Personal knowledge management is one of those subjects I keep coming back to. Regular readers of this blog will probably have noticed that by now. I have written about Capacities.io (https://capacities.io/), about screenshots as a surprisingly useful way of capturing information, about saving browser tabs as files and about all sorts of other ways to collect, organise and — hopefully — find information again.
So when I came across a presentation by Ivy Reese during the LocalFirst conference in Berlin (https://www.localfirstconf.com/) about a programmable notebook, it immediately caught my attention. Reese is a researcher at Ink & Switch (https://www.inkandswitch.com/), an independent research lab that spends a lot of time thinking about what computers and software could be, rather than simply creating another version of the applications we already have. One of the projects Reese discusses is called PlayBook, and its basic idea is fascinating: what if a digital notebook were programmable?
More than digital paper
We already have plenty of digital notebooks. There is certainly no shortage of applications in which we can type notes, draw things, paste images, create links and organise information. But most of these applications still work according to rules somebody else has invented. The developer decides what a page is, what a block can do, which buttons are available and how different objects behave.
We can usually configure these applications, sometimes quite extensively, but ultimately we are still working within somebody else’s model. PlayBook explores a different approach. Ink & Switch describes it as a digital notebook based around the idea of programmable ink. The ambition is to preserve much of what makes paper so useful — the freedom to scribble, sketch, write, draw arrows, move things around and think spatially — while adding something that paper obviously cannot provide: computation.
That combination is important. The idea isn’t simply to turn a notebook into a programming environment with a drawing function attached to it. Nor is it just handwriting recognition with some clever AI features added. The notebook itself becomes programmable.
Think of a spreadsheet
A useful comparison is the spreadsheet. A paper spreadsheet is simply a grid in which you can write numbers and calculate things yourself. A digital spreadsheet looks remarkably similar, but its cells can contain formulas. Change one value and other values automatically change with it. That relatively simple addition of programmability completely transforms what a spreadsheet can be used for.
Ink & Switch has been exploring a similar question for several years: what would happen if handwritten notes, drawings and other objects on a page could also be programmable? Earlier projects such as Inkbase, Crosscut and Inkling explored different aspects of that idea. PlayBook brings many of these experiments together in something that behaves much more like an actual notebook.
One of the interesting aspects of PlayBook is that it doesn’t start with traditional programming concepts. Instead, the researchers work with materials such as ink, paper, pins and beams. Each has its own behaviour — its own “physics”, as Ink & Switch calls it — and these materials can be combined to create more complex behaviour.
This means programming becomes part of working with the notebook itself. You might write something, draw something, connect objects or select part of a page and give it a certain behaviour. Something you do in one place can influence something somewhere else.
Earlier experiments from Ink & Switch show where this thinking comes from. In Inkbase, for example, the researchers experimented with a hand-drawn checkbox whose state could affect other objects on a page. Draw a checkmark in the box and something elsewhere could automatically change. Objects could also be selected or manipulated based on their position on a page. Suddenly the spatial organisation of your notes isn’t merely visual. It can become computational.
Programming without constantly writing code
That leads to what I think is one of the most interesting ideas in Reese’s presentation. Traditional programming requires us to adapt ourselves to the computer. We learn a programming language, understand its syntax, open an editor and write instructions in exactly the form the computer expects. That gives us enormous freedom, but it also creates a considerable barrier. Programmable Ink tries to turn that relationship around. What if computation could simply become another material you work with, alongside writing and drawing?
That also explains why pen and touch interaction are so important in PlayBook. The notebook is designed to retain some of the directness of working on paper. Ink & Switch deliberately tries to avoid filling the screen with conventional buttons, menus and toolbars. Instead, the researchers have experimented with gestures for drawing, selecting, moving and manipulating objects.
The technology behind this is interesting, but that isn’t really the main point. What interests me much more is what happens when you start using such a notebook for real work.
Building your own notebook
Ink & Switch has been using PlayBook internally for everyday note-taking, brainstorming, music composition, puzzle solving, collaborative whiteboarding, annotating PDFs and tutoring. That variety is important because it shows that the researchers are not trying to define one specific workflow.
And that immediately brings me back to personal knowledge management. Most PKM applications eventually force us to make choices about how we want to organise information. Should I use folders? Tags? Objects? Backlinks? Databases? Daily notes? Cards? Properties? A graph? We spend far too much time thinking about questions like these.
A programmable notebook potentially approaches the problem from a completely different direction. Instead of choosing a knowledge-management system, perhaps you could gradually build your own system while using it. You don’t necessarily have to sit down and write hundreds of lines of code before you can start taking notes. You begin with a page and add behaviour when you need it. Perhaps a handwritten task can actually behave like a task. Perhaps notes placed in a particular area automatically belong together. Maybe moving an object changes its status or category. A diagram might no longer simply be a picture of a system, but become a small model that you can actually manipulate.
A concrete PKM example
Imagine that I am researching a new article. During the day I collect a few web links, save several browser tabs, make a screenshot of an interesting graph, jot down something somebody told me and write a few thoughts of my own. This is exactly the sort of information that tends to end up scattered across different places.
In a programmable notebook, I could create an area on a page called “Sources”. Anything I drag into that area could automatically be treated as source material. A URL might display the title and publication date. A screenshot could remain visible while also keeping a reference to where it came from. A handwritten note could simply sit alongside them.
Next to it I could have an “Ideas” area. Moving a note from Sources to Ideas could change its role without requiring me to open a menu, select a property and choose a new value. Draw a line between an idea and three sources and those relationships could become actual connections rather than merely lines on a screen.
I could then create another area called “Used in article”. Drag a source there and the notebook could mark it as used. A small counter might tell me that I have collected 14 sources, used six and still have eight sitting there waiting to be examined. A checkbox next to an idea could make it disappear from my open research questions once I have dealt with it.
The important point is not that PlayBook necessarily offers exactly this workflow out of the box. In fact, that would almost defeat the purpose. The interesting idea is that I could define such behaviour myself because it happens to fit the way I research and write. Someone doing academic research could create something completely different. So could a software developer, student, historian or someone simply keeping track of books they want to read. At that point, the distinction between a “note”, an “interface” and a “program” starts to become rather blurry. And to be honest, I find that idea enormously interesting.
Maybe our software should adapt to us
There is another reason why this project appeals to me. We have become remarkably accustomed to adapting the way we work to software. Install an application and there is usually a “correct” way of using it. We learn its menus, its structure and eventually even its terminology. If the developer decides everything should be organised into projects, we create projects. If the application believes in folders, we use folders. If it believes in tags, we start tagging. Then we spend hours watching YouTube videos explaining the perfect workflow for that particular application.
Perhaps we have this the wrong way round. Maybe the software should adapt to us. That is what makes the programmable notebook idea so interesting to me. Instead of developers trying to predict every possible way in which people might want to work, they could provide the building blocks and allow users to create their own behaviour.
There is an interesting connection with AI here as well. Almost every piece of software seems to be acquiring an AI assistant at the moment. There is nothing wrong with that. I use AI all the time. But programmable software suggests another direction as well: don’t just give me an assistant that tries to figure out what I want. Give me better building blocks so I can decide for myself what my tools should do.
Another PKM rabbit hole
Is PlayBook going to replace Capacities, Obsidian, Notion, a folder full of Markdown files or whatever else people use for personal knowledge management? That isn’t really the point. PlayBook is a research project rather than simply another note-taking application promising to become your ultimate “second brain”.
What makes it interesting is the idea behind it. For years we have been trying to digitise the notebook. We replaced paper with screens, pages with documents and handwritten notes with text blocks. We added search, tags, links, databases and, more recently, AI. Perhaps the next interesting step isn’t another feature. Perhaps it is giving people the ability to decide for themselves how their notebook should behave.
Here is a video of the presentation Ivy Reese gave in Berlin.