Analog Thinking Innovations

This week I was experimenting with Open Brain - a framework put together of product guru Nate B. Jones - and it's been a lot of fun considering how it can integrate with my current workflow.

The idea revolves around ownership of the content you produce in chat AI apps like Claude and ChatGPT. Currently, when you chat, those conversations just live there on those corporate platforms, and of course if your connection with them is ever severed, then you loose connection with your personal history there.

Open Brain is a concept, not a product. You simply implement a set of instructions to build a personal database that captures those conversations, so that you have them in your own storage system instead of just leaving them in theirs.

I integrated this into my Claude app and I've got a good feeling knowing I've taken possession of what is mine. And what's particularly powerful is that it's a vector database that is able to retrieve details based on meaning, not just keywords. So for example if I ever wanted to have a conversation with a chat agent about the content in my database, it will be able to surmise the most important details in my database, not just return a list of keyword results. It's a personally-owned assistant in the making.

However - it led me to the next question... what am I doing on the regular that could benefit from this powerful database?

As you know I love analog approaches to writing, assisted by digital tools. So building a completely digital workflow for writing from my Open Brain system was out of the question. I already have a paper zettlekasten approach to research, and I'm not giving it up. But what I could use some help with is project managing the synoptical approach to research. (btw - that's not a typo. The more commonly used word synopsis is a wonderful word, but – it's a different word.)

I'll share more about syntopical research in the future, but in short, it's a way of synthesizing information about a topic from multiple sources and perspectives.

This is an experiment. I've built an app, https://birch.work, for managing the process of putting together the strategy and implementation process of syntopical research. I'm excited to share this with you, because we are at the precipice of forgetting how the world has done analog research (if I ever really knew how until now). Birch.work is made digitally, pointing back to analog.

I'm in love with building tools, so lets cross our fingers that I'll actually use this tool, and help others use it too, and not leave it on the shelf of forgotten wisdom.