Personal Knowledge Engineering (PKE) Systems ... A Manifesto

Success is not solely about hard work and the diligency of showing up every day to just bang away fixing the same old shit.

Rather, SUCCESS is about having one's eyes on the horizon RATHER THAN THE REAR VIEW MIRROW ... coming up with a credible knowledge-based [rather than tool-based or equipment-based] plan for adaptability in the future ... and that means working harder, in a disciplined manner, up front preparing that plan, developing the tools and systems, like PKE systems, to have FLEXIBLE SYSTEMS THINKING in place before the trouble ever shows up ... not just to dig a well before one is thirsty, but to have the knowledge and capacity to engineer well-drilling systems when well-drilling systems are needed ... at its core, PKE is really about intelligently understanding systems and working in the development of knowledge-based systems for future needs, it's NOT personal knowledge management (PKM) -- which is important, but about the management of collections notes, ideas, plans, artifacts, references -- PKE is more forward-thinking, ie thinking about the development of future systems.

This means that we need tools and technology for NEW INTELLIGENCE, for intelligence and knowledge that hasn't come into existence yet.

Doing this is about systems that have the capacity to gather much more intelligence and knowledge than we currently do. It's also about making the attempts to apply the knowledge that our intelligence gathering ops have obtained more efficient and rapid. PKE is in the system of applying the knowledge and testing assumptions; PKE is about our methodology and thinking that we use to identify causal relationships and validate their veracity in order to utilize shortcuts to overcome challenges and free up time for pursuing larger goals ... and, if we love doing this the LARGER goal or reward will be that we get to improve the PKE implementation!

This Manifesto attempts to give an overview of the primary goals of the 100 modules in our 100-day project to level up our game in PKE systems, as well as outline the core principles of PKE systems and to explain something about what the measures of success will be for this project. You could say that this 100-module plan is really about implementing something akin Marcus du Sautoy's "Thinking Better: The Art of the Shortcut" because a big part of it is a celebration of how mathematical and statistical thinking helps us to solve problems more efficiently in everyday life, in producing anything, in design.

People might get sidetracked by the fact that du Sautoy's a mathematician, but this is most definitely not JUST mathematics, although mathematics is invaluable for implementing the art of the elegant, stable equilibrium solution. It really about understanding systems in order to find elegant and efficient solutions to complex problems by recognizing patterns and developing general algorithms ... rather than band-aids or cobbled-up, likely to fail fixes. Elegance is about solutions that stay fixed or heal and get better over time.

It is worth emphasizing that elegant thinking "shortcuts" are NOT at all about taking unethical or lazy approaches, but rather about developing a deeper understanding of problems to find more intelligent and clever ways to navigate them. The whole point of developing and using more advanced personal knowledge engineering (PKE) systems is not for PKE itself [although THAT is the goal of the 100 module plan] but to understand systems and genuinely "think better." Getting past the bandaid or likely-to-just-break-down-and-fail-again fix is about adopting not just a mindset but an entire PKE arsenal that allows one to understand, seek out and leverage the more clever solutions, recognizing that efficiency and deeper understanding can lead to more fulfilling and impactful achievements.

Primary Goals

• The core objective is progressive, to advance beyond the transition from the passive practice of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and make PKM note-gather more the mere collection of random notes and notetaking apps ... TOWARD ... a more actively evolving or extensible, disciplined system of AI-assisted Personal Knowledge Engineering (PKE) ... which presents all kind of opportunities that enhance our capacity to contribute to significant work in extensible open-source technologies.
• Fostering meaningful new professional connections and friendships across different disciplines in virtual venues [where people would not otherwise meet in the halls of the departments or R&D labs of their corporations]; the general goal of AI-assisted PKM and PKE is to accelerate the continuous learning and development processes, to spark new creative work, and, most importantly, to meet new friends by sharing this journey of building PKE technology to accelerate the continuous learning process in public
• As we learn more, we will attempt to better transform atomic notes, likely collected in simple MarkDown files used for this mdBook knowledgebase, from a static archive or just an online book into a more dynamic, programmable publishing AI engine, ready for sharing, collaboration, querying and other advanced augmentation with AI extensiions ... but in order to do this, we must articulating and embody the goals and principles of a systematic PKE framework to accelerate our own autodidactic education ... which is key in understanding the details of research in new systems at the forefront of technological innovation in various disciplines.

Core principles

• There's always going to be someone, somewhere who developing a better feature ... not necessarily a better system, but a compelling feature to understand and appraise. We want to be aware of what's happening with shiny new features, but we want to understand whether or not they represent generally better system. The Rust programming language's core feature, for example, is in its ownership and borrowing system, enforced by the RustLang borrow checker at compile time resulting in greater safety and simplicity in code, while retaining the speed of C language. The Modular Platform, with Mojo, Max, and the MLIR compiler framework, offers a different approach, particularly focused on high-performance AI development and leveraging advancements in compiler technology. Mojo, inspired by Rust and built on a next-generation MLIR compiler framework, aims to provide even higher levels of performance, particularly for AI applications, outperforming Rust in certain scenarios, like DNA parsing, through features like eager destruction, efficient Single Instruction, Multiple Data (SIMD) ergonomics, and advanced compiler optimizations. We love the RustLang system and developer ecosystem, ie RustLang is why this book uses mdBook ... but over time, we might find that we like Mojo and the Modular platform even more.
• The extensibility of open source enables its key feature, the strengthening and deepening of the interaction in the development community surrounding an open source project. One learns most, best, fastest by attempting to teach others and trying to understand their learning process. People will fail to understand, fail to adopt, fail to use because the technology is inheritly failure prone, but our intention must be to learn from failure -- in fact, the principle must be to fail fast, in order to learn faster. Everything in this curriculum is an experiment intended push envelopes in order to court failure.
• **Dogfooding new technology is the best way to learn how to develop new technology** and to meet people who are also serious about this objective.
• This 100-day plan adopts a documenation-first direct-to-book methodology, which means that instead of developing a better private note-taking app because so many others are doing that, our focus is on this 100-day plan as the central artifact presented as a living, version-controlled technical book, built with mdBook.. mdBook's key selling point is its speed, safety, and simplicity, its integrated search support and focus on atomic Markdown-based, locally controlled documentation, particularly for technical projects and for getting involved int the Rust programming language and it growing developer ecosystem.
• We are attempting to build something cyclonic, which means that it's ok to spin it up slow somewhere in the hinterlands in total isolation, but maintaining rotational inertia has to matter, ie the PKE system has to be built to feed back useful knowledge to help PKE developers dev the PKE system ... at first, we get the flywheel moving, then maybe try to spin the flywheel a little faster ... but even when we struggle, we stay at it and keep the flywheel spinning every day.
• Reuse, adapt, polish, master FIRST, rather than inventing your own. Instead of rolling our own that's just so or spending money on something with extra features, we will rely upon the GitHub Discussion and Issue and Project functionality, fully exploiting GitHub's ongoing GitHub Projects [along with Discussions and Issues] because these things are sufficient and an adaptable collection of pages, presenting your data, which you can view as a table, a kanban board, or a roadmap and that stays up-to-date with GitHub data. Your GitHub projects can track issues, pull requests, and ideas that you note down AND ... they can, of course, be linked to our own .md pages ... AND anybody else in the world that finds our material useful also has full access to everything GitHub puts out there.

Success Metrics

• At first, it's simple -- just a matter about completing today's module, while looking forward 10-20 days ahead to see how the work in this Phase sets up the next Phase ... then completing the Phase, looking at full horizon of all 100-days ahead ... thus, generally, not just looking ahead, but updating and revising the 100-module strategic curriculum, and maybe going back and correcting what should have been included in earlier modules ... with a long-term view, informed by the daily experience of showing up, rather than on temporary impatience or whim ... in other words, success of PKE system is not exactly just about how it helps only one highly experienced multi-disciplinary systems engineer, although that's enough ... hopefully, the process will help engineering new opportunities to dogfood something of greater value for others.

• The primary focus is on this PKE development journey of being much more seriously intentional about the technology of autodidactic learning and dogfooding the technology in order to continually learn better ways to learn and meet new colleagues who share that desire to accelerate learning. The whole point of open source PKE technologies assembled and developed during this journey serving goes beyond the enabling toolkit, but actually uses the process of dogfooding the PKE as well as a means of meeting more colleagues and making new friendships with people who enjoy the journey of continual learning.

• Whether one is successful in the development of PKE technology will be tough to measure until after the PKE technology has been used, adopted, improved. Success along the way is a matter of just showing up every day to keep the flywheel spinning. The rotational inertia of developing the PKE technology necessarily must be transitted through the larger roadmap and staying focused on that larger picture [which will change as the PKE technology is built].

The 100-Day Personal Knowledge Engineering Curriculum Overview

Conclusion

This 100-module curriculum provides a rigorous and systematic pathway for an experienced engineer to build a Personal Knowledge Engineering System centered on the principles of autodidacticism and community. By progressing through the four phases—Foundation, Learning, Creation, and Connection—the engineer will not only acquire skills in the most important modern technologies but will also construct a sustainable, integrated system for continuous professional growth and friendship. The emphasis on rapid, failure-tolerant experimentation, open-source contribution, and value-driven networking is designed to combat the sense of being overwhelmed by providing a clear, actionable framework. The final deliverable is more than a collection of notes and projects; it is a fully operational flywheel that transforms a lifetime of experience into a source of ongoing learning, discoverability, and meaningful connection within the global technology community.