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Science and technology communication – it is much harder for me to explain things I actually research on, and can be considered an expert, than things I do in my free time. This is true on a broad level (innovation, progress studies, knowledge architecture) which requires establishing links between many different domains as well as on the level of details, i.e., how the tech actually works. The reason may be the curse of knowing too much and therefore always falling into the traps of jargon, insignificant details, too much exposition and failure to provide proper context.

Knowledge architecture – communicating science is hard but communicating background-agnostic knowledge is even harder. I love researching all the new ways people are trying to go around the problems the scientific publishing industry is marred with. I think we can do much better than the current format of scientific journals. Every senior scientist I talked to actually doesn’t even read the papers but develops a sophisticated technique of skimming through the paragraphs, figures and tables. This can be automated. However, we should move beyond automation and change how we write articles. I will write about some of my ideas on knowledge architecture in due time.

Coding – computer coding is surprisingly relaxing and very engaging. Learning new programming languages is like exploring whole new worlds of possibilities. Connecting technologies via code, e.g., the web and machine learning, or machine learning and blockchain, is also very satisfying. I am not and will probably never be a professional coder or hacker. I am too impatient for this and will remain mostly at the proof-of-concept level.

Innovation – how does it happen? When do we start calling things innovative? Does innovation mean progress? How can we learn about innovation without falling into the creativity trap? What interests me is how things come to be and how they evolve over time.

Tools

I do all my research and writing using simple tools on a phone or on a laptop. Although laptops have been around for many years, the way we use them changed significantly. For example, my laptops are running rather effortlessly multiple servers as well as blockchain full nodes. This allows me designing, computing, and working on data presentation completely on the move. Once you learn how to deploy a simple machine learning model on a server you can easily code an interface to demonstrate how it performs. Apps on the mobile phone and on the laptop are syncing in the background. I try several different apps to see what works best for me.

• SimpleNote, Samsung Notes for short text notes
• Evernote and Pocket for websites
• Notebloc for documents and images
• Gmail for email
• Slack and WhatsApp for teams
• Overleaf for writing articles
• Feedly for RSS newsfeeds
• Moon+ Reader and OverDrive for ebooks
• Podcast Addict for podcasts

Have a comment or suggestion?

Write me an email: nikodem.tomczak@gmail.com