24Apr11 | Events as fundamental units of the timeline

This post briefly answers a question posed in:

24Mar28 | Time as a computing platform

I thought it’s about time to sit down and write what does it mean to work on a digital time travel tool, along with some definitions and concepts, since there isn’t probably a single idea that consumes as much of my head as time travel. But I believe time is in itself an interesting enough concept that many people like me would have no problem dedicating their life’s work trying to understand it.

zeyads.com

Which is: How to connect life events?

The idea is if we’re able to represent events on the timeline atomically, there’s no boundary on the connections we can make between events. Where each event on its own represents as maximum context as possible from a real-life event. Connections then can be made using mentions of days or events within the current event’s note, or based on the location of the event itself.

A similar concept is discussed here, where a note is considered a fundamental unit of knowledge work:

An example:

Represented here is a Timeline Event for a conference I attended in Jan 2024. From the location data & the notes, the app knows that this is the 3rd conference in a series that started back in 2021. It then links this event to events at the same location from Apr 22nd 2023 and Jan 14th 2022. Clicking on the hyperlinks below the note redirects to the respective events from these days.

The use case for this simple idea is infinitely extensible.

Premise is: You can track a project. You can track a sport. You can track progress. You can track memories.

Coupled with AI, the timeline is a powerful idea. You can search with a place, someone who was with you, some activity you were doing, music you were listening to, or something you wrote, and instantly be presented with one or more related life events to your search query.

In practice, representing data on a rich timeline can replace most project management, fitness, photo memories, and writing apps.