But back to the story. I was obsessed with the leaf-printing technique so last night I did a web search on it and discovered that the technique is called Eco-Printing and was developed by an Australian textile artist named India Flint. Enraptured, I turned to Minerva (the AI learning tool Dave created and just released under open source license), and asked her to build me a thoughtbase (Minerva term) on natural dyeing and eco-printing.
It was good, and thorough, but unstructured. So I had her turn it into a learning journey (another Minerva construct that’s more structured). She expanded the thoughtbase a bit, restructured it, and it was even better! But I wanted Next and Back buttons, so I asked her to add them for lazy navigation. Done!
Then it was so good that I figured she was just being all AI and blowing smoke up my nose so I asked her for citations and a full bibliography so I could validate the sources for quality and veracity. Wow!!! No Joe-who-did-it-once-and-posted-a definitive-how-to-on-his-blog sources!! It's as if Minerva wrote a living book just for me. I ask a question on what I'm reading, Minerva answers it, and the asks if I want to incorporate the answer into my learning journey or just leave it a part of our conversation (the conversation I have with Minerva alongside the thoughtbase). If I want it in, she adds it, and cites it-all in the appropriate places, not appended at the end but where it makes the most sense.
As an example of why it is a living book, I was reading it and I came across the term "gyotaku” in the history section. It is a Japanese technique and means "fish printing”. I decided I want to learn about it and try it too, so I had her add a chapter to the learning journey specifically on it-history, techniques, how to, everything!
This morning I was gushing about the quality of the information I got to Dave and he says that's because he coded Minerva to look for information as if she was a research analyst hence no "Joe's blog”. He also asked if I had asked her to embed links to YouTube videos in the thoughtbase as he had put in that feature just for me. Some husbands give your jewelry. Mine gives me access to All the knowledge!
I am so excited by this thoughtbase that I had Minerva help me publish it on Github and link it through to Netlify. Here it is if you are interested in natural dyeing and eco printing too. If you would like to try Minerva, version 1.0 is free for nothing here—and has a hefty set of docs to go with it. Version 2.0 is coming soon. You currently need to use Claude AI—though 2.0 will allow you to connect to other models—and you need to have a key. (How to get Claude and a key.)
As someone who grew up
- pre-cellphone
- pre-computer
- pre-email
- pre-Internet (I was at a conference with Tim Berners Lee in ’92 where he presented on a new thing called the world wide web—and it was YEARS before it wasn’t frustrating as hell to use)
- pre-Google
- pre-social media
and who remembers when you shared your phone line with other families and used the last five digits of phone numbers to call someone… Well, I can still say this is the most exciting new technology I have ever seen. I am looking forward to using it to learn soooooo many more new things. If Dave wasn’t in the middle of teaching me calculus right now, I swear I’d ask Minerva!
