Suggest edit — IdeaFlow Background

Title

Name

Note

---
imported_by: wikihub-q7gz
scraped_at: 2026-01-30
source_gdoc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1czHhLzsvXXJRQ8eZ8Vo3_qBbJcxJa3LWf72VpqzUQCk
source_url: http://ideaflowbackground.jacobcole.net
title: IdeaFlow Background
visibility: public
---

[[systematicawesome]] \> [[ideaflowbackground]]

\#connectordoc \#curatedList

started by <jacob@ideaflow.io>

Contribute to the list at top!

IdeaFlow Discursive Background Reading

[Demos        1](#h.vmm8vruypckq)

[\#backgroundReading        2](#h.nfgx4ydbdw2u)

[Engelbart        2](#h.wbdrposgea6m)

[Giant Global Graph/Semantic Web        2](#h.6jslxfsiak5l)

[Zettelkasten        3](#h.8lz1aliiu0p9)

[\#supportingquote        3](#h.1vazxn94o3yt)

[More Related Projects        4](#h.3r1l9ow9ijiy)

[See also:        4](#h.a74mu7fw49tr)

[College papers        4](#h.igqlf9olfgex)

[Inspiring Global Vision        5](#h.2g1fz15rt8dr)

[@Team        5](#h.ramh813w5bpo)

[Thiel Fellowship Application: The most fundamental pressing problem in the world is that human activity is scattered        5](#h.kjr0etfihiix)

[Supporting Quote        6](#h.5xo6uy4d8m0y)

[Further Reading        7](#h.e1zromwk434q)

See also: [[gestaltexplanation]] • [quests.world](http://quests.world/) • [manifestos.world](http://manifestos.world)

\#TODO: this page needs to be revised to provide a clear, coherent overall vision for Ideaflow. It provides a series of tangential ideas, but should ideally communicate a synthesis of how they connect together.

## Demos

- Try Ideaflow Notes[ ](http://onboarding.ideaflow.app)[onboarding.ideaflow.app](http://onboarding.ideaflow.app)
- [Ideaflow Speech + Parse with AI Demo](https://youtu.be/hQaLg4o73yY?si=KEHZ2eihuAMLXbym)
- [Bullet View](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4feZo9PqTlo)
- [Paper2Graph Demo Updated – Paths from Ovarian Cancer to IGF2](https://www.loom.com/share/1286b34df8284ae3b33890b3a0a59267)

- [Old: Paper2Graph Demo Part 2 – Paths from Ovarian Cancer to IGF2 HQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0FKbVtzeEU)\

## \#backgroundVideo

[Ideaflow Pitch Draper Summit 2024](https://youtu.be/jvovyHG4xqc)

Future vision (longer)

[A Global Idea Bank: The Age of Massive-Scale Coordination Systems; Stanford Talk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70HL0yrsRQU)

[Tim Berners-Lee Ted Talk: The next Web of open, linked data](https://youtu.be/OM6XIICm_qo?si=OMwPB56Ujmi3z4Wl)

## \#backgroundReading

[[gestaltexplanation]]

### Engelbart

[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification)<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification>[ ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_intelligence>

<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart>

Read career and accomplishments. Specifically the [guiding philosophy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Engelbart#Guiding_philosophy), for the best existential crisis ever 🙂  [intelligence amplification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_amplification) too!  (Famously, Engelbart also invented the mouse and gave the [Mother of All Demos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY))

Doug "Engelbart's career was inspired in December 1950 when he was

engaged to be married and realized he had no career goals other "than

a steady job, getting married and living happily ever after".\[14\] Over

several months he reasoned that:

-he would focus his career on making the world a better place\[15\]

-any serious effort to make the world better requires some kind of

organized effort

-harnessing the collective human intellect of all the people

contributing to effective solutions was the key

-if you could dramatically improve how we do that, you'd be boosting

every effort on the planet to solve important problems — the sooner

the better

computers could be the vehicle for dramatically improving this capability.\[14\]"

### Giant Global Graph/Semantic Web

Re: semantic web, check out these slides From Tim Berners-Lee’s TED Talk especially

<https://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/0204-ted-tbl/#(8)>

And this:

<https://web.archive.org/web/20160304052840/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-04/19/tim-berners-lee-science-w3c>

See also: <https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Abstractions.html>

[And https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Global_Graph](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Global_Graph)

Create a way to connect half-formed ideas, as a step toward automating

cognition \#AI -- Tim Berners-Lee on science, 'stretch-friends' and

open data

"There are millions of scientist trying to cure the likes of AIDS and

Alzheimer's. Maybe the cure is currently separated in different

people's heads. How can we design the web so that these half-formed

solutions can come together How can we build a really creative space

for scientists?"

<https://web.archive.org/web/20160304052840/http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-04/19/tim-berners-lee-science-w3c>

See also: Web Net Graph <https://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/Abstractions.html>

And <https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Global_Graph>

### Zettelkasten

<https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html>

"Luhmann claimed that his file was something of a collaborator in his

work, a largely independent partner in his research and writing. It

might have started out as a mere apprentice when Luhmann was still

studying himself (in 1951), but after thirty years of having been fed

information by the human collaborator it had acquired the ability of

surprising him again an again. Since the ability of genuinely

surprising one another is an essential characteristic of genuine

communication, he argued that there was actually communication going

on between himself and his partner in theory."

## \#supportingquote

Tim Gowers says:

“Keep up the good work...going back to

Polymath, I felt that one of the reasons that it hasn’t

really ...scaled in the way that we hoped...is that there’s a sort of feeling that it doesn't really work unless you’ve got someone who’s already got a very prominent blog who

can attract people and, and there aren’t very many people who are in

that position so as a result there haven’t been that many Polymath

projects. But with a sort of very nice product like this that people

can work on privately or in small groups, that they get together, or

sort of publicly in a small way, I think there’s the potential for

much more collaborative research to become a lot more practiced. In

mathematics I feel as though one of the things that’s holding up

progress in that direction is exactly a lack of a really nice piece of

software like this. As I was saying to you earlier, you have something

that people can use privately, but that’s very easy for other people

to contribute to as well, then that way you don’t really have to go

out there and encourage people to start collaborating with each other

it’ll just happen automatically. All these structured, half-finished

projects will be there for people to go in and contribute to. So, I

really hope it’ll succeed.” ~Fields Medalist Tim Gowers on IdeaFlow

## Grand Vision Conversation (45 min, worth a listen!<sup><a href="#cmnt1" id="cmnt_ref1">[a]</a></sup>)

Cody and I just had an epic conversation which outlined the high-level version of Ideaflow, that we are working towards in a way that made him, in his words,  particularly motivated to build

<https://develop.ideaflow.app/shared/nlZ5j3jYYs>

Here are the notes and the recording! I would encourage everyone to listen to at least the first ~20 minutes because I think it points us in some very good directions, and make clarify decisions we make. It was also so fun!<sup><a href="#cmnt2" id="cmnt_ref2">[b]</a></sup>

\#grandVision

## More Related Projects

category theory <http://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/teaching/sp13/CT4S.pdf>

<https://ideapad.io/top-level/graph>

Semantic Web / GGG

Society of Mind / Marvin Minsky

[Memex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memex#:~:text=The%20memex%20(originally%20coined%20%22at,%22As%20We%20May%20Think%22.) – vannevar bush / [As we may think](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/) essay

Doug Engelbart

[Xanadu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu) / Ted Nelson

<https://ideapad.io/related-projects/graph?snapshot=related-projects>

## See also:

###  College papers

( IdeaOverflow, the basis for a platform for collaborative ideation and project sharing. [Society of Mind Final Paper v1.1](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O8t7ouEYC_1TMI9XbvWWT0wRPDxRpIIHafA-lJVqZls/edit) (Covers gestalt psychology). Co-authored with [Holden Lee](http://holdenlee.github.io/blog/). Also at [[gestaltexplanation|gestalt explanation.jacob cole.net]])

Nexus of related thoughts (many dead links)

[IdeaOverflow IDE (Idea Development Environment) Plan](http://ideaflowplan.jacobcole.net/) (direct [link](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UFjkJyI_D3JvVSeMQwN0HixOgYuISGwhcuyFuxqwhsY/edit))

---

### Inspiring Global Vision

If you want to see the thing that inspired me probably the most in the last few years it’s this clip from Jack Park (former colleague of Doug Engelbart). He has a clear vision for “how this planet is going to get fixed”. Which he states here[ ](http://worldquestguild.connectordocs.com/)<http://worldquestguild.connectordocs.com/> (see key quotes, or better, watch the linked video clip; on 2x speed for 20min))

#### @Team

Related projects to be aware of

<https://workflowy.com/#/7eb57e7699e2>

## Thiel Fellowship Application: The most fundamental pressing problem in the world is that human activity is scattered

What motivates us right now is that we see the most fundamental pressing problem in the world is that human activity is scattered:

People with synergistic ideas in research groups, big companies, and society aren't aware of each other (Tim Berners-Lee says "There are millions of scientists trying to cure the likes of AIDS and Alzheimer's. Maybe the cure is currently separated in different people's heads. How can we design the web so that these half-formed solutions can come together? How can we build a really creative space for scientists?" in

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-04/19/tim-berners-lee-science-w3c). Talented people start redundant or non meaningful startups even when there are many great ideas available low-hanging.

News media has a short attention span; we hear about bombings in Syria and earthquakes in Haiti one week and something else the next, even if the problems aren't resolved. Resultantly, the well-being of suffering people is at the mercy of what entertains the first world.

This isn't okay.

Minsky teaches us that a mind is a system to meditate between a collection of little agents, and that society is a mind. This mind is currently scatterbrained.

In the abstract, the goal of this project is to build a "gestalt processing system for society" (ref: link on http://ideaflow.jacobcole.net) so that everyone, everywhere can be included in the circle of humanity. It is to lift the fog of non connection that sits on the world between people and their ideas,  and build the giant global graph. It is to create a system to relate ideas - a rudimentary intelligence able to, for fundamental reasons, make broader connections than any single brain - which, as a side effect, produces a new paradigm for conducting Internet research that is better informed than Google for many tasks (ref: http://researchlists.jacobcole.net). In the same breath, it also incidentally produces a new type of smart text document not trapped in the paradigm of static paper.

The data collected from this system is vast and hopes to lay the groundwork for strong AI that produces new ideas autonomously.

In parallel, a second problem we see is that many of the smartest people we know spend their days working to improve the ad recommendation system on Facebook instead of curing cancer or building strong AI. We are, ultimately, striving to give these people a materially equally appealing or more appealing alternative option that also gives them an opportunity to directly help people!

[Thiel fellowship app (unsent)](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bl7UYhz_EGxAJAmwW364ThAmhY8jdmS07uEdejV22b4/edit)

\<\> Untapped internet potential

\#idea all ages thiel fellowship

See also: <http://ideabank.global/>

# Supporting Quote

[Testimonials and Videos](https://www.notion.so/Ideaflow-Onboarding-Quickstart-34f45fb3dd9f49e381cd161c32afa94e?pvs=4#29c8c26fb7774136bac4d468de23aa2a)

- [How I Use Ideaflow for Blogging](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7DwH77os4)

\#supportingquote from Josh Kopelman, founder of First Round Capital (Tier 1 VC, our investor)

"I think it's fascinating, what you're working on.  And more importantly than the whizzy-bang demo is the thought behind it, the framework.  It's really sophisticated for a company of your stage.  I've seen a lot, and I'm rarely as blown away as I am right now.

Congrats on finding a... Let's put it this way.

The most common reason we pass on an opportunity is not because we think it's going to lose money, but because we think it's not worthy of ten years of a founder's time, like success is just not going to... The opportunity cost for a founder like you is so massive that they have to be working on something that, if they solve it, is worth so much more, is so much better than any other opportunity they could spend their time on.  Oftentimes, when I pass on something, it's because I don't think it's worthy of the founder's time!  I wish that the founder was working on something bigger, or something else.  So, what I like about this... Whether you choose us or we choose you or we get there, what I like about this problem that you're solving is it's so worthy of your time.  Who knows, it could be something!  But it is real, it's worthy, it's... very cool.  Congratulations.  It's hard to find something that so early, with something so broad, so fragile, you can still get enough visibility to look and say, yup, this is worth a decade of my life."

# Further Reading

<http://ideaflowplan.jacobcole.net/>

[TedX MIT 2022 Outline 1.0](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11tmha1y0eHAAFrYA8LwHj0YvEijPfjBPQOD2Fkuk03s/edit#heading=h.k3lpbpt8ng8c)

[\#explainingIdeaflow from ideaflow.app for GPT Summary](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15-qhardaVzyMStHjAwmHEvzHBSoeBZ8KdKzGxuJwxAo/edit)

- [Copy of \#explainingIdeaflow from develop.ideaflow.app](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VLxRWv97cvRS6uEL0gawxluTWq_wFOXxAS3pThlmN8U/edit)

—

External: [As We May Link](https://s3.us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/5addb912-b590-41f1-adf1-f6ba35ae93ab/AsWeMayLink_Singer_and_Norrie.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAT73L2G45O3KS52Y5%2F20200805%2Fus-west-2%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200805T195740Z&X-Amz-Expires=86400&X-Amz-Signature=ac2908e80a4588d8cb7e862978bada494844025ee842ae06ddb8c88bc936facc&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&response-content-disposition=filename%20%3D%22AsWeMayLink%2520Singer%2520and%2520Norrie.pdf%22)

<div>

<a href="#cmnt_ref1" id="cmnt1">[a]</a>This was so enjoyable to listen to! Loved the tuning fork metaphor.. really captures what I've been thinking about for a few years.

</div>

<div>

<a href="#cmnt_ref2" id="cmnt2">[b]</a>@jacob@ideaflow.io

Deriving the user intent and the effective epistemic Taxonomy that is in context is a hurdle.

Minimalist internet, understanding the bento... references. You want a hyper-graph of the concepts effectively a massive interconnected Schema Ontology as per Tim Berners-Lee concepts of GGG.

\_Assigned to jacob@ideaflow.io\_

</div>

---

*Source: <http://ideaflowbackground.jacobcole.net>*
*Google Doc: <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1czHhLzsvXXJRQ8eZ8Vo3_qBbJcxJa3LWf72VpqzUQCk>*
*Scraped: 2026-01-30*