How much information have I acquired in my life? Where is most of it? The answer to the former I don’t want to think about too much. The answer to the latter is “lost or locked away”.
I’ve long had the notion that I needed to build a ‘database for life’ in which I could store the information I acquire and want to use. That it should not get locked into silo’s but be available for new purposes and applications.
This is why I have tried to build a Mentat-like application about 4 or 5 times since about 1996. I want to “own” my information. That is, I want to know what I have, I want to build the new on top of the old, I want to relate things together, discover new things. And then I want to make use of it all.
In my concept of Mentat, it is able to grow alongside my information and use cases.