Building a modern Memex

[hyfen]

Description

[Description that is 1-2 paragraphs (75 - 150 words)]

Building a modern Memex

Bret Victor posed an important question: over a long time horizon, what strategy for preserving information has been most successful? Redundant copies stored in a distributed way (for example, each of us storing a full copy of the human genome) or a centralized repository (like the Library of Alexandria)?

For the last few years, I've been working on a project to pull a copy of my personal history from across all the platforms and tools I use and make it available for archiving, search, and computation.

I'd like to go over the historical project that inspired this project (the Memex of 1945) as well as giving a demo of the system I've built.

More information here: Building a Memex

Type: talk / demo
Length:1 hour
Language: english
Additional considerations:

Session Objective

• think about the risks of outsourcing our personal history to a few companies that only preserve our data while it's financially viable
• inspire people to build decentralized

Material and Technical Requirements

Just need projector and laptop stand.

A similar talk I gave about the same project: RubyConf 2018 - Building a Memex (with Ruby!) by Andrew Louis - YouTube. I'd like to focus more on the philosophy of decentralization and the importance of having access to our own personal history.

Presenter(s)

Name: Andrew Louis
Email: andrew@hyfen.net
Url(s): https://hyfen.net
Twitter: @hyfen
GitHub: [hyfen](url to GitHub account)

As organizers we strive for low-cost pathways of participation, are you interested in a community billet program either hosting out-of-towners or staying with locals?
N

Presenter Bio

Andrew is a software developer based in Toronto. He’s currently working on building a digital Memex as well as researching the history of similar projects. Previously, he was the co-founder and CTO of ShopLocket, an ecommerce startup acquired in 2014. When he’s not coding, he spends his time on obsessive projects such as attempting to bike on every street in Toronto, taking photos of only doors (instagram: @hyfen), and making voxel art.