Skip to content
By using Twitter’s services you agree to our Cookies Use. We and our partners operate globally and use cookies, including for analytics, personalisation, and ads.
  • Home Home Home, current page.
  • About

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Language: English
    • Bahasa Indonesia
    • Bahasa Melayu
    • Català
    • Čeština
    • Dansk
    • Deutsch
    • English UK
    • Español
    • Filipino
    • Français
    • Hrvatski
    • Italiano
    • Magyar
    • Nederlands
    • Norsk
    • Polski
    • Português
    • Română
    • Slovenčina
    • Suomi
    • Svenska
    • Tiếng Việt
    • Türkçe
    • Ελληνικά
    • Български език
    • Русский
    • Српски
    • Українська мова
    • עִבְרִית
    • العربية
    • فارسی
    • मराठी
    • हिन्दी
    • বাংলা
    • ગુજરાતી
    • தமிழ்
    • ಕನ್ನಡ
    • ภาษาไทย
    • 한국어
    • 日本語
    • 简体中文
    • 繁體中文
  • Have an account? Log in
    Have an account?
    · Forgot password?

    New to Twitter?
    Sign up
vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

Tweets

  • © 2020 Twitter
  • About
  • Help Center
  • Terms
  • Privacy policy
  • Imprint
  • Cookies
  • Ads info
Dismiss
Previous
Next

Go to a person's profile

Saved searches

  • Remove
  • In this conversation
    Verified accountProtected Tweets @
Suggested users
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @
  • Verified accountProtected Tweets @

Promote this Tweet

Block

  • Tweet with a location

    You can add location information to your Tweets, such as your city or precise location, from the web and via third-party applications. You always have the option to delete your Tweet location history. Learn more

    Your lists

    Create a new list


    Under 100 characters, optional

    Privacy

    Copy link to Tweet

    Embed this Tweet

    Embed this Video

    Add this Tweet to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Add this video to your website by copying the code below. Learn more

    Hmm, there was a problem reaching the server.

    By embedding Twitter content in your website or app, you are agreeing to the Twitter Developer Agreement and Developer Policy.

    Preview

    Why you're seeing this ad

    Log in to Twitter

    · Forgot password?
    Don't have an account? Sign up »

    Sign up for Twitter

    Not on Twitter? Sign up, tune into the things you care about, and get updates as they happen.

    Sign up
    Have an account? Log in »

    Two-way (sending and receiving) short codes:

    Country Code For customers of
    United States 40404 (any)
    Canada 21212 (any)
    United Kingdom 86444 Vodafone, Orange, 3, O2
    Brazil 40404 Nextel, TIM
    Haiti 40404 Digicel, Voila
    Ireland 51210 Vodafone, O2
    India 53000 Bharti Airtel, Videocon, Reliance
    Indonesia 89887 AXIS, 3, Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata
    Italy 4880804 Wind
    3424486444 Vodafone
    » See SMS short codes for other countries

    Confirmation

     

    Welcome home!

    This timeline is where you’ll spend most of your time, getting instant updates about what matters to you.

    Tweets not working for you?

    Hover over the profile pic and click the Following button to unfollow any account.

    Say a lot with a little

    When you see a Tweet you love, tap the heart — it lets the person who wrote it know you shared the love.

    Spread the word

    The fastest way to share someone else’s Tweet with your followers is with a Retweet. Tap the icon to send it instantly.

    Join the conversation

    Add your thoughts about any Tweet with a Reply. Find a topic you’re passionate about, and jump right in.

    Learn the latest

    Get instant insight into what people are talking about now.

    Get more of what you love

    Follow more accounts to get instant updates about topics you care about.

    Find what's happening

    See the latest conversations about any topic instantly.

    Never miss a Moment

    Catch up instantly on the best stories happening as they unfold.

    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Knowledge generally depreciates, and a holy grail of knowledge modeling and capture for a long time has been to reverse the default negative interest rate it accrues and turn it positive. There was a “knowledge banking” project at Xerox back in the day that aimed at this for eg.

      2 replies 6 retweets 38 likes
      Show this thread
    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      In the past most such efforts have failed because they relied on automation to try and keep entropy at bay, which sort of works weakly with relative legible and structured information. But for more squishy information, the only thing that works is a “many eyeballs” process.

      1 reply 2 retweets 28 likes
      Show this thread
    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Anytime I’ve seen a positive-interest-rate knowledge repo, it’s because many people were resurfacing bits and pieces at random and making point improvements. So the only known solution to date for positive interest rate has been to collectivize and socialize the prosthetic memory

      2 replies 4 retweets 63 likes
      Show this thread
    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      So a good measure of the technical sophistication of a medium is to measure the number of people (eyeballs) and money (how much they’re paid) required to sustain a positive interest rate. I think Roam reduces both to the limit: 1 person and self-funded hobby time.

      1 reply 1 retweet 36 likes
      Show this thread
    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Compare for instance Wikipedia (~100s-1000s unpaid) or Stanford Encyclopedia or Wolfram Mathworld (single digits -100s, but paid, directly it indirectly). This is probably because Roam allows one mind to effectively act as many (Fox > Hedgehog)

      2 replies 0 retweets 21 likes
      Show this thread
    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      In practice, I’m finding now that when I have a new nugget to add, from whatever headspace I’m in (working, at the gym, random thought during in a meeting, half-asleep thought in bed), I can always make a quick judgment of approximately where a thought belongs, and put it there.

      2 replies 0 retweets 28 likes
      Show this thread
    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      By contrast in weaker media, I have to be in high energy, direct focus headspace, having warmed up around 30 minutes to get situation awareness around the whole project. Only then can I reliably lower entropy and turn interest rate positive. Roam lowers threshold to 10% of that.

      1 reply 2 retweets 35 likes
      Show this thread
    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      This btw is the maker time/manager time problem pg wrote about. Making needs 4 hour chunks because anything less tends to increase entropy rather than decrease it in any non-trivial knowledge work project. So anything that lowers that lower limit is a big win.

      2 replies 3 retweets 55 likes
      Show this thread
    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      My suspicion is, a good KPI for a knowledge tool is minimum threshold of time required to make a negentropic update to it, with every halving of the threshold increasing its capacity to hold positive-interest-rate knowledge repos by an order of magnitude.

      1 reply 1 retweet 37 likes
      Show this thread
    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      So a tool with a 2h minimum can sustain a 10x bigger positive-rate knowledge base with the same budget of people/money than a 4h minimum. I suspect for Roam, a very suitable project may get it down to minutes, and for a typical project, maybe 30min. Something like that.

      3 replies 0 retweets 23 likes
      Show this thread
      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Dec 2019
      • Report Tweet
      • Report NetzDG Violation

      Hmm trying a 2x2 :diagram in roam. It is pretty janky but close enough to usable that for simple ones, I'm likely to use native rather than import from a more complex tool.pic.twitter.com/0d67HIvowi

      11:37 AM - 8 Dec 2019
      • 1 Retweet
      • 28 Likes
      • Rushi Olaf Flyingdown Matt 𝄞 𝄢 ♪ ♯ Lars Hallenius Brian James Rubinton zan ⭐ Daniel Lucraft ian m hines
      2 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 11 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          One sign I'm achieving some sort of "hedgehog closure" is that I'll find a thought in my pre-Roam notes I'm not sure I've captured yet, and when I go to add it in a page I'm not sure exists yet, I'll find that the page and the capture both exist. Falling necessity of deduping.

          1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
          Show this thread
        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 13 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Okay, I started using Roam on Nov 26, so I'm now almost 3 weeks in. I seem to be entering a more difficult middle phase where it's all about resolving mergeconflicts. Lots of page merges and clean-ups today.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
          Show this thread
        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 13 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I am experiencing a kind of grind that I'll call a "Windows 95 to Windows XT" experience. My current state is a complex thing (Windows) built on a primitive simple thing (DOS) and I have to now go back and rebuild foundations in light of the clarity achieved at the complex levels

          2 replies 0 retweets 12 likes
          Show this thread
        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 13 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          This is definitely not as fun as the first 2 stages. I think I'm going through a double freytag process here. 1. Discovery (pre-Roam) increasing entropy collection 2. Sensemaking (stage 1 Roam) 3. Valley (mergeconflicts and rationalization)

          2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes
          Show this thread
        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Hmm. Conflicted about what to do about the content I started putting into @readingsupply a few months back. While Roam is clearly a much more powerful paradigm, I do like RS's cleaner presentation and collaboration/permissions model.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1199511350919065600 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          I guess I leapfrogged past Notion, and there were a couple of other tools I started using like http://paper.supply  but in view of this, I don’t think others hit the right mix. Hey @vidy___ you still working on your thing?
          Show this thread
          2 replies 0 retweets 2 likes
          Show this thread
        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          (in the quoted earlier tweet in this thread, I mistakenly referred to it as paper dot supply) I was briefly kicking the tires on that a few months back, but unfortunately, it didn't take as a habit the way Roam appears to be doing for me.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1140787641106911233?s=20 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          Hmm http://reading.supply  is nice. Clean collaborative document archive creation space. HT @tobyshorin for the find. Kicking the tires now. So far I like it. Cc: @vidythatte another product in introvert-toolkit space, kinda complementary to what you’re working on.
          2 replies 0 retweets 3 likes
          Show this thread
        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          It'd be nice if http://reading.supply  or something like it were bolted onto Roam as a sort of classic publishing/sharing front-end.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
          Show this thread
        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          I was briefly being pretty evangelical about reading supply, but the enthusiasm dropped rather quickly once I realized the creation workflow friction is too high... on par with say google docs. But still, there's some stuff there that's interestingly different from Roam.

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
          Show this thread
        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 19 Dec 2019
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Venkatesh Rao Retweeted Venkatesh Rao

          Unlike Workflowy, which I think has been strictly superseded by Roam. Again a nice product, but simply beaten comprehensively by a better one. For now. I don't think it's down for the count yet.https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1207437689709969408 …

          Venkatesh Rao added,

          Venkatesh Rao @vgr
          shit, moving my workflowy list over to roam was a single cut and paste operation... this is not good news for them, they're probably toast if they don't differentiate fast
          1 reply 0 retweets 6 likes
          Show this thread
        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 20
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Important threshold: it’s now easier to create a page linked off the right existing page for a one-liner thought than to tweet it and then postprocess the tweet. Took some practice, but I do it routinely now. Roam has hacked the tweeting impulse. Like Uber hacked taxi-hailing.

          3 replies 2 retweets 25 likes
          Show this thread
        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 20
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          When I compare to effort in late 90s (hand code new html page, edit existing to link, and ftp to home page site) the effort level to create a meaningfully linked page has fallen fallen faster than Moore’s law. I now do it on phone for 1-liners. Amazing.

          2 replies 0 retweets 19 likes
          Show this thread
        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Jan 20
          • Report Tweet
          • Report NetzDG Violation

          Kinda like what git did to code commits and forks. Made it really cheap and got us to continuous deployment/continuous integration. Roam is CD/CI for brain.

          3 replies 2 retweets 33 likes
          Show this thread
        14. End of conversation

      Loading seems to be taking a while.

      Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.

        Promoted Tweet

        false

        • © 2020 Twitter
        • About
        • Help Center
        • Terms
        • Privacy policy
        • Imprint
        • Cookies
        • Ads info