0:18

In this episode, we talk with Drew

0:21

Coffman, who is an optimist

0:23

interested in the connections between creativity,

0:26

technology and true meaning.

0:29

His YouTube channel aptly named Drew

0:31

Coffman contains videos about Roam

0:33

research. From a beginner's point of

0:35

view, trying to understand a different features

0:38

that the tool has. And as

0:40

someone who has been on Twitter for a very

0:42

long time drew as in multiple

0:44

circles from tech, Twitter, to Roam

0:47

Twitter, and many other things that captures

0:49

his attention. So in this episode,

0:51

we talk about roamcult, The

0:53

community aspect of Rome and how

0:56

that is a hidden feature of Roam research,

0:58

the impact of Roam research on things

1:01

like social media, our ability to interact

1:03

with each other, through our notes, taking

1:05

us back to the nineties, just like hypertext

1:08

was. The power of nostalgia

1:10

and how it impacts us. And

1:12

Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest

1:14

men of all time, in my humble opinion,

1:17

a true Renaissance man, drew shares

1:19

his thoughts on why Leonardo were

1:21

so renowned throughout the world

1:24

for it is variety of interests

1:26

and answering the question, what

1:29

would your Mona Lisa be? From

1:31

possibilities of a Rome graph to all

1:33

kinds of things, we just went full nerd

1:35

on everything roam related. So without

1:38

further ado, let's dive into

1:40

my chat with Drew Coffman.

1:42

I don't know how rowdy we're going to get, uh, talking about

1:44

Roam, um, because

1:47

things tend to get pretty heated up whenever we talk

1:50

about something pretty, pretty damn

1:52

exciting. Um, yeah.

1:54

Uh, I'm not sure. Uh, have you been,

1:57

have you been chatting with a lot of, um, few

2:00

Roamcult members recently just

2:02

in general, uh, having conversations

2:05

about this because I'm sensing a very interesting

2:07

pattern here just from seeing that.

2:10

Uh, what, what, what pattern are you talking about?

2:13

The energy level exponentially

2:15

goes higher. The more that you

2:17

run out of topics to talk about when it comes

2:19

to what you know, and then

2:22

all you're left with are the commonalities,

2:25

which are the tool Rome

2:27

and how you use it. And the future, like.

2:30

It is a very interesting filter. Like people

2:32

are very, very future oriented. So I was

2:34

just curious to see, like, when you were talking about

2:36

remove other people, uh, what,

2:39

what have you seen.

2:40

I really think that one of the defining features

2:43

of roam research is the community

2:45

that it's built on Twitter. Um, I'm

2:48

like a long time Twitter

2:50

user. I don't know about you. Uh,

2:52

but I've been on there for. Far too

2:54

long. It's one of those things where, you know, it sends

2:56

you that like, congratulations, it's

2:58

your Twitter anniversary message every year.

3:01

And like, my number is high enough that it starts to

3:03

feel like weirdly depressing. Like, wait,

3:05

why have I been on here for so long? And like,

3:07

what am I, what have I been doing with all that

3:09

time? Because I'm a very future oriented person.

3:12

And I'm also a very community oriented.

3:14

The person, I always want to meet new people and do

3:16

new things. And for a long time,

3:18

my Twitter has been like tech, Twitter.

3:21

You know, you kind of bubble yourself into

3:23

these different little communities and as

3:25

someone who likes technology, you know,

3:27

it's the Apple, Twitter, it's the new tech

3:30

Twitter, but that

3:32

community, I don't know if you have been a part of it

3:34

isn't necessarily the most like.

3:36

Well, welcoming or gracious

3:38

sometimes, especially about

3:40

their own stuff. You know, like, Oh, a new Apple announcement

3:43

one's coming out very soon. Probably.

3:45

Well, one will have come out by the time this

3:47

is released. I'm sure. Um, unless

3:49

you're really fast. And,

3:51

uh, and, um, you know, there's

3:53

a lot of like cynicism and skepticism

3:56

about future oriented stuff.

3:58

Um, in the, the Twitter bubble that I

4:00

had built. And when I started finding Rome,

4:03

You know, it, it's a, it's a tool that requires

4:06

you to reach out and find other people

4:08

because of its beta nature. And

4:10

every single person that I came across was

4:12

so kindhearted. So interested

4:14

in talking about these things with me, there

4:16

are so many accounts that I've found that are,

4:19

you know, probably searching. You

4:21

know, at Rome research, Rome, research, Rome,

4:23

cult, all these things every day, just to

4:25

find new people to talk to.

4:28

Um, and that's one of the things that made me so happy

4:30

to have found this tool is like, Oh, I didn't

4:32

just find a tool. That's good for me. I found

4:35

like my people, I found the community.

4:37

That's good for me too. So yeah, I definitely

4:39

agree. I mean, you know, there's a.

4:42

After having been in the Hardy

4:44

skepticism of tech Twitter for

4:46

so long, it feels really good to be in a space

4:48

where everybody's passionate about the future. Not like

4:51

Rose colored glasses, you know,

4:54

optimistic either. Like everybody understands

4:56

that this is a beta, that things change, whatever.

4:59

Um, but yeah, it's, it's really cool

5:01

to be a part of a community. That's just excited about

5:03

seeing technology progress in a way

5:05

that like makes us all better.

5:08

yeah. And too,

5:11

I'm not sure when exactly was it that when

5:13

you discovered Rome, but I noticed this

5:16

when I joined Twitter only

5:19

last year. Uh, mainly

5:21

because my foray

5:23

into Twitter was the podcasting space.

5:25

So not tech, Twitter, uh, and.

5:29

Uh, podcasting and tech they're they're a little

5:31

bit, they're, they're a little bit similar in terms

5:33

of the speed of development, like more and more

5:35

companies coming in or new non-sports, et cetera.

5:37

So there are some overlap. And then from there,

5:40

I start to know these names like notable tech

5:42

figures or people in the VC space,

5:44

or, you know, the entrepreneurs who are

5:46

doing long tweet, tweet threads about

5:48

how they're doing, how they're feeling, et cetera, et cetera. Uh,

5:51

and then Rome came about. So it's,

5:54

it's interesting because not only do you have.

5:58

Active discussions on whatever space

6:00

that you're interested in on Twitter that

6:02

Twitter allows for that to happen. But

6:05

it also really

6:07

caters for Rome's

6:10

biggest attractive point, which is

6:12

the filtering and the attraction of

6:14

a specific kind of person or a specific

6:16

kind of personality. So, you

6:19

know, it's, it's just fun to be part of this journey.

6:21

Do you remember where, and you've, you've talked about this

6:23

before, but do you, do you remember specifically

6:26

where you first saw Rome? Like,

6:28

was it on Twitter and how, like, who was

6:30

it?

6:31

uh, I, I remember very specifically, uh,

6:34

it was, uh,

6:37

it was me

6:39

on Twitter and

6:42

I saw a post by Nat,

6:45

uh, not a license and

6:47

he did a blog post

6:49

about it. You know, it's that, it's that

6:51

very popular blog post about, Oh, about room

6:53

research and why I use it, et cetera, et cetera. And

6:56

it was shared by, uh, someone who

6:58

works at Buzzsprout, who is here. He's a head of

7:00

marketing at Alvin, Brooke. Um,

7:03

and I know Alvin from, because

7:05

we're both involved in podcasting, so we see each other's

7:07

names often. So it was,

7:09

it was my first time seeing

7:11

someone who's involved in podcasting, just someone

7:13

who is just behind the microphone, talking all

7:16

of a sudden, be interested in. Personal

7:18

knowledge management. Like I never would have thought

7:20

that that would collide. Like

7:22

those two groups of people would ever

7:24

collide. I never would've thought that he would be interested

7:27

in PKM, but there he was commenting on it. So

7:30

him commenting on that, attracted me to it.

7:32

And I didn't really think much of it

7:34

at the time until he was telling

7:36

me about all the. The

7:39

ability to remix blocks, et cetera. And then I thought,

7:41

okay, there's some potential there. And

7:43

then I tried the, the tool and then

7:45

look where we are now. So, yeah. Do you,

7:47

do you remember when, uh, how you discovered it?

7:50

No, and that's what I, I, I should really go

7:52

back and try to find it, but that's, you

7:54

know, I didn't follow Nat. I didn't know who Connor

7:57

was. I didn't know any of these people in this world.

7:59

Like my Twitter feed today

8:01

and my Twitter feed back when I first found

8:04

it, which was around March, maybe February.

8:06

Is completely different. So, you

8:08

know, I'm like, man, I'm scratching my head, like who

8:11

in my weird tech Twitter bubble

8:13

that mostly talked about, you know,

8:15

the new iPhone, uh, was

8:17

interested in Rome research and was talking about

8:19

it. Um, so I, I should, I should go back and find

8:21

it, but, you know, I was one of those

8:23

people that. When I first

8:25

found out about Rome, I downloaded it.

8:27

Well, I didn't download it. I opened the website,

8:30

I signed up for it. I gave it a little

8:32

try and then I just totally bounced off of

8:34

it for the first week, two weeks, three

8:36

weeks, something like that. Um, I

8:39

have never really been a person that is like super

8:42

systems oriented. Um,

8:44

Which is actually why I like Rome is because

8:46

it allows me to be sort of chaotic. Um,

8:48

but I had come from like, you know, notion

8:51

Evernote, uh, to do this, like these

8:53

tools where like, Oh, I know how this

8:55

thing works. It requires me to

8:57

put all this stuff in there to make it

8:59

really functional. And I'm probably not going

9:01

to do that. So I think I'm going to leave until

9:04

maybe there's some more features that compel me to come back.

9:06

And it was really, it was, it was like,

9:09

unfortunately, you know, 20, 20 craziness,

9:11

like the quarantine that really made me

9:13

reconsider it. Um, right

9:16

before things really started getting locked down

9:18

here in LA. Uh,

9:20

I thought, you know, This would be this,

9:22

this feels like a good time to

9:25

like organize my thoughts more

9:28

because I may have in the future

9:30

a bit more free time than I have usually a

9:33

bit more time inside, a bit more time

9:35

with books. So let me, let me try this tool

9:37

again. Um, and it just like blew my

9:39

mind when I realized that there

9:41

wasn't like one way that

9:43

it was trying to make me use it. There was.

9:46

In infinite amount of ways. And I just had to figure

9:48

out the one that worked for me. Um, and that's like

9:50

something I've really noticed over and over again in the way

9:52

that I talk about Rome and the people that like

9:55

seeing helped by the stuff that I'm sharing

9:57

is. I am by

9:59

no means the biggest power user

10:02

of the tool. I'm probably on like the

10:04

low end of using everything,

10:07

you know, every once in a while I'll see a tweet.

10:09

I'm like, Oh yeah. There's like mermaid.

10:11

I don't even know what mermaid stands for, but Oh yeah.

10:13

That, that might be cool to like, try that out

10:15

sometime. Like I have no use

10:17

for that kind of stuff on a day-to-day basis.

10:19

And I like, forget it exists, but.

10:22

The way that I use things is exactly

10:24

the way that my brain works. And every

10:27

once in a while I'll get a tweet or a YouTube comment or something.

10:29

When I talk about Rome saying like, Oh,

10:32

that's really great. Like I've been using Rome for a long

10:34

time, but I've been trying to do it this

10:36

way that somebody else taught me or

10:39

this way that this other app taught me.

10:41

And I just need to, I like

10:43

the way that you just said it makes me realize I

10:45

can do it the way that my brain works

10:47

instead of the way that. The system,

10:50

you know, is intended quote unquote,

10:53

because in Rome there, isn't a way that the systems necessarily

10:55

intended and like that's what rules so much. So

10:57

yeah, it's been, it's been interesting to see

11:00

how, you know, over the course

11:02

of time, I sort of had to

11:04

like figure out my own

11:06

way into Rome. And I think that's probably the

11:09

same for, for quite a few people.

11:11

Yeah, uh, for, for, uh, yeah,

11:14

definitely for a number of people. And it

11:16

is intimidating in, in the very

11:18

beginning because you're met with

11:21

the strangest thing ever when you open it up for

11:23

the first time, which is a date and

11:25

a blank page, like. What

11:27

the hell? Uh, I mean, we've had, uh, a

11:30

previous guest, uh, Stan from

11:32

episode one described it as

11:34

like, you know, I'm not, I'm not like a teenager,

11:37

uh, writing into my diary

11:40

for, uh, for school. I'm not trying to

11:42

write my emotions into this. Why the hell is there a daily

11:44

notes page? And then all of a sudden, it, it, it

11:47

came to realize just how powerful it was. Uh,

11:50

so that was, that was really interesting

11:53

that the fact that we have to try to articulate. The

11:56

need to release

11:59

previous systems that, that

12:01

we've been conditioned into doing

12:04

for our notes ticking system, because we're

12:06

trying to take that from other apps

12:09

and then putting that into row, like we will be

12:11

attracted with the, with, with how powerful

12:13

Rome can be. We, you know, all this buzzwords words and, Oh,

12:15

it's, it's, there's no structure or something like

12:17

that. And they were met with this and all

12:20

of a sudden they tell you anything is accepted. And

12:23

you fall into to two categories of people,

12:25

the ones who were extremely exploratory, that

12:27

they will try everything. And then they'll

12:29

realize that that is accepted. And

12:32

then the others who require a little bit more guidance

12:35

in that I am now left

12:37

with a note taking system where everything is accepted.

12:40

What do I do? And the confusion comes

12:42

from a, from a mix of there's

12:45

like an expectation at the end. Like

12:47

I'm supposed to write everything in there maybe,

12:50

or hopefully something will come up. But romantic,

12:52

let it grow over time. Uh, so there's

12:54

like a shift in a mindset, uh, when trying

12:56

to redefine the word note-taking system and then

12:58

Rome is helping us with that. Um, so

13:01

it's nice to see that when, you know, you were doing

13:03

a YouTube videos and I'm seeing if

13:05

you had a YouTube as, as well, uh, bring up ways

13:08

to explain Rome. Uh,

13:10

I was watching your YouTube videos just today.

13:12

Actually, I just, you know, of course the prep to

13:14

prep for this, but, but also just out of fun, like

13:16

purely out of like, Oh yeah, I want to search

13:19

Rome. What happens? Right. It's

13:21

really nice. Like you're

13:23

one of the most welcoming people when it comes

13:25

to explaining Rome. Um,

13:29

whenever we talk about introducing Rome

13:31

to others, I'm not sure

13:33

what's your take on this, but

13:35

do you find that a lot of people always

13:38

try to introduce the tool Rome as

13:41

a productivity

13:44

booster from a productivity

13:46

boost perspective, as opposed to just

13:48

a place to write.

13:51

Yeah, I think I, yeah,

13:53

like it's obviously I don't

13:55

have my thoughts fully formed as I, I stumbled

13:58

a little bit, but one of the things that

14:00

I, I felt when I first saw Rome

14:02

is. Like I've downloaded a billion

14:05

note, taking apps on my phone, you

14:07

know, there's every single one that's ever come out. I

14:09

probably have in my download history

14:11

on my iPhone. Um, and

14:13

I've tried a bunch of different, you know, plain text

14:15

files marked down, whatever, on my, on my computer

14:18

as well. And like,

14:20

if you asked me if you put a gun to my head right now and

14:22

asked me, like, tell me exactly

14:24

what the rum research homepage says right

14:26

now. Like, I couldn't tell you, like, I don't, I don't remember

14:28

exactly what it says, but whatever it was.

14:31

You know, the only thing that like stuck

14:33

in my mind was the little,

14:36

like, uh, arrow, diagonal,

14:38

arrows, like linking thoughts

14:40

to each other. Um, and, and I

14:42

realized like that

14:44

is such a important.

14:47

Distinction from every other note

14:49

taking app that that's all that I'm going to tell

14:51

people when I try to explain it to them. Because

14:54

if you say there's this new note taking app,

14:56

then everyone says, gee, I've ha I

14:58

have plenty of those. And you

15:00

know, a lot of friends and very like.

15:03

Power user oriented. People are just using

15:05

Apple notes now because it's such a good tool

15:08

that, you know, it works for them. Uh,

15:10

and if you say it's a productivity thing,

15:13

people already have a productivity system it's 2020.

15:15

Like, you know, they figured out the thing that works

15:18

for them. There's been many, many years

15:20

where they've decided if they to do as person or a

15:22

things person or an Omni focused person or in a sauna

15:24

person or whatever it might be. But

15:26

when you say to people. This

15:29

is a tool that is really helpful

15:31

to you because it lets you connect your thoughts

15:33

and like, Bubble up your thoughts

15:36

that you may have forgotten about in a way that you

15:38

wouldn't usually do that really

15:40

clicks, because I don't think that anyone in

15:42

the world is, is looking

15:44

around and saying, you know what? I love about computers

15:46

and you know what? I never go go. You know, what I hope

15:49

never goes away is the file system

15:51

like files and folders.

15:53

I love them so much. I love them in real

15:55

life. I mean, I'm sure there's somebody, but you know, that's

15:57

not the typical, that's not the typical

15:59

feeling. And in fact, my, my

16:01

wife, who is like, You

16:05

know, uh, the,

16:07

the, the very polar opposite of me when it comes

16:09

to technology, she like has no interest

16:11

in new tech. You know, she's very happy with her systems.

16:13

She's very happy with her setup. She does

16:16

not care about the new iPhone

16:18

or the new. AirPods or

16:20

a new app. It just doesn't register

16:22

as interesting or intriguing to her this

16:25

weekend. She downloaded drum

16:27

or she started using her own research because

16:29

she's working on this long form creative project.

16:32

And she's been just writing all of these things that are just

16:34

kind of disappearing into Apple notes. And

16:37

I said to her, like, I, I

16:39

know that I know how you feel about technology. I'm

16:41

not trying to pitch you something. Give me 30

16:43

seconds to just show you how this tool works

16:45

and how I use it. And if it's interesting to you.

16:48

I'll I'll help you, like, you know, import stuff into

16:50

it. And I just showed her the graph

16:52

and I clicked on one of the notes and showed her how

16:55

it expanded to other notes. And it

16:57

just instantly like, was

16:59

recognizable to her as helpful

17:02

because she's been writing these different, you

17:04

know, bits and pieces over the last six months

17:06

or so. And then they just sort of disappear

17:09

into an archive of files and folders

17:11

on your phone or your Mac book or wherever. And

17:13

you sort of forget that you wrote it and you

17:15

know, when you see stuff. Like

17:18

connecting together. I

17:20

think that it works as such a huge

17:22

motivator in a way that we don't fully

17:24

understand like the, you

17:26

know, the thing that I was also doing

17:29

in tandem with building my initial

17:31

Rome research graph was growing a sourdough

17:33

starter and they felt very similar

17:36

to me. Like I was every

17:38

day feeding this little starter

17:40

so that I could make bread and caring for

17:42

it, you know, like giving it a daily

17:44

dose of life. And then

17:46

I was also. Feeding my

17:48

note collection and letting

17:50

my thoughts in our connect in a way that,

17:53

you know, let it grow and grow. And as

17:55

I watched my room research graph get bigger

17:57

and bigger. It wasn't like that

17:59

was actually unlocking something

18:01

in my brain. It wasn't like, Oh yeah. Now I

18:03

have 200 notes now I've loved. Like, it didn't matter,

18:05

you know, like it's, it's the little connections

18:08

that matter. It didn't matter how

18:10

big my sourdough starter was, because all I

18:12

needed was enough to make a loaf of bread.

18:14

Right. But like just watching

18:16

it expand, made me feel

18:19

like something good was happening. And

18:22

it's, it's like a positive feedback loop

18:24

where as I watched it grow and grow, I

18:26

wanted to put more and more in. And that's what

18:28

I watched my wife do this weekend is. You

18:30

know, she put a couple of notes in, and then

18:32

she saw the connections and she's like, Oh, what about this?

18:35

And started putting those in and saw the connections. And

18:37

all of a sudden she probably had 40

18:39

or 50 different notes that she had imported

18:41

into Rome that we're all interconnected

18:43

and really beautiful ways. And I know

18:46

that now she has a better. Like

18:48

starting the starting place

18:50

for the next time that she sits down and writes.

18:52

Whereas before every time

18:54

that she sat down and she had to start with a blank page,

18:57

now that blank page is eliminated

19:00

and she has all of these different places to

19:02

start from. And like, that's the power. So

19:04

none of that can be said as. Note-taking

19:07

tool or productivity tool.

19:09

Like it's, it's something bigger. It's, it's such

19:11

a tool for thought, um,

19:13

that I try to convey that whenever I talk

19:15

about it, because I know that that's the thing that people say, yeah,

19:17

I don't have any of that. I don't have that

19:19

downloaded on my phone anywhere, you know, nothing is

19:21

helping me think in that way.

19:24

And that sounds worthwhile to give a try,

19:27

even though I've downloaded 500 note

19:29

taking apps.

19:30

Yeah, I, maybe I may not have done a

19:32

it as much as. You have in terms of number

19:35

of apps, trying to set up some

19:37

kind of new system or testing out new apps

19:39

here and there. Um, just to

19:42

find an app that really resonates with how

19:44

I think, uh, uh, until

19:47

it came to Rome and, and,

19:50

and on the, on the note of trying

19:52

to define it as a note taking tool or a

19:54

productivity tool, And

19:56

I always still feel like this is true that

19:58

labeling it as such, it can be dangerous

20:01

because your subject or the tool itself

20:04

is subject to the rivalries

20:06

of potential competitors, which are not even competitors.

20:08

Like they're not even in the same field.

20:10

Like there are other tools like Evernote or notion

20:13

or whatever that have

20:15

different ways to take

20:17

notes or even collaborate, or even

20:19

do ABC or XYZ. They have a different

20:21

set of features that. Put together

20:24

become that one tool. The

20:26

thing is with Rome, I feel like

20:28

because the features

20:31

are so expensive that it becomes easily

20:33

compared, like we try to simplify

20:35

our understanding of it by boiling

20:38

it down to, Oh, it

20:40

takes notes. It's a note taking tool or,

20:42

Oh, it helps you become more productive. It's a productivity

20:44

tool. It's more like, yes

20:47

and no. It's like, yes. And much

20:49

more. So like over time,

20:51

there's becoming more, there are more discussions on Twitter

20:53

talking about how Rome is giving

20:55

birth to a new genre

20:58

or a field of tools

21:01

to harness that.

21:04

Uh, that output, that ability to think

21:06

better to connect better, or, well, basically

21:08

what was written on the website for room research, a

21:10

network thought tool, and that's

21:13

honestly quite a mouthful to say. Uh, so

21:15

it's, it's also not that it

21:18

still sounds a little bit too technical in, uh, in my

21:21

Definitely. Yeah.

21:22

So I, I wish that we could find a way to better

21:24

articulate the value that is

21:26

provided because like,

21:28

like you said, your wife is an S. You

21:31

know, as interested in the technical abilities

21:34

of network, thoughts, uh, tools

21:36

as you are, but you showed her a demo

21:38

and all of a sudden she could probably write a full

21:41

book. Um, I can only imagine,

21:43

so yeah, it's

21:45

marketing. Rome is a whole other story.

21:48

Yeah, competitors is an interesting

21:50

thing too, because you know, If

21:52

you talk about it online, just like any tool,

21:54

you know, everybody sort of gets into these

21:56

little camps and into the thing that works for them.

21:59

And people ask, well, have you tried this? Have you tried that? And

22:01

for me, you know, I'm,

22:04

I'm super happy if people find like

22:06

another system that's similar in nature

22:08

that works for them. But the thing that

22:11

like drew me to roam research, isn't

22:13

just like the tool as it exists today.

22:16

It's the fact that it has a compelling vision

22:18

for the future that I think they can actually accomplish.

22:20

And, you know, whenever note was

22:22

first, like starting to get really big on the scene,

22:25

you know, years and years ago, um, the

22:27

CEO said somewhere. I

22:29

forgot the exact quote, but it was something like, this

22:32

is going to be a hundred year app. Like that's

22:34

my goal. My goal is for this to be around

22:36

for the next hundred years. And even if we

22:38

don't have computers as we have them today,

22:40

like I want Evernote to exist. And

22:42

I thought that is really cool. Like when

22:45

I'm thinking about storing everything

22:47

that I care about in a space,

22:50

uh, I would really like it for that, that

22:52

tool to be around for a long time. And

22:54

then that CEO left Evernote. And

22:56

then I realized that is not going to

22:58

be a hundred year tool and I

23:00

deleted it and I didn't ever use it again. Um,

23:03

because you know, like I

23:05

was looking for that vision, the reason that I was

23:07

using the app, um, that

23:09

platform was because of this,

23:11

this long-term vision and.

23:14

That, that inkling, which,

23:17

which definitely felt a little more like marketing

23:19

speak. The former CEO of Evernote seems like a rad

23:21

dude that had that idea. And, you know,

23:24

unfortunately it didn't work out for that, that

23:26

use case. Like I very much see in Rome

23:28

and I, I, I trust Rome to enact

23:30

that, um, more than Evernote

23:33

was able to. I also think that we're at a, at a point

23:35

where. The world feels a little more

23:37

flat as far as technology, you know,

23:39

like we've been using Facebook for a long time. We've been

23:41

using Twitter for a long time. Like at

23:44

the beginning of the app store, everything

23:46

felt like, well, in two years, this could all be

23:48

gone. And now that doesn't feel quite

23:50

right. It's true anymore. Like we we've come

23:52

to expect that these tools that we're using today

23:55

will be around for the longterm. And,

23:57

um, you know, like a year or two

24:00

ago, I scanned my

24:02

great grandmother's journal

24:04

into, um, like a computer,

24:06

you know, it was at this physical notebook that my

24:08

grandmother gave to me, uh, from her

24:11

mother and I scanned it in and thought,

24:13

I'm so glad that now, like I have

24:15

this preserved. And

24:17

that maybe future generations will have this preserved.

24:20

And there's a, there's a small part of me. I try

24:22

not to like, think about it too much because then it

24:24

kind of makes everything weird. But there's a small part of me that thinks

24:26

like this collection of notes

24:28

that I'm making, like, could be around

24:30

for generations. And I, and I hope that it is

24:32

like somebody I saw said

24:34

on Twitter, you know, like, These

24:37

are tools that we can use to like talk

24:39

with future generations. And that's a really

24:41

special thing because you know, when my

24:43

great grandmother wrote that journal, I don't know

24:45

if she had that thought that. I

24:47

would be holding it one day. Like the

24:50

world felt so fleeting through

24:52

all of history that no one necessarily

24:54

thought definitely my thoughts are going to be

24:57

preserved, but

24:59

I, I have the privilege because

25:01

of the technology that we have of, of believing

25:03

that that's actually possible for me. And that I

25:06

can create this database, this graph

25:08

of information, that if someone is

25:10

interested in it, Long after I'm gone,

25:12

they can still access it and sort of have this

25:14

conversation with me. So, you know, like it's

25:16

cool to be building something that feels

25:19

long lasting, um,

25:21

but also intimate at the same time,

25:24

you know, like I'm not trying to publish some book

25:26

and make it a New York times bestseller. I'm trying

25:28

to publish my thoughts for the people that deeply

25:30

care about me or want to learn about

25:32

me. Um, even when I

25:35

w when I can't respond back, you know? And

25:37

so that's like, That's

25:39

why I'm not going to try a roam competitor, right.

25:41

Is because I don't think that any of those

25:43

people are thinking of that extremely

25:46

long game. When I know that

25:48

Connor is, you know, like I know that

25:50

the Rome research team is dedicated to

25:52

building something that will continue to

25:54

evolve and expand, not

25:56

just over the next 10 years, not just over the next 20

25:58

years, but over potential lifetimes.

26:01

Like I know that. The goal and that's

26:03

the power of text that still hasn't

26:05

really been fully understood or sussed

26:07

out because of the fragility

26:10

of paper. And now that

26:12

we're over that hump, you know, something new

26:14

can happen and it feels like Rome is the

26:16

right tool to really capture that.

26:19

Yeah. And then on that note, uh,

26:22

having this kind of conversation that goes

26:25

far beyond longterm, where the

26:27

factor of us being alive

26:30

or not does not play a part

26:32

any more is what makes

26:34

even just thinking about that vision. Very exciting. And

26:37

I think I know which tweet you were talking about. Cause

26:39

it was by, uh, one of the members

26:41

of their own research team, Matthew McKinley, who

26:43

talked about having a a hundred year conversation

26:45

with their family. Uh, just,

26:47

just the weight of that sentence blew

26:50

my mind and a shout out to Matthew

26:52

for that, uh, great guy. Um, and,

26:55

and my perspective on that is the

26:58

ability to digitize one's legacy

27:01

is such a powerful

27:05

opportunity that we've

27:07

never really seen that in any other tool up

27:09

until now. And there

27:12

are ways to try to salvage

27:14

that and. Like you said

27:16

the Frigidaire Theo paper means that sooner

27:18

or later, these notebooks, these journals may

27:22

rot or may disintegrate and you

27:24

may not be able to salvage them anymore. Um,

27:26

but now that you have Rome, it's possible

27:29

to, you know, save them and recover them. Uh,

27:31

I would think that doing something like

27:34

saving someone's journals or notebooks, it

27:36

feels like you're saving someone's life. And

27:39

normally it's maybe

27:41

it's to do with the way that I view. People's

27:45

relevance is to one's life as

27:48

the memories that we make, therefore,

27:50

we feel that they are alive. So

27:52

how should we celebrate them even after their

27:54

death? Or how should we think of them

27:56

from all the lessons that we've learned as such all of these, like, you know,

27:59

relationships and they're, they're sort of like

28:01

organic linked references. If you think about it that way, but

28:03

if you put them all together and then you save that

28:05

and you recovered it and you can share that with the rest of

28:07

humanity, um, And

28:10

Rome is paving the way for that eventually to happen.

28:12

I think that is such a beautiful thought

28:15

to have.

28:16

Yeah. I mean, I can actually speak to the fragility

28:19

of paper directly because unfortunately,

28:22

and this is a sad story,

28:24

but unfortunately, a few years ago

28:26

I lost my house to a wildfire.

28:28

And, um, I, you

28:30

know, this, this giant fire swept through the

28:32

town that I was living in and my home

28:35

burned up. I woke up at five in the morning,

28:37

packed a very small bag. My house was full of smoke.

28:39

Got out of there. Um, did

28:41

not take much. And, you know,

28:43

I had this bookshelf that had a bookcase

28:46

of all of my journals over the last few

28:48

years. You know, all those thoughts are

28:50

gone now. And, um, you know, same

28:52

thing for my wife's journals. You know, there

28:54

were lots of very precious memories

28:57

that just don't exist anymore because

28:59

they were, you know, precariously in

29:02

one single space. Uh, and

29:04

they, they didn't, they didn't last the. They,

29:06

they didn't stand the test of time. Uh,

29:08

and you know, that

29:10

that's something that's really powerful about

29:12

technology and the way that we can

29:14

use tools to like upload our

29:16

thoughts, offload our thoughts, not just to have a single

29:19

copy, but create something bigger is

29:21

not having to worry about that anymore. And, um,

29:23

I used to be a really big fan of paper and pencil.

29:26

You might be surprised to hear that I don't really journal

29:29

with paper anymore I

29:31

had that experience did not necessarily set

29:33

me up to want to keep doing that. Um, but

29:35

I, I read this book this year,

29:38

um, called, Oh man,

29:41

I always forget the name of it because it's it's Oh,

29:43

I it's called a human as media

29:45

and it was recommended on Twitter by David

29:48

Parell. Um, and have

29:51

you read this book? Have you heard about this book?

29:53

uh, no, I feel like I've heard the title,

29:55

but I don't know. What's it about.

29:56

Yeah, it is a fascinating book. And

29:58

basically the very short

30:00

version of it is, um,

30:02

this person kind of sets us up as saying,

30:05

you know, there have been these evolutions

30:07

of humanity and in

30:09

media over time, you know, way,

30:12

way back in the day, very early on in

30:14

humanities, like. You know, evolution.

30:16

Um, somebody was able to figure out writing.

30:19

And when we were able to figure out writing,

30:21

there was this emancipation of

30:23

like communication because now,

30:26

you know, everybody could write, everybody could, could put

30:28

something down on a piece of paper

30:30

and, and preserve it in a way that wasn't

30:33

possible with oral language. And

30:35

then as time went on, there was another

30:37

evolution with the printing press, because

30:39

now you didn't just have to

30:42

have a single copy of something like my notebooks

30:44

in my home, but you could, you could very evenly

30:46

distribute words and, you know, knowledge could get

30:48

out much faster, but in both

30:51

of those situations, there's still a fragility, right.

30:53

Because. You know, not everybody

30:55

knew how to write. Not everybody had access to that.

30:57

And then even if you were able to like publish something

31:00

and print it, not everybody can have that

31:02

distributed to them. And you know, I think

31:04

about how throughout all of history

31:06

there have been, I am sure many,

31:09

many, many incredible voices

31:11

of wisdom, sages, you know, people that had

31:13

so much beautiful knowledge that impacted

31:15

so many people, but their ideas and

31:17

their thoughts were never able to get

31:20

out of their community. You

31:22

know, like they shared it with their people

31:24

and then they died and then maybe there is

31:26

some oral tradition passed down, but then it was

31:29

gone and really to let

31:31

thoughts leave a true legacy, there

31:33

has to be this long distribution

31:35

of thoughts. And in the book, human is

31:37

media argues that we are

31:39

once again in one of those really pivotable

31:42

once again in one of those really pivotable.

31:44

Wow. Once again, in

31:47

one of those really pivotal moments

31:49

in that. You know, at first

31:51

there was this evolution of writing. Then there

31:53

was this evolution of publishing. And now

31:55

there's this emancipation of thought

31:58

where I don't have to be some big

32:00

shot to get my words

32:03

printed in a book and distributed through

32:05

the world. I can just do it by

32:07

going online. And creating a

32:09

blog. I can just do it by tweeting. You

32:11

know, there's this even distribution

32:13

now of people's thoughts that, you

32:15

know, you no longer have to have the connections you no longer

32:18

have to be in the right spot. You just have to have an internet

32:20

connection in Rome feels like

32:22

the answer to that in a way that blogs

32:24

aren't in a way that social media platforms aren't because

32:27

we already have seen how many of

32:29

our thoughts that we've put online over the last few years.

32:31

Are gone forever because the platform

32:33

is deleted. You know, I was

32:35

just, I tweeted at Connor just

32:37

recently because he has

32:39

this great, like early, early, early tweet

32:42

talking about how his mother, um,

32:44

is an immigrant. And like, I think it's a picture

32:46

of her like selling hotdogs or something, you

32:48

know, like really this interesting story of like, You

32:51

know, I am the American dream because of what my

32:53

parents did. And the photo was

32:55

a white frog link. That's gone, you

32:57

know, and I have plenty of those memories

33:00

too. I have blogs that are deleted off the internet

33:02

because the, the, the platform shut down

33:04

and that isn't. That

33:07

isn't the evolution, right? Like

33:09

the evolution isn't you have the

33:11

ability to share your thoughts, but it's going

33:13

to be somewhere that might not be around

33:15

for too long. Like that's actually worse than paper

33:18

because at least with paper, you know, I can go down and find

33:20

a copy of a book from 1930 still

33:22

and hold it in my hands. If it, if it was able

33:24

to make it this long, where now there's no copies

33:27

of the stuff on the, on the internet that's been deleted.

33:29

But with Rome, it's very clear, like, yeah, this is going

33:31

to be around. I can download it. I can have

33:33

it. It can be online. Like. You know, something

33:37

to really, truly push that concept

33:40

forward of like preservation and

33:42

continuity and like communicating

33:44

with future generations needs to be

33:46

able to say, this is not going

33:48

anywhere and we can promise you that it's not

33:50

going anywhere. And when I post on Facebook

33:53

or even when I tweet on Twitter, I don't

33:55

necessarily feel that way. So that's

33:57

not it. Right. And when I put

33:59

something in my Rome graph, I'm very, very

34:01

clear. This is going to be around for

34:04

as long as I want it to be. And it'll

34:06

be around longer than me, you know? And that

34:08

that's, that's something that feels really special

34:10

that you like. Can't really put a price tag on.

34:14

Hmm, then you'd be very particular

34:16

about what you put into your own graph then, because if

34:18

you have the very intention of

34:23

defining the lifetime of your own graph

34:25

to be beyond your bodily life. Then

34:30

you want to make sure that the

34:32

thoughts, the blocks, the

34:34

notes that you're taking in are

34:37

either evergreen or they

34:39

will be retained

34:41

or relevant even for, in

34:43

even decades and even a century after which

34:45

would be yeah.

34:49

Definitely not.

34:50

Oh, definitely not. No. Okay.

34:51

put my finger up. Yeah. It, you know, one of the

34:53

things that I really noticed with my great-grandmother's

34:56

journal is the things that I remember the most

34:58

are the most mundane. Like, you

35:00

know, I don't want to read

35:03

about her, you know, I

35:05

mean, I do want to read about her deep philosophical thoughts,

35:07

but I also really love, um, hearing

35:09

that she went on a date. And the guy pissed her off.

35:12

Like that makes her human to

35:14

me, you know, like that's really sweet and special.

35:16

And you know, that's not a story that I've

35:18

been told. It's probably not a story that she

35:20

told her own daughter. Um,

35:23

but because it's in this journal, it's preserved

35:25

through time. So I mean, yeah, I

35:27

mean, and I'm not, you know, I'm not

35:29

expecting someone to be pouring over

35:31

my Rome research graph. And that's, I was trying to say,

35:34

like, I don't try to put that in the, in the

35:36

forefront of my brain, because then it'll get weird,

35:38

you know, and I'll start having this, this weird

35:40

voice of, Oh, I have to be

35:42

this wise person now, you know, like half

35:44

the stuff in my room is crazy, but

35:47

you know, if somebody cares about me, Then

35:49

that might be interesting to them. And it's interesting to me,

35:51

it's certainly going to be interesting to drew

35:54

10 years in the future or 20 years

35:56

in the future. I'm going to be able to learn a

35:58

lot from the cadence and the tone

36:00

and the feelings and the thoughts and the energy of

36:03

the person that exists here. Just like if I go back

36:05

and look at tweets 10 years ago, I'm like, wow,

36:07

that's a very different person, you know? And

36:09

do I agree with them every time? Absolutely

36:11

not. Like I think that would be a problem, right. Um,

36:14

is it embarrassing sometimes, maybe, but

36:16

that's like part of growing, you know, especially if

36:18

you want to grow around community

36:21

and grow in public, you just have to sort of be

36:23

okay with that. But yeah, no,

36:25

I, I, I try not to, you

36:28

know, put on the like Sage

36:30

mantle because I want it to be a place where.

36:32

You know, I can just be myself and,

36:34

and put down the things that I care about. Um,

36:37

but I, but I definitely am like mad at

36:39

myself for not having better

36:41

book notes over the last 10 years, you

36:43

know, like I've read so many books and, you

36:45

know, they were highlights and I put the highlights

36:48

in Kindle and now it's gone for some reason

36:50

or, you know, um, Nobo

36:52

or whatever. Amazon or

36:55

whatever Barnes and Noble's version was, you know?

36:57

And it's like, yeah, that's all gone. I, I wish that I had,

36:59

um, not only like the highlights, but the thoughts,

37:01

because I wish that when I had read those books 10 years

37:04

ago and I revisit it, I could remember how

37:06

that version of me felt

37:08

when I was reading that kind of thing. You know? So

37:11

to me there there's so much like beauty and

37:13

context in that type of stuff. I am still

37:15

very excited about like seeing more

37:17

public book notes. I would love

37:19

to, when I read a book, be able to

37:21

go. And look at other people's Rome graphs

37:23

and see what they got out of it, you know, like that feels

37:26

so profound and important to me. So it's

37:28

not just about necessarily the legacy. Um,

37:30

but it's also about like the interactivity

37:32

between people that are, that are building

37:34

this and caring about this right now. Um,

37:37

and obviously we're just scratching the surface

37:39

of like public roams. Um,

37:41

and I think there's a lot more to be done, uh,

37:43

in the future of that.

37:44

Yeah, I've been thinking about that. Uh, public

37:47

roams in the beginning, there were a few discussions

37:49

about how roams

37:52

when Rome graphs, when they are made,

37:54

public are very difficult

37:56

to navigate. If you are not a

37:59

Chrome user, so accessibility

38:01

then becomes a problem. If

38:03

you have the intention of wanting to share such

38:06

public knowledge, because it's a public graph after all,

38:08

uh, with the rest of the world, how do you make

38:10

it as easy to access or as easy to

38:12

navigate as possible? Or do you even

38:14

consider that because you have to care

38:16

for things like the exploratory

38:18

behavior of many different users

38:21

who stumbled into the graph and they're like, Oh, what's this about?

38:23

Or what's this book notes about? Um, so

38:25

I've been contemplating that. Um, a lot,

38:28

uh, recently, especially when we're coming

38:30

up to things like paid roam

38:32

graphs or premium room graphs, um,

38:35

and, or public graphs

38:37

that serve a specific purpose. Like

38:39

for example, this show has its own, uh,

38:42

Roman fem graph. So like all the transcripts

38:44

are, are linked. Uh, so that's,

38:46

that's brought up some very interesting behaviors.

38:50

So I.

38:50

think that you, I think you hacked it

38:53

sort of to have the left sidebar

38:55

be kind of an index, right. Or

38:57

like, you know, I know that it's like

38:59

a daily note way down at the bottom that says start

39:01

here. And I think you can also use the index

39:03

right. To like kind of navigate a bit on the Rome

39:05

FM public

39:06

Yeah, so I made it so that I

39:09

did not use the daily notes page at

39:11

all. Like as soon as you click on, uh,

39:15

the main room, if I'm graph link, it

39:17

will immediately go to the page, start here

39:19

and. Um, the

39:22

reason why I chose to do it like that was because

39:25

since, since this is

39:27

a, and we can probably talk about this and maybe you

39:29

have some thoughts on this. Um, since

39:32

this is a, a public graph

39:34

that is derived from my private graph,

39:37

then it is filtered information,

39:39

which means I already have an intentional structure

39:42

or I'm trying to narrow the different

39:44

ways that a person might be able to explore the

39:46

graph. So. I will try my best

39:48

to always send people to the start here page first.

39:50

And then from there, they can do whatever they want, uh,

39:53

that is becoming hard to do because

39:55

people are still cheating. And the way that

39:57

it would do that is like, for example,

40:00

this entire graph is public. And I would have

40:02

notes like on the fly as I'm talking to

40:04

guests and these episodes aren't

40:06

even out yet, but I would let people know, Hey,

40:08

I talked to this person before and it would search the

40:10

name. On the graph, like they

40:12

cheated, like they, they looked ahead. I'm like, Oh shit.

40:14

Um, so I had to deal with that in

40:16

some way. Uh, but, uh, other than

40:19

that, it's, it's interesting because the

40:21

behaviors of people who stumble into graphs

40:24

are very similar to hypertext

40:27

websites, where you try to explore all these different

40:29

notes, all it's different, you know, digital gardens,

40:31

et cetera, et cetera. But Rome

40:33

has that extra layer of

40:36

linked to references. Unthink references. Uh,

40:39

blocks that can be referenced, uh, once

40:41

multiplayer room comes out, uh, and

40:43

many more. So I hope to see that more in the

40:45

future and, Oh yeah. So

40:47

on the, on the thing that I, I wanted to hear your

40:49

thoughts on this. So, um,

40:52

if you think of a, if

40:55

you think of a two by two square

40:58

and on one hand,

41:01

it's a public

41:03

graph, public graph, sorry. On

41:05

one hand, it's. A yeah,

41:07

sorry. On one hand is a public graph, private graph.

41:09

And on the other side is a public graph, private

41:11

graph. So each square

41:14

represents the potential

41:16

relationship between two types

41:18

of graphs, a public graph, or a private graph.

41:21

There were discussions about how

41:23

would you define the relationship between

41:25

these two graphs in each of these squares?

41:28

So, as an example, once

41:30

multiplayer Rome comes out and

41:32

we have the ability to reference other people's

41:35

blocks. Say

41:37

that a public graph references a block

41:39

from another public graph, then

41:41

you can say on the no, uh,

41:43

my book notes graph references, your

41:45

book notes graph. And we

41:47

created discussion between the both of us

41:50

about our interpretation of this same

41:52

book that could be possible. Right. So

41:54

you would have a public discussion private

41:57

to public. Means that it's

42:00

a filter where my private

42:02

notes are only for me, but I will only filter

42:04

out a certain percentage of my

42:06

notes onto a public graph. So

42:08

it's like a display or like an exhibition

42:11

right. Public to private is when

42:13

you have a public that's pository of notes

42:16

and you want to bring it into your

42:18

own private graph for further processing

42:20

or further summarization, et cetera. And

42:23

private to private is very close to like

42:25

a Twitter DM. It's just a private message between

42:27

two. You know, private users

42:30

and their ideas of like, Oh, what if I just like,

42:32

copy paste D block riff for you in

42:34

Twitter. And then you can just like, look at the secret message

42:36

I sent for you or something like that. So we're

42:39

seeing possibilities like that. And

42:41

I'm curious to hear your

42:43

thoughts on what's a,

42:46

what is exciting you the most about

42:48

multiplayer Rome? Since this

42:50

is something that we've never really seen yet,

42:52

uh, up until he will come out.

42:54

Yeah, totally. I mean, it is

42:57

a big part of why I care

42:59

about Rome in the first place. Um, I,

43:02

I have known for a long time that I'm

43:04

the kind of person that. When

43:06

I do something creative, I'm

43:08

doing it to build, create, I'm sorry. I'm doing

43:11

it to build community. I don't

43:13

like making things in a bubble.

43:15

It's not interesting to me. Like, you know,

43:17

if I had to write in private

43:20

or secret and not share with anybody, I

43:22

just wouldn't do it because that's not,

43:24

that's not interesting. Um, I

43:26

want feedback. I want community. I want people

43:29

to, to read or care, you know,

43:31

read the things that I write. Look at the things

43:33

that I'm making care about, the things that

43:35

I care about. That's like a huge factor for

43:37

me. And so,

43:39

you know, it's, it's part of why anything

43:41

that feels single-player even

43:43

reading a book. Is

43:46

is like, not as good, like I'm

43:48

the guy that, you know, in my friend group,

43:50

I'm always like, Oh, have you read this? Oh, have you seen this?

43:52

You know, like, I'm that kind of person, you know, Oh, actually

43:54

I just read this thing, you know, like my wife

43:56

jokes about it all the time that I do it, maybe a little too

43:59

often, especially with her who has to deal with me

44:01

24, seven, three 65, you know? Um,

44:04

but it's just, just like the way that my brain works. I like sharing,

44:06

like sharing is an important core. Belief

44:09

a core factor of why I do anything.

44:11

And so the idea

44:14

of multiplayer Rome is really

44:16

important to me because I think that it, it kind

44:18

of unlocks the next step of

44:21

sort of unlocks the next step of what I've always wanted.

44:23

Like blogging to me. I actually started

44:26

a blog right before I

44:28

found Rome. Um, you know,

44:30

20th blog I've started. Some of them have been successful.

44:32

Some of them have been less successful. The last one that I had was on

44:34

medium, it was doing really well. I just ended

44:36

up hating medium because it like got crazy.

44:39

Uh, and so, you know, another

44:41

reason why I'm really liking Rome is like, I'm pretty

44:43

much done hitching my wagon to

44:45

these free tools. So that like, I just can't

44:47

know about, I want to be able to pay money,

44:50

even if it's a lot of money to somebody, because

44:53

I feel much more confident in the future of

44:55

that, if that's what I'm doing. So anyways, I

44:57

started this blog, but what I was really

44:59

trying to do before I knew the

45:01

term was make a,

45:03

um, a digital garden, you know, like I

45:05

didn't, I hadn't heard about that. I didn't know what that was.

45:08

But, um, I'll, I'll find a picture and send it to you or

45:10

something, but I deleted it now because I'm like,

45:12

Oh no, Rome is what I really wanted to do. But

45:14

I started building like a very nineties

45:17

vibe, like under construction,

45:19

Wiki, like I had the like gifts

45:21

of the construction guy digging and

45:23

stuff, you know, um, in every

45:25

single article that I was writing, every single

45:27

thought that I was writing, I was linking to other

45:29

thoughts. And I had all of these like

45:32

meta categories. And I

45:34

was like, I don't, none of these, you know, blogs

45:36

are always sorted by time. None of these

45:38

have anything to do with time. I'm not writing some

45:40

hot take on the newest thing I'm

45:43

writing about the way that we interact

45:45

with each other. I'm writing about, you know, this

45:47

I'm writing about that. So I don't care about

45:49

date hierarchy. I actually care

45:51

about like the intimacy and the

45:53

interconnected nature of these different thoughts

45:56

to one another. I'm I'm

45:58

describing Rome and I'm describing digital

46:00

gardening, but it was before I had found Rome,

46:02

it was before I had heard the term digital gardening.

46:05

And, and so, you know,

46:07

The, the thing that I liked about

46:09

it was that I could share them with people on Twitter. The

46:11

thing that I didn't like about it was that no

46:13

one could do anything with

46:15

them. You know, like blogs, notoriously,

46:18

you know, like their comment sections

46:21

are dead. If they exist at all. Sharing

46:23

a blog on Twitter, you get such little

46:25

interaction because you know, you have to make them

46:27

click through and do this different stuff. This was

46:29

before I had found visa,

46:32

who is, you know, like the King of like actually

46:34

don't blog, just make these gigantic Twitter

46:37

threads that you can like keep updated all the time,

46:39

which I've started doing more and more because I've been inspired

46:41

by that. But the

46:44

thing that gets me excited

46:46

about Rome multiplayer

46:48

is. Being able

46:51

to do that thing that I was trying to do on my own,

46:53

this digital gardening, but doing

46:55

it in a way that's communal

46:57

like literal, communal gardening,

47:00

you know, to be able to, I

47:03

actually don't know. I really care if it's public, private,

47:05

private, public, whatever. Um, I had heard

47:07

Connor, I think a long time ago, say that like maybe

47:10

what you would end up being able to do in the future is like,

47:13

Say this page and everything that it

47:15

links to is public. Like that would make a lot of sense

47:17

to me. Like anything that this page touches

47:19

make public, you know, like all this stuff that's

47:21

not related to don't make public, whatever. Like I could

47:23

see myself doing that. I would very happily

47:26

just make my private room, a public

47:28

room. I don't care. It's not like I

47:30

have any secrets inside there. I just don't think that

47:32

it's of much value in

47:34

its current form because it's so chaotic,

47:36

you know, like, um, What's

47:39

his, uh, what's his name? Max? Maximillian

47:41

something. Um, I want to know

47:43

his name, max. Yeah. Maximillian Shoals,

47:46

um, posted on, on Twitter

47:48

recently, like this beautiful index

47:50

page that he made that like made his private

47:53

Rome very like, um, You

47:56

know, recognizable and searchable and

47:58

like, I want to build something like that. And then maybe

48:00

I'll toggle my, my private room public.

48:02

Uh, but, uh, the

48:04

thing that gets me excited is, is the collaborate,

48:07

the collaboration. So I

48:09

don't want you to take my thoughts

48:11

and put them in your, I don't want

48:13

you to take my thoughts that are in my silo

48:15

and put them in your silo. I want

48:17

us to have a shared space where we can do it.

48:20

You know, like that's, that's the thing that really gets me

48:22

excited about this. And, you

48:24

know, I feel that way for. Um,

48:26

book notes. I think that's a great use

48:28

of it. Every time that I read a book, my book

48:30

notes are very scattershot. You know, I'm not

48:32

the kind of guy that's taking notes every

48:34

single way. It'll be like chapter two,

48:37

a bunch chapter 14, a bunch,

48:39

you know, like I'm, I'm that kind of person where like,

48:41

I only really want to put into things that like really

48:43

resonated with me, but. I

48:45

really want to know what resonated with you. So

48:47

if, if chapter eight resonated with you in

48:49

a way that it didn't impact me, I will

48:51

be impacted because you,

48:54

a person that I care about was impacted.

48:56

So like that's the kind of levels of

48:58

collaboration that I want to see. And when I'm writing

49:00

on a thought or thinking about something, and I

49:02

realize that you've written about the same thing

49:05

or thinking about the same thing. I want to

49:07

know what you're thinking about right now. Like that's

49:09

why I use Twitter all the time. Anytime that I watch

49:11

a movie, anytime that I read a book, anytime that I find

49:13

something fascinating, I do a

49:15

filter follow search, which means that

49:17

I see only the people that I'm following. And I just type

49:19

the word in yesterday. I had

49:21

rewatched a bit of the movie, the

49:24

last temptation, uh, and

49:26

it's like one of my favorite movies, Martin Scorsese. And

49:29

I just typed in last temptation, you know, saw

49:31

who I was following that, um,

49:33

had talked about it before and lo and behold,

49:35

um, one of the. The, the new acquaintances.

49:38

I found a guy named Don maxler had

49:40

not only posted about last temptation, but

49:43

I posted the very scene

49:45

that I was thinking about. And had his

49:47

own thoughts about that. And now

49:49

that, that moment where I watched something that

49:51

impacted me, isn't just a moment where

49:54

I was impacted. It was a moment where I

49:56

was impacted and I know this other

49:58

person who I'm getting to know was

50:00

also impacted. And the thing that he took

50:02

away from the scene was slightly different from the thing that I took away

50:04

from the scene. And it just, it grows and grows and grows.

50:06

It builds and builds and builds in those levels

50:08

of understanding and those levels of

50:10

community or the parts that I'm I'm

50:12

interested in, in, in Twitter is like, Terrible

50:15

for this, you know, like it's not,

50:17

I don't, I can't have a good conversation on Twitter about

50:19

this. You know, I had to like, you know,

50:22

let's see his, his tweet was from,

50:25

uh, March, you know, so here I am.

50:27

Some guy being like, Hey, remember that thing you talked about in

50:29

March, I'm bringing it back up. Like, that's not what necessarily

50:31

Twitter's for, but if I were to resurface

50:34

a note in your Rome graph

50:36

from six months ago, you would get

50:38

it. You'd be like, yeah, that's awesome. That's why I put

50:40

it there. You know, that's not necessarily why people

50:42

are tweeting. But it's why they're using their own

50:45

graph. So because the context and because

50:47

the intent is rediscovery,

50:49

when someone else rediscovers

50:51

your thought and wants to build on it, it feels natural

50:54

in a way that no other platform really allows

50:56

for that. So, you know, that's a big

50:59

part of why I think it's important is because

51:01

that concept of resurfacing

51:03

is not only like possible.

51:06

But it's encouraged and expected.

51:08

So, you know, as we get these multiplayer

51:10

instances, I know that they won't only exist

51:13

in a moment, but they can be long-term

51:16

projects that new people are constantly finding

51:18

constantly adding to. And that feels

51:21

really cool because I don't

51:23

want to think about something, pick it

51:25

up. And put it down and never think about

51:27

it again. I want somebody to remind

51:29

me of that thing that I cared about

51:31

and bring their own insights to the table

51:34

and like resurface it back into

51:36

my mind.

51:38

we're at this point, we're redefining

51:41

social media or social interaction at this point,

51:43

because if, if Rome is

51:46

going to have multiplayer Rome and

51:49

I mean, totally the rum research team can correct

51:51

me if I am getting this completely

51:54

wrong. But if we are able to reference

51:56

our people's blocks, it would mean that

51:58

there is one giant universal graph.

52:00

That is the earth. And then each

52:02

and every block is unique in itself. Therefore

52:05

that allows us to do things like

52:07

referencing other people's blocks. If

52:11

you redefined social media, from this

52:13

perspective, we

52:15

can now interact with each other through

52:18

not the persona that we have put on

52:21

our social media profiles, but

52:23

our most intimate forms of ourselves.

52:26

Other than our physical bodies, like in person, which

52:29

are our notes. So like, if, for example,

52:31

you have, you know, notes on this movie, and then I have

52:33

this notes on these movies on this movie and,

52:36

you know, they are still just as relevant as, uh,

52:39

as they are to you right now. Like your thoughts on that movie,

52:41

et cetera, instead

52:44

of tweeting at you, instead of emailing

52:46

you, instead of messaging you on Facebook and be like, Hey,

52:48

remember that movie 10 months ago? Uh,

52:51

I can. Put

52:54

a block under your block or referenced or block

52:56

directly like tap right into your

52:58

notes. Like directly

53:00

of course we have consent. Um, and

53:03

from there we strike up a conversation

53:05

that may bring up something that was of interest,

53:08

or maybe still is, but isn't your priority

53:10

right now, but rediscovery,

53:12

which is probably a, a

53:15

feature in long-forgotten in most social media platforms,

53:17

rediscovery, exit, maybe YouTube,

53:20

like YouTube is a different thing. Um, That

53:23

putting, putting that first, before

53:26

any other piece of social media, uh,

53:29

where you need to be looking at the most

53:31

latest tweets or the most trendy

53:34

of things where we have to be like, you

53:36

know, people are trying to gain for attention, which is a whole

53:38

different thing altogether. I

53:41

really want to see that happen because

53:43

I was on the verge of not really wanting to be

53:45

on Twitter or on any social media

53:47

platform. Cause I've had very bad experiences

53:50

with. This lots of fake

53:53

personas or people not really being

53:55

on this or not really sharing so much of their, of

53:58

their knowledge that they're willing to reciprocate

54:01

a value. But now

54:03

that we have a place like Rome, or at least

54:05

this small circle, uh,

54:07

in Twitter, people are willing to give back.

54:09

And, uh, that is a beautiful, beautiful

54:12

thing. I would love to see like Connor. Um,

54:15

I'm not sure if fighting against Twitter's the right

54:17

word, but setting.

54:19

Foundation for something like

54:22

Twitter interactions, but with

54:24

blocks instead of tweets, like if we can get blocked

54:26

threads, like block threads

54:29

on a feat, like if you, if you imagine

54:31

a screen and instead of

54:33

daily notes, pager, sidebar, then you're a right

54:35

bar. You have your daily notes, page,

54:37

your sidebar, and then a feed of

54:40

blocks. Like, yeah.

54:43

I mean, we're seeing other people like. Throwing

54:46

out ideas like, Oh, can we subscribe to someone's graph

54:48

and then see latest blocks being built or

54:50

something like that. That'd be pretty cool. I'm

54:52

really excited for that.

54:53

I, I mean, you know, the, the closest

54:55

thing we have to like a public realm is Twitter,

54:58

because it's all of these people's blocks

55:00

or tweets, you know, like kind of just scattered

55:02

throughout time and preserved, but you

55:05

know, there's no auto-complete right. Like I am

55:07

an avid Twitter searcher. I probably use

55:09

Twitter as a search engine. As much,

55:11

if not more as I use it as a social

55:13

network, but it's horrible, you know, like

55:15

I have to do 50 searches to

55:18

find the thing that I'm looking for. Cause I have to try a word,

55:20

Oh, maybe this other word. Oh, this so that, you know,

55:22

like it's, it's very challenging where in

55:24

Rome, you know, I can usually find

55:27

the thing that I'm looking for in one or two tries

55:29

because I'm just, you know, auto completing

55:31

until I find the thing that I'm, I'm, I'm,

55:33

I'm trying to get at. But yeah, I

55:35

mean, I, I totally agree with you that,

55:38

that concept of like, Multiplayer

55:40

in that aspect of being able to find other people's

55:42

thoughts on a thing is so valuable.

55:44

Um, I wish that

55:46

teenage me had that because

55:49

when I was younger, like as college aged me,

55:51

because when I was younger, um, I'm a Christian

55:53

and I used to run a Bible study. And

55:56

I was actually in this sort of weird phase where I

55:58

had this little community built and there are all these people, but I didn't

56:00

really have like a church that I was a part of.

56:02

Um, and, and because

56:04

of that, and I had to run this weekly Bible study

56:07

and I had to talk about something

56:09

and I would always feel like stressed

56:11

about that. Like, I don't have like a normal church.

56:13

That's like, Telling me to read

56:15

something or, or sharing insights with

56:17

me. So I had to, I downloaded a bunch of podcasts

56:20

and I would listen to a bunch of things and I would try to take as many

56:22

notes and find some insights that I thought were

56:24

worth sharing with the group. But

56:27

what if I had

56:30

a bunch of people that I, I valued

56:32

their thoughts that were also Christians that

56:35

had rooms. That when I thought

56:37

I wanted, I don't know what I should talk about today. I

56:40

don't know what I'm talking about this week. I wish that I could talk about

56:42

this subject. I would able, I would be able to

56:44

look at these public rooms and find people's

56:47

notes on there. Their own Bible studies,

56:49

their own experiences, searching through the Bible. That

56:52

would be so much more valuable to me than

56:54

having to find five.

56:57

Big shot, pastors that have podcasts

56:59

and regurgitate their thoughts

57:01

to the group that I had. I never felt

57:04

good about that, but you know, this is, it's sort

57:06

of going back to that concept in that book. I was

57:08

talking about human as media, you

57:10

know, when you get into worlds

57:13

where, when

57:15

you get into worlds where like communication

57:18

is not only. Important,

57:20

but, but like sacred, you know,

57:23

I didn't feel comfortable as a 19

57:25

year old making up thoughts about the Bible.

57:27

I actually think now that I, I should've felt

57:30

okay doing that, but I didn't, you know, I wanted

57:32

somebody who is mentoring me and leading me into

57:34

that. But because we

57:37

have only given the right

57:39

to publish to the people who are privileged

57:41

to publish, there's only this small

57:44

amount of information that actually is

57:46

like, The information that we

57:48

can take and the information that we can glean

57:50

from. Whereas now, as

57:52

you know, the world has already changed so much since that,

57:55

you know, that was 10 years ago, I'm 30 now.

57:57

Um, and the world has already

57:59

changed so much that. You know, I

58:01

would probably, if I was in that same situation, just

58:04

like Google stuff and find, you

58:06

know, the weird little Christian bloggers that

58:08

are doing their own thing and having their own thoughts. And

58:10

I would be much happier, like taking their insights,

58:12

but, but still there's the layer of disconnect

58:14

where those aren't people that I'm talking to, those aren't

58:16

people that I'm in communication with. But

58:19

you know, if, if there are people that. I

58:21

have already found so many like-minded people,

58:23

not just that care about technology that, but care

58:26

about spirituality through Rome, because

58:28

if you're the kind of person that's willing to dump large

58:30

amounts of information into a,

58:32

you know, networked thought space, you're

58:35

probably the kind of person that like I want to

58:37

hang out with. Right? Like that's, that's

58:39

sort of how we all feel is like, Oh my people

58:41

like you, if you're doing it this, like,

58:43

we have a lot in common, um,

58:45

in. If you're doing it, you're probably

58:48

also doing it because you want to talk

58:50

with others where, when you have a blog, you

58:52

don't necessarily flip that switch

58:54

where you're saying, and now please talk to me.

58:56

Like, there's still a little bit of this. Like

58:59

I'm putting this out into the world and I

59:01

get to choose whether or not like

59:03

I reciprocate and we have these conversations back

59:05

and forth, but I haven't met anyone in

59:07

Rome that has felt that way. That's like,

59:10

no, actually, you know, I'm just putting

59:12

my thoughts out here, please. Let's not like take

59:14

this the level further up to discussion and,

59:17

and that that's a significant change,

59:19

right? Like the fact that the people that are building

59:21

roams today at least are all

59:24

willing to continuously engage

59:26

in conversation and move thoughts forward

59:29

feels way different than blogging feels way

59:31

different than tweeting feels way different than publishing

59:33

a book. And I think that there are so many people

59:36

who benefit from that, that, that covering

59:38

that layer of like, Mentorship

59:41

or thought leadership that comes

59:43

from that, where they say, okay, now I'm not alone

59:45

in now. Not only am I not alone, but I

59:47

can now talk to these people that are feeling

59:50

similar ways as me. You're talking about similar things

59:52

that I'm talking about. Like there's just, there's

59:54

so much value there to unpack that

59:57

is like, It's almost hard

59:59

to talk about because we don't have a context

1:00:01

for it. There's there hasn't been a website

1:00:03

or a platform or a social network or a blogging,

1:00:06

whatever that has really like taken

1:00:08

that on in the way that Rome can

1:00:10

in the future.

1:00:13

yeah. The the possibilities,

1:00:15

uh, as a result of the tool coming in, allow

1:00:19

more voices to really, sorry.

1:00:23

No, let me reword that. The

1:00:26

possibilities that Rome provides as a result,

1:00:28

I feel like it brings reassurance.

1:00:31

And that's huge. Like that is

1:00:33

huge. And I mean, you've,

1:00:35

you've said that we've started a few blogs before.

1:00:38

Uh, I have, uh, as well, and

1:00:40

I have a few blogs that have, you know, uh,

1:00:42

died, but I've let it died on purpose because

1:00:44

with the amount of embarrassment and with the amount of

1:00:47

weird stuff that I was writing on there, I would rather

1:00:49

let it perish than have it shared with the rest of

1:00:51

the world. But. But

1:00:53

I remembered that part of trying to

1:00:55

start something like that, because embarking

1:00:58

on something like creating content or, you

1:01:00

know, writing an article or publishing a blog post,

1:01:02

or, you know, just continuing a blog over time,

1:01:04

whatever it can, whatever it may be. There's

1:01:07

this it's like facing in the mirror

1:01:09

and asking yourself, like, am I worth listening

1:01:11

to, or, you know, are people

1:01:14

going to. Are people going to

1:01:16

resonate with me, there's a lot of fears and really

1:01:18

exposing these thoughts that you tried

1:01:20

your best to convey. And then now you're subject

1:01:22

to the spotlight where other people

1:01:24

can read it and they can comment negativity,

1:01:26

or they may not think

1:01:29

that your voice is valuable

1:01:31

enough that they will just ignore you, et cetera.

1:01:33

So lots and lots of potential doubts

1:01:35

and worries, but with tools

1:01:37

like Rome and even not just Rome, even just

1:01:39

other tools like notion, uh, or.

1:01:42

The acceptance of people publishing book notes

1:01:44

online. Like that's technically also

1:01:47

a recent thing. I don't think I remember

1:01:49

anyone doing that 10 years ago or 20 years ago.

1:01:52

Um, it's

1:01:55

great to see all this published online. It's great

1:01:57

to see all of this willingness

1:02:00

to have such. I

1:02:02

call them informal mediums and

1:02:04

informal being relative because

1:02:07

they are relative. They're

1:02:09

relatively informal when compared to

1:02:11

large published books

1:02:14

or books that are pushed

1:02:16

by large corporations or large publishing

1:02:18

houses, because that really sets the sets

1:02:21

the tone for what a traditional thought leader would

1:02:23

be. Because, you know, as long as you have a book, you are like a

1:02:25

full-on, Oh, you're a leader. Everyone should listen to you, et cetera.

1:02:28

So. If

1:02:30

you have something like row, man, people can resonate

1:02:32

with that and people can resonate with your notes and your messages

1:02:35

and your thoughts on your block, your blocks,

1:02:37

and talk to you. Even if it's

1:02:39

just a few conversations here and there, like

1:02:42

you have done your job and you've done it very well. So I

1:02:45

do have to give massive props to Rome

1:02:48

for not even

1:02:50

its intended feature, but

1:02:53

the reassurance that chaos is

1:02:55

fine. Like chaos is accepted.

1:02:58

And chaos can be shared

1:03:01

by other people and chaos can be marketed

1:03:03

or a shared view to people. Like people can

1:03:05

realize that they look at Rome cult or

1:03:08

this culture, or this group of, uh,

1:03:10

what, what, what does Connor call the magical trash

1:03:12

pandas, trying to mix all these

1:03:15

notes together and just junkyard of weird,

1:03:17

chaotic thoughts and be like, Hey,

1:03:19

join us. You're perfectly fine. You fit the right

1:03:21

criteria. You should be. Uh, okay.

1:03:24

Have you ever asked people. Maybe

1:03:26

who are not involved in their own research yet?

1:03:29

What do they think about, uh, roam

1:03:31

cult or even just on people

1:03:33

surrounding the tool?

1:03:35

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's like a coming

1:03:38

from tech, Twitter, there's this skepticism,

1:03:41

um, that surrounds anything new

1:03:44

that has a Catholicism around it. I mean, I

1:03:46

think also. It doesn't help

1:03:48

that a lot of the people that are part

1:03:50

of it, um, we're probably just

1:03:52

as optimistic and positive about notion

1:03:54

before they like dumped it and

1:03:57

came over here. So it's like, well, didn't you just do

1:03:59

this about something else? Like, I, I, you know,

1:04:01

we're so accustomed to that. Um,

1:04:03

especially because we sort

1:04:05

of live in that world where. Even

1:04:07

though I said, we expect our

1:04:09

like, tools to exist, like Facebook and Twitter

1:04:12

for the longterm. You know, there's always

1:04:14

the new app that comes out that we're like, is

1:04:16

this going to be around in six months? I guess I'll go and register

1:04:18

my name there. Um, but I don't know

1:04:20

if it's going to actually be around. And then you kind of have to

1:04:22

gauge like, is everyone using it? Are they not,

1:04:24

you know, like I have a. You

1:04:26

know, library if dead apps, I'm

1:04:29

sure. Um, you could create like a folder.

1:04:31

That's like a graveyard for all this

1:04:33

stuff that people tried and failed. Um,

1:04:35

so I think there's a skepticism there. I

1:04:37

have been impressed and interested to see

1:04:39

that that skepticism is,

1:04:42

um, kind of lifting

1:04:44

a little bit faster than I anticipated. Um,

1:04:46

even in like the tech, journalism crowd. Um,

1:04:49

there's a guy named Casey Newton.

1:04:51

Is that his

1:04:51

Yeah. Casey nation. Yeah.

1:04:54

Casey. Yeah. Casey Newton, who. Um,

1:04:56

just posted recently that he's been using the

1:04:58

verge quite a bit. I'm sorry. He's been using Rome research

1:05:01

quite a bit. And, uh, and

1:05:03

I thought that he would probably be one of those

1:05:05

people who was like, this is weird.

1:05:08

You know, this is the, the new hotness

1:05:10

that's going to be gone in six months. Um,

1:05:12

but you know, I think that his tweet was like, I can't

1:05:14

imagine writing anywhere else now that I've, I've

1:05:16

used this. Um, and I think that's what, you

1:05:18

know, anybody who's accustomed to writing on

1:05:20

the regular, um, sees the benefit

1:05:23

of this so quickly in a way that doesn't

1:05:25

exactly. Work with other tools.

1:05:28

Um, I think that there's plenty of value in

1:05:30

a lot of the other tools. Um, and I

1:05:32

think that there's good. Like there's good fanaticism,

1:05:34

like, you know, I, I imagine that it feels

1:05:36

great to be a part of their own research team

1:05:39

and see the amount of people

1:05:41

that are just happy and excited and talking

1:05:43

and making memes and, you know, all these things

1:05:45

like it has to feel good as a person who's making this.

1:05:48

So, you know, I don't necessarily think that.

1:05:50

The problem is that people get

1:05:53

fanatic. I think the problem is that people

1:05:55

get fanatic and then the

1:05:57

tool dies anyways. You know, like

1:05:59

I always think back to, um, Google

1:06:01

wave, like Google wave was my first

1:06:03

like heartbreak where I was like, Oh

1:06:06

my gosh, I can see the future of technology

1:06:08

in this. You know, like, you know, it was pre Google docs.

1:06:10

So it was like collaborative. Note-taking doing

1:06:12

all these things in one spot. You know, every

1:06:15

tech article that I read about it was, you

1:06:17

know, Super positive and like, wow,

1:06:20

like they demoed it and it works the way that they said,

1:06:22

and we actually were able to try it and it's not like

1:06:24

horrible and buggy, and this is amazing.

1:06:27

And then it was gone, you know, like it didn't matter that

1:06:29

people loved it. It didn't matter that it changed

1:06:31

people's lives, you know, same thing for like, Google

1:06:34

reader. It didn't matter that it was a good product that was

1:06:36

used every day. It just gone all of a sudden

1:06:39

it's gone. And, you know, there are

1:06:41

people that have used note taking apps or people that

1:06:43

have used productivity tools. There are people that have used

1:06:45

all kinds of different things, social networks, whatever. And

1:06:48

no matter how many people use it, no matter

1:06:50

how many people wanted to keep using it,

1:06:52

it just disappears because that's what

1:06:55

tech does sometimes. Um, but

1:06:57

I think that it's becoming clear

1:06:59

that Rome doesn't fit in that

1:07:01

category. It's not. The app,

1:07:04

that's trying to get 1 billion

1:07:06

users and if it doesn't get them, you

1:07:08

know, it's going to close down. Like it's

1:07:11

not the thing that has to make all

1:07:13

of this money back because it took too much VC.

1:07:16

Like they have a clear, cautious

1:07:19

future plan that they are going to

1:07:21

act out. Um, and I think that just

1:07:23

changes. People's understanding of like, Oh yeah,

1:07:25

this is actually good. And

1:07:28

you know, the people that seem like they are

1:07:30

the most, um, Anti

1:07:33

roam, Colt as it's called, I think are

1:07:35

just people that like chose another tool. And

1:07:37

they're like, no, but like my tools better, you

1:07:40

know? Um, I think you're always going to have that,

1:07:42

right. Like, X-bar

1:07:44

I'm I'm I used to be like a

1:07:46

huge gamer when I was a kid, you know,

1:07:48

and who doesn't remember the Sony,

1:07:51

Nintendo, Microsoft Sega

1:07:53

Wars, you know, like that will always exist. Right?

1:07:55

When you put two people, um,

1:07:57

that are making things that are similar, that have two

1:07:59

groups that are, you know, caring about

1:08:02

things that are similar, those groups will always fight

1:08:04

and skirmish it's just is like, what will

1:08:06

happen, you know, as human nature. So, um,

1:08:08

but I I'm very happy that,

1:08:11

you know, The defining characteristic

1:08:13

of the people who are caring about Rome research

1:08:16

and talking about it in public is the friendliness,

1:08:18

you know, like there is this, this consistent

1:08:21

like friendliness, um, you know,

1:08:23

people. I always see people saying,

1:08:25

you know, sharing my videos, sharing different things that I'm making,

1:08:27

because people said, I don't get this. What should

1:08:30

I do? You know? And like, there's always

1:08:32

people that are willing to say, you should try this, you should do this.

1:08:34

You should do this. Have you considered this? And not in like

1:08:36

a pushy aggressive way, but just

1:08:38

in like this helped me. Maybe it'll help

1:08:40

you. Or, you know, I understand the value

1:08:42

of this. Maybe if you understand the value of this too,

1:08:44

that'll be beneficial. And that feels really special

1:08:47

because it doesn't feel it's the right

1:08:49

balance between helpful.

1:08:51

Um, and gracious that

1:08:54

a lot of other communities aren't able to like tackle.

1:08:58

Yeah. Th those are some of the very interesting

1:09:00

aspects of a community

1:09:03

centered around a tool. And the closest

1:09:06

to that I've seen as notion. So

1:09:08

notion would be more of

1:09:11

a couple of thought leaders or a couple of

1:09:13

notion experts who would be really,

1:09:16

really willing to share their

1:09:18

workflows, their templates, et cetera.

1:09:20

And. With that they, they

1:09:22

grow following. And from there to have, you know, a certain

1:09:24

set of users that follow their YouTube channel or, um,

1:09:27

their posts all the time and, and

1:09:29

these experts, they know each other by

1:09:31

proxy because state date, all of them use

1:09:33

notions. So it's like, there's this interesting exclusive

1:09:35

circle of notion experts. And

1:09:37

it's really interesting to have these chapters that people who

1:09:39

use notion for all kinds of use cases. And

1:09:43

I remember being relatively

1:09:45

involved in that because I was using notion for quite a while,

1:09:48

uh, last year. And just following

1:09:50

the threads of all these experts

1:09:53

and seeing how they gather and seeing

1:09:55

how they exude their personality through

1:09:57

how they teach a notion is

1:10:00

a very slow paced. You can build things just

1:10:02

like how you would want to see it. It's very pretty,

1:10:05

it's a very pretty app. So, you know, aesthetically,

1:10:08

like from an aesthetic point of view, if you like

1:10:10

notion you probably have similar tastes in aesthetics,

1:10:13

like maybe that's a possibility right there and

1:10:16

on Rome, We

1:10:19

have to, you have to have had tackled

1:10:22

the, not to make a pun out of it. The

1:10:24

notion of chaotic writing,

1:10:26

or at least what I call it in my head writing

1:10:29

in madness. So. When

1:10:31

you ride a madness, it doesn't matter. What's

1:10:33

written down as long as it is written down, but maybe

1:10:35

you can use it sometime in the future and

1:10:37

Rome being like the only tool

1:10:39

that has accepted that so far has given

1:10:42

birth to a space or a corner

1:10:44

of the world where anyone who looks in that corner

1:10:46

or in that direction, who is

1:10:48

currently finding a way to

1:10:50

house. All of

1:10:52

that mad writing that they've been doing is

1:10:56

looking at that engaging whether or not

1:10:58

do they fit. Because it's such a weird

1:11:00

and strangely intimate

1:11:04

part of our, why?

1:11:07

I mean, I call it writing life because

1:11:10

you don't always want to show

1:11:13

your messy, chaotic,

1:11:15

whatever notes to people. Most

1:11:17

of the time we have this very interesting

1:11:19

first impression where what you post online

1:11:22

must be refined. Must have proper

1:11:24

grammar, maybe eaters, SEO,

1:11:26

maybe there's some kind of like amazing blog post

1:11:28

and meta categories, et cetera. Um,

1:11:31

th the conventional criteria

1:11:33

that a blog would have, but

1:11:37

when we get to here, the community

1:11:39

is just amazing. Yeah, sure. We

1:11:41

can get very cultish, but I think that's part

1:11:43

of the banter. And I have a strange feeling

1:11:45

that I am quite a big factor to that,

1:11:48

uh, that I'm willing to add in

1:11:50

like random Latin

1:11:52

phrases to welcome new users, uh,

1:11:55

or whenever someone's on the

1:11:57

believer plan that I'm like, Oh, credo. Right.

1:11:59

And, um, by directional

1:12:01

linking everything that's on Twitter, even though that

1:12:04

doesn't have any, that doesn't serve any purpose, but I've realized

1:12:06

that that's some sort of guerrilla marketing,

1:12:08

because the more that we fake.

1:12:11

Link words on our

1:12:13

tweets don't want that people would ask, like,

1:12:16

why are you guys doing that? And then that's

1:12:18

enough, excuse to be like, Hey, you

1:12:20

should check out this tool. And I'm

1:12:22

in pure pitch mode. Uh, and

1:12:25

that's when it gets pretty, uh, interesting way

1:12:27

before, before we move on from that

1:12:29

bit. I actually, and

1:12:31

not as you brought up the, uh, Uh,

1:12:34

the console Wars from ages ago, I

1:12:36

know that you do a lot of, uh, tweet threads on

1:12:38

various things that bring up quite a number of Nick

1:12:41

nostalgic feelings. Cause I realized that

1:12:43

a lot of things that you post about it, I'm

1:12:45

like, Oh wow. I haven't seen that like 20,

1:12:47

30 years. So it's really

1:12:50

interesting that that it's either that we've,

1:12:52

we've watched similar things. Um,

1:12:56

and, uh, yeah, I was going to ask what

1:12:59

was the most nostalgic.

1:13:02

Video games, sound of your childhood.

1:13:05

Mm. Yeah, I, I

1:13:07

included it in the Twitter thread. Actually. It

1:13:09

was definitely the sound

1:13:12

of a PS two starting up.

1:13:14

And it's, it's one of those things. Yeah.

1:13:17

I always post these random

1:13:19

nostalgic videos. Um, I like,

1:13:21

I sort of think in video, um, It's

1:13:24

it's one of the formats that like makes them of sense

1:13:26

to me. Um, and so I try to include

1:13:28

a lot of like video clips and different things

1:13:30

on Twitter, because it feels like something that I'm

1:13:32

set up to do. And it it's like, uh, a

1:13:34

helpful way of, of talking.

1:13:37

You know, like if I tweet, does anyone remember

1:13:39

the PS two intro sound, or I

1:13:41

say, who remembers this? And I,

1:13:43

you know, play the sound like the

1:13:45

second thing is much more powerful and

1:13:47

evocative, especially when I'm trying to make people

1:13:49

like, remember something, you know, um, But

1:13:52

yeah, like, uh, I like

1:13:54

whenever, whenever I, I have

1:13:56

those nostalgic moments, which I think I actually

1:13:58

have more often because of

1:14:00

Rome, because I'm doing these daily note

1:14:02

taking experiences where I'm processing

1:14:05

and thinking and externalizing the things that

1:14:07

would usually be fleeting thoughts. Um,

1:14:09

but yeah, I, uh, I typically try

1:14:12

to post those to Twitter to see who else those

1:14:14

things resonate with. But yeah, I.

1:14:17

There's a, there's a good like YouTube video. I found

1:14:19

about the subject recently, um,

1:14:21

where it was sort of talking about like each

1:14:23

of the PlayStation sounds over time

1:14:25

has its own vibe. Um, and

1:14:27

the PS one specifically it's sorta like

1:14:30

weirdly like dark and

1:14:32

not creepy, but like the,

1:14:34

the PlayStation one sound is very like happy

1:14:36

and kind of positive. And the PS

1:14:38

two has this weird, like a femural thing.

1:14:40

And you're like descending in this city of darkness.

1:14:43

And like, it's very strange when you like, kind

1:14:45

of. Think about it outside of the context

1:14:47

of just like, yeah. That's what the PS two sounds like. Um,

1:14:50

but yeah, I mean, man here, I can hear

1:14:52

it playing in my head right now and who

1:14:54

knows how many times I heard in my childhood.

1:14:57

Right. Every single time that I turned it on to play a game,

1:14:59

um, you know, many, many times a day.

1:15:02

So yeah, if you. I

1:15:04

don't have a, my,

1:15:06

my Twitter is not necessarily a Twitter of strategy.

1:15:09

You know, I'm not trying to be like the

1:15:11

blanket guy. Um, it's sort of like,

1:15:13

these are things that popped into my head and I liked hope,

1:15:16

hope you enjoy. Um, so if you want

1:15:18

a random dose of nostalgia, uh,

1:15:21

you know, that's, that's what I try to provide

1:15:23

every once in a while on Twitter.

1:15:25

yeah. Going the visa route basically

1:15:27

like if you're thinking out loud and

1:15:30

your, your threads are of

1:15:32

any topic, as long as it captures your attention,

1:15:35

that is the only criteria. And that is the best

1:15:37

criteria. And I fully

1:15:39

agree with that. Um, I think it's,

1:15:41

I think it's kind of, there's

1:15:44

a certain pressure behind trying

1:15:47

to grow once followers on Twitter,

1:15:49

if he had the intention. Like if you, if you get on Twitter

1:15:52

and he had the intention, uh, trying to grow

1:15:54

once followers by niching

1:15:57

ourselves into a,

1:16:00

like you said, the blank guy. And

1:16:03

I feel like that's, that's

1:16:05

honestly very disadvantages, uh, to

1:16:08

someone because. It sort

1:16:10

of, in my opinion, maybe it's a very strong

1:16:12

one. Someone else can completely disagree

1:16:14

me, but it really dehumanizes the person

1:16:18

because you're not always thinking about this one topic

1:16:21

24 seven, no way. Right.

1:16:23

Like if it's like, if it's, if

1:16:25

you're in here and you're your niches like writing, for

1:16:27

example, you're not always thinking about writing

1:16:29

all the time. Like there are times where he'd be thinking about

1:16:32

food or like, you know, you run out of

1:16:34

toilet paper or you're in a bathroom unit emergency,

1:16:36

or you're thinking about the love of your life

1:16:38

or your family or something

1:16:40

nostalgic from ages ago or

1:16:43

inspirations that have nothing to do with writing.

1:16:46

Maybe they play a part. But the thing is in

1:16:48

the pursuit of trying to showcase

1:16:51

to the world, just how human we are balancing

1:16:55

that with trying

1:16:57

to showcase to the world how useful we are.

1:17:00

Becomes a very difficult thing to

1:17:03

try to, I mean, can I use

1:17:05

balance again, but to try to balance

1:17:07

and juggle between the both of them, just

1:17:10

because there's only so much we can talk

1:17:12

about on the same thing. So I really do appreciate

1:17:14

that you can go full on with like any

1:17:16

topic, no matter if it's nostalgia or on

1:17:18

something that you've been interested in, interested in, because

1:17:22

like, If it's not resonating with me,

1:17:24

I could just scroll down. I mean, just like anyone

1:17:26

else would just scroll down with anything on their feed,

1:17:28

but if it's something that brings up memories

1:17:31

from like 15 years ago or something, I

1:17:33

would totally vibe with that. Like, it's

1:17:35

just hilarious to me.

1:17:37

Yeah, I've always, you know,

1:17:40

again, like this is one of the things where, you know,

1:17:43

you'll hear me use the word community one

1:17:46

way too many times in this conversation, but it's because

1:17:48

it's so valuable to me, but it's something that I've really appreciated

1:17:51

about the new sort of bubble.

1:17:53

I found myself in as I've been exploring,

1:17:55

um, using rum research because I've

1:17:58

probably. Doubled

1:18:00

the amount of people that I'm following on Twitter

1:18:02

over the last few months, because I found so many new

1:18:04

interesting people, but, you know, following

1:18:07

along in tech Twitter, it felt

1:18:09

very, very like,

1:18:12

Ooh, is this like, can

1:18:15

I, can I post this right now? Like everyone's

1:18:17

talking about technology all the time. Is

1:18:20

it okay for me to post this and, you know, I feel the same way.

1:18:22

People like tweet about sports. I'm not a sports

1:18:24

guy. I'll be like, man, I do not know

1:18:26

what this person is talking about. And now I

1:18:28

know like biweekly, I have

1:18:31

to deal with them, you know, live,

1:18:33

tweeting some game that I'm not following

1:18:35

in the slightest. And, you know, I wish that there was a

1:18:37

better way for Twitter to kind of. No,

1:18:40

push those tweets to the side, um, without

1:18:42

like fully buying into the algorithm and

1:18:44

the timeline. But, um,

1:18:46

I don't really feel the way that I used

1:18:48

to feel about like, is this okay to.

1:18:51

Twitter not because, you know, I've,

1:18:53

I've grown my bubble to be

1:18:55

as such that people are constantly talking

1:18:57

about a variety of things all the time.

1:18:59

So, you know, again, it's not necessarily

1:19:01

like a strategic thing. Um, but

1:19:04

it's something that I think is good. And, you know, at the beginning of this year,

1:19:06

I read, uh, Walter

1:19:09

Isaacson's biography of Leonardo da Vinci.

1:19:12

And, you know, ultimate Renaissance man definition

1:19:14

of a Renaissance man, um, that

1:19:16

guy could not follow a single thread

1:19:18

to save his life. Like he was constantly

1:19:21

looking at new things, constantly obsessed

1:19:24

with something different, you know, you know, like

1:19:26

half of, you know, a good quarter

1:19:29

of the book is spent with,

1:19:31

um, It is spent documenting him writing

1:19:33

about birds. I would imagine that if you went

1:19:35

and talked to those people, they would have no idea that

1:19:37

Leonardo da Vinci spent any time writing about

1:19:39

birds. You know, that is not a

1:19:41

thing that has hit popular culture. They're

1:19:43

like, didn't he just paint? No, he did not just paint.

1:19:46

He did quite a few things and went on quite a few

1:19:48

rabbit trails. Um, and you

1:19:50

know, it just has it, you, you

1:19:52

say it's like disadvantage disadvantageous

1:19:54

to like. Kind of shoehorn

1:19:57

yourself in to a certain like

1:19:59

thing. I would argue that through,

1:20:01

throughout a lot of social media, it has

1:20:03

actually been extremely advantageous to

1:20:05

do that because it's the only way to really like

1:20:07

gain a foothold. And it's only

1:20:09

now becoming a bad idea

1:20:12

because we are only now allowing

1:20:14

ourselves to really like be full

1:20:17

people. But you know, if you go on Tik TOK, Look

1:20:19

at the people that are crushing it on Tik TOK, you're going

1:20:22

to see the same tick-tock on their grid

1:20:24

a hundred times, you know, like that

1:20:26

it has been the growth hack for

1:20:28

so long that I have never liked, you

1:20:31

know, I want to reject it. I don't want to be

1:20:33

a part of it. And it feels like tools like Rome

1:20:35

are the, are the tools being built

1:20:37

by the people and for the people that

1:20:39

aren't interested in, that kind of stuff, you know, like,

1:20:42

um, the, the YouTube videos that I've been making

1:20:44

it's. Very much like a quarantine

1:20:47

time project where it's like, you know what? This feels

1:20:49

like a great thing to spend my time doing right now.

1:20:51

The next video that I do is probably

1:20:54

going to be on like a movie that I

1:20:56

watched and want to like add a criticism to,

1:20:58

is that what people are necessarily expecting after

1:21:00

I've made a few like Rome research, videos and stuff.

1:21:03

Maybe not, but like, I don't care.

1:21:05

I'm not interested in like boxing myself

1:21:07

in that far in, in interspersed

1:21:09

between, um, my videos

1:21:12

about Rome or videos about,

1:21:14

uh, you know, the fire that I experienced

1:21:16

or videos about this or videos about that. Um,

1:21:18

and I'm finding people like

1:21:20

visa and Michael Ashcroft and different, you know,

1:21:22

different folks who are doing similar

1:21:24

things where, you know, they're talking about what

1:21:26

inspires them, talking about what impacts

1:21:29

them. And that's what I care about.

1:21:31

Well, I don't care about going

1:21:33

to the guy that says the same

1:21:35

thing, 20 different ways, 20

1:21:38

different days in a row. I want to

1:21:40

follow the people who I have a connection

1:21:42

with that are constantly surfacing

1:21:45

the things that inspire them that might inspire

1:21:47

me. And the fact that we have a

1:21:49

tool that can do that, the fact that we've built

1:21:51

a community that can do that feels so

1:21:53

good to me in a way that I

1:21:55

haven't really found online for a long time.

1:21:57

It almost feels nineties. You know, like it

1:22:00

sort of feels like a throwback, which is

1:22:02

very much in line with the like hypertext

1:22:04

hyperlink HyperCard vibes that

1:22:06

Rome research often has, you know, it's like,

1:22:09

For the people that are nostalgic for when it

1:22:11

felt a little less corporate, when it felt

1:22:13

a little less like growth, hacky,

1:22:15

marketing centric, all this stuff, you know, like

1:22:17

this is a community that's building for

1:22:20

that, for the future that

1:22:22

was coming that got sidelined

1:22:25

by the present that we have. It's

1:22:27

like a, it's a complex sentence, but you understand

1:22:29

that, you know, like what I mean by that? Uh, so

1:22:32

yeah, it just. I love it so much. And I'm so

1:22:34

glad to feel comfortable

1:22:36

and confident, just doing whatever I want

1:22:38

and knowing that other people are doing the exact same thing.

1:22:41

yeah, like a modern Renaissance, especially

1:22:43

when you see other names like visa

1:22:45

and Michael, uh, you know, pumping

1:22:47

up these YouTube videos where, you know, they're not

1:22:49

trying to, they're not trying to hack the

1:22:51

YouTube system or anything. It's more like they,

1:22:54

they are willingly building. A

1:22:57

circle of people that they're willing

1:22:59

to connect with either

1:23:01

through their own interests or just

1:23:03

the prolific publishing of videos

1:23:06

and thoughts and attracting

1:23:08

people through that instead of like,

1:23:11

you know, going through an ultimate guide of content, marketing

1:23:13

and SEO, and then trying to perfect,

1:23:16

uh, their image online, it's

1:23:19

rather the flaws and

1:23:21

the awkwardness. And the pauses

1:23:24

and a lack of editing on their videos, maybe,

1:23:26

um, that may attract

1:23:28

them remain, make them more relatable or, uh, may

1:23:30

humanize them better. It's just that

1:23:33

they're exploring alternative mediums, which makes it much more,

1:23:35

uh, interesting. You did bring up Leonardo da Vinci

1:23:37

though. And I was going to ask you something about that since,

1:23:39

uh, uh, Isaacson's book

1:23:41

is like probably one of my favorite books

1:23:44

of all time, because DaVinci has always

1:23:46

been such a huge figure of

1:23:49

inspiration, uh, for mine, uh, of,

1:23:51

for me. Because

1:23:53

of the way that he navigates his attention

1:23:55

towards things like his notebooks

1:23:58

can range from whatever topic

1:24:00

it may be in any medium

1:24:02

whatsoever, whether it would be art and illustration,

1:24:05

a cross section of a bird, or

1:24:07

like war machines that may or may not

1:24:10

fly or may or may not kill may

1:24:12

not even work. Um, but

1:24:14

in a, but in an environment where

1:24:18

this was supported, It

1:24:21

felt really encouraging to see that

1:24:24

his scattered

1:24:27

or the way that he would shall

1:24:29

we say point his as his attention towards

1:24:32

things is accepted. So

1:24:34

seeing that come back now. But

1:24:36

on a smaller scale between these people that we

1:24:38

recognize is a brilliant, but,

1:24:41

uh, there is something that, uh, in your video

1:24:43

that you brought up, uh, when you were talking about this book

1:24:45

where you mentioned the Mona Lisa, and

1:24:47

there was a bit at the end where the Mona Lisa is

1:24:49

the combination of all the, all

1:24:52

the things, the experiences D observations

1:24:55

that you're not at, the Vinci has made. So

1:24:57

let me ask you something that may

1:24:59

be a little bit difficult to ask. Uh,

1:25:02

what would your Mona Lisa consist

1:25:04

of?

1:25:04

Hmm. No, that's a great question. Um,

1:25:08

I, I think that because

1:25:10

we're in such a nascent stage of

1:25:12

Rome, there still feels like we're in

1:25:14

this like very early, just

1:25:17

like compiling mode and like getting

1:25:19

to know the tool and learn it. But

1:25:21

I, I definitely think that we're going to see

1:25:24

a lot of people who. Have

1:25:26

finished works in some way or

1:25:29

another that STEM

1:25:31

from Rome and maybe live in Rome.

1:25:33

You know, I don't necessarily think that it just means like

1:25:35

I made a book because of all these things

1:25:37

that I was able to connect in Rome. Like I think that's

1:25:39

the, the very beginning, the most rudimentary

1:25:42

form. I think that there's something bigger and

1:25:44

I've always had this, um, I

1:25:47

actually have like a first draft of

1:25:49

a book, um, written living

1:25:52

in a hierarchy of files and folders,

1:25:54

which is why I've not turned it into

1:25:56

anything more. Cause that like bores me so much.

1:25:59

Um, but I've always had this, this like

1:26:01

desire to create,

1:26:04

um, sort of like a choose your own adventure

1:26:07

book of creativity, um,

1:26:09

sort of like. There's no right.

1:26:11

There's no wrong way to create. There's no right

1:26:13

way to create. One of the first things that I did as a creative

1:26:16

person was learned to be a photographer. I

1:26:18

just did it. I just bought a camera and took

1:26:20

a trip to Guatemala where a friend of mine lived

1:26:22

and learned how to take it photos. Like, what

1:26:25

is this style do? Oh, what's aperture. Like

1:26:27

I had to learn it that way. And that was a

1:26:29

perfectly normal and legitimate

1:26:31

way to learn a creative craft.

1:26:34

Uh, and you know, now I have,

1:26:36

uh, you know, uh, like a camera that's much

1:26:38

better at taking photos than

1:26:40

the weird crappy, um, Cannon

1:26:43

with the kit lens that I had 10 years

1:26:45

or 15 years ago. Um, but,

1:26:47

um, I'm still on the journey of learning and there are people

1:26:50

that have, have learned and gone on a photographic

1:26:52

journey in a way that's totally different than me. So

1:26:54

I had this idea of creating this sort of like

1:26:56

choose your own adventure of

1:26:59

creative tasks and creative activity

1:27:01

and creative action, um, that

1:27:03

you kind of clicked through as you figured out

1:27:05

your own vibe. And I've really been wanting

1:27:08

to. Put that in Rome,

1:27:10

uh, in some way, but is

1:27:13

that my Mona Lisa? No, I think that's my

1:27:15

first weird, I think that's my, um,

1:27:18

uh, index of birds or

1:27:20

whatever Leonardo da Vinci, you know, was

1:27:22

working. You know, I think it's something that I want to fiddle

1:27:24

with and mess with and care about and,

1:27:26

you know, work on the details for a long time.

1:27:29

Um, you know, the, the quote

1:27:31

that I think is so powerful, About

1:27:34

that, that ending kind of conclusion

1:27:36

about the Mona Lisa in Isaacson's book

1:27:38

is him saying. Everything

1:27:41

that Leonardo did, everything that he cared

1:27:44

about is represented in the Mona

1:27:46

Lisa and the Mona Lisa would not be

1:27:48

as beautiful or as perfect, or

1:27:50

as interesting if he hadn't studied anatomy,

1:27:53

if he hadn't studied nature, if he hadn't studied

1:27:55

landscapes, if he hadn't tried to get bird bird's-eye

1:27:57

views, like all of these things come together

1:27:59

in this painting. And I

1:28:02

think that. In a weird

1:28:05

way. The Rome graph

1:28:08

is the Mona Lisa in

1:28:10

a way that, um,

1:28:13

in, in a way that we could never view Leonardo

1:28:15

da Vinci's notebooks. Like I think that

1:28:17

his notebooks are just

1:28:19

as valuable, if not more valuable

1:28:22

than any painting that he's left behind. But

1:28:24

because we as humans, can't leaf through

1:28:26

the notebooks and see his thoughts, it

1:28:28

doesn't feel as immediately

1:28:31

interesting or. Masterful

1:28:34

as the painting that we can view or like

1:28:36

go to a museum to see, you

1:28:38

know, you can't hang is every

1:28:41

page of his notebooks in a gallery.

1:28:43

Like you could, but like no one will

1:28:45

in the same way that they hang his paintings.

1:28:48

Um, and in my hope is that, you

1:28:50

know, because of the way that we're actually able

1:28:52

to like interconnect text that

1:28:54

the text itself can

1:28:56

be viewed as a master work

1:28:59

and a work of. Of

1:29:01

history, you know, of, of

1:29:04

interest of intrigue in the same

1:29:06

way that like a typical

1:29:08

art piece has been throughout time.

1:29:10

But I also, I don't know, man, like, you

1:29:13

know, I think that's the power of Rome, right.

1:29:15

Is I have already realized.

1:29:17

Oh, I should really write about this. Oh, I should really

1:29:19

do this. Oh, wow. Like I've thought about this

1:29:21

10 times. Oh, I, I found that off there already,

1:29:24

like way long ago in this quote, from

1:29:26

this other book, I didn't realize it was the same guy. Like

1:29:28

I do that all of the time. So,

1:29:30

you know, even though I said, like, I'm

1:29:33

not the blank guy, I

1:29:35

wonder if I will recognize that

1:29:37

the trends and the topics and the things that matter

1:29:40

to me, um, In

1:29:42

a way that I wouldn't, if I was just living life

1:29:44

every day, because I'm seeing the

1:29:46

things that truly matter to me that truly

1:29:48

get me energized coming up to the

1:29:50

surface again and again. So, you know, I

1:29:53

think, I think time will tell.

1:29:57

Time will tell of course. And as the graph grows,

1:29:59

I like that actually. Um, Your

1:30:02

graph as a masterwork or your

1:30:04

graph as the Mona Lisa, if

1:30:06

we could get a graph overview that actually creates

1:30:09

a piece of art, like it looks really, really

1:30:11

pretty. That

1:30:13

would be amazing. Uh, that,

1:30:15

that also just reminded me, I think, in

1:30:17

Malaysia last year.

1:30:20

Yeah. Last year there was a Leonardo

1:30:22

da Vinci exhibition, and

1:30:25

people had like, they had like notebooks

1:30:27

pages. Uh, printed, uh,

1:30:29

on the wall. So you can actually see or try to

1:30:32

figure out what, uh, he was trying to draw, trying

1:30:34

to say, and it had digital screens

1:30:36

showcasing the art because they're not going to bring the art

1:30:38

all the way to it and that a country, but they could

1:30:40

at least scan it and you could see

1:30:42

the details. So you can see the imperfections in

1:30:44

each of his art pieces. So

1:30:48

the fact that we can get an exhibition of a person

1:30:51

who. Has done 50

1:30:53

different things has incomplete

1:30:55

pieces of art. And some

1:30:57

parts of the art are flawed. Like,

1:30:59

I mean, it's really masterful work, but there

1:31:02

are some parts where maybe the proportions are a little bit

1:31:04

off or it there's a gradual

1:31:06

progress in his skill. Um,

1:31:09

people will still

1:31:12

accept it and people will still visit

1:31:14

it and people will still come to it and

1:31:16

people will still. Want

1:31:19

to see it and want to see more of

1:31:21

it because they are enamored of the name,

1:31:23

Leonardo da Vinci. So if

1:31:26

we tried to transpose that feeling into

1:31:28

us, our Mona Lisa

1:31:30

is probably the

1:31:32

experience that you can provide to someone.

1:31:35

If you give them the key to

1:31:38

your graph and let

1:31:41

them explore, like, if, if your

1:31:43

graph becomes a museum, then

1:31:46

that will probably be. You're a Mona

1:31:48

Lisa. I, that would be great

1:31:51

too, to have that, like, to be able to translate

1:31:53

that into an experience or even a narrative,

1:31:55

uh, was I was trying to explore this idea

1:31:58

of, of

1:32:00

a, a premium graph

1:32:02

where instead of having,

1:32:05

like, if you want to be like a self-publishing author,

1:32:07

you, you know, you, you write a book and you publish

1:32:09

the book on Amazon or something like that. And

1:32:11

I was trying to entertain this idea of an

1:32:14

unlinked book. Which will

1:32:17

be just a normal book on Amazon, but

1:32:19

a linked version where you have to pay

1:32:21

to access a graph of

1:32:23

the same book, but with extra

1:32:26

notes and access

1:32:28

to the next book or a trilogy or whatever.

1:32:31

But it's basically all of this

1:32:33

author's works in one premium graph

1:32:35

and then you just pay to get access to it. So

1:32:37

it's like building a theme park of your

1:32:39

writing. Oh, that's amazing.

1:32:41

In a, in a way that I have no interest in

1:32:43

paying for newsletters that show

1:32:45

up as emails that I don't want to get. I'm

1:32:48

very interested in paying for, you

1:32:50

know, we're on research graphs that actually let me

1:32:52

explore it in a way like that, you know? Um,

1:32:55

and I, I definitely think that we are still

1:32:57

stuck in the con in the, in the constraints

1:32:59

of the mediums that we have today, like email,

1:33:02

uh, and, you know, I am

1:33:04

currently just anytime that I come across

1:33:06

a newsletter, I like anytime I come across an article that

1:33:08

I like I'm importing it into my room,

1:33:11

but, you know, imagine the world where

1:33:13

it is already in its own room

1:33:15

and you can choose to import it or work with it, however

1:33:17

you want. And like, yeah, that sounds

1:33:19

like the future that I want to be a part of. And it seems like

1:33:21

it's the one that's coming, so, you know yeah.

1:33:25

Has anybody done like a newsletter on Rome

1:33:27

yet? I don't.

1:33:27

no, no,

1:33:29

a, that's a good idea. If any listener

1:33:32

wants to, you know, I will tweet

1:33:34

at me if you create your Rome newsletter

1:33:36

and I will be your first quote, unquote subscriber.

1:33:38

So please save me from not having

1:33:40

to read your thoughts via email.

1:33:43

I would much rather read them in a, in a public

1:33:45

room.

1:33:45

you've triggered a memory in me

1:33:47

months ago. If you know the designer,

1:33:50

uh, as Elza, the

1:33:53

one that was hired onto the team, he

1:33:55

had this idea where he

1:33:57

wanted to code and auto

1:33:59

newsletter. For updates on

1:34:01

his digital garden. So it

1:34:03

was the prototype for the idea that you're talking

1:34:06

about, where he had a digital garden and

1:34:09

each note under each evergreen note or whatever it was,

1:34:12

uh, You can update

1:34:14

it with like notes over time and

1:34:16

there will be a newsletter that will come out that

1:34:18

will go into your email. And it'll say like,

1:34:20

Hey, as Lynn has updated the following notes,

1:34:23

this note, this note, this note, click here to view.

1:34:25

So that's like the prototype for it, but

1:34:27

I'm really curious about a newsletter graph.

1:34:30

That will be really interesting. I,

1:34:33

I really want to see that happen. Like

1:34:35

we've seen people. Building their

1:34:37

newsletters on Rome and then publishing

1:34:40

it through the normal newsletter format, like

1:34:42

writing the newsletter is in Rome, but publishing

1:34:44

it is still the usual newsletter stuff. And

1:34:47

I'm getting newsletter fatigue a lot.

1:34:50

Like my I'm getting headaches just from looking at the

1:34:52

updates tab on my Gmail. And

1:34:54

no, it's no good.

1:34:55

yeah, I, I really want to read

1:34:58

all of the amazing work that people are, are

1:35:00

reading, like are creating, but. I

1:35:03

don't know, like I wish there was a better way

1:35:05

to, to consume it. Um,

1:35:08

but yeah, if we, if Rome can fix that,

1:35:11

that'd be great. But basically if Rome

1:35:13

can fix everything, that'd be great. Like, not that I'm being

1:35:15

very, very biased about it, but email

1:35:18

newsletters, um,

1:35:20

audio even, yeah. Collaboration

1:35:23

is the big one. Like collaborations probably when VI

1:35:25

V2 of Rome will be out and V3

1:35:27

is like the API or API will be like

1:35:29

V 1.5 or something like that. But we'll

1:35:31

see. And, uh,

1:35:34

I hope that this is not too

1:35:36

bad for timing coming up on

1:35:39

time. Might as well, uh, close

1:35:42

it off of a couple of segments or

1:35:44

segments rather that I would love to

1:35:46

hear, uh, your answers to

1:35:48

this. Although I think you've already answered it already. Like

1:35:50

halfway through the conversation.

1:35:52

The first one is how would you describe

1:35:55

roam to someone who hasn't started using

1:35:57

it yet?

1:35:58

No, actually, I haven't said that necessarily

1:36:00

the way that I constantly

1:36:03

refer to around, just because I think that it's helpful

1:36:05

to have like something that people can imprint

1:36:07

onto immediately is I

1:36:09

say it's sort of like Wikipedia for

1:36:11

note taking like, just like when you

1:36:13

go on Wikipedia and there's all those blue links

1:36:16

and you can explore through it, imagine that,

1:36:18

but for your notes and you know,

1:36:20

is it a perfect one-to-one like

1:36:22

example of what Rome is? No, definitely

1:36:24

not. But I think that because we've.

1:36:27

All used Wikipedia. And we

1:36:29

all know that Wikipedia has all those

1:36:31

wonderful blue links that go back and forth

1:36:33

different pages. And you can explore all day. That

1:36:36

is a healthy way to get

1:36:38

people into the understanding of

1:36:40

bi-directional links, which I think is the

1:36:42

first thing that people should. Learn about

1:36:44

because it's the real differentiator, you know, if

1:36:46

I say, Oh, it has this graph,

1:36:49

you know, and it's like a, you know, like that's all

1:36:51

too conceptual and weird, so Wikipedia,

1:36:53

but for your notes is always the way that

1:36:56

I pitch it. And that that's, that's definitely my

1:36:58

elevator pitch.

1:36:59

okay. Yeah, definitely a really

1:37:01

good reference since everybody knows how Wikipedia

1:37:04

works. Like. Maybe not

1:37:06

even like the fine tunings of it, but at

1:37:09

least navigating through it, they'll be like, Oh yeah, it goes here.

1:37:11

It can go here. It can go here. Okay. Yeah.

1:37:13

That's a good way to put it. And the final

1:37:15

question is what does Rome

1:37:17

mean to you?

1:37:20

Well, you may. Uh,

1:37:22

not be surprised to hear that I'll throw

1:37:24

around the word community again. Um,

1:37:26

but you know, for me, roam

1:37:28

goes way beyond just

1:37:31

like a collection of notes

1:37:33

that I'm putting in a silo. Um, it goes even

1:37:35

beyond that concept that I

1:37:37

was saying of like the sourdough starter of

1:37:39

the mind, you know, that is, is growing

1:37:41

and is making me happy to see grow. Like if

1:37:44

it was just for me, If it was just

1:37:46

me watching it grow, I know that

1:37:48

I would kill it much. Like my sourdough

1:37:50

starter is in freezer, deep storage

1:37:53

right now. You know, I am not growing it

1:37:55

every day because I don't want a loaf of bread every day.

1:37:57

And I don't necessarily want to

1:37:59

write all my thoughts every day. Like it's, it's

1:38:02

my, my use of Roman scattershot. Some days

1:38:04

my daily notes. Is massive.

1:38:06

Some days it's two lines.

1:38:08

Some days I'm writing thousands

1:38:10

of words in Rome and taking notes and doing highlights