Recently, I stumbled across Are.na, an online platform that I've started using for personal knowledge management and collaboration. Are.na is actually becoming my research workflow, not just part of it.
There is no question that I am an information addict and that information addiction is actually a thing. Curiosity is the child of dopamine, my friends. I'm not addicted to the internet — I can just as easily get lost forever at a bookstore or art gallery. I am a research junkie. If I am interested in something, I have to dig and read and amass vast quantities of articles published in academic journals, blogs, tutorials, etc. Every answer or new piece of information causes a dopamine rush, just like every ding of a text or Facebook notification. How long can you wait to look? We have a need for instant gratification when we want to know something, even if the information is shit. It's hard to filter the noise at times and I'm using Are.na to help me in that endeavor. I also use Are.na to build on the information I already have by connecting related information to it to give the information different contexts. The quality of the content on the site is usually high. I haven't run into too many animated .gifs yet. You also don't have to look at ads featuring the last pair of shoes you checked out on Amazon and I find there is a general lack of kitten videos, which I appreciate. All things in the right time, at the right place…
What is Are.na?
From the Are.na Blog:
"Our intention behind Are.na is to build a platform for creative thinking and research that is open to everyone.
It's a distraction-free space where you can collect anything, organize your thoughts, and develop ideas over time. It's also a community where curiosity and collaboration are more important than algorithms and likes."
Check out the rest of the videos on the Are.na vimeo channel to see how it works!
Consuming as much media as we all do in this wonderful age of information makes cognitive overload — brain drain — a reality for most of us. There are so many things of various quality competing for our attention & brain energy that focusing can be challenging. The Are.na UI is about as minimalistic as you can get, and I didn't even know I needed that! I really like that I can look at my channels on my index page and nothing is competing for attention. It's almost calming. Inside channels, I can get my visual crack by viewing the blocks inside. I need a little law and order to my sometimes unwieldly brain, and Are.na is proving to be a really good place for me to get my ducks in a row. I am extremely visual, but I can be overwhelmed by pretty pictures of foxes on Pinterest. I need visuals, but I also need whitespace to stay focused.
Influenced by Tom Nelson's writings and his Xanadu project, Are.na is what I imagine would result if Delicious, Diigo, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, and Pinterest had a baby. A smart baby. A baby that I like. It's a place where you can not only gather and organize, but also build upon your interests and ideas by collaborating, connecting related information, and exploring.
You create channels (like folders) and collect and organize pieces of information (called blocks) in them. Channels can be public or private and you can add collaborators to them. Blocks can be in other channels and related channels can be connected together. You can add web content with a browser extension.
It sounds strange, but actually tying information together and expanding on the possibilities is a relaxing and creative process for me. As you build your own knowledge library, you're helping to create a network of collective intelligence and can take part in communities that form around the information that you're interested in.
Other Cool Uses:
I used to teach college freshmen to create their portfolios using Pinterest before it became about shopping. I like the idea of using Are.na for that purpose much more (there are no ads YAY!) and I think there are many different ways it can be used in academics. It could be used for team project collaboration, for course delivery, even as an LMS.
Since I've worked in higher education for a while, educational use cases came to mind first, but it's also great for teams to use for project management. I am really interested in figuring out things I can automate via IFTTT recipes and I'm interested in ways it could be used for web content management. There are a ton of possibilities.
Future Stuff I'd like to See:
● I'm Interested in how you could include code in blocks, it would be awesome to have some github type features.
● It would be really nice to see the community grow & possibly see more social tools (just not TOO much).
● I would like to see different ways to explore the information other people add
Go create an account and start playing around! Make sure you say Hi and let me know how you're planning to use it. Are you using it for yourself, in education, for work? Search for channels that contain user feedback and add your thoughts. I hope to be writing about other cool things I've used it for soon!