Cross-posted from my Notion. Over my last year of independent work, I built a lot of prototypes and stepped one foot into research land. I also learned a lot about how I work — what I enjoy working on, what I’m good at, what I’m bad at, and what I want to be doing long-term. One … | Continue reading
Direct manipulation interfaces let us interact with software materials using our spatial and physical intuitions. Manipulation by programming or configuration, what I’ll call programmatic interfaces, trades off that interaction freedom for more power and precision — programs, lik … | Continue reading
Some software interfaces are windows into collections of features. The Uber app, for example, literally opens with a screen full of buttons, each of which take you to a different screen with yet more buttons and inputs. Google Search is also built with features – inputs, buttons, … | Continue reading
A big library holds a kind of strange faux-infinity, spanning across hundreds of topics with voices from millions of authors. Good libraries can contain in their finite space a feeling that, even if you read for centuries and centuries, you would never exhaust the knowledge conta … | Continue reading
There is a concept in physics called resonance. In lay terms, it describes the fact that for any given object there are natural frequencies at which the object “likes to vibrate”. A simple pendulum’s natural frequency is the rate at which it swings back and forth; if you wiggle t … | Continue reading
In the last post, I shared some possible ideas for how humans may interact in the future with large language models. It focused on specific examples of both good and bad interface ideas. In this post, I want to continue that exploration, but from first principles, asking ourselve … | Continue reading
A core research interest of mine is imagining new kinds of interfaces to text documents that are made possible by modern AI and software. I think an interesting place to look for such ideas may be interface designs for reading and writing legal documents. Legal document-wrangling … | Continue reading
Humans are bad at coming up with search queries. Humans are good at incrementally narrowing down options with a series of filters, and pointing where they want to go next. This seems obvious, but we keep building interfaces for finding information that look more like Google Searc … | Continue reading
I spent the last month wondering and investigating how we might design better workflows for creative work that meld the best of human intuition and machine intelligence. I think a promising path is in the design of notation. More explicitly, I believe inventing better notations c … | Continue reading
This is a short story about AI, which I would usually write and share on my second blog linus.coffee. But I liked this one enough, and thought it was interesting enough, that I’ve opted to publish it here, instead. The town was called Aperia. A quiet but sophisticated sprawl of h … | Continue reading
I don’t normally write about new gadgets when they come out, but once in a while, a new device captures my imagination and creativity so much that I can’t help write a little bit about how I use it, and why it gets me so excited. The last time this happened, it was about the 2018 … | Continue reading
There are two ways to think about a multi-decade-long project, like building a company or growing a personal body of work. The first way is to maximize value being created today. I describe this as building an earning machine. In this approach, you make decisions based on how muc … | Continue reading
I think a lot about building tools, especially software tools. My favorite way to think about tools is as a force multiplier of human effort. A better tool multiplies humanity’s effort and willpower by a higher factor to effect more change on the world in whatever direction we de … | Continue reading
Last fall, I wrote on the topic of identities, and how they change: We are constantly becoming ourselves. With every memory or book or accident or victory the person that I am changes slightly, so that the next thing I experience, I experience as a different person. Like the need … | Continue reading