That's a mighty huge essay, but it looks really exciting. I'm going to have to dedicate some time to reading this.

I'll bet your phone has an accessibility screen reader that can read most of it to you

Ironically, I think the essay talks about how linear transmission of information is ineffective and what to do about it. So I don't think I want a screen reader, I think I need to read it at my own pace 😛

Sometimes listening to an article on the way to work is the only way I have time; but otherwise, I agree

I am not an expert, but i took a course decades ago from Fermando Flores, and he was a super expert on the german philosopher Heidegger, and Heidegger asserts that speech is thought; it is just words sequenced without moving your lips. This leads me to believe the answer of more powerful tools is creating better languages, not tools.

In a sense, languages are tools

Really good essay. This paragraph jumped out at me. Unfortunately right now most of the people capable of implementing “digital tools of thought” are not domain experts in a subject other than computing. But, hopefully the barrier to entry of creating these tools will be driven down over time.

I'm hopeful that I can create a tool that is at least effective for the end-user apps I'm familiar with: games. I've been programming (small) games for 12 years at this point! But also: most programming languages aren't used in domains that they were explicitly created for (JS is on servers now, C++ is used for video games instead of "systems programming"). So I can't really do worse than the status quo!

why is it that the technology industry has made comparatively little effort developing this vision of transformative tools for thought? I liked the whole essay but disagree with this premise, I could list out my head about 100 guys/projects (or this slack alone) that are trying to push the edge in very innovative ways. The right question would be, instead, why hasn't any of this caught up? I think it has to do with education and community. Education: people go to school to learn (fundamentally) the same tools as 20 years ago, Community: new efforts rarely go beyond being niche and having a few hundred supporters at most.

@Al Mo The essay talks about "the technology industry". Is anyone here working on a FoC project for that industry? My impression is that it's mainly personal projects, plus some academical.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to imply with community, so you could have some very good ideas but they rarely go beyond the scope of its (very small) community. Why is that? I have no idea, it may due to some kind of "marketing" issue.

@Al Mo or financing generally. There's a problem that open, flexible, and interoperable is often at odds with walls and moats.