From regrouping to Knowledge economy

Auginte was started as a personal tool to prepare for exams. Drawing on paper helped memorising things, as it included visual and motor memory. Main problem with paper approach was: for the places you needed to add new notes the most — there already was no space left.

So, paper notebook was converted into software, zooming and reference tracking was also introduced. There was lots of experiments with different user interfaces and technologies, also learning more about knowledge-management field.

And I realised that we all emphasise knowledge, innovation, intelligence, dealing with complexity and other buzzwords as the most important things in our daily and economy-related world — but still using archaic knowledge-related tools.

We are amazed by new information visualisation in science fiction movies, but not implementing them today, keeping it a far future. Why? Is it too complex to implement, is it not needed or not discussed enough, are we all too deep into our own ego to share time for larger innovation?..

With Auginte I want to push knowledge tools to the level of future expectations. Computers will not do all the work for us — they are only tools. Innovation will always be initiated by humans. Augment our intelligence by better using our own perception, memory and attention capabilities.

Every consumer would want software for free and unrestricted. As a developer myself, I do want this too. But I also realise that good software requires time and effort to maintain — and that time has to come from somewhere fair.

Auginte is and stays open source — code is yours to read, fork and improve. Sustainability comes from optional services, not from locking the tool away.

This principle also applies to buying things, but with a different angle: pay for what is rare and supports those who built it. We try to apply the same to our own work.

If Auginte ends up being just small steps in this direction — that is already enough.