# Reinventing the Book > Books are incredible *repositories for information*, but *terrible tools for learning*. The lie is that if you read a book, you will learn the knowledge contained in the book. This is not the case. In order to truly learn from a book, you have to apply additional learning techniques on top of the book. What if there were a new medium for interacting with knowledge that was better than a book for relaying knowledge? We would probably want to represent knowledge differently (see [[Knowledge Representation]]). ## A History What follows is a partial history of ideas about how to invent a better medium for learning than the book. - [[Vannevar Bush]]'s [Memex](http://worrydream.com/refs/Bush%20-%20As%20We%20May%20Think%20(Life%20Magazine%209-10-1945).pdf) from 1945 was the backdrop for Engelbart and Alan Kay. - [[Douglas Engelbart]]'s Augmenting Human Intelligence is an important backdrop to _everything_, but it's a bit inaccessible. Engelbart is probably a Level 6 or 7 (see [[The Levels of Work]]) and had a hard time connecting and explaining his ideas. - [[Alan Kay]] is the bridge from Engelbart and Bush's ideas to the present ideas explored by Victor, Matuschak, and Nielsen. He pioneered the Dynabook. - Here's Alan giving an [oral history of the Dynabook](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwL3yXdupv0). It's about 2 hours, but worth the watch. It will take you through parts of [[The Dream Machine]] as well. - The Learning Research Group at Xeroc PARC did some work as well. - Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay's [Personal Dynamic Media - 1977](http://cognitivemedium.com/emm/refs/Kay1977.pdf) - Bret Victor is the next important figure. - [ ] He has done research and prototyping on [Explorable Explanations](http://worrydream.com/#!/ExplorableExplanations). - Here's an example of an interactive essay he put together [Simulation as a Practical Tool](http://worrydream.com/#!/SimulationAsAPracticalTool). - To see more examples, watch his talk on [Media for Thinking the Unthinkable](http://worrydream.com/#!/MediaForThinkingTheUnthinkable) - Andy Matuschak has written a great summary article [Why books don’t work | Andy Matuschak](https://andymatuschak.org/books/) - See Andy's notes on his approach to solving the problem, what he calls the Mnemonic Medium: - [Mnemonic medium](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4rRX3qwSSJRsEkdXKwH2shamgHNeRthrMLiF) - [Evergreen notes](https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4SDCZQeRo4xFEQ8H4qrSqd68ucpgE6LU155C) - Michael Nielsen has done some thinking on this: - [Thought as a Technology](http://cognitivemedium.com/tat/index.html) - [Toward an exploratory medium for mathematics](http://cognitivemedium.com/emm/emm.html) - Andy and Michael collaborated on [Quantum Country](https://quantum.country/), which is a mnemonic medium "textbook" for learning the basics of Quantum Computing. - They wrote about their learnings from this project in the paper [[How can we develop transformative tools for thought? by Matuschak and Nielsen]] ## A Future - Future of Text Book (2020) is worth looking into. Pulled together by Frode Hegland - Future Of Text Community on Circle: - [ ] Join and introduce myself [here](https://future-of-text.circle.so/c/member-introductions) * A new way of handling metadata: [Visual-Meta](https://visual-meta.info/) ## Examples [Road to Reality](https://reality.mentat.org/essays/reality/introduction) is a series of essays to build a workshop full of the tools required to create and explore simulated worlds that behave like our most advanced models of reality. See [[Readwise/Books/Tools for Thought]] #work/notes #inbox #publishc