History of gthnk

I began documenting my work-related thoughts in a work journal circa 2006. Initially, I used Open Office templates. I chose to separate journal entries with a timestamp because I could type it pretty quickly on a numeric keypad. I iterated through quite a few methods for keeping a chronological sequence of entries until I ended up with Gthnk.

This work was inspired by DevonThink, which I really tried to use. For me, I needed a less opaque container for my information. I wanted my text files to stay text files, because my concern was that years or decades down the road, I would not be able to access text files stored in a DevonThink filesystem container.

This work was also inspired by Vernor Vinge’s Marooned in Realtime, which featured a companion-like computer called “GreenInc”. This computer presented an interface that was highly customized to the person who trained and used their GreenInc system. Ironically enough, I misremembered the name of Vinge’s system as “GreenThink” to the extent that I had used it as a name for an earlier prototype of the Gthnk system.