I have two things to share with you today:

First, we’re starting a publishing company.

Second, I wrote a book about computing, out soon.

Let’s start with the book:

I’ve had a bunch of versions of the same conversation with curious friends and family over the years: folks are generally aware that computers “use binary”, but want to understand how they build up from there to all the things we recognize as modern computing today. This book answers that question.

Over ten chapters, it illustrates how we built each layer of computing out of the one before, and the models of thinking that got us there. It’s a short, technical book for curious, non-technical people.

It’s called Bootstrapping Computing, and I’d love for you to have a copy, share one with your most curious friend, and enjoy these wonder machines before us a little more with me. While it’s written for a non-technical audience, I’ve greatly enjoyed how it has helped me solidify my thinking about the fundamentals of computing; the ingredients for my everyday work.

Each book is archival quality and made by hand in Tennessee. The cover is a hard case wrapped in smoke grey book cloth, and the 112 pages are printed in full color using pigment-based ink on 80 lb warm white paper sewn with accented linen thread.

It comes out at the end of March, and you can preorder now.

Members of the Little Lab get a discount. Get a coupon code instantly after joining here, or sign in to your existing account.

Now, the publishing company I am starting with Sarah, my wife:

We care a great deal about books. But most of the books coming out today aren’t that good — in content and construction. Too many would be better as shorter books, but include lots of filler. And too many are just poorly made, and don’t stand the test of time.

Authors don’t have many great choices. Self-publishers are pushed to use print-on-demand services, which have mixed quality. Or when working with a publisher, authors have to give up lots of quality and control to fit that publisher’s idea of a good book, and leave all of the most interesting decisions about the construction of the book to what would be produced the cheapest.

We want to help build “the ninth path” for today’s authors and readers. Our company is building all of its own books in-house. They are archival quality, handmade using the best materials and methods. Folding, sewing, gluing, cutting, casing-in, pressing — it’s all done by hand. If well-cared-for, these books will last generations.

We’re starting by publishing some of our own works, and if things go well, we will move into publishing books by other authors.

And honestly, I’m most excited to be working with Sarah again. We do some of our best work together, and making books together has already been a dream come true. We hope you’ll pick up a copy of our first book, and sign up to hear about our new releases.

There’s nothing quite like a really nice, physical book that anchors your personal library, the kind that you leave on your desk for days or weeks after you’ve read it — having the words dutifully cared for and brought to you in a beautiful, tactile physical construction — it’s one of my favorite things in the world.

I’m looking forward to learning what it takes to make great books, and making them for you.

— Alexander

Today, I’ve got a new essay to share with you. It will land in a few parts, and part one is up now.

Read on:
The Interfaces With Which We Think »

Here’s the introduction:

The concepts in modern operating systems — apps, windows, desktops, notifications, and so on — have so permeated our understanding of personal computing that it’s hard to imagine anything else, let alone believe there could be anything better.

It’s easy to assume that this is, somehow, simply, how computers work.

But this can’t be further from the truth.

I hope all is well your way,

— Alex

I’ve got two projects to share with you today:

First up is an essay about OLLOS, a personal computing environment that organizes your things on the dimension of time, which I worked on and in from 2021 to 2023.

The essay includes a demo video, and covers everything from the project: how it works & how I used it, design and concept iterations, future work for it and the OS, and what I learned about personal interfaces.

Read on:
OLLOS: An itemized personal computing timeline »

Last year, I worked with independent research lab Ink & Switch on a new project that explores how to reorganize personal computing away from the over-abstract and rigid user environments of today.

Embark separates the data, functions, and interfaces users need, then lets users recombine these pieces for their own needs and context.

Read on:
Embark: Dynamic documents for making plans »

I hope your new year is off to a good start, and I look forward to exploring wild ideas with you all this year.

— Alex

Today’s lab note is an early investigation into time: how should our operating systems understand time, and what do they need to get it right?

Read on:
LN 039: Notes on time »

In case you missed it: this exploration is a deeper look at one aspect of the last two lab notes:
LN 037: Gestural view construction »
LN 038: Semantic zoom »

As we learn more about what makes us and our lives unique, today’s rigid software interfaces become more frustrating — not less!

In today’s lab note, we explore how the operating system of the future might become more supportive of the unique needs and context of our lives:

Read on:
LN 038: Semantic zoom »

In case you missed it: this exploration conceptually builds on the last lab note:
LN 037: Gestural view construction »

One of the most glaring insights from living in my own OS’ user environments is simply that it takes too long to unearth insights!

Today’s lab note starts to explore one experiment aimed at tightening up that feedback loop.

Read on:
LN 037: Gestural view construction »

While exploring an OS which is made up of all the items in your digital life, it’s easy to wonder if things would become a mess rather quickly. In the latest lab note, I explore ways in which an itemized OS might help us keep organized, without the tedium.

Read on:
LN 036: Free and easy organizations and associations »

This lab note is a “part 2” to the last one, so if you missed it, you can start here:
LN 035: The Messy Desktop »

Next up: I have some new experiments to share with you, and as always, more lab notes coming your way. Don’t touch that dial.

A huge thanks to Val Town for sponsoring my work this month, helping make my independent research possible.

I’ve been a big fan of what they’re building: you can create “vals” (little code snippets, like Gists), run them, schedule them, call them via API, or even call them from other vals. Everyone gets a namespace, and you can call other people’s vals from your own, and publish yours to be called elsewhere too. There’s lots more to it, which you can see in this demo video.

If you’d like to find out more about becoming a sponsor, head to alexanderobenauer.com/sponsorship/. June and July are currently available.

Watching how others interact with their computers has long been a fascination of mine. There’s so much to glean from lots of little details as someone goes about their life and life’s work on their personal computing devices.

One of the more shocking anecdotes from this fascination kicks off my latest lab note.

Read on:
LN 035: The Messy Desktop »

If you’re looking for something more to read this weekend, here’s some other things I’ve published this year:

• WonderOS is an ongoing research project exploring an itemized user environment.
• Hello, Operator! is WonderOS’ guide to the itemized environment, an initial exercise exploring how computer literacy might be attained by society at large with systems of this type.
• 2023, an annual recap and update on my independent research and membership program.

For the last year or so, I’ve been working on a longer-term research project that experiments with building itemized environments.

To learn more:
Read on at WonderOS.org »

One part of the project that I’ve begun publishing, though it isn’t yet complete, is the operator’s handbook for WonderOS. It is presented as the manual that would come with the user’s first itemized personal computing device.

Hello, Operator! is an exercise in exploring how computer literacy might be attained by society at large with systems of this type, and how people might learn to use the core primitives of itemized, malleable systems to evolve them for their changing times and needs.

Read on:
Hello, Operator! »

Thanks to WonderOS, and the other experiments it has produced, I’ve been living inside itemized environments in more of my personal computing life lately, which has produced delightfully odd and interesting insights that build on the fundamental ideas proposed in my lab notes.

As I continue to tinker with these experiments, those insights will land back in the lab notes; in fact, most of the latest ones feature new thinking that has come out of WonderOS and the experiments it supports.

To catch up with those, see the section titled: Having fun with itemized interfaces in:
The lab notes »

This morning, I published my annual update, with reflections and updates after the first year of a membership program, and how the core work is evolving in its next year.

Read on:
​2023: Now it’s getting interesting »

I’ve also refreshed my site, and included some new things for the new year.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll start sending you some of the work that has been brewing here since last year. Don’t touch that dial.

Happy New Year’s!

One more lab note for 2022. In it, I’ll share with you an odd thought; a new way to think about notifications in the OS of the future that I’ve been tinkering with lately.

Read on:
LN 034: Live items & Contextual notifications »

Happy holidays!

Earlier this year, we explored fluid workspaces — a way to navigate our OS of the future with greater ease.

Today, we’re expanding on that concept with a new way to think about our digital workspaces and how they might be reified within our itemized systems.

Read on:
LN 033: Swappable reference views »

If you’re new to these lab notes, it might be helpful to start at the beginning first, or get a summary in LN 014: The Graph OS.

Finally, since I’ve last sent this newsletter, I’ve published a few things for members: A member update and demo of a new experiment I’ve been working on, as well as the second Member Magazine. Both are available in the member portal. A huge thank you to all members for helping me make this unfettered research possible!

The latest iPhone’s new feature, Dynamic Island, follows a long line of ways OSs have allowed system and third-party software to inject new functionality over the decades.

Today’s lab note is about this — one of the most important forms of freedom in personal computing.

Read on:
LN 032: System injections »

Once I started using my itemized OS, I quickly felt limited by some of the basic concepts.

Today’s lab note explores one experiment to change that. A word of warning: it’s somewhat complex to discuss, because it entails the consequences of two alternate ideas for navigation in an OS of the future — so maybe grab your cup of coffee first.

Read on:
LN 031: Fluid workspaces »

When designing my “OS of the future”, there are lots of interesting interface ideas to consider. The most interesting ones are patterns that could be used throughout the system with many different kinds of items.

Today’s lab note is about one of those patterns. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it starts to show some of the styles of thinking that an itemized OS could allow for.

Lots of demos in this one! Read on:

LN 030: Foldable views »

As we’ve explored the idea of an itemized OS of the future, we’ve considered something with immense flexibility; but how does the user make that flexibility work well for them?

A series of demos, starting in the next lab note, will explore exactly this. But first, today, I want to lay some groundwork:

LN 029: Experimenting with the item as the core primitive »

In the next few lab notes, I’ll share with you my project that I’m currently working on (here’s a little preview), and lots of demos that take this experiment — of the item as the core primitive — as far as we can.

We’ve explored lots of possible features for the OS of the future. But how should systems of the future reify their functionality? How should they make their primitives available to users? Who has the ability to evolve these systems long into the future?

This week’s lab note considers how flexible systems could work for users of all levels of computer literacy:

LN 028: Designing systems for computer literacy and evolvability »

In the last few Lab Notes, we explored what the future of the OS might look like on an itemized internet. Now let’s take that back to your own devices:

What if you could have your own, personal computing network? And what kinds of devices could you add to it?

Read the lab note:
LN 027: Personal Computing Network & Devices »

We’ve explored the personal itemized system so far. But what happens when you take these systems online? Could a user build an online store from the itemized system? Or an appointment booking service?

Today, we continue to explore taking itemized systems online, but this time, in modules with behavior:

Read the lab note:
LN 026: Internet Modules »

This week’s lab note begins a series of notes, all on the itemized internet.

What might the internet look like when we introduce items?

Read the lab note:
LN 025: Publishing items »

We’re now 25 lab notes (and one experiment) into these explorations. I last asked for some feedback at the fifth, so it’s a good time to do so again.

I’d love to hear from you: What do you want to see more of? What do you want to see less of? Any other thoughts or feedback?

You can simply send along an email with your responses!

This week’s lab note starts with some simple ideas, and expands from there.

What if the operating system of the future could treat the transformation of data as an important piece of data itself?

Read the lab note:
LN 024: Mutations & Item change logs »

The amount of double work done in software development today is unnerving. When it comes to personal computing, basic interactions have to be rebuilt over and over, even though the concepts are settled.

Today’s lab note explores how an itemized OS of the future might reduce this double work considerably.

Read the lab note:
LN 023: Higher-level primitives »

Diving back into our concepts for the future of the OS with something simple, but powerful.

Read the lab note:
LN 022: Undo Actions »

I’ve also published the first Member Magazine. It has a series of essays that explore the background thinking behind the more public work that I do. In this first issue, I explore the foundations of the research I’m doing now: why it matters, and what’s at the very core of it.

Members can check out the first Member Mag here.

If you’re interested in becoming a member, check out memberships. I’m immensely grateful — this experiment has already allowed me to dedicate more time to this work, and it shows how the community helps make this kind of independent research possible in the long run.

In our next few lab notes, we will continue to explore some of the larger ideas from today’s.

The way our itemized OS of the future is designed could very well open up the potential for some of the most compelling automation available in personal computing.

Read the lab note:
LN 021: Automations »

In a recently published (and well done) talk, Priscilla Chomba-Kinywa discusses the needs and challenges of the billions who have no internet access, and what can be done about it. These challenges became more clear than ever during the pandemic, as people were no longer able to sell their goods to make a living, and children could no longer access their schooling.

You can watch the talk here:
A free and fair internet benefits everyone »

Let’s get back into exploring ideas for the future of the operating system. We’ve explored the flexibility our personal computing environments gain with items, and today we’re extending that flexibility with the actions you might take on those items.

Read the lab note:
LN 020: Item Actions »

Last week, I sent along an overview of where this research has been so far, and where it’s headed in the next year.

If you missed it, you can read it here:
​2022: Expanding the exploration »

To support this research, I launched a membership program. If you want to see more work in this space happen in the world, consider joining. You will be directly supporting my research work, and in return, you’ll get access to a members-only newsletter with more articles and works-in-progress, pre-release and experimental software, and in some cases, discounts on things I sell. With this support, I can spend more time on independent research, writing, and collaborations.

A huge thank you to the members who have already joined — your support means the world. Beyond the financial support, there is something compelling in knowing that there is a formal charge from the community to do this work. I’m excited to take this research to new places in 2022 with your help!

2022 is officially here, and there’s lots to explore. I’ve published an article on where my core research work is headed this year.

Read it here:
​2022: Expanding the exploration »

This is all in the article, but here are some highlights:

• Last year, I experimented with publishing all of my thoughts and work exploring the future of the operating system in 19 Lab Notes and a handful of other articles.
• In addition to writing and prototypes, I also published one experiment, an open source plugin for Obsidian that explores an implementation of some concepts found in my Lab Notes.
• I also worked on a handful of other small projects, most recently including a habits app that I created for myself (I’ll publish some on this as soon as I can learn a bit more from using it).

And looking ahead:

• In 2022, my high aim is to meaningfully expand and deepen my current exploration of personal computing’s future.
• I’m starting a membership program to support this work. If you want to see more work in this space happen in the world, consider joining. You will be directly supporting my research work, and in return, you’ll get access to a members-only newsletter with more articles and works-in-progress, pre-release and experimental software, and in some cases, discounts on things I sell. With this support, I can spend more time on independent research, writing, and collaborations.
• In addition to exploring more questions and experimenting with more concepts, my longer-term goal for this work is to construct an experimental new environment and platform for personal computing.

As always, I hope you’re well, and… Happy New Year!

Notifications stand to be one of the most important things in our personal computing domain. But in today’s OSes, this sacred space fails to achieve that ideal because it is home to others’ priorities over our own.

My next lab note on notifications in the OS of the future is live now.

Read it here:
LN 019: Notifications »

The show I launched this fall, Songs I’m Made Of, is halfway through its first season. We discuss songwriting and play some tunes with songwriters throughout the world. The first six episodes are out now, and feature a wide range of genres and inspirations.

Check it out here:
Songs I’m Made Of »

As always, I hope you’re well!

As I begin developing the concepts I’ve laid out in my Lab Notes so far into an environment anyone can use, some thinking needs to be ironed out around how the system works internally.

That’s what we’re exploring in today’s lab note. It contains ideas that build on top of the system’s itemized fundamentals.

Read it here:
LN 018: Services, Actions, Automations, and Item Drives »

Any of the prototypes you’ve seen within my Lab Notes so far are just that — prototypes. But what I’m working on now is an app that you can run on your existing computers and devices that serves as a personal computing environment implementing these concepts, letting you use them with your own data and use cases.

The biggest question I have at the moment is: how do we measure success? It’s an experiment, but one without clear, objective outcomes. For example, if the goal is increased productivity, the measurement might be clear. But if the goal is expanded creativity, the measurement might be much less clear.

Last week I launched Songs I’m Made Of, the half-discussion, half-music show that explores the craft, process, and inspirations of some incredible songwriters that I had the pleasure of interviewing.

You can tune in now on Spotify. The first three episodes are up, and you can expect new episodes every Friday this fall.

Check it out here:

Songs I’m Made Of »

As always, I hope you’re well.

Before we get into the future of the OS, I have a new project to share with you.

Longtime subscribers already know of my fond love for music. In the last several months, I’ve been working with songwriters from various genres to record a new podcast.

The show blends discussion and music, as I sit down with songwriters to talk about their work and their biggest inspirations. The songs we discuss play within each episode.

The show is called Songs I’m Made Of, and it begins next Friday. To find out more, or to sign up for updates, head the website:

Songs I’m Made Of »

There’s a lab note I’ve had in the works for some time now on web browsing in the OS of the future. A concept I prototyped allowed users to browse the “static web” without javascript (and some other things). If a user wanted to allow javascript on a page or domain, they could enable the URL as an “app,” causing the system to treat it as such, both in its behavior and how you might navigate to it.

When using “the static web,” I’d land on news articles that didn’t jump around as ads loaded; I could simply read the content. Cookie banners and other popups stopped covering the things I was trying to read. And the few sites I wanted to behave like apps within my system would be specifically identified.

It was transformative… for today’s web.

Over time I’ve begun to wonder if the thinking is simply too short-sighted for the project.

When you go back and read Bush’s As We May Think (1945), Engelbart’s Augmenting Human Intellect (1962), and similar visions of the past’s future, you’ll find plenty of things that we often describe as “predicting the web,” and though true to an extent, those articles illustrate so much more; some of the most compelling thinking — illustrated more than a half-century ago — hasn’t yet materialized in widespread technology.

The best analysis I’ve read on this came from Alan Kay, one of our industry’s pioneers who has helped make computing what it is today (among other things, Kay is also a professional jazz guitarist & composer).

In response to a question asked on Quora, “Should web browsers have stuck to being document viewers?” Kay responded with a wonderful analysis on how we got to where we are today, and the missed paths along the way. His answer begins clearly, “Actually quite the opposite.”

Read it in full here:
Kay’s answer on Quora »

What should the future of the web look like, how should it relate to the future of the operating system, and how does today’s web map into that vision, if at all?

When you read my Lab Notes on the future of the operating system, you can start to see some clear hooks into these concepts for a compelling “web of the future” that could begin to materialize some of yesterday’s unrealized visions.

This is all “food for thought,” as I want to spend some months exploring the topic more deeply while continuing to prototype my operating system of the future.

Two other notes:

If you’ve emailed me recently, I apologize for not responding yet! There’s been an uptick in responses to my lab notes. Every time I get a thoughtful email, I’m excited to dig in. I will read what you’ve sent me & continue the conversation shortly!

And one thing I’ve noticed with my work is that as a new project shifts from being consumed mainly by hobbyists to professionals, engagement shifts from the weekend to the workweek. This work seems to be making that shift, so starting with this edition, I’ll experiment with sending these letters on weekdays.

As always, I hope you’re well.

How can the operating system of the future be a higher-gear companion to our knowledge work and life’s pursuits?

We’ve explored this question a bit lately, and we’ll explore a new direction in my latest lab note, which covers a series of features I’ve enjoyed in my prototypes.

Read it here:
LN 017: Today & Daily summary »

We’ve explored lots of different ways our items become containers to other items in the operating system of the future, but one of the most important will take a few lab notes to cover: dates.

The date views in our futuristic OS can allow us to do some interesting things with the items we deal with on our computers every day. Today’s lab note gets us started on the topic:

Read it here:
LN 016: Calendar views »

Last week, I demoed one of the concepts in my Lab Notes working within Obsidian, the notes graph app. If you missed it, you can see the demo video here.

I’ve now open sourced the plugin, and will work on polishing it up before submitting it into Obsidian’s Community Plugins directory. If you want to test it out, head to GitHub and follow the instructions for testing.

To acquaint the new subscribers joining us this week:

I’m exploring the future of personal computing by way of conceptualizing, designing, and building pieces of a futuristic operating system.

You can see these concepts, designs, and prototypes in my lab notes so far:

Read the Lab Notes »

Why the operating system? Why personal computing?

Personal computing is one of the most important things humanity has ever built, and it’s on every desktop and in every pocket. It’s surprisingly ubiquitous: right around half the global population has a smartphone, which is a personal computing device; people who don’t have electricity have smartphones, people who don’t have homes have smartphones.

It’s the foundation on which we conduct much of our lives today: it’s where we do much of our life’s work, it’s where we capture and develop our thinking, it’s the medium through which we connect with our loved ones and peers, it’s often where we learn new things, and it’s our connection to the internet and world at large.

Personal computing, along with the operating systems that foster it, is one of the most important things we’ve ever made, and it helps people in nearly every cross-section of the global population.

How will pioneering and trustworthy personal computing be made available to the world’s population in 50 years? In 100? What should it look like? Who should be charged with directing its future, and how?

It’s up to us, as a collective industry, to make sure we build on the rich legacy handed to us by continuing to build towards the future that the next generations deserve from ours. For me, that means constructing the concepts for personal computing’s next phase of life that continue to push it radically forward, and ensure that it does not become an adversary to the people who use it.

Last week, we explored some concepts around how your operating system can adapt itself according to how all of your digital things relate to one another.

To explore this concept futher, I’ve built a plugin for the notes app Obsidian that implements many of these ideas within a graph of notes.

I’ve published a video demoing it, along with an article and the plugin itself, all in my next lab note.

Read it here:
EXP 001: Cross-reference Navigation in Obsidian »

Hope you enjoy, and have a great week.

My next lab note is live now. It explores one of the concepts that shows what the operating system of the future can do to adapt itself to each user’s workflows.

Read it here:
LN 015: Cross-references & References cloud »

As a bonus, I’ve been working on a demo of today’s concept that you’ll be able to experiment with soon – more on that shortly.

Enjoy, and I hope you have a great weekend.

In my lab notes so far, we’ve explored a handful of new and renewed concepts for the operating system of the future. There are more to come, but today I want to pause and consider the bigger picture, starting with some of those concepts themselves:

What if you could transclude anything in your personal computing domain within any other thing? Demos of this included dropping a podcast episode into the note you’re developing your thoughts in, letting you pause and play the episode whenever you open the note again.

What if you could develop your thinking or work in browsing paths that can contain all the items you need, regardless of type or source? And what if you could return to your recent paths anytime? Demos of this included moving from your day’s task list into a project that required taking down notes and tasks while researching a specific topic with assets in your path, and returning to this path later to continue the work.

What if your system could identify associated items from past browsing paths when you have items open? Demos of this included having automatic recall of the email thread about a meeting from the meeting’s calendar event notification?

And the list goes on: What if you could swap out the views used to render specific items? These views might come from third-party developers, or what if you could create your own views for items? What is the result of using references among your things that form an items graph of everything in your personal computing domain?

All of these individual concepts contribute to an explorative operating system of the future — or more specifically, to the user environment of one.

The demos you see in the above lab notes all work, and for the most part, together. Building out the concepts helps me learn more about them, from both implementation and use. But the next step is becoming more clear: letting others use them too.

So here’s my plan: over the course of the next few months, I hope to share with you this system I’ve developed. As a fullscreen app for your current machine, it becomes an alternative user environment in which you’ll be able to explore these concepts with your own work and data.

What concepts need more thinking? What gaps exist? Is this something that is only incrementally better than today’s operating systems, or is the difference more meaningful than that? How does it affect the ways we think or work? There are lots of questions I hope to explore by sharing these first implementations.

In the meantime, I’ll keep the lab notes coming with more of the concepts I’m exploring.

As always, I hope you’re well.

It’s been some time since I’ve sent you one of my lab notes, which are my favorite thing to produce each week. Diving back in today with a new one.

Read it here:
LN 014: The Graph OS »

Looking for more to read this weekend? I’ve also republished an old newsletter as a new lab note:

Read it here:
LN 013: Why is our thinking on computers so restrained?

Enjoy, and as always, I hope you’re well.

During the pandemic, I thought lots about what my life’s work is. Researching the future of personal computing is where I’ve landed.

How Mail Pilot fits into that is now clear:

Read on:
Mail Pilot 5: For the love of it »

And speaking of my research on personal computing, my next few Lab Notes are in the works as I continue to explore some new paradigms for the operating system of the future. Stay tuned, and always feel free to send interesting things you find or wonder my way.

The deeper I get into research on the future of personal computing, the more convinced I become of the need for art in society.

Great tech amplifies human capability.

But it amplifies everything — the good, and the bad. We’ve seen this play out for years.

On the other hand, great art (such as music) causes us to introspect, understand, and empathize. It’s biased towards amplifying the best of humanity.

One more contrast:

Software depreciates, art appreciates.

A book or a record, for example, appreciates with time; it becomes more valuable, not less. It does not require constant maintenance and upkeep just to keep it from dipping below some bar of quality. Once the book is printed, it might exist for hundreds of years. Same with a movie: generations after yours might enjoy it. But software? Code written today may be obselete in just a few years, even with ongoing maintenance.

This isn’t to discredit software or building it — it’s what I do for a living! Software allows us to do some wonderful things. But it’s important in my own practice to understand the true impact of the things we build. These contrasts beg for some questions that haven’t been asked nearly enough in building some of the software used globally today.

Curious to hear your thoughts.

Also: Are you a Mail Pilot user? Big news is ahead. Next week on Tuesday August 10, check our Slack or Twitter for the first in a series of things I have to share.

As a kid, I found two things that were pure magic to me: computers and music.

They held so much potential for expression and ideas, and so much potential for making life great.

Music never disappoints.

But computers do.

Computers simultaneously mesmerize and disappoint me. I think this is why computer science is ultimately the field I went into. Lots of things fascinate me, and lots of things disappoint me. But it’s computers that do both. They harbor so much potential, yet so often they fulfill very little of it.

My work in software has always been borne out of this gap: How can software improve people’s daily lives? What concepts might open up our thinking and elevate what we’re capable of producing? Who should be in charge of the future of personal computing, and how should they be charged with its direction?

Keep reading in How I approach my core work, recently updated with a few new sections.

Today our thinking on user interfaces is severely constrained: “This text box is here. I can only change what’s inside it.” In five years’ time, we should think of changing any data or view as “changing my stuff” — effectively the same class of action; making your software reflect your thinking, just the way you want. Today, we don’t feel like these are personal computers. “The text box is there. That is up to someone else. They might change it in an update. That isn’t up to me, the user.”

So often, we want to redo our office, remodel our kitchen, reconfigure our workspace, or refurbish our RV. Our minds naturally consider how our environments could be improved to better our experience and effectiveness within them. Yet we don’t do this with our software — for the most part, we can’t. We spend an enormous amount of our lives on our personal computing devices, and yet today, we do not have the freedom to redesign, remix, remodel, or reconfigure our digital workspaces.

All of us have vastly different kinds of work to do in our lives, yet we all have the same workshop from which to do it all.

Excerpted from The Potential Merits of an Itemized OS, an article I published on my work in operating systems thus far.

Two other updates:

I’m starting a discussion forum soon for the community to discuss various ideas related to the future of personal computing, such as the ones that I often send in this newsletter.

If this is something you’re interested in, let me know so I can put you on the list for access.

Second, I’ve finally published an RSS feed for this weekly newsletter. If you use an RSS reader, you can subscribe with this URL: https://alexanderobenauer.com/assets/feed/rss.xml

I hope all is well in your part of the globe this weekend.

— Alexander

The computers we use are so capable, it’s almost hard to even fathom what we can do with them.

We largely have not explored completely new models for computer thinking native to the digital realm. We only use concepts native to the physical world, simulated digitally.

Let’s start with one example of what we have today: files and folders.

My primary notes app is home to a large variety of things:

• Thinking (which I do by writing as I think)
• Writing (drafts of things I’m preparing to publish)
• Learning (notes on books I’m reading or topics I’m studying)

Plus a few other things.

I do each of these things among a few different sets of topics — music, software, and so forth.

And each of these things I like to categorize as:

• Up Next (where I put all of the articles, podcasts, concepts, and so forth I stumble across and would like to dive into soon)
• Now (the things I’m working on at the moment)
• Past (essentially an archive of these things)

Any one note might be in three areas here: an idea might be in Thinking, Now, and Software. Or a book I want to read next might be saved in Learning, Up Next, and Music.

But my primary notes app follows the standard files-in-folders method of organization, so I have to choose one hierarchical organization. Only one of these methods of organizing my notes can be the first-order organization. If I want to organize further, my second-order organization folders would need to be replicated within each of the first-order folders. For example:

1. Thinking
   1. Up Next
   2. Now
   3. Past
2. Writing
   1. Up Next
   2. Now
   3. Past
3. Learning
   1. Up Next
   2. Now
   3. Past

This also means I always have to think of my notes in this way; whenever I want to dive in, I must think in this specific arrangement every time: Type first, status second.

Sometimes I want to look at all of my books: I’d like to see what I’m reading now, what’s up next, and what I’ve read recently. Sometimes I want to look at everything that’s up next: books, podcast episodes, saved articles; everything.

Sometimes I want to look at specifically what software books I have listed as up next. Or I want to see all the books on music I’ve finished recently. Or just the saved articles, on any topic, I’ve listed under up next. Or what thinking I’m in the middle of fleshing out right now, in any topic. Then maybe I’d like to focus in on one topic.

Each of these represents a different perspective into my things I have in different situations. With a files-in-folders hierarchy, the experience is quite frustrating, as I have to bend my use of the software to suit its model — which is a model of the physical world, simulated digitally! There’s lots of clicking and cobbling together a general idea of what I’d like to see at any moment.

The computer is capable of so much more. There’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to see and interact with my things in ways that suit each of my uses throughout a week.

Yet, in many apps, not even tags and labels solve this problem without constant searching.

It might be difficult to fully consider the ways you would be able to reflect your own true thinking or uses in a well-suited software concept because we are so used to the metaphors our software has been based on for the last 50 years. But I implore you to try! Consider what ways your uses or thought processes could be more naturally reflected within your digital tools. (And if you want to share your thinking, my inbox is always open!)

To sum up: Today, our computers still only augment our thinking by mirroring how we operate things in the physical world. It affords us no new models of thinking that we didn’t have before, just tweaked and scaled in different ways.

In the physical world, a file goes in a folder. If it has something to do with a file that belongs in another folder, we just kind of need to remember that association. This is how our digital tooling works too, even though digital things have no constraint requiring such a compromise.

Over the years, we have introduced new models for thinking, but we largely have not explored completely new models for computer thinking: ways of thinking about things and organizing them native to the digital realm. We mostly use methods native to the physical world, simulated digitally.

Why is this? Is it so hard to think about things beyond physical realms that our brains can’t keep up? (I hope that’s not it.) Have we simply not stumbled into the right ideas yet? Or are we iterating our way towards those concepts, just slowly? Really, there’s no way to know looking ahead.

What kind of thinking is native to the digital realm? What hints do we have today to show us the directions that ought to be explored further?

As always, thanks for coming along on this thought experiment. And if anything stokes your own thinking on this, let me know!

For the last month, I’ve been busy preparing an article that sums up almost everything that I’ve learned about my OS so far.

I hope you enjoy:
The Potential Merits of an Itemized OS »

How will we organize our things in the operating system of the future?

Today’s lab note jumps into an initial thought on the topic, leveraging the fundamentals of the OS as described in the first few lab notes.

Dive in:
LN 012: References box & Topics »

I’ve now published enough lab notes to organize a table of contents by topic. If you’re diving back in, you can use that here.