Lino
A memory extender for everyone who reads.
My 2024 prototype, before Lino was a startup.
As We May Think, Vannevar Bush, The Atlantic, 1945.
In 1945, Vannevar Bush imagined the Memex.
A desk that could hold all the world’s libraries, with trails linking one piece of knowledge to the next. It led on to hypertext.
Every notes app ends up a black hole of random stuff.
Mind maps become mess maps. Tags multiply, folders pile up, and nested pages hide what’s inside them.
Knowledge isn’t a pile of facts. It’s a web.
Concepts, the content around them, the contexts that give them meaning, and the associations between them.
Select a word as you read, and it becomes a card.
AI fills the card in. Select a word inside it, and that becomes a card too. Each new concept links back to its source and to the cards around it, so the web grows as you read.
A year later, it became Lino.
Cards became Concept Cards, the automatic links became connections you can see on a canvas, and the floating card became Quick Entry. Now the AI works on the whole web of ideas with you.
- Role
- Concept, interaction and UX design, solo
- Course
- History and Future of Interaction Design, Carnegie Mellon University, with Paul Pangaro
- Year
- Fall 2024
- Status
- Prototype; it grew into Lino