Obsidian, Roam, and the rise of Integrated Thinking Environments

Covers "a new class of apps called “Integrated Thinking Environments (ITEs)”... [and] NOTE framework, used to describe the specific feature sets ITEs provide... examples and some future directions".

The term ITE riffs off "Integrated Development Environments... provide developers a comprehensive set of tools ... a kind of augmented cognition for programmers... automating some of the work... freeing... programmers to think ... more about design and development".

Integrated Thinking Environments (ITEs) thus provide tools to make thinking easier, enabling us to be more innovative - essentially what I want the MyHub CMs to be (so the term may deserve it's own tag here). They're a subset of note-taking apps, which generally I find too unfocused to help writers write.

"the best way we have of working with our thoughts is to instantiate [represent them in an information system] them as notes". To turn a basic note-taking app or second brain into a ITE, we need to "consider how we can best parse and compile notes into useful things". To think about these features, the article describes the NOTE framework - "four dimensions of ITEs:

• Navigable... methods for quickly and intuitively navigating, reviewing, and collating collected thinking.
• Organizable... including classifying, tagging, summarizing, and visualizing collections of thoughts.
• Transformative... methods for defining and refining thoughts... querying, combining, and referencing that thinking.
• Extensible... enabling customizability and extensibility... think of tools like Obsidian and Roam as ITE Operating Systems. They provide a foundational layer ... get organically shaped into ITEs purpose-built for each user’s needs."

Individual features fall into these basic categories. A detailed analysis of how well each app implements these four categories would help identify key competitors and open water.

Some AI feature examples:

• DEVONthink "understands" you notes to "suggest which documents are similar to one another and to automatically organize new documents into the folders you’ve already created"
• Psionica’s Dual, an in-app chatbot ... respond to queries and questions in natural language.

Other noteworthy ideas

• “softerware” well-documented and replicable techniques for working with ITEs in specific ways"
• “workbench note... temporary staging space for collecting ideas that I could then remix and add to... [evolved into] the Workbench plugin, which provides commands for copying and linking to items across your ITE in Obsidian
• collaboration, although "thinking is intensely personal and contextual" - expect version control issues.