A professor told me recently that in today’s age, it’s more important to know where to find information than to memorise it, especially since our mind can only recall so much. I agreed with him, but a caveat is that we also need to organise our data well so we know where to look.
I’ve been archiving my data and photos faithfully since 2000, and my collection is over two terabytes in size. They are stored in logically-named folders but they can be a pain to go through. That’s why I hardly revisit my digitalised past.
What my database needs is proper tagging – like how Google Photos automatically tags the content of each uploaded photo – so I can pull up the right data when I need it. I think a big role for AI in the future is to help us organise and sort our data, so our histories become fully searchable by ourselves. I wouldn’t trust the current Generative AI technologies to do this as they can hallucinate, but it’s just a matter of time.
In the meantime, file everything and file them well. Before you throw away any birthday cards or written notes, take a photo of them. Before you renovate your house, take a photo. Before you put up a post on LinkedIn, save it first in a document. Then put them in properly-named folders.
Everything will disappear if we don’t file them, both in the real world and in our minds.
What I wrote this week
Some people say that the act of writing is unneccessary now, because Gen AI can write better than most people. They don’t understand what writing is really about.
Here are two published feature stories from our GO-FAR (Going Overseas For Advanced Reporting) trip in Mae Sot, Thailand: “The Murder of The Salween” and “The Doctor Who Left Singapore to Build Emergency Care on the Thai-Myanmar Border”. You can read more stories on our GO-FAR website where we have put up our ebook titled “Displaced” as well as video documentaries focusing on the lives of migrants and refugees at the Thai-Myanmar border.
You probably didn’t know that ChatGPT 5.1 launched and it’s ok. The output seems to be more casual and it’s getting better at psycho-analysing me (or rather, pretending to do so, since machines have no feelings).
I continue my little mission to teach everyone how to draw, this time with students from Nanyang Junior College who visited my school to find out what communication studies is all about.
The Straits Times’ editor has asked the newsroom to come back to the office and it’s a good thing. News journalism thrives in a newsroom setting where great minds come together to help readers make sense of the world.
Photos from a morning walk at Benjakitti Park during a short weekend trip in Bangkok.
That’s all, thanks for reading!
