(2020-07-28) Matuschak Nielsen Timeful Texts

Andy Matuschak and Michael Nielsen: Timeful Texts. To engage with a book’s ideas over time, readers must remember its details, and that’s already a challenge. One promising solution lies in spaced repetition memory systems (SRS), which allow users to retain large quantities of knowledge reliably and efficiently. Like meditation, these systems involve a daily practice: every day, a reader maintains their memory library by reviewing a few dozen lightweight prompts.

To be transformed by a book, readers must do more than absorb information: they must bathe in the book’s ideas, relate those ideas to experiences in their lives over weeks and months, try on the book’s mental models like a new hat. Unfortunately, readers must drive that process for themselves. Authors can’t easily guide this ongoing sense-making: their words are stuck on pages which have already been read. How might one create a medium which does the job of a book, but which escapes a book’s shackled sense of time? How might one create timeful texts—texts with affordances extending the authored experience over weeks and months, texts which continue the conversation with the reader as they slowly integrate those ideas into their lives?

Readers must carry this book’s ideas into their daily interactions in the lab, watching for moments which relate to the exercises or which give meaning to the authors’ advice.This model of change is brittle: the right situation must arise while the book is still fresh in readers’ minds; they must notice the relevance of the situation; they must remember the book’s details; they must reflect on their experience and how it relates to the book’s ideas; and so on.

the world’s most transformative books. Consider texts like the Bible... they’re surrounded by rich cultural activity... Weekly sermons and communities of practice... We can’t build cathedrals for every book.

Guided meditation smartphone apps offer a promising design approach. 2020-04-30-MatuschakOnGuidedMeditationApp

To engage with a book’s ideas over time, readers must remember its details, and that’s already a challenge. One promising solution lies in spaced repetition memory systems (SRS), which allow users to retain large quantities of knowledge reliably and efficiently. Like meditation, these systems involve a daily practice: every day, a reader maintains their memory library by reviewing a few dozen lightweight prompts. (2020-03-21) Matuschak On SRS

Each day’s session is different because each prompt repeats on its own schedule.

Despite their efficacy, these systems are not yet widely adopted

One important barrier to adoption is that it’s surprisingly difficult to write good prompts. To explore one potential solution, we created an experimental quantum computing textbook, Quantum Country. It’s written in a “mnemonic medium,” interleaving expert-authored spaced repetition prompts into the reading experience

the regular review sessions didn’t just build detailed retention: the ongoing practice also changed readers’ relationship to the material by maintaining their contact with it over time

Consider The Elements of Style, a classic writing primer by Strunk and White.

The authors demonstrate the value of parallel construction

But it’s not enough to read an example. Good writers’ ears become automatically alert to these constructions. They notice opportunities to create parallelisms, and they notice dissonance when similar phrases are presented differently. It takes time to develop this awareness.

What if, a week after learning about parallel construction, a reader’s review session included this prompt?... The example reflection prompt would sit between others on physics, poetry, and whatever else you’d been thinking about.

Of course, spaced repetition is just one approach for writing timeful texts. What other powerful tools might it be possible to create, making future books into artifacts that transcend their pages, as they slowly help readers shape their lives?