This page is a first draft containing my vision of what Athens can be. These proposals are by no means complete, nor debated. My hope is these topics can be a catalyst for debate about the future of Athens as a platform.
Some of the topics mentioned are based upon existing ideas and tools:
- Git
- Wikipedia
- Boosting our Collective IQ - Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart
- Schema.org vocabulary
The idea of connected thoughts is nothing new, yet there has not been 1 winner-takes-all piece of software that is able to fulfill this need. Here is where I envision Athens as a real contender, not as just one piece of software, but as a platform of thought.
First of all, Athens should build a data-model that enables the linked knowledge aspect, building upon the ideas of others like Roam. It would be great if Athens had extensions/plugins to convert data from other sources into the Athens data-model.
If we were to use Athens as a platform to build a collective memex, there should be some agreed-upon vocabulary.
When multiple people are linking the same page, this page should have a shared meaning/metadata.
Let's look at this example: Person A & Person B both write a review about the same book, then the page about the book should have some universally accepted vocabulary indicating the page is of the type Book.
Athens could be the provider of this collaborative schema standard, or we could use Schema.org or any other provider we agree upon.
A second feature we should definitely have is the notion of time. When making a bi-directional link, we should always be linked to a snapshot of that page frozen in time.
For example:
In a page you make a reference to a quote block inside another page that is not yours, you don't necessarily want your link to automatically link to an updated quote when someone decides they want to change it.
For this, we should have something to keep track of versioning like git, but for pages/blocks. Then we would also be able to scroll through time and see edits and advancements being made on topics and pieces of information.
There is no doubt we need extensive debate building upon shared and deeply researched topics. Here are some key questions I think we should consider:
- How can we make Athens work together with other data sources as well as possible?
- What does a data-model need to enable bi-directional linking?
- How can we implement linking to a specific version of data/content?
- How can we make use of universally accepted vocabulary (schema standards)?