The ideal personal information manager - what is it?

The resources of the human brain are not infinite. The modern pace of life requires much more than we are capable of. We cannot remember everything that is needed - even our own thoughts and ideas elude our heads . But, it would seem, the very approach to storing and receiving information has changed: the Internet has appeared, it has been filled with useful content, search engines have been born and voila - where earlier it was necessary, for example, to strain the brain and recall the simple integration formula in parts, now you can simply to type “integ” in the browser bar and, quite magically, search engines that have been watching what people are looking for for years will politely ask you, and if you, the guy, do you want to take the integral part by part? Here, look, friend, the link to the article in Wikipedia! And you can even write your integral on WolframAlpha , he generally thinks everything himself, take it - I do not want it. Habitual already familiar to all magic, which every year all the less surprised.

So why is not everything so rosy?

Even such miracles can not always help.

First, you simply don’t need 99% of the information on the Internet. Moreover, most often it is harmful, malignant information. Every word, every article and video on the Internet wants you to see it personally. And you're just looking for a formula that a professor gave you a few lectures back, but somehow it turned out that you’ve been watching music videos on YouTube for the second hour. And how did you even get here? Even in your particular subject, you probably do not need to show how to derive or prove this formula, you need a squeeze, a specific thing and from your request it is quite clear what you want. But, forgive me, it’s not you who live alone in the network, the other person knows your formula by heart, but he needs to refresh his proof right now. From this it follows that there is a certain small slice of information in a special way that you personally need (as an option, a small group of people, a family, a stream of students, a company).

Secondly, the content that you personally generate . He is not in the network. You will forget your brilliant idea already in fifteen minutes, when a girl calls you and complains that you forgot about the fact that today some days since something happened. This idea needs to be written down. And here there are several fundamental problems.
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Nowhere to write, once, difficult or simply lazy

We need to get a notebook and a pen, but where is it? You had an awesome dream, but now it's six in the morning and I also want to sleep and the desire to sleep is struggling with the desire to record the episode where Tim Roth , Jan Curtis and that girl from Fahrenheit were chasing you. By the way, what was her name? Damn, better to go to sleep. You also have lousy handwriting.

Watch the performance by Louis C. K. and then he gives out a pearl that you want to remember for a lifetime! Will you remember about it in half an hour when you watch? It is unlikely that this is exactly what you want to avoid, but where and when you will write it down, because you need to follow further what is happening on the stage!

Well, let's say there is a computer, a smartphone in which you can quickly write something. But how difficult it is to write something that contains a mathematical text! Simple text? So you later in life will not understand what he wrote. TeX ? You need to remember the syntax, and you need to compile the source, which requires tools, time and extra buttons. I would like to write such things as simply as on paper, but here's the bad luck - then you will not index the paper.

Information lies in different places and is not always available.

To begin with, we want everything to be in one place. You will never remember after a long period of time that your little bank account number is recorded in a small black notebook, and in the green notebook you can find an outline of lectures on the complexity of the algorithms. And to find this notebook in home chaos is no easier than solving the NP-complete problem.
Well, let's say everything is in one place. Notebook? Always carry with you and, God forbid, you continue it somewhere. Computer? You don’t bother much wherever you need it, and besides a computer you have a working machine, a smartphone and a tablet. Well, of course, the Internet! But the provider is a bastard, pings for 20 seconds, and in general electricity is cut off once a day. And the service that hosts all you need is the second day in Down. Yes, you are not lucky, man.

Information is poorly structured.

Look at a typical reference book. Table of contents, glossary, subject index (which is essentially a reverse index) and we need all this. And also tags, categories, contexts, etc. And full text search. Who will fill it all up? You will be lazy, I guarantee it. And without such means of navigation and search it is very difficult to unearth something specific.

Example needs

Imagine you are a comedian, screenwriter. You work on television, a couple of night shows or sitcoms are held on your author's power. In the place of this comrade in the example, anyone can be a creative, writing profession - a programmer, a scientist, a critic, a journalist.

So, your head is full of ideas and they come at any time in your life. Ideas need to be stored somewhere, for perhaps it’s good, but you can unleash it properly, until a full sketch or episode, you can only later, when the brainstorming will be a terrible force. And this assault, by the way, also needs to somehow be organized and saved. It is necessary to find associations and links with the topic that you are currently thinking about, it is good to present such information in the form of a mind map , but how and where to draw and store it?

The script is written on the show, which will be in a week. It would be nice to have a decent editor, you need to write a lot and quickly. Autocompletion and snippets would be a good idea from the world of programming and IDE, but you are a screenwriter, you are unlikely to use anything other than a pen, paper and Word. And still it is necessary to keep the history of versions of the script, it changes every day beyond recognition! We will store several files that differ only in dates in the name. About the version control system, you certainly haven't heard what the hell Git is, what are you talking about?

And still need to constantly write jokes. A lot of jokes. On different topics. Every joke has its own context and category, maybe even a few. And at one point you will need an entire archive of jokes that relates to one topic.

Ideas dried up, you need something simple. Can remake a famous song or proverb? We need a list of popular proverbs, but that's just where to get it, a search engine on this topic will give out only a mountain of garbage.

Total

What should the perfect personal information manager look like?

• It should contain a slice only for you personally useful (or useful in the future) information, and it should be possible to simply filter by context (Mathematical analysis -> Integration by parts -> formula)
• All information should be stored in one place.
• All information should be structured for the fastest and most efficient search (full-text search, categories and tags, hyperlinks), and a minimum amount of effort should be made to structure it.
• Information should be available always, everywhere and from everywhere, with instant speed.
• Information must be securely stored, we do not want to lose all the developments of life due to an oversight or accident.
• Change history should also be kept.
• It should be possible to present information in any convenient form, be it a text, a mathematical formula, a picture, a graph or a graph.
• Recording information should be as simple, quick and accessible as possible; a mathematical formula can be drawn by hand, you can quickly drive in text with auto completion, generate a graph or diagram with a couple of simple actions. And it's better not to type and write anything at all, but just think about it.

I know only one tool, as close as possible to these criteria - the human brain. And his main problem, which does not allow him to be considered the Ideal Personal Information Manager, is his limited resources.

In the comments, I propose to discuss whether there is something else that can get close to the brain in terms of similar tools, is it possible to do something like that, and does humanity need such a solution at all?