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IN PROGRESS / DRAFT

Familial Knowledge Transfer

As a father I've been increasingly reflecting about how I best pass down my knowledge (for what it’s worth) to my two my children.

While this is of course something parents have done time immemorial, the digital / information age that we're now in, and the associated digital tools, services, and platforms that are at our disposal as a result, make it more possible than ever to pass down a tangible subset of both what we know and have gathered in our (digital) lives.

Obviously knowledge can manifest itself in countless ways so in this case I mean the following:

  • Life skills (applicable to the respective stages of life they’ll eventually go through)
  • A subset of my current professional knowledge (software development, photography, business, etc)
  • Digital assets (e.g. code, photography, writing, licenses, cryptocurrencies, etc)
  • Account details to the online services that I use

This is obviously quite a diverse set of items; some of which are already digitized, while others not. As such, invariably different approaches will be needed to depending on factors such as sensitivity of the data, it’s relative value, etc.

Beyond this however, is also equally interesting. If not perhaps more so. How for example can I collate and capture what I know now and package it such that it can be consumed (and learned) at appropriate stages of their lives. E.g. when they’re 40, for example, I’ll be lucky if I’m not wearing adult diapers and far from be in a position to instill them with relevant / appropriate pearls of wisdom. Therefore, how can I capture things now that will be of use to them when they need it.

Even aside from the act of capturing it in a meaningful way it also raises a few additional, not insignificant, challenges.

  • How can I ensure that this data will survive multiple decades?
  • How can I be sure to capture it in formats that will be accessible at that point in the future?
  • If there’s anything sensitive within the data set that I collate, how do I keep it secure?
  • How to index or catalog it, or otherwise make it accessible?

In this piece I’ll explore answering a few of these questions. I have a feeling it will also raise a number more, but here goes.

What to capture

  • My already created books (both physical prints and ePubs) -

Storage mediums

NB / Lots of trade-offs

  • Physically printed (or written) books
  • Disks that you replicate across family member’s residences (or equivalent) that they’ll have access to in the years ahead. Risk that it may get misplaced, etc.

In this case, I particularly mean my explicit (versus tacit) knowledge; namely the useful things I have been taught, studied, and learned throughout my life.

++ of course not all of it is necessarily even useful or needs to be provided ... ++

But almost goes without saying that (although it really is quite unique to the current generation of parents) more and more of our knowledge is stored digitally in products such as Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, 1Password, Github, etc, and thus with a bit of planning there is no reason why this (and the value contained within) can't be passed down.

Taking this further, there's no reason why a more broader range of digital assets shouldn't be included too.

As such a preliminary list of things could include the following:

  • Expertise (e.g. domain specific knowledge such technological expertise)
  • Digital Assets (e.g. iTunes purchases, software licenses, etc)
  • Unstructured Data (such as access to one's Dropbox, 1Password, Evernote, Gmail, Google Drive, etc)
  • Digital Media (such photographs, videos, writing, etc)

In aggregate, and if organized appropriately, this potentially serves as a powerful collection to pass down to the next generation.

Steps

  • Gathering up of knowledge assets into cohesive structure. One way in which I've started to do this is via a notes archive(http://notes.bluer.com) currently hosted on Github Pages.

Side Benefits

While going this process thus far a few side benefits have started to emerge. Firstly, in terms of getting organized

  • Identify the gaps in my own knowledge
  • Get more organized
  • Improved redundancy and security in my digital life

Reflection Point

Makes me wonder how I might be perceived after I’m gone.

Appendix / Notes

  • Swedish approach to preparing for one’s death by clearing out one’s superfluous physical items
  • Google Photos and ingestion workflow for knowledge
  • Scans of docs / excerpts (via LiquidText)
  • Knowledge “gateway” and general shared stuff