EP 481: Preservation in the Post-Information Age with Sari Azout

Stop me if you've heard this before: we're overloaded and overwhelmed by information. There's more content than you could ever hope to consume. More scientific theories, philosophical concepts, and art forms than you could ever hope to engage with.

Enter personal knowledge management (PKM). It's a modern term for an ancient practice—how one collects, preserves, and utilizes knowledge worth remembering. In this episode, I speak with Sari Azout, the founder of Sublime, an app for personal knowledge management (but that description truly doesn't do it justice). We talk about the philosophy behind the product and how that plays out in the product's design.

Plus, I dive into how Sari's PKM philosophy is part of a long lineage of practices people have used to remember what's worth preserving.

Footnotes:

• Check out Sublime or get started right away with an invite!
• Too Much to Know by Ann Blair
• More about Sarah Mackenzie & Read-Aloud Revival
• "The Glassbox and the Commonplace" by Steven Johnson
• More on John Locke's commonplace book index system
• What do you want to preserve?
• More on Corita Kent at the Corita Art Center

Every new episode is published in essay form at WhatWorks.FYI!

• (00:00) - How I keep track of ideas and information
• (02:56) - Meet Sari Azout, founder of Sublime
• (04:30) - Information age versus post-information age
• (06:55) - Information overload is an ancient problem
• (08:05) - Commonplace books
• (11:20) - Commonplace books contain a central tension
• (12:12) - We shape our tools and then they shape us
• (16:24) - Where the cool stuff is really happening
• (17:40) - John Locke's commonplace system
• (19:52) - A tool for creativity rather than productivity
• (23:33) - Single-player mode versus multiplayer mode
• (27:05) - The promise of preservation

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Work is central to the human experience. It helps us shape our identities, care for those we love, and contribute to our communities. Work can be a source of power and a catalyst for change. Unfortunately, that's not how most of us experience work—even those who work for themselves. Our labor and creative spirit are used to enrich others and maintain the status quo. It's time for an intervention. What Works is a show about rethinking work, business, and leadership for the 21st-century economy. Host Tara McMullin covers money, management, culture, media, philosophy, and more to figure out what's working (and what's not) today. Tara offers a distinctly interdisciplinary approach to deep-dive analysis of how we work and how work shapes us.