Further thoughts on direction

Committing this much time to something is pretty daunting. At some point you just have to put down the post-its and actually explore—like, physically ambulate… with your hands. I said it in my last post, just get out of your head. I’ve been thinking about the categories I came up with last week, and attempted to understand them more. I mapped out any thought I had surrounding the sticky note I had titled, “material science for the web” My understanding of it seemed to resemble that of a personalized AI, so I started there.

From that map, I highlighted a few things that seemed interesting to me, and jotted down any similarities. Comparing this list, I didn’t find anything that stood out as a new finding, so I went to look back at the resources I had gathered. I was referred this talk by Bret Victor where he discusses the exact thing I had just mind mapped — contextually based research/learning. I get that feeling where my mind doesn’t jump directly to a single idea, but a series of paths. It is both interesting and a problem space I would like to dive deep into.

Below were little notes I jotted down during my synthesis that I find relevant and an exciting direction.

Or maybe instead of learning, its research for a discovery. Contextual input to bypass that frustrating need for various keyword searches until you find something that vaguely resembles what you are looking for.

How do we make learning contextual and active? How do we explore the world/field to discover what we need to? ex. Want to learn about concrete? AI makes you find a workshop or materials or a construction site etc. to see it first hand.