1/ Personal Knowledge Base (PKB) is defined by Wikipedia as: "An electronic tool used to express, capture, and later retrieve the personal knowledge of an individual"
Here are 6 categories of software tools that DON'T fit the definition
Here are 6 categories of software tools that DON'T fit the definition
2/ NOT PERSONAL: universal knowledge stores (like World Wide Web or Wikipedia) don't focus on an individual's knowledge; search systems (Google and other search engines) only allow intake, not expression of knowledge
3/ NOT [GENERAL] KNOWLEDGE: productivity or time management tools with narrow, purely functional info (calendars, agendas, to do lists, contact lists); info sources dedicated to a specific domain (bibliographic sources, directories)
4/ NOT MANAGEMENT: repositories for storing only final products, not intermediate ones (digital asset mgmt, digital archiving software); systems for capturing transient info, instead of info that has long-term value (search history, time logs, web history)
5/ What DOES qualify as a PKB: besides being electronic, and being able to express/capture/retrieve, there seem to be 3 core requirements
6/ #1 is that it should contain DISTILLED knowledge. Not a collection of all the docs and sources a person has encountered (which is PIM), but only the parts they found relevant and extracted
7/ #2 is that it should allow for SUBJECTIVE expressions, i.e. writing or saving whatever thoughts or ideas or interpretations come to person's mind (not just saving snippets pulled from outside sources)
8/ #3 is that it should be FREEFORM, allowing info to be input in any form, with search, rearrangement, and restructuring allowed at any later time (instead of requiring precise input formats like a database)
9/ Most note-taking apps meet all these requirements easily, but the key missing piece is distillation. It can't (yet) be done automatically, but is essential to keeping an effective personal knowledge base. Progressive summarization is my solution
10/ Supersizing the Mind book adds a few more requirements for PKB to be considered part of our "exocortex." #1 is that it is readily available. Smartwatches, smart earbuds, voice assistants, and mobile app redesigns can really help here, to make capture/retrieval easier
11/ #2 is that it needs to be "typically invoked." That is, it needs to be the default place you go to for knowledge. This is where centralizing personal knowledge to one tool, even if suboptimal for some info, is powerful (one source of truth)
12/ #3 is that it needs to be "automatically endorsed." That is, you trust what it contains about as much as you do your own biological memory, and don't need to question it much. Progressive summarization also helps here, because each layer is a human decision
13/ All this suggests biggest room for improvement to create true PKBs is 1) provide better tools/methods for distillation (like Prog Summ or Smmry) 2) better tools/methods for capture (new smart devices, faster mobile apps) 3) centralization of pers knowledge to create defaults
14/ But I think underlying need is for better epistemic skills (splitting, merging, grouping, regrouping, sorting, labeling, tagging, titling, visualizing, adding/removing structure, sifting, sorting, classifying, selecting, choosing, and comparing)
