Zuck, in an internal memo about Messenger as a platform in 2013:
We're focused on quality because we think the issue is that the cost of using our platform is too high, when the bigger issue is that the value is too low compared to emerging alternatives. We do have real quality work to do, but we must also acknowledge that no amount of quality fixes will increase the potential value of using our platform,
It seems like knowledge tools are stuck in a similar delusion: we think the basic ideas (bidirectional links, tags, and search in an outliner) are right, but that the cost of using them is too high. So we polish and polish and polish, but really the marginal value they offer compared to pen and paper (or Apple Notes) may be simply too low. They replace problems of recall and speed with problems of information overload and tag fatigue. I don't think they enable fundamentally new ways of working with information. They mostly just feel like ever more beautiful facades in front of a growing mountain of complexity.
Computers are more than fast typewriters, because computers can understand language as more than a sequence of bytes. Computers should enable people to think completely new thoughts and solve previously intractable problems. Simply being more efficient is not enough — we need software that enables creation not possible without it.