest in my productivity. It’s not as if they are risking privacy for zero benefit.

Lastly, anyone and everyone you collaborate with are exposed to far greater threats. Let’s talk about the video and audio amassed in Zoom, shall we? :wink:

Nor should it. Content is the new data, and data is rapidly becoming an ad-hoc process that is made almost laughably possible with LLMs.