- Feb 2023
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
reply lifted from my notes:
Henry David Thoreau kept both a commonplace book (essentially a traditional (non-Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten in notebook form) and a separate writing journal where he did what most would consider typical 'journaling', but where he also tried out phrasing, writing, and other experimental work that would ultimately become part of his published written output. This may be a useful model for some. His journals ran to multiple volumes, but a good edited version with a nice introduction to some of his work and methods can be found in:
- Thoreau, Henry David. The Journal: 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009.
Similarly Roland Barthes used his card index as more than the traditional bibliographical, excerpting, and note taking tool that many had before him. He also used it to accumulate notes on what he had seen and heard in his daily life, phrases he liked, and plans. It came to serve the function, particularly in the last two years of his life, of a diary or what biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call his fichierjournal or index-card diary. Published posthumously on October 12, 2010, Mourning Diary is a collection from Roland Barthes' 330 index cards focusing on his mourning following the death of his mother in 1977.
- Barthes, Roland. Mourning Diary. Macmillan, 2010. https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374533113/mourningdiary.
- Budelis, Kristina. “Barthes’s Hand.” The New Yorker, September 8, 2010. http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/barthess-hand.
- Samoyault, Tiphaine, and Jonathan Culler. Barthes: A Biography. Translated by Andrew Brown. 1st edition. Cambridge ; Malden, MA: Polity, 2017.
-
-
jan.boddez.net jan.boddez.net
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
reply to Share the ideas dancing in your ZK with us. February 17, 2023
Congratulations @Will on the milestone! @ctietze's analogy with smithwork is fantastic. I might also liken it to the point in acquiring a new language when one begins dreaming in their new target language. So many talk about the idea of increased productivity associated with having a zk, but most spend an inordinate amount of time on shiny object syndrome or over complicating it and never get to the point of quickly writing things out, filing them, and being able to trust that their system will just work™. When you no longer notice it anymore and it has become second nature is when the real fun (and magic) begins to happen. It also seems easier and more natural to break the "rules" once you've internalized the basics. We should spend more time talking about the value of 'zettelkasten fluency'.
I'm excited this week to be doing some work in areas of the history of misinformation, cultural myths, and 'American exceptionalism' in preparation for Dan Allosso's upcoming book club on Kruse and Zelizer's new edited book. I suspect he'll announce it shortly at https://danallosso.substack.com/ if folks are interested in joining in the discussion/sensemaking.
Kruse, Kevin M., and Julian E. Zelizer. Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past. Basic Books, 2023.
-
-
-
reply to michaljjwilk (edited) Feb 18
Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. […] The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. —via chrisaldrich
Nadrzędny cel robienia notatek metodą Zettelkasten jest organizacja wiedzy, a nie organizacja notatek, stąd potrzeba odpowiedniego systemu łączenia informacji, a nie poszczególnych notatek.
(eng, for reply purpose only) btw, i do not see any way to annotate the annotation in hipothesis or any way to save someone's highlight or note.
(edit) It is so annoying and tedious i can not view this comment in my profile. I understand social aspect of Hypothes.is (and needs for that), but it is hard to track your activity this way. And it is not intuitive to annotate someone's annotation. So i assume - Hypothes.is masters can correct me if i am wrong - the better way is copy someone's quote with a link to Hypothes.is and put it in the page note, but the problem is i view this annotation in separation of the source material, so i have to go to source (context) and there find what interests me and do my work. Some time to time maybe it is no problem, but i do not want to imagine how it feels in bigger scale. And i do not get why there is tagging option for replies if you can not search them in the main page…
You've definitely come across a well known issue with respect to Hypothes.is: https://github.com/hypothesis/h/issues/7317 Feel free to comment on it to help it get some attention from developers.
I pull most of my content into an Obsidian notebook, so I always include the URL for any individual page into at least one of my annotations. Then I can use the API to pull in all of my own annotations (including replies) using that.
Alternately you might reply to someone's annotation and then cut/paste a version as a page note so that it's more easily searchable.
Surely there are other potential workarounds, but it depends on what you need out of your practice.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
How long do you spend in a single note-taking session? .t3_112k929._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionBasically, just curious how much time people spend writing down notes in a typical session, as well as how many notecards you usually finish. If you can give me an idea of how long a single lit/permanent note takes you to write, even better
reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/112k929/how_long_do_you_spend_in_a_single_notetaking/
Quite often my sessions can be in small 5-10 minute blocks doing one or more individual tasks that compose reading, writing, or filing/linking things together. Usually I don't go over a couple of hours without at least a small break or two.
Like Luhmann “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” Incidentally by "easy" here, I think Luhmann also includes the ideas of fun, interesting, pleasurable, and (Csikszentmihalyi's) flow.
For my lowest level reading I'll only quickly log what I've read along with a few index terms and a short note or two, if at all. For deeper analytical reading (as defined by Adler & van Doren) those sessions are more intense and I aim to have a direct "conversation with the text". Notes made there can sometimes be 2 - 10 minutes in length. I can often average about 50 annotations in a given day of which maybe 2 or 3 will be longer, fileable zettels. Most of my notes start as digital public annotations which one can view at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich if they like. On the topic of notes per day, I have a collection for that, some of which is given as a synopsis with some caveats here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day%20comparison.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Your Antinet Walkthrough
reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1132e2r/your_antinet_walkthrough/
Examples like this would certainly be useful/helpful, but you may be waiting a while. Until then some extant (if possibly longer or even written) examples are always helpful. Some may be a bit less Antinet in shape, but the examples are useful none-the-less: - See comment thread here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ - https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#historical-examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 with notes at https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ (though perhaps a deeper view into them is more illustrative: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm?stackedNotes=z4KZ9973AoHhvM9Pj5Qrds48JXNbMEwVJmVRw&stackedNotes=z8RTzukqNLKFXzqLwx25HrUrg5E5jiziGznWB&stackedNotes=z6UDDkom8Aifg6mLdjT1sPtbMBweCmpyTwmJT - Scott Scheper has a LOT here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSofW8L-FnU-Z8BFXqv8JZt5Cp0mj2_Eb - Ryan Holiday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk - Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Only then do I start writing. Compared with the labour of making, sorting and arranging notes, this is a relatively speedy business. But it is followed by a much more time-consuming task, that of travelling round the libraries to check the references in my footnotes, only too many of which, thanks to poor handwriting, carelessness and an innate tendency to ‘improve’ what I have read, turn out to be either slightly wrong or taken out of context.That one hit a little close to home. lol.
We should also acknowledge that when revisiting some of our references again later, we're doing so with a dramatically increased knowledge and context of a particular problem which we may not have had when we first read a piece or took the notes.
Not many here are writing or talking about these small sorts of insights into learning and writing or generating new work. Perhaps we should do more to acknowledge this hermeneutic cycle in our work?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/comment/j7uexbk/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
-
What are your two favourite articles, videos or books on the zettelkasten process?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10wj6tv/what_are_your_two_favourite_articles_videos_or/
My favorite video for its utter brevity and compactness combined with complexity and trueness to the historical record, not to mention the spectacular production value - The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Runner up video, which I love for the supreme simplicity of the method—literally slips and a box - “The Speed Traders/Mandela/Eminem.” 60 Minutes. CBS, October 10, 2010. https://youtu.be/pPXBwy3JgVo?t=64
My favorite article for its practicality and some studied perspective - Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
-
-
www.thesing-online.de www.thesing-online.de
-
This framing makes me think you'd appreciate: <br /> https://hapgood.us/2015/10/17/the-garden-and-the-stream-a-technopastoral/
syndication link: https://mastodon.social/@chrisaldrich/109833797235024284
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I agree.After thinking about it for a bit, a common symbol for "the present card/note" is the one I'm most wanting.For the other stuff, I'm thinking:The squigly arrow symbol in latex is probably enough to do fuzziness. Then it could be squigly arrow to the current card or squigly arrow to not symbol current card. And for pen and paper, just use the biochem flat arrow with a squigly body for "somewhat contradicts" or is in tension with.
reply to stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6x52ce/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Luhmann often used the shorthand of red numbers to indicate a link to nearby card in the current branch/stem, which Scott Scheper calls "stemlinks" in Antinet Zettelkasten (2022) p234. So, for example, on card ZKII 9/8 there is a red "1" which indicates the branching card ZKII 9/8,1. Scott uses a more computer science oriented notation of "/1" to indicate this as if he were traversing up or down a folder structure. Since there isn't really a (useful) idea of a root or home folder, and one wouldn't often want to refer to their zettelkasten itself, one might consider using the solidus "/" to indicate the current card? I personally do this, but not very frequently, though I might do it more often with respect to indicating argumentation within and among other cards.
Some languages have location/proximity identifiers or markers (similar to here/there/over there). I'll sometimes use the Japanese markers (ko-so-a-do) as shorthand to provide rough approximation of idea relationships particularly when I have open questions. (example: kore, sore, are, dore -> this one, that one, that one over there, which one?) Many ideas are marked あ to indicate "just out of reach" or "needs additional thought". When ideas are adjacent or nearby, but by happenstance are relatively far away within my ZK (with respect to physical card distance in the box) they'll be pre-pended like こ/510/4b/3 (aka "ko"/510/4b/3).
-
Are there symbols for 'supported by' or 'contradicted by' etc. to show not quite formal logical relations in a short hand?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/are_there_symbols_for_supported_by_or/
In addition to the other excellent suggestions, I don't think you'll find anything specific that that was used historically for these, but there are certainly lots of old annotation symbols you might be able to co-opt for your personal use.
Evina Steinova has a great free cheat sheet list of annotation symbols: The Most Common Annotation Symbols in Early Medieval Western Manuscripts (a cheat sheet).
More of this rabbit hole:
- Steinová, Evina. Notam Superponere Studui: The Use of Annotation Symbols in the Early Middle Ages. Brepols, 2019.
- Cappelli, Adriano. The Elements of Abbreviation in Medieval Latin Paleography. University of Kansas Libr., 1984.
- Coulson, Frank, and Robert Babcock. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography. Oxford University Press, 2020.
- Lindsay, W. M. Notae Latinae. Cambridge University Press, 2013. https://archive.org/download/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich/notaelatinaeacco00lindrich.pdf.
- Bains, Doris. A Supplement to Notae Latinae (Abbreviations in Latin Mss. of 850 to 1050 A.D.). Cambridge [England] University Press, 1936. http://archive.org/details/supplementtonota0000bain.
(Nota bene: most of my brief research here only extends to Western traditions, primarily in Latin and Greek. Obviously other languages and eras will have potential ideas as well.)
Tironian shorthand may have something you could repurpose as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tironian_notes
Some may find the auxiliary signs of the Universal Decimal Classification useful for some of these sorts of notations for conjoining ideas.
Given the past history of these sorts of symbols and their uses, perhaps it might be useful for us all to aggregate a list of common ones we all use as a means of re-standardizing some of them in modern contexts? Which ones does everyone use?
Here are some I commonly use:
Often for quotations, citations, and provenance of ideas, I'll use Maria Popova and Tina Roth Eisenberg's Curator's Code:
- ᔥ for "via" to denote a direct quotation/source— something found elsewhere and written with little or no modification or elaboration (reformulation notes)
- ↬ for "hat tip" to stand for indirect discovery — something for which you got the idea at a source, but modified or elaborated on significantly (inspiration by a source, but which needn't be cited)
Occasionally I'll use a few nanoformats, from the microblogging space, particularly
- L: to indicate location
For mathematical proofs, in addition to their usual meanings, I'll use two symbols to separate biconditionals (necessary/sufficient conditions)
- (⇒) as a heading for the "if" portion of the proof
- (⇐) for the "only if" portion
Some historians may write 19c to indicate 19th Century, often I'll abbreviate using Roman numerals instead, so "XIX".
Occasionally, I'll also throw drolleries or other symbols into my margins to indicate idiosyncratic things that may only mean something specifically to me. This follows in the medieval traditions of the ars memoria, some of which are suggested in Cornwell, Hilarie, and James Cornwell. Saints, Signs, and Symbols: The Symbolic Language of Christian Art 3rd Edition. Church Publishing, Inc., 2009. The modern day equivalent of this might be the use of emoji with slang meanings or 1337 (leet) speak.
Tags
- via
- reply
- Evina Steinova
- nanoformats
- stemlinks
- Curator's Code
- proximity markers
- hat tip
- ars memoria
- Maria Popova
- Tironian shorthand
- annotation symbols
- shorthand
- LaTeX
- manuscript studies
- Tina Roth Eisenberg
- note taking affordances
- symbology
- paleography
- leet speak
- solidus
- Universal Decimal Classification
- tools for thought
- Medieval texts
- emoji
Annotators
URL
-
-
answers.microsoft.com answers.microsoft.com
- Jan 2023
-
-
This sort of policy matches closely to the model page zettelkasten.de which has also a strong focus on memorizing information and excludes secondary elements like vegan food and doing sport for no reason.This is factually incorrect.
reply to u/FastSascha at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10nolg3/comment/j6naobz/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Let those who have not folded an index card to use it as a fork for eating food (vegan or otherwise), throw the first pack of index cards.
Is this the correct zettelkasten translation of John 8:7? Should I number this ZKII, 9/8k?🗃️😉
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'd recommend a Book-to-Maincard approach for this (instead of the 2-step Bibcard Method). And I'd recommend Reformulation notes (i.e., summarization notes) instead of Excerpts.
reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10o4jnl/comment/j6ii64d/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Is this about as close as Scott Scheper comes to recommending taking Cornell Notes?!? 😂
Let's be honest that this is roughly what this (and Bibcards) ultimately is. You take some general notes on a lecture (book or other material) as a sense making tool to help you better understand the material. You write down some bits you want to remember and use for some brief spaced repetition perhaps. You write down some pointed questions to help review for a test later. The subtle difference is that Cornell notes were designed to do the sense making, summary, and repetition portions well for students and learners, but didn't focus as much on the longer tail of knowledge creation using analysis, and synthesis. To fill in the last mile for your card index, take the best idea(s) (maybe one or two at most) and flesh it out to create a useful maincard.
If it's useful try some 8 x 12" paper for your lecture notes, and take them Bibcard or Cornell Notes style. Once you've excerpted your main card notes, you can fold your sheet in half twice and file it with your Bibcards, naturally taking care to have the paper's spine face up to prevent other slips from becoming lost in between. (This obviously works best for those using 4 x 6" index cards though if you're in the 3 x 5" camp, then use 6" x 10" sheets for folding.) For those with middle grades or high school students, this may be a more profitable method for introducing these methods to their study, learning, and creation patterns.
Summary: Cornell Notes can be an excellent method for capturing session-based fleeting notes and distilling them down into permanent notes. Cornell Notes focus on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than the broader spectrum that a zettelkasten method might.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What are your goals for creating your zettelkasten? .t3_10mha0u._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/IamOkei at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10mha0u/what_are_your_goals_for_creating_your_zettelkasten/
The gloriousness of combinatorial creativity!
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
-
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6dhx2t/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It's relatively easy since it's all hiding in my notes. lt may become a book one of these days, I'm just not sure how to approach it quite yet, though I'm getting close to the philosophy I think is missing from the bigger space. I find it somewhat useful to use my notes to create longer responses in spaces like this that I expect I'll reuse in a book.
One can find utility in asking questions of their own note box, but why not also leverage the utility of a broader audience asking questions of it as well?!
I've seen that same copy of Webb's book floating around in various places. In fact, it's the exact same fingerprinted version of the .pdf that I originally read, which can be seen by appending
https://via.hypothes.is/
to the URL like this https://via.hypothes.is/http://digamoo.free.fr/webb1926.pdf which will quickly reveal my own notes in the margins. (It may help some to find the small portions outside of Appendix C which relate to note making. 😀)If you want to follow me down the rabbit hole on some of the intellectual history and examples, try: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/ which I try to keep updated with new pieces as they arrive.
-
My plan is to make some sort of physical timeline eventually, but while analog does feel a little "fixed" for this purpose, I want the shear size and the speed of cards.Do you happen to know what historians used to do before computers?
reply to u/stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10nlu4l/comment/j6bdgma/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
I've used data from my own cards to create timelines before using the Knightlab's TimelineJS tool: https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=18QD2-Kx0WdFBzqDv1sTkQWOJLGHGXsvr4NBLYNiX9FA&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=2&height=650%27%20width=%27100%%27%20height=%27650%27%20webkitallowfullscreen%20mozallowfullscreen%20allowfullscreen%20frameborder=%270%27
You'll note that it's got a fun card-like flavor to its design. 🤩
Historically, while they had certainly done so much earlier, historians began doubling down on slip-based research work flows in the late 1800's. Many in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were heavily influenced by the idea of "historical method" or the German "Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens". Primary sources going back over a century have included:
- Bernheim, Ernst. Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie : mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittelzum Studium der Geschichte ... völlig neu bearbeitete und vermehrte Auflage. 1889. Reprint, Leipzig : Duncker, 1903. http://archive.org/details/lehrbuchderhisto00bernuoft.
- Langlois, Charles Victor, and Charles Seignobos. Introduction to the Study of History. Translated by George Godfrey Berry. First. New York: Henry Holt and company, 1898. http://archive.org/details/cu31924027810286.
- Dow, Earle Wilbur. Principles of a Note-System for Historical Studies. New York: Century Company, 1924.
- Barzun, Jacques, and Henry F. Graff. The Modern Researcher. New York, Harcourt, Brace, 1957. http://archive.org/details/modernreseracher0000unse.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
A few prime examples of historians practicing this sort of card index method (though not necessarily in the same form as Niklas Luhmann) include:
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- Pomeroy, Earl. “Frederic L. Paxson and His Approach to History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 39, no. 4 (1953): 673–92. https://doi.org/10.2307/1895394.
- Aldrich, Chris. “S.D. Goitein’s Card Index (or Zettelkasten).” BoffoSocko (blog), January 15, 2023. https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/.
- Lustig, Jason. “‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History.” History of the Human Sciences 32, no. 3 (July 1, 2019): 49–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/0952695119830900.
- Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
- Margolin, Victor. The Process of Writing World History of Design, 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI.
Margolin's short video is particularly lovely for its incredible depth despite its brevity.
Beyond this there is also a very rich history of sociologists, anthropologists, philosophers, linguists, and others in the humanities using similar methods.
Beatrice Webb has a fairly good description of how she created her "scientific notes" in the late 1880/1890s in a database-like fashion in the appendix to her memoir My Apprenticeship and expanded on some of the ideas in a more specific text a few years later.
- Webb, Beatrice. My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926.
- Webb, Sidney, and Beatrice Webb. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Interested in seeing what others’ reference/bib notes look like .t3_10m3abl._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } share + showcaseNothing more than that, just curious how other people structure/write their reference/bib notecards
reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10m3abl/interested_in_seeing_what_others_referencebib/
An example of my digital "bib notes" for: Sayers, Dorothy L. The Lost Tools of Learning. E. T. Heron, 1948.
https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=url%3Aurn%3Ax-pdf%3A13447fd092edd947b775ba269de28ee6
There are some other good anecdotal examples here too.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
yeaaaaaaah I'm gonna need a link to purchase these if you got one
reply to u/pipepistolnoscope at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10lqfsn/comment/j62dp7o/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
These are slightly easier to find in a variety of styles, colors, and materials if you're using European A5 or A6 slip sizes. Search for 6 ring binders which usually come in A5 or A6 sizes for a variety of planners, calendars, and general notes with accessories. Franklin Covey has a variety of binders for their 4.25" x 6.75" note pages and planners which will likely work with index cards, but I haven't tried that.
If you use US standard index cards 4 x 6" or 3 x 5", you'll want an appropriate 6 ring hole punch to pre-punch your cards as appropriate, but keep in mind the two standard sizes can be slightly off with respect to the binder you find but they're probably close enough it shouldn't be a big issue as most of the binders are slightly larger in both directions to protect the paper inside.
I recently posted about note taking on the go, so you might find some interesting ideas, methods, modifications or even DIY options there or in the comments: https://boffosocko.com/2022/12/01/index-card-accessories-for-note-taking-on-the-go/
-
If you really want to go crazy you can get 6-hole punches to make your own cards.
And if you like you can co-opt those holes in your notebox by using them for taxonomy terms and removing/or not the connective pieces to indicate membership of a group. Then by putting a knitting needle through large groups of cards, you can sort through your collection to find related items the way they used to in early computing with edge-notched cards. 😉🗃️
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
It is my cup of tea. Now I'm looking for his practical advice
He's got a collection of ideas around the area with some useful history: https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/
His practical advice is usually to quit reading about the theory and do the thing. Choose the simplest path and stick with it a while. See what happens. What's useful? What's not? Practice, practice, practice.
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
What ideas are you wrestling with this week? January 19, 2023
Reply to Will at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2490/what-ideas-are-you-wrestling-with-this-week-january-19-2023#latest
There's so much great looking material here, it's almost overwhelming on where to start. I almost feel like I should be reading all this in addition to everything else I've got on my list.
Some of the direction with respect to writing, writing practice, and even your woodworking makes me think you'd appreciate the subtle idea hiding in this old blogpost I ran into in April 2021: https://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary.
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
Anybody using this approach to manage contacts? How?
reply to IvanFerrero at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1740/anybody-using-this-approach-to-manage-contacts-how#latest
Many of the digital note taking tools that run off of text allow you to add metadata to your basic text files (as YAML headers, inline with a
key:: value
pair, or via #tags). Many of them have search functionality or use other programmatic means like query blocks, DataView, DataViewJS, etc. for doing queries on your files to get back lists, tables, charts, etc. of the data you're looking for.The DataView repository has some good examples of how this works with something like Obsidian. Fortunately if you're using simple text files you can usually put them into one or more platforms to get the data and affordances you want out of them individually.
As an example, I have a script block in my daily note in Obsidian for birthdays in my notes that fall on today's date:
```dataview LIST birthday FROM "Lists/People" WHERE birthday.day = date(2023-01-18).day ```
If I put the text
birthday:: 1927-12-08
into a note about Niklas Luhmann, his name and birthday would appear in my daily note on his birthday. One can use similar functionality to create tables of books they read with titles, authors, ratings, dates read, etc. or a variety of other data input which parses through your plaintext files. Services like Obsidian, Logseq, et al. are getting better about allowing these types of programmatic searches for users without backgrounds in programming and various communities usually provide help for pre-made little snippets like the one above that one can cut and paste into their notes to get the outputs that they need. Another Obsidian based example that uses text files for tracking academic journal articles can be found at https://nataliekraneiss.com/your-academic-reading-list-in-obsidian/; I'm sure there are similar versions for other text-based platforms.In pre-digital times, for a manual version of a rolodex like this in paper, one could use different color cards as pseudo-tags (doctors are on yellow cards, family members on blue cards, friends on green cards, etc.) or adding edge notches or even tabs to represent different types of metadata. See for example the edge colored cards in Hawkexpress' Pile of Index Cards: https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122
-
-
fieldnotesbrand.com fieldnotesbrand.comContact1
-
A lovely quote I ran into this morning, perhaps for a future 3 pack, potentially featuring Thoreau, Thoreau and writing, Thoreau and nature, the Concord writing group, etc., etc.:
"Might not my Journal be called 'Field Notes?'" —Henry David Thoreau, March 21, 1853 via The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837-1861. Edited by Damion Searls. Original edition. New York: NYRB Classics, 2009. https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Thoreau-1837-1861-Review-Classics/dp/159017321X/
There's also another writerly tie-in here as when he returned to Concord, Thoreau worked in his family's pencil factory(!!), which he would continue to do alongside his writing and other work for most of his adult life. Replica Thoreau factory pencils anyone?!
Given the fact that he was an inveterate journaler as well as someone who who kept multiple commonplace books, perhaps a tie-in to a larger journal or commonplace book format product? (I'm reminded that the famous printer, publisher and typeface designer John Bell published blank commonplace books along with instructions from John Locke on how to keep and index them. See an example: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Bell_s_Common_Place_Book/3XCFtwAACAAJ?hl=en )
At a minimum I'm pretty sure we all want this Thoreau quote on a Field Notes brand t-shirt...
Thanks for all the years of solid design and great paper!
Warmest regards, Chris Aldrich
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Equations and Formulas in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry Using a Digital Zettelkasten .t3_10dbza7._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } zk-structureHow do you handle relations between mathematical, physical or chemical formulas in a digital Zettelkasten? Since I would like to use a future-proof system, my files are written in markdown.Is it possible to write down those formulas on a tablet and save the pdfs inside the digital Zettelkasten (along with a new ID and a descriptive title) and then just reference on it from the markdown Zettel? Or should I create attachments for markdown Zettel that require some formulas or images providing the *same* ID to them?Or, do I completely overthinking this?
reply to u/phil98f at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10dbza7/equations_and_formulas_in_mathematics_physics_and/
Perhaps you've not gotten far enough in your studies to see the pattern yet, but most advanced mathematics texts (Hungerford's Algebra or Rudin's Real Analysis for example) and many physics texts are written as if they were pre-numbered zettelkasten. Generally every definition, theorem, corollary, proposition, and lemma in the text will be written out succinctly with its own unique number and arranged in some sort of branching order. Most of these texts you could generally cut up and paste onto cards and have something zettelkasten-like without any additional work.
I generally follow this same pattern and usually separate proofs on cards behind their associated theorems (typically only for those I've written out myself). Individual equations can be numbered, but I rarely give an equation its own card and instead reference them by card number with a particular equation line in parenthesis when necessary. I can then cross reference definitions, theorems, etc. easily as I continue building things up. Over time you can eventually cross reference various branches of math, physics, chemistry, biology, etc. For example I've got a dozen different proofs and uses of Schwartz' inequality in six different branches of mathematics which goes toward showing how closely knit various disparate branches of math can be.
In most cases I might also suggest against too heavy a focus on the equations, but on what they may say/mean, and what you can use it for. Alternately drawing diagrams or pictures of the relationships can be valuable. Understand it first then write it down. As an example you can look at Boyle's Law, Charles' law, Avogadro's Law and Gay-Lussac's law, but if you know and understand them properly then you should be able to write down and understand the more generic Ideal Gas Law, which shows how they're interlinked. Later in your studies you might also then be able to derive it from microscopic kinetic theory with statistical mechanics as well, then you'll be able to link up those concepts at that time.
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
Zettelkasten for studying art?
Sometimes having examples of others' work can be helpful. In your case, perhaps perusing some zettelkasten work by previous users within the art/image space? In this respect some of the work by Aby Warburg may be interesting to you. I might suggest starting with his archive here: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verknüpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/IamOkei https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10bjqjq/how_do_you_generate_unique_notes_i_feel_weird_to/
You may find value in re-framing your active reading and note taking/annotating as "having a conversation with the text". Adler's essay How to Mark a Book is a good short introduction. If you try this for a while and still have trouble, watch the movie Finding Forrester and try again. If you're still having trouble after this, read through Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading with a pen(cil) in hand and then try a third time.
-
-
hcommons.social hcommons.social
-
reply to Ryan Randall and Matt Stine at https://hcommons.social/@ryanrandall/109677171177320098
@mstine@mastodon.sdf.org @ryanrandall It won't go as far back as we may like, but I'm hoping Mark Bernstein's upcoming talk will help to remedy some of the lost knowledge: https://lu.ma/2u5f7ky0
In part I blame Vannevar Bush for erasing so much history in As We May Think (1945).
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
Those interested in archaeology and anthropology with respect to art and memory may appreciate this new paper which could push the date of our earliest writing systems back several thousands of years. (cc @LynneKelly)
Upper Palaeolithic Proto-writing System and Phenological Calendar<br /> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/an-upper-palaeolithic-protowriting-system-and-phenological-calendar/6F2AD8A705888F2226FE857840B4FE19
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
202301041111 Making family podcast with kids
https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2488/zettel-feedback-podcast-with-children?
To extend, it could be an interesting exercise to have the kids call up grandmother and grandfather to interview them with questions about when they were growing up, about their parents, and their grandparents. Then you're also getting some of the family oral history together not only for yourself, but for your children as well as future generations.
I have a nascent card very much like yours, but not as well fleshed out yet.
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Definitely the mate is the most fundamental intellectual aim, I was wandering from the beginning if that was a mate hahah. How is it that you are drinking mate? I’m guessing you are not from Argentina since you speak and write in english and for english-speaking students… Also, I really like this series about the zettelkasten, you explain things clearly and with great humor. I like videos like this one where you show the actual process.
Process is important and I suspect we need more concrete examples for people to see. I'm reminded of Andy Matuschak's note taking live stream a while back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 though some editing, time compression, and inserted images can make it a bit more interesting than watching paint dry.
Anecdotally, I feel like mate has become at least marginally more popular in the United States in the last few years, or at least enough to enter the consciousness of the cultural zeitgeist at a liminal level.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
cplong.org cplong.org
-
https://cplong.org/2023/01/return-to-blogging/<br /> reply to https://hcommons.social/@sramsay/109660599682539192
IndieWeb, blogging, fountain pens?!? I almost hate to mention it for the rabbit hole it may become, but: https://micro.blog/discover/pens. Happy New Year!
-
-
-
is zettelkasten gamification of note-taking? .t3_zkguan._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/theinvertedform at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zkguan/is_zettelkasten_gamification_of_notetaking/
Social media and "influencers" have certainly grabbed onto the idea and squeezed with both hands. Broadly while talking about their own versions of rules, tips, tricks, and tools, they've missed a massive history of the broader techniques which pervade the humanities for over 500 years. When one looks more deeply at the broader cross section of writers, educators, philosophers, and academics who have used variations on the idea of maintaining notebooks or commonplace books, it becomes a relative no-brainer that it is a useful tool. I touch on some of the history as well as some of the recent commercialization here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Has anyone read this? “Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age by Ann Blair”
reply to u/alcibiad https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1054a49/has_anyone_read_this_too_much_to_know_managing/
I don't know everything, but reasonable portion of it comes from Ann M. Blair who is one of the senior scholars in the area of intellectual history. If you want a crash course on the space her book and Markus Krajewski's are probably the two best you can start out with, though keep in mind that they're written for a more scholarly crowd and can be somewhat dense in some places. For those who are fans, below is a quick bibliography of her related work in the space. For those who don't want to wade through several hundred pages of a relatively dense book, some of her shorter journal articles can be quite interesting.
Blair, Ann M.. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” Journal of the History of Ideas 53, no. 4 (1992): 541–51. https://doi.org/10.2307/2709935.
———. “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy: The Commonplace Book.” In Jean Bodin. Routledge, 2006.
———. “Note Taking as an Art of Transmission.” Critical Inquiry 31, no. 1 (September 2004): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.1086/427303.
———. “Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload ca. 1550-1700.” Journal of the History of Ideas 64, no. 1 (2003): 11–28. https://doi.org/10.2307/3654293.
———. “Annotating and Indexing Natural Philosophy,” January 1, 2000.
———. “Conrad Gessner’s Paratexts” 73, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 73–122. https://doi.org/10.24894/gesn-en.2016.73004.
———. “Manuals on Note-Taking (Ars Excerpendi).” In Brill’s Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World. Brill, May 7, 2014. https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/entries/encyclopaedia-of-the-neo-latin-world/manuals-on-note-taking-ars-excerpendi-B9789004271029_0058.
———. “Textbooks and Methods of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe,” January 1, 2008.
———. “The Rise of Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe.” Intellectual History Review 20, no. 3 (August 4, 2010): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2010.492611.
———. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton Legacy Library. Princeton University Press, 2017. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691654386/the-theater-of-nature.
———. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know.
Blair, Ann M., Paul Duguid, and Anja-Silvia Goeing. Information: A Historical Companion. Princeton University Press, 2021. https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691179544/information.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Requesting antinet hivemind assistance: ANALOG ACCOUNTING/BUDGETING/BOOKKEEPING .t3_103r4j0._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Does anyone have any cards or know of any books/chapters/quotes that pertain to analog accounting, budgeting, and/or bookkeeping? For example, In "Paper Machines" Krajewski mentions how Melvil Dewey invented a personal analog bookkeeping system that was... disastrous...and he went bankrupt. That was really good information! Anyone have any leads?
reply to u/Echo_Delta17 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/103r4j0/requesting_antinet_hivemind_assistance_analog/
You should read Paper Machines closer as the accounting uses of Library Bureau products are what made it fantastically profitable in the early 1900s. Ann Blair has some useful references in Too Much to Know. Broadly there is lots of heavy influence of accounting principles in history as applied to note taking evolution, and particularly that of double entry bookkeeping. The idea of waste books plays particularly heavy here.
I've previously posted some early 1900s photos from Yawman & Erbe of uses of index card filing systems for CRM and other business related purposes: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/
Melvil Dewey/Library Bureau ultimately partnered up with Herman Hollerith in a predecessor of what became IBM to supply early versions of punch cards for government contracts. (See Krajewski for this.)
Feel free to troll some of my other notes for some related references across time: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=accounting
Curious what you're looking to discover here? A hard target library search for references should get you swimming in details pretty quickly here. I'd love to see what you come up with.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Hi Chris Aldrich, thank you for sharing your great collection of hypothes.is annotations with the world. This is truly a great source of wisdom and insights. I noticed that you use tags quite a lot there. Are you tagging the notes inside your PKM (Obsidian?) as much as in Hypothes.is or are you more restrictive? Do you have any suggestions or further reading advice on the question of tagging? Thanks a lot in advance! Warmly, Jan
Sorry, I'm only just seeing this now Jan. I tag a lot in Hypothes.is to help make things a bit more searchable/findable in the future. Everything in Hypothes.is gets pulled into my Obsidian vault where it's turned into [[WikiLinks]] rather than tags. (I rarely use tags in Obsidian.) Really I find tagging is better for broad generic labels (perhaps the way many people might use folders) though I tend to tag things as specifically as I can as broad generic tags for things you work with frequently become unusable over time. I recommend trying it out for yourself and seeing what works best for you and the way you think. If you find that tagging doesn't give you anything in return for the work, then don't do it. Everyone can be different in these respects.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
BTW can you please elaborate more on these steps between new source ideas and point ideas? I suppose the source notes are more like bib notes and point notes as main cards.
reply to u/BlackSwan8043 on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/102gt6i/what_are_the_technicalities_of_the_antinet/
I'm not sure anyone has written "the" book on these things (yet), but Dan has certainly written a very good and concise one (and particularly the first half with respect to your question): https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/02/how-to-make-notes-and-write-a-handbook-by-dan-allosso-and-s-f-allosso/. His definitions of source notes and point notes along with examples are in chapter 4 if I recall: https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/chapter/highlighting-and-note-taking/
Another good source for the sorts of reading practices and thinking/writing involved can be found in:<br /> Adler, Mortimer J., and Charles Van Doren. How to Read a Book. 1940. Reprint, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972.
It sounds like you're almost there, if not already, so I would recommend spending more time actually reading and writing and you'll refine things for yourself as you go.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
reply to u/shibbywiggy on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zzlje4/what_makes_this_special_for_me/
In his book Sönke Ahrens mentions the Zeigarnik effect and that it works for the slip box method in much the same way that Zeigarnik works for David Allen's GTD, but to my knowledge he wasn't making any sort of attempt to integrate GTD with the slipbox there. Where are you drawing this inference with respect to his work?
I've noticed the "frankenbaby" phenomenon too and have called it zettelkasten overreach in the past. HawkExpress' original Pile of Index Cards is the closest I've seen to pure GTD with index cards.
-
- Dec 2022
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Is the ZK method worth it? and how it helped you in your projects? .t3_zwgeas._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionI am new to ZK method and I'd like to use it for my literature review paper. Altho the method is described as simple, watching all those YT videos about the ZK and softwares make it very complex to me. I want to know how it changed your writing??
reply to u/Subject_Industry1633 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwgeas/is_the_zk_method_worth_it_and_how_it_helped_you/ (and further down)
ZK is an excellent tool for literature reviews! It is a relative neologism (with a slightly shifted meaning in English over the past decade with respect to its prior historical use in German) for a specific form of note taking or commonplacing that has generally existed in academia for centuries. Excellent descriptions of it can be found littered around, though not under a specific easily searchable key word or phrase, though perhaps phrases like "historical method" or "wissenschaftlichen arbeitens" may come closest.
Some of the more interesting examples of it being spelled out in academe include:
- Thomas, Keith. “Diary: Working Methods.” London Review of Books, June 10, 2010. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary.
- Webb, Sidney. Methods of Social Study. London; New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1932. http://archive.org/details/b31357891.
- Eco, Umberto. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina. 1977. Reprint, Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/how-write-thesis.
- Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. (Particularly ch 7 if I recall correctly)
For academic use, anecdotally I've seen very strong recent use of the general methods most compellingly demonstrated in Obsidian (they've also got a Discord server with an academic-focused channel) though many have profitably used DevonThink and Tinderbox (which has a strong, well-established community of academics around it) as much more established products with dovetails into a variety of other academic tools. Obviously there are several dozens of newer tools for doing this since about 2018, though for a lifetime's work, one might worry about their longevity as products.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Linking two notes .t3_zwkkm9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionHello,I'm probably bad at searching, but I haven't been able to find an answer to this question: how to link two notes. Some sources show a direct hyperlink in one of the notes to another, while others talk about using a third note that explains the link. Any advice?Thanks,ManyNothings.
reply to u/ManyNothings at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwkkm9/linking_two_notes/
I've seen more sources that suggest creating a link and then adding a quick note for the reason if it isn't obvious. Bob Doto does something like this if I recall correctly. I'm curious what specific sources you've seen that suggest a third note? I want to look at those and their reasoning.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Finished the manuscript - do you go back to the notes?
reply to u/lichtbogen at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zwp4a2/finished_the_manuscript_do_you_go_back_to_the/
A few potentially interesting examples from my notes:
Hans Blumenberg had a habit of striking out note cards either once or twice in red ink as a means of indicating to himself that he had used them in his writing work. He also wrapped them up and hid them away to prevent the risk of over-using his ideas in publications. [#]
He was also cognizant of the potential of over-use of ideas in his own work and in at least one case accused Montaigne of having over used a Lucretius quote to illustrate a small point rather than saving it for a major point in his argument on the failure of states where Blumenberg thought it was "compulsory". [#]
Much like Umberto Eco (How to Write a Thesis), in the closing paragraphs of his essay The Card-File System of Note-Taking, historian Jacques Goutor finally indicates that note cards can potentially be reused for multiple projects because each one "contains a piece of information which does not depend on a specific context for its value." While providing an example of how this might work, he goes even further by not only saying that "note-cards should never be discarded" but that they might be "recycled" by passing them on to "another interested party" while saying that their value and usefulness is dependent upon how well they may have adhered to some of the most basic note taking methods. (p35)
---
Helbig, Daniela K. “Life without Toothache: Hans Blumenberg’s Zettelkasten and History of Science as Theoretical Attitude.” Journal of the History of Ideas 80, no. 1 (2019): 91–112. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2019.0005.
Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Are hyperlinks needed for a Zettelkasten?
Reply to u/ManuelRodriguez331 on https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zvvuke/are_hyperlinks_needed_for_a_zettelkasten/
Eminem would indicate it's a clear no.
By direct translation zettelkasten = slips + box. There is no word in the name to indicate links of any sort. 😁🗃️🤣
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'm a multi-media artist, so I have many ideas about fashion pieces, artworks, music, etc. that i'd want to make. Would I plug in these ideas as 'fleeting notes' until they're more cemented? would you recommend I keep separate my 'original' ideas and the ZK note-taking system?
I gave some examples of uses in arts/media a while back that you might find interesting for your use case: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xdrb0k/comment/iofo5vv/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
In particular, a more commonplace book approach or something along the lines of Chapter 6 of Twyla Tharpe's book may be more useful or productive for your use case.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
ephemeral sources .t3_znbvw3._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/znbvw3/ephemeral_sources/
If it makes you feel better, this is a long standing problem of document and source loss. As just a small historical example from a fellow, but very early, note taker and practitioner of the ars excerpendi (art of excerpting):
Presumed to have been written in the fifth century Stobaeus compiled an extensive two volume manuscript commonly known as The Anthologies of excerpts containing 1,430 poetry and prose quotations of classical ancient works from Greece and Rome of which only 315 original sources are still extant in the 21st century.[1] Large portions of our knowledge of many famous classical texts and plays are the result of his notes. Perhaps your notes will one day serve as the only references to famous documents of our time?
Often for digital copies of things, I'll use a browser bookmarklet to quickly save archive copies of pages to the Internet Archive as I'm excerpting or annotating them. See https://help.archive.org/help/save-pages-in-the-wayback-machine/ for some ways of doing this.
[1] Moller, Violet. The Map of Knowledge: A Thousand-Year History of How Classical Ideas Were Lost and Found. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2019. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/546484/the-map-of-knowledge-by-violet-moller/.
-
-
-
ourobo-ros · 2 days agoOk great! Do you have an example you could illustrate of new ideas you've managed to extrapolate?
Often the context to properly illustrate these new insights can be more than they're worth. However this self-contained one linked here, may be useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/comment/j02niq3/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
-
Reply to:
Who is Zettelkasten note-taking system for? <br /> u/Beens__<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/zhyu5i/who_is_zettelkasten_notetaking_system_for/
Perhaps your use case may benefit from knowing the longer term outcomes of such processes, particularly as they relate to idea generation and innovation within your areas of interest? Keeping notes which you review over periodically and between which you create potential links will help to foster more productive long term combinatorial creativity, which will help you create new and potentially useful ideas much more quickly than blank page-based brainstorming.
Her method was much more ad hoc than the more highly refined methods of Luhmann which allowed him to write, but perhaps there's something you might appreciate from the example of the character Tess McGill in the movie Working Girl. Even more base in practice is that of Eminem, which shows far less structure, but could still have interesting long term creativity effects, though again, it bears repeating that one should occasionally revisit their notes (even if they're only in "headline form") in attempts to refresh their memory and link old ideas to new to generate completely new ideas.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Should I use a Zettelkasten if I’m just intending to use it to learn about a few topics (no intention of publication/paper-writing, ever)?
If you're considering less work upfront, you might consider a closely related form by maintaining a commonplace book, or a pared down version of what folks here are calling a zettelkasten.
https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I published an article about the Zettelkasten Method in my blog .t3_zgx3pv._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/I_saw_the_Aleph<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/zgx3pv/i_published_an_article_about_the_zettelkasten/
Thanks for adding to the tradition in another language. This is great.
I'm obviously not a fan of the commonly held Luhmann "zettelkasten origin myth", but since you don't cite a source for "otros métodos de tomar notas similares se originan en el siglo XVII" (translation: other similar note taking methods in the 17th century), I'm curious what and potentially who you're referring to here? I've seen a handful of online sources nebulously mention this same 17th century time period without any specific evidence, so I'm curious if you're following that crowd, or if there's something more specific you have in mind or could point to from a historical standpoint?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Thank you - I'm impressed, once again.I still find it baffling that the evolutionary tree of zettelkasten practices doesn't seem to show some sort of Cambrian explosion starting directly with Luhmann. There are people around him, eyewitnessing a productivity of barbaracartlandian proportions, and no one seems to make relevant attempts at imitating and adapting his specific methods? - I would like to understand the reasons for this.PS: Do you know the interview (five short parts, in German) the Suhrkamp publishing house has conducted with Andre Kieserling, Luhmann's successor at Bielefeld University, and Johannes Schmidt, the zettelkasten curator? https://youtu.be/q0LdmKMbJCw - I haven't found it in your hypothes.is annotations.Btw, I'm living in Stuttgart near Marbach, and after visiting the 2013 exhibition with its perenially inspiring title "Zettelkästen. Maschinen der Phantasie" and reading its catalogue, I've sent my copy to Professor Kuehn. I miss his Taking Note blog.
reply to https://www.reddit.com/user/thomasteepe/
Luhmann's method is certainly an evolution on prior methods, but only has a few differences. Sadly there aren't a broader array of other options that are open in the solution space to create an actual Cambrian explosion here. At the end of the day, one still has to do actual reading, note taking, thinking, and work to make the system go. It this hurdle of work that most often dampens people's spirits and despite it's ability to be more easily sustainable, it's really not very sexy, so people move on to the next shiny, new thing.
I'm aware of that series of videos and a few others, though my German is almost non-existent which makes them a slow slog. I suppose I should use Google's auto-transcription/translation, but that often muddies things further. I've had a few people translate pieces of things like that for me, but it becomes cost prohibitive after a while.
I wish Manfred Kuehn had left his site up, but I understand why he did it. I still delve back into Archive.org every now and then to find new things. If I had some extra time, I'd contact him to see if he'd be willing to publish archived versions of his blog as a book and do the collation/editing to get it out, but it's a lot of work, even with large portions automated.
One of these days I'll find a copy of the Marbach catalog to read...
-
Based on Luhmann's ZKII 9,8.3 (aka The Ghost in the Machine) and various other video and anecdotal sources, his colleagues saw his system and generally didn't care. His influence has primarily only been influential after-the-fact beginning online with mentions by Manfred Kuehn after 2007 with more interest following the Marbach zettelkasten exhibition in 2013 and the launch of zettelkasten.de. You're living amidst his greatest influence on the space, particularly asking this question just two days before Scott Scheper's book Antinet Zettelkasten, focusing on the specifics of Luhmann's method, is set to be released.
With respect to zettelkasten, I would posit that it was Luhmann himself who was actually standing on the shoulders of other giants which preceded him in these broader traditions including Desiderius Erasmus, Rudolph Agricola, Phillip Melanchthon, Konrad Gessner, John Locke, Ernst Bernheim, Charles Langlois, Charles Seignobos, Antoine Sertillanges, Beatrice Webb, Johannes Heyde, and C. Wright Mills, etc. See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/ for more on the history here.
While I'm thinking about influence, has anyone named their children after the method yet? Is there a baby named Slip, Zeke, or Luhmann in honor yet? Perhaps this is the week that may have happened? 😉
-
-
www.dalekeiger.net www.dalekeiger.net
-
I'm enamored of this idea as well and this is a fascinating example.
It seems similar to the related (and also difficult-to-name) concept which I've called combinatorial creativity. One of the earliest versions I've seen is that of Raymond Llullus' work with respect to combinatorial mnemonics described in Frances Yates' The Art of Memory (1966). Farnam Street's post is a good start https://fs.blog/networked-knowledge-and-combinatorial-creativity/, but I've been collecting other examples: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22combinatorial+creativity%22 and other names for it over time.
I can't help but wonder what Ericsson's role of deliberate practice would look like with arts as the subject? What motivates long term deliberate practice?
Yates, Frances A. The Art of Memory. 1966. Reprint, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Memory-Frances-Yates/dp/0226950018.
Ericsson, K. Anders, Ralf Th. Krampe, and Clemens Tesch-Romer. The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance. Psychological Review, 1993.
-
-
-
https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2022/12/the-ethics-of-syndicating-comments-using-webmentions/
Not an answer to the dilemma, though I generally take the position of keeping everything unless someone asks me to take it down or that I might know that it's been otherwise deleted. Often I choose not to delete my copy, but simply make it private and only viewable to me.
On the deadnaming and related issues, it would be interesting to create a webmention mechanism for the h-card portions so that users might update these across networks. To some extent Automattic's Gravatar system does this in a centralized manner, but it would be interesting to see it separately. Certainly not as big an issue as deadnaming, but there's a similar problem on some platforms like Twitter where people will change their display name regularly for either holidays, or lately because they're indicating they'd rather be found on Mastodon or other websites.
The webmention spec does contain details for both editing/deleting content and resending webmentions to edit and/or remove the original. Ideally this would be more broadly adopted and used in the future to eliminate the need for making these choices by leaving the choice up to the original publisher.
Beyond this, often on platforms that don't have character limits (Reddit for example), I'll post at the bottom of my syndicated copy of content that it was originally published on my site (along with the permalink) and explicitly state that I aggregate the replies from various locations which also helps to let people know that they might find addition context or conversation at the original post should they be interested. Doing this on Twitter, Mastodon, et al is much harder due to space requirements obviously.
While most responses I send would fall under fair use for copying, I also have a Creative Commons license on my text in an effort to help others feel more comfortable with having copies of my content on their sites.
Another ethical layer to this is interactions between sites which both have webmentions enabled. To some extent this creates an implicit bi-directional relationship which says, I'm aware that this sort of communication exists and approve of your parsing and displaying my responses.
The public norms and ethics in this area will undoubtedly evolve over time, so it's also worth revisiting and re-evaluating the issue over time.
-
- Nov 2022
-
-
Likewise, Luhmann probably learned some of his system from someone else. Most of us don't learn the things we do in complete and total isolation. That said, at the end of the day - our writing process is extremely personal.
reply to u/deafpolygon at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/z5haa9/comment/iy6yowi/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
It's been reported by his son that Luhmann did learn about a method (which either he heavily modified or someone else showed him their modification thereof) from Johannes Erich Heyde. There's sure to be more details on this in Scott Scheper's upcoming book Antinet Zettelkasten.
see: Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931.
-
It's not as refined or as compartmentalized as Luhmann's process, but art Historian Victor Margolin broadly outlines his note taking and writing process in reasonable detail in this excellent three minute video. (This may be one of the shortest and best produced encapsulations of these reading/note taking/writing methods I've ever seen.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI
Though he indicates it was a "process [he] developed", it is broadly similar to that of the influential "historical method" laid out by Ernst Bernheim and later Seignobos/Langlois in the late 1800s.
-
-
andy-bell.co.uk andy-bell.co.uk
-
The TTRG (time to reply guy) was getting so fast, that I can’t actually remember the last time I tweeted something helpful like a design or development tip. I just couldn’t be arsed, knowing some dickhead would be around to waste my time with whataboutisms and “will it scale”?
-
-
www.dalekeiger.net www.dalekeiger.net
-
https://www.dalekeiger.net/on-being-a-gentleman-well-unread/
Both your 積ん読 game and master level antilibrary skills are on wonderful display here.
-
-
www.dalekeiger.net www.dalekeiger.net
-
Your observations here ring true to me. They're also supported by similar observations by Malcolm Gladwell in chapters 8 and 9 (I believe) of Miracle and Wonder. There he's got stories of Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Simon which provide additional examples though he's also attributing some of the success to memory and the idea of situational awareness. He quotes his own researcher there who makes some comments on short versus long artistic careers and how they relate to creativity and longevity. See also this "zettel": https://hypothes.is/a/Kd7X4lvPEe250Gvn57Pbdg
Gladwell, Malcolm, Bruce Hedlam, and Paul Simon. Miracle and Wonder: Conversations with Paul Simon. Audiobook. Pushkin Industries, 2021. https://amzn.to/3ENU32D
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
I believe Victor Margolin when he says that he developed his own system. That's what I did in the years before people started widely discussing personal knowledge systems online. Nobody taught me how to do it when I was in college. @chrisaldrich repeatedly tries to connect everyone's knowledge practices to an ongoing tradition that stretches back to commonplace books, but he overstates it. There is such a thing as independent development of a personal knowledge system. I know it because I've lived it. It's not so difficult that it requires extraordinary genius.
Reply to Andy https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16865#Comment_16865
Andy, I'll take you at your word. You're right that none of it requires extraordinary genius--though many who seem to exhibit extraordinary genius do have variations of these practices in their lives, and the largest proportion of them either read about them or were explicitly taught them.
With these patterns and practices being so deeply rooted in our educational systems for so long (not to mention the heavy influences of our orality and evolved thinking apparatus even prior to literacy), it's a bit difficult for many to truly guarantee that they've done these things independently without heavy cultural and societal influence. As a result, it's not a far stretch for people to evolve their own practices to what works for them and then think that they've invented something new. The common person may not be aware of the old ideas of scala naturae or scholasticism, but they certainly feel them in their daily lives. Commonplacing is not much different.
By analogy, Elon Musk might say he created the Tesla, but it's a far bigger stretch for him to say that he invented a new means of transportation, or a car, or the wheel when we know he's swimming in a culture rife with these items. Humans are historically far better at imitation than innovation. If people truly independently developed systems like these so many times, then in the evolutionary record of these practices we should expect to see more diversity than we do in practice. We might expect to see more innovation than just the plain vanilla adjacent possible. Given Margolin's age, time period, educational background, and areas of expertise, there is statistically very little chance that he hadn't seen or talked about versions of this practice with several dozens of his peers through his lifetime after which he took that tacit knowledge and created his own explicit version which worked for him.
Historian Keith Thomas talks about some of these traditions which he absorbed himself without having read some of the common advice (see London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n11/keith-thomas/diary). He also indicates that he slowly evolved to some of the often advised practices like writing only on one side of a slip, though, like many, he completely omits to state the reason why this is good advice. We can all ignore these rich histories, but we'll probably do so at our own peril and at the expense of wasting some of our time to re-evolve the benefits.
Why are so many here (and in other fora on these topics) showing up regularly to read and talk about their experiences? They're trying to glean some wisdom from the crowds of experimenters to make improvements. In addition to the slow wait for realtime results, I've "cheated" a lot and looked at a much richer historical record of wins and losses to gain more context of our shared intellectual history. I'm reminded of one of Goethe's aphorisms from Maxims and Reflections "Inexperienced people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."
-
-
brainsteam.co.uk brainsteam.co.uk
-
https://brainsteam.co.uk/2022/11/26/one-week-with-hypothesis/
I too read a lot of niche papers and feel the emptiness, but because I'm most often writing for myself anyway, its alright. There are times, however, when I see a growing community of people who've left their associative trails behind before I've found a particular page.
I've used the phrase "digital exhaust" before, but I like the more positive framing of "learning exhaust".
If you've not found it yet, my own experimentations with the platform can largely be found here: https://boffosocko.com/tag/hypothes.is/
-
-
readwriterespond.com readwriterespond.com
-
Whenever I read about the various ideas, I feel like I do not necessarily belong. Thinking about my practice, I never quite feel that it is deliberate enough.
https://readwriterespond.com/2022/11/commonplace-book-a-verb-or-a-noun/
Sometimes the root question is "what to I want to do this for?" Having an underlying reason can be hugely motivating.
Are you collecting examples of things for students? (seeing examples can be incredibly powerful, especially for defining spaces) for yourself? Are you using them for exploring a particular space? To clarify your thinking/thought process? To think more critically? To write an article, blog, or book? To make videos or other content?
Your own website is a version of many of these things in itself. You read, you collect, you write, you interlink ideas and expand on them. You're doing it much more naturally than you think.
I find that having an idea of the broader space, what various practices look like, and use cases for them provides me a lot more flexibility for what may work or not work for my particular use case. I can then pick and choose for what suits me best, knowing that I don't have to spend as much time and effort experimenting to invent a system from scratch but can evolve something pre-existing to suit my current needs best.
It's like learning to cook. There are thousands of methods (not even counting cuisine specific portions) for cooking a variety of meals. Knowing what these are and their outcomes can be incredibly helpful for creatively coming up with new meals. By analogy students are often only learning to heat water to boil an egg, but with some additional techniques they can bake complicated French pâtissier. Often if you know a handful of cooking methods you can go much further and farther using combinations of techniques and ingredients.
What I'm looking for in the reading, note taking, and creation space is a baseline version of Peter Hertzmann's 50 Ways to Cook a Carrot combined with Michael Ruhlman's Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking. Generally cooking is seen as an overly complex and difficult topic, something that is emphasized on most aspirational cooking shows. But cooking schools break the material down into small pieces which makes the processes much easier and more broadly applicable. Once you've got these building blocks mastered, you can be much more creative with what you can create.
How can we combine these small building blocks of reading and note taking practices for students in the 4th - 8th grades so that they can begin to leverage them in high school and certainly by college? Is there a way to frame them within teaching rhetoric and critical thinking to improve not only learning outcomes, but to improve lifelong learning and thinking?
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCLCIw-HSJc
I'm curious if you knew if Nelson, Engelbart or any of their contemporaries had/maintained/used commonplace books or card indexes as precursors of their computing work? That is, those along the lines of those most commonly used by academics, for example as described by Markus Krajewski in Paper Machines (MIT Press, 2011) or even Beatrice Webb's Appendix C on Note Taking in My Apprenticeship (Longmans, 1926) in which she describes a slip (or index card)-based database method of scientific note taking. I've always felt that Vannevar Bush held things back unnecessarily by not mentioning commonplace book traditions in As We May Think.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
mastodon.social mastodon.social
-
Can someone point me to a writeup or venn diagram explaining the relationship between the #Fedivers and #IndieWeb?Doing a lot of learning and not afraid to dig in on the protocol level. Do these protocols compete? Interoperate? Complement each other?
https://mastodon.social/@tbeseda@indieweb.social/109368520955574335
At a base level, the Fediverse is a subset within the bigger IndieWeb. Parts of the Fediverse, have and support some of the IndieWeb building blocks, but none that I'm aware of support them all. Example: Mastodon has microformats markup, but doesn't support sending webmentions or have micropub support. Currently it's easier for the IndieWeb to communicate into and read the Fediverse, but the Fediverse doesn't do a good job of seeing or interacting with things outside it.
-
I need to create a sense of obligation on myself, so I'll toot anything I add to my reading queue, hashtag #queued. Then, when I've pushed it along further, I can return to that toot to add my thoughts...
reply to thread: https://mastodon.social/@mathew@campaign.openworlds.info/109371453439113339
Perhaps underneath the My Library you need to have an alternate path labeled "Antilibrary". Perhaps that will alleviate a lot of your cognitive dissonance and guilt.
-
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
JohnPhilpin I have read a number of questions from people in different communities I am part of, asking for Podcast recommendations. I don’t think it is an easy question to answer. 1) There are millions of these puppies 2) Because I like something doesn’t mean you will 3) My recommendations this week might be different next - because 'moods' 4) and and and I wrote this post as a starting point. Happy to share my current OPML with anyone who wants it - add a comment below - or email me. Happy to offer my thoughts on what you might like if I know more about what you like. I won't typically offer BIG NAME podcasts.
https://micro.blog/JohnPhilpin/14165886
@JohnPhilpin Recommendations can often come cheap, particularly on iTunes where everyone begs for reviews. I prefer hearing about what people actually listened to. What did you invest your time in/on? This is why I sporadically maintain what I call a faux-cast or a feed of podcasts and audio I've actually listened to: https://boffosocko.com/2018/03/08/podcasts-of-things-ive-listened-to-or-want-to-listen-to/
-
-
johnjohnston.info johnjohnston.info
-
Thanks for the follow within FeedLand today btw. I saw it pop up in the group list. 🙂
-
-
-
manton Interesting post by @simon@simonwillison.net that Mastodon is just blogs. Except Mastodon’s design runs counter to blog features like domain names and custom designs. I’d say Mastodon is more Twitter-like than blog-like… Which is fine, but not the same as a blog-first platform.
https://micro.blog/manton/14045523
@manton When I was looking at Fediverse instances the other day I noticed that one of the biggest platforms within it was Write.as, which are more blog centric. Is there a better/easier way for m.b. to federate/interact or serve as a reader for that part of the ecosystem? Perhaps worth exploring?
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
analogoffice.net analogoffice.net
-
https://analogoffice.net/2022/10/28/a-life-in.html
@Guy Reminds me instantaneously of this collection of farm themed pocket notebooks which inspired Field Notes: https://fieldnotesbrand.com/from-seed 📓
-
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
danielsantos @chrisaldrich thanks for sharing… personally, I tend to associate ZK with Luhman. But I’ll read your shared article later to broaden my perspective :)
@danielsantos Almost everyone in the space exclusively associates ZK with Luhmann, in part because of the use of the foreign (unfamiliar) German word and the lost cultural memory of the use of card indexes as note taking tools or as commonplace books in index card form. Hopefully we can change this misperception which also opens up these practices to a lot more people with a lot less confusion.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
jessekelber @collin oooh, so many great options! My 2 personal favorites would be the LAMY Al-Star and the TWSBI Diamond 580. I'm sure others will offer up other great options, but that's my proverbial $0.02.
@jessekelber @collin I'll second the Diamond 580, though if they're completely new, the ECO T may be a useful choice as the grip design helps to nudge a better grip for beginners. It's also a little less expensive (if they have fear of breaking or losing their nice new pen), and gives them space to dream upwards without breaking their own bank when you've turned them into a lifelong collector.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
danielsantos @chrisaldrich @jean I second this. It would be very nice to have a tagmoji for PKM and it’s apps… I instantly thought about a brain 🧠, though.
@danielsantos @jean I almost included the brain emoji, but I feel like it's far too closely associated with Tiago Forte's commercial/paid Second Brain courses and book, and doesn't have the feel of written (or even typed/digital) representation of note taking the way the card file box 🗃️ does historically. I've seen many in the zettelkasten space use the card file box emoji regularly and it generally doesn't have any negative connotations that I've seen or am aware of. I've also seen some in the digital gardening spaces make use of some of the plant-related emoji for their notes, but those generally have a more clear cut gardening use case on the web and might otherwise cause confusion. Some of the other logical choices of pens, pencils, and journals are already either in use for those topics or ought to be kept for them if necessary.
-
-
bavatuesdays.com bavatuesdays.com
-
web.hypothes.is web.hypothes.is
-
Is there a way to search for your replies to someone's public annotations?
Currently, they don't show up when I search my user name and the tag I used in the reply. Is there an elegant way to search for these annotations and my reply to them?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Interesting. So it's like an analog CRM? Multiple people have brought this type of thing up.
reply to u/sscheper<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/yka3ro/vintage_yawman_and_erbe_card_index_filing_systems/
These were commonly used for what we now call CRM as well as for accounting, general filing, and all sorts of business and back office use cases in the early 20th century which are now handled by computers. A dozen or so companies made large wooden and metal index card filing cabinets and sold them by the truckload to businesses of every sort.
A lot of the digiterati are just repeating and attempting to reinvent these sorts of ideas using Obsidian, Notion, etc.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Zettelkasten for technical sciences .t3_yibchw._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/yibchw/zettelkasten_for_technical_sciences/
Presumably you've been the member of or seen a journal club/discussion group for scientific articles, and if not, you could start your own journal club (with yourself) using a zettelkasten by excerpting ideas from what you read, annotating them, writing down open questions, thoughts about what researchers get right/wrong, what could be done better, etc. A zettelkasten practice can be highly fruitful in the sciences. Carl Linnaeus, Newton, and Leibnitz (among many others) had similar looking practices.
-
- Oct 2022
-
benwerd.substack.com benwerd.substack.com
-
Given your talents, if you've not explored some of the experimental fiction side of things (like Mark Bernstein's hypertext fiction http://www.eastgate.com/catalog/Fiction.html, Robin Sloan's fish http://www.robinsloan.com/fish/ or Writing with the Machine https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/, or a variety of others https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22experimental+fiction%22), perhaps it may be fun and allow you to use some of your technology based-background at the same time?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Workflow for capturing and processing online content for use in a Zettlekasten
reply to https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/ye3bvk/workflow_for_capturing_and_processing_online/
While it's possible that some set of tools will work best for you and potentially be more "fun" than other combinations, the upper limit you'll find on efficiency and productivity in this area is limited.
As a result, I'd recommend looking at the quality of the material you're putting into your stream as potentially the best means of improvement at your disposal. The quality of your ideas and thought will increase if you're reading and conversing with the highest quality sources you can get your hands on. Well-researched, long form material (books, journal articles) will have likely done a lot of the filtering and heavy work for you, so use those as input when you can.
Unless you're a sociologist or cultural anthropologist looking for examples of behaviors and material in social media, it may not be the best place to turn. Before I open social media apps I remind myself of note #1267 from Goethe's slipbox (Maxims and Reflections): "Ignorant people raise questions which were answered by the wise thousands of years ago."
Similarly, upon hearing the words "firehose", "drowning", or "information overload", I'm reminded that, presuming you'd even want to make the effort, there's only one way to eat a whale: one bite at a time.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Handwriting + Zettelkasten
I've used Livescribe pens/paper for note taking (including with audio) before, and they've got OCR software to digital workflows. Or for the paper motivated, one could use their larger post it notes and just stick them to index cards as a substrate for your physical ZK with digitally searchable back ups? Now that I've thought about it and written this out, I may have to try it to see if it's better than my prior handwritten/digital experiments.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Creating a ZK Don't Break the Chain Calendar in Obsidian
For those interested in the research on the "Write Every Day" mantra:
Sword, Helen. “‘Write Every Day!’: A Mantra Dismantled.” International Journal for Academic Development 21, no. 4 (October 1, 2016): 312–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2016.1210153.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What would you suggest instead if my goal is taking notes on various topics in order to remember them? (no output needed)
reply to dhXcol https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/yc35nl/comment/itlmjbn/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
You might appreciate the pre-Luhmann zettelkasten (or commonplace book traditions) which could serve this purpose, and most of the applications that you can use for ZK will work for these purposes if you're not an index card person. Some differentiation and pointers here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I can't quite grasp this concept, although it seems interesting for my specific case. Isn't the index box supposed to be organized by alphabetical order? How can personal notes be placed right in such an order?
los2pollos reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/y5un81/comment/it667sq/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
There are a wide variety of methods of organizing and sorting one's note cards including by topic (usually alphabetical), by date, by idea, by author, by title, etc.
If you're using it as a diary, you'd probably keep that subsection in order by date written, and then potentially have it cross indexed by subject if those things were important to you.
If you kept other information like mood, health, activities, exercise, glasses of water per day (for example) on them, you could resort and re-order them by those data as well if you liked. And naturally, this ability to resort/reorder one's notes has been one of the greatest features and affordances to these systems historically.
-
Memorization is not about a language, rather about a feeling you have about information. In other words, how deep it resonates with your life. In this sense, I was also exploring the idea that having an Antinet Zettelkasten is almost like having a "diary", not for your personal feelings or emotions, rather for exploring the way in which your entire mind and heart work together over the years in which we discover the world. For me, exploring subjects and studying is an internal discovery.
in reply to los2pollos<br /> https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/y5un81/comment/it4jy3c/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
You're not the only one to think of a card index as diary. Roland Barthes practiced this as well. His biographer Tiphaine Samoyault came to call it his fichierjournal.
-
Bilingual Antinet?
There's research to support that thinking in a non-native language has benefits for your thought processes and decision making. E.g.: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/thinking-foreign-language-helps-economic-decision-making
-
-
-
I am less worried about natural disaster than my own negligence. I take the cards with me too much. I am not stationary in my office and so to use the cards I am taking them. I am afraid they will lost or destroyed. I have started to scan into apple notes. I will see how that goes. It is easy and might be a great overall solution.
episcopal-orthodox reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/y77414/comment/isyqc7b/
As long as you're not using flimsy, standard paper for your slips like Luhmann (they deteriorate too rapidly with repeated use), you can frame your carrying them around more positively by thinking that use over time creates a lovely patina to your words and ideas. The value of this far outweighs the fear of loss, at least for me. And if you're still concerned, there's always the option that you could use ars memoria to memorize all of your cards and meditate on them combinatorially using Llullan wheels the way Raymond Llull originally did. 🛞🗃️🚀🤩
-
Worried about paper cards being lost or destroyed .t3_y77414._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I am loving using paper index cards. I am, however, worried that something could happen to the cards and I could lose years of work. I did not have this work when my notes were all online. are there any apps that you are using to make a digital copy of the notes? Ideally, I would love to have a digital mirror, but I am not willing to do 2x the work.
u/LBHO https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/y77414/worried_about_paper_cards_being_lost_or_destroyed/
As a firm believer in the programming principle of DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself), I can appreciate the desire not to do the work twice.
Note card loss and destruction is definitely a thing folks have worried about. The easiest thing may be to spend a minute or two every day and make quick photo back ups of your cards as you make them. Then if things are lost, you'll have a back up from which you can likely find OCR (optical character recognition) software to pull your notes from to recreate them if necessary. I've outlined some details I've used in the past. Incidentally, opening a photo in Google Docs will automatically do a pretty reasonable OCR on it.
I know some have written about bringing old notes into their (new) zettelkasten practice, and the general advice here has been to only pull in new things as needed or as heavily interested to ease the cognitive load of thinking you need to do everything at once. If you did lose everything and had to restore from back up, I suspect this would probably be the best advice for proceeding as well.
Historically many have worried about loss, but the only actual example of loss I've run across is that of Hans Blumenberg whose zettelkasten from the early 1940s was lost during the war, but he continued apace in another dating from 1947 accumulating over 30,000 cards at the rate of about 1.5 per day over 50 some odd years.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Does anyone else work in project-based systems instead? .t3_y2pzuu._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/y2pzuu/does_anyone_else_work_in_projectbased_systems/
Historically, many had zettelkasten which were commonplace books kept on note cards, usually categorized by subject (read: "folders" or "tags"), so you're not far from that original tradition.
Similar to your work pattern, you may find the idea of a "Pile of Index Cards" (PoIC) interesting. See https://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-efficiently-organizes-ta-1599093089 and https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122 (read the descriptions of the photos for more details; there was also a related, but now defunct wiki, which you can find copies of on Archive.org with more detail). This pattern was often seen implemented in the TiddlyWiki space, but can now be implemented in many note taking apps that have to do functionality along with search and tags. Similarly you may find those under Tiago Forte's banner "Building a Second Brain" to be closer to your project-based/productivity framing if you need additional examples or like-minded community. You may find that some of Nick Milo's Linking Your Thinking (LYT) is in this productivity spectrum as well. (Caveat emptor: these last two are selling products/services, but there's a lot of their material freely available online.)
Luhmann changed the internal structure of his particular zettelkasten that created a new variation on the older traditions. It is this Luhmann-based tradition that many in r/Zettelkasten follow. Since many who used the prior (commonplace-based) tradition were also highly productive, attributing output to a particular practice is wrongly placed. Each user approaches these traditions idiosyncratically to get them to work for themselves, so ignore naysayers and those with purist tendencies, particularly when they're new to these practices or aren't aware of their richer history. As the sub-reddit rules indicate: "There is no [universal or orthodox] 'right' way", but you'll find a way that is right for you.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/raphaelmustermann9 hours agoSeparate private information from the outline of academic disciplines? .t3_xi63kb._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } How does Luhmann deal with private Zettels? Does he store them in a separate category like, 2000 private. Or does he work them out under is topics in the main box.I can´ find informations about that. Anyway, you´re not Luhmann. But any suggestions on how to deal with informations that are private, like Health, Finances ... does not feel right to store them under acadmic disziplines. But maybe it´s right and just a feeling which come´ out how we "normaly" store information.
I would echo Bob's sentiment here and would recommend you keep that material like this in a separate section or box all together.
If it helps to have an example, in 2006, Hawk Sugano showed off a version of a method you may be considering which broadly went under the title of Pile of Index Cards (or PoIC) which combined zettelkasten and productivity systems (in his case getting things done or GTD). I don't think he got much (any?!) useful affordances out of mixing the two. In fact, from what I can see looking at later iterations of his work and how he used it, it almost seems like he spent more time and energy later attempting to separate and rearrange them to get use out of the knowledge portions as distinct from the productivity portions.
I've generally seen people mixing these ideas in the digital space usually to their detriment as well—a practice I call zettelkasten overreach.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Check out the Zettelkasten (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten). It may be similar to what you're thinking of. I use a digital one (Foam), and it's absolutely awesome. It's totally turned how I do my work for school on its head.
reply to https://www.reddit.com/user/kf6gpe/
Thanks. Having edited large parts of that page, and particularly the history pieces, I'm aware of it. It's also why I'm asking for actual examples of practices and personal histories, especially since many in this particular forum appear to be using traditional notebook/journal forms. :)
Did you come to ZK or commonplacing first? How did you hear about it/them? Is your practice like the traditional commonplacing framing, closer to Luhmann's/that suggested by zettelkasten.de/Ahrens, or a hybrid of the two approaches?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Underlining Keyterms and Index Bloat .t3_y1akec._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }
Hello u/sscheper,
Let me start by thanking you for introducing me to Zettelkasten. I have been writing notes for a week now and it's great that I'm able to retain more info and relate pieces of knowledge better through this method.
I recently came to notice that there is redundancy in my index entries.
I have two entries for Number Line. I have two branches in my Math category that deals with arithmetic, and so far I have "Addition" and "Subtraction". In those two branches I talk about visualizing ways of doing that, and both of those make use of and underline the term Number Line. So now the two entries in my index are "Number Line (Under Addition)" and "Number Line (Under Subtraction)". In those notes I elaborate how exactly each operation is done on a number line and the insights that can be derived from it. If this continues, I will have Number Line entries for "Multiplication" and "Division". I will also have to point to these entries if I want to link a main note for "Number Line".
Is this alright? Am I underlining appropriately? When do I not underline keyterms? I know that I do these to increase my chances of relating to those notes when I get to reach the concept of Number Lines as I go through the index but I feel like I'm overdoing it, and it's probably bloating it.
I get "Communication (under Info. Theory): '4212/1'" in the beginning because that is one aspect of Communication itself. But for something like the number line, it's very closely associated with arithmetic operations, and maybe I need to rethink how I populate my index.
Presuming, since you're here, that you're creating a more Luhmann-esque inspired zettelkasten as opposed to the commonplace book (and usually more heavily indexed) inspired version, here are some things to think about:<br /> - Aren't your various versions of number line card behind each other or at least very near each other within your system to begin with? (And if not, why not?) If they are, then you can get away with indexing only one and know that the others will automatically be nearby in the tree. <br /> - Rather than indexing each, why not cross-index the cards themselves (if they happen to be far away from each other) so that the link to Number Line (Subtraction) appears on Number Line (Addition) and vice-versa? As long as you can find one, you'll be able to find them all, if necessary.
If you look at Luhmann's online example index, you'll see that each index term only has one or two cross references, in part because future/new ideas close to the first one will naturally be installed close to the first instance. You won't find thousands of index entries in his system for things like "sociology" or "systems theory" because there would be so many that the index term would be useless. Instead, over time, he built huge blocks of cards on these topics and was thus able to focus more on the narrow/niche topics, which is usually where you're going to be doing most of your direct (and interesting) work.
Your case sounds, and I see it with many, is that your thinking process is going from the bottom up, but that you're attempting to wedge it into a top down process and create an artificial hierarchy based on it. Resist this urge. Approaching things after-the-fact, we might place information theory as a sub-category of mathematics with overlaps in physics, engineering, computer science, and even the humanities in areas like sociology, psychology, and anthropology, but where you put your work on it may depend on your approach. If you're a physicist, you'll center it within your physics work and then branch out from there. You'd then have some of the psychology related parts of information theory and communications branching off of your physics work, but who cares if it's there and not in a dramatically separate section with the top level labeled humanities? It's all interdisciplinary anyway, so don't worry and place things closest in your system to where you think they fit for you and your work. If you had five different people studying information theory who were respectively a physicist, a mathematician, a computer scientist, an engineer, and an anthropologist, they could ostensibly have all the same material on their cards, but the branching structures and locations of them all would be dramatically different and unique, if nothing else based on the time ordered way in which they came across all the distinct pieces. This is fine. You're building this for yourself, not for a mass public that will be using the Dewey Decimal System to track it all down—researchers and librarians can do that on behalf of your estate. (Of course, if you're a musician, it bears noting that you'd be totally fine building your information theory section within the area of "bands" as a subsection on "The Bandwagon". 😁)
If you overthink things and attempt to keep them too separate in their own prefigured categorical bins, you might, for example, have "chocolate" filed historically under the Olmec and might have "peanut butter" filed with Marcellus Gilmore Edson under chemistry or pharmacy. If you're a professional pastry chef this could be devastating as it will be much harder for the true "foodie" in your zettelkasten to creatively and more serendipitously link the two together to make peanut butter cups, something which may have otherwise fallen out much more quickly and easily if you'd taken a multi-disciplinary (bottom up) and certainly more natural approach to begin with. (Apologies for the length and potential overreach on your context here, but my two line response expanded because of other lines of thought I've been working on, and it was just easier for me to continue on writing while I had the "muse". Rather than edit it back down, I'll leave it as it may be of potential use to others coming with no context at all. In other words, consider most of this response a selfish one for me and my own slip box than as responsive to the OP.)
Tags
- Niklas Luhmann's index
- reply
- Dewey Decimal System
- The Bandwagon
- multi-disciplinary research
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- examples
- information theory
- Universal Decimal Classification
- Claude Shannon
- zettelkasten
- indices
- bottom-up vs. top-down
- commonplace books vs. zettelkasten
- hierarchies
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'd really love to see and hear more about people incorporating dreams, visions, non-ordinary experiences and the like in their zettelkasten.
taurusnoises https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xyhpq4/2015_exhibition_of_roland_barthes_zettelkasten/
Me too. This is one of the reasons I'm not the biggest fan of the "fleeting note" framing of Ahrens, as it's more likely to marginalize these sorts of smaller daily ideas and discourage people from placing some of these types of things into their zettelkasten as potentially "unimportant". I feel like from what I see and hear anecdotally his framing encourages too many to only put in things which are significant, deep, academic, or which have a certain sense of gravitas.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Apply zettelkasten at school?
Posted by u/ivanZalevskiy https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/y0k076/apply_zettelkasten_at_school/
From a historical perspective, education is broadly the reason zettelkasten principles were created and evolved. In the late 1400s and early 1500s Agricola, Erasmus, and Melanchthon wrote handbooks for students and teachers to spread these methods specifically for learning and building knowledge. Here's a reasonable example of someone using them for their Ph.D. work, and I suspect they, like many, wish they'd started sooner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiol2oJAh6.
I've remarked in the past that zettelkasten methods very closely mimic the various levels of Bloom's Taxonomy, which outlines broadly how people learn and grow: https://hypothes.is/a/c8jzkLHgEeyUhBs5w48csg
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/Kshkn16 hours agoRate my idea for a new product
One might suggest that the freedom, flexibility, and customization of these systems is actually an unuseful time suck for many users which only encourages shiny object syndrome. From a design perspective, try starting out building a system that works for you before beginning on design for others. Research and looking at the user interfaces offered by the competition will helpful as well. Which are the most popular? fun to use? Why? What actual affordances do those interfaces and functionalities allow? are they truly productive?
Possibly more productive, what sorts of standards can you leverage to make people's pre-existing notes more useful? Can you take pre-existing stores of .txt or .md files and provide different views or perspectives on them? This will allow people to pick and choose which applications might work with their stores of data to provide different views or perspectives on them. Why reinvent a text editor or tools like Logseq or Obsidian when you can leverage the local stores of data to provide the sorts of services you're not seeing in the broader space? For example, on the "social media" side, there are existing solutions for taking your locally stored notes, putting them into the cloud and displaying them on the web, but the various steps are highly technical and require a relatively large amount of work and admin tax to maintain. A service that allows one to point at their local store of data and automatically host it on a website and keep it synced would be a major boon for the non-technical user.
Separately, Matuschak did not invent evergreen notes. The first clear cut instantiation I've seen in the literature is from Konrad Gessner in 1548, and honestly even his idea really stems from a longstanding tradition of working with commonplace sententiae preceding his work. (see https://hypothes.is/a/uEboYlOwEeykkotYs594LA) Matuschak simply applied the definition/idea of "evergreen" (meaning easily reusable) articles or content from journalism to describe his notes which could be reused in various contexts. (Example: Why rewrite an article on how to decorate and entertain for the holidays, when you can reuse the same article you've been publishing for years, perhaps along with some updated photos?) "Atomic" notes is another variation on this same theme, but is one which underlies the ability to re-use notes in combination with one or more other notes to generate new ideas.
-
-
johannadaniel.fr johannadaniel.fr
-
Pardon my use of English. I'm curious if you ultimately found the best research method for yourself? Did you publish it? Being interested in reading practices and annotation myself I can't wait to read your thesis, though it may take some time given the dreadful state of my French capabilities.
Thank you for your reflection on Barthes' particular method (and especially the photos)! If you're interested to dig further I found a few references that expand significantly on Barthes' fichier boîte method in the following short journal articles: - Hollier, Denis. “Notes (On the Index Card).” October, vol. 112, no. Spring, 2005, pp. 35–44. - Wilken, Rowan. “The Card Index as Creativity Machine.” Culture Machine, vol. 11, 2010, pp. 7–30.
Having delved into it reasonably, it stems from the commonplace book tradition which moved to slips of paper (index cards) in the late 1500s with Konrad Gessner. Ernst Bernheim (German) and shortly after Charles Langlois & Charles Seignobos (French) wrote about some of their research methods in popular textbooks about historical method in the late 1800s. Paul Chavigny also wrote a manual in French in the early 1920s. One of the best versions of this method I've seen is by Umberto Eco (How to Write a Thesis (1977, 2015) though there are also German and English editions of Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes (2017) which describes a similar zettelkasten method used by prolific German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, about whom there is a significant archive: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/. It would be helpful to have more written methods like these, but apparently much of these traditions is handed down orally. Having glanced at some of your other methods posts, it almost looks like you've recast the general tradition using colorful Post-It Notes.
If you did finally outline your ultimate method, I'd love to read it.
Thanks again!
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Anyone doing NaNoWriMo!?
I posted a follow up question in the NaNoWriMo forum, which may get some additional traction: https://forums.nanowrimo.org/t/linking-up-zettelkasten-or-card-index-method-writers/433719
I'm more of a "pantser" (vs planner) when it comes to NaNoWriMo, but if you think about it, zettelkasten provides a solid structure that builds your plan for you as you go.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/lsumnler1 year agoHow is a commonplace book different than a zettelkasten? .t3_pguxq7._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I get that physically the commonplace book is in a notebook whether physical or digitized and zettelkasten is in index cards whether physical or digitized but don't they server the same purpose.
Broadly the zettelkasten tradition grew out of commonplacing in the 1500s, in part, because it was easier to arrange and re-arrange one's thoughts on cards for potential reuse in outlining and writing. Most zettelkasten are just index card-based forms of commonplaces, though some following Niklas Luhmann's model have a higher level of internal links, connections, and structure.
I wrote a bit about some of these traditions (especially online ones) a while back at: https://boffosocko.com/2021/07/03/differentiating-online-variations-of-the-commonplace-book-digital-gardens-wikis-zettlekasten-waste-books-florilegia-and-second-brains/
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
Will October 2 edited October 2 Flag Thank you for your thoughtful review of C. Wright Mills' "On Intellectual Craftsmanship." You are correct in saying, "he talks more about the thinking, outlining, and writing process rather than the mechanical portion of how he takes notes or what he uses, he's extending significantly on ideas and methods..." Mills is interested in conveying the how of thinking and less so the mechanics. Mills is agreeably tool agnostic and focuses more on the process. There was an earlier discussion on the topic you might be interested in. Don't let the title of the thread fool you. What are the Implications of the new note-taking app wave? — Zettelkasten Forum Here are the 20 zettel I created processing "On Intellectual Craftsmanship." They are not in an elegant display form like yours, but I want to share them. It is in a folder archive that can be opened and read in any text editor and navigated when opened in The Archive. On Intellectual Craftsmanship
Thanks for the pointer @Will and for sharing your notes! We definitely need better and easier ways of sharing notes like this.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
level 1coluseum · 14 hr. agoInteresting to be sure! But feel it misses the whole point , in my opinion, of building your own ….if you just buy someone’s else’s then where are your original thoughts and ideas…..those will be in built in your own zettlekasten….sort of the whole point in my eyes? I think one of the sticking points with zettlekasten is the amount of time and effort it can take and so people will try and short circuit the process . The point to me is the process of building your own original zettlekasten is the whole point. Hope I am making sense 😗
I get the gist of what you're saying and I prefer putting things into my own collection in my own words as well. However, there is a history of folks putting other materials into their systems like this. Johannes Heyde, in particular, mentioned that German publishers used to mail promo details for forthcoming books on A6 size postcards that one might place directly into their bibliographic index without needing to recopy.
I know I've suggested to u/sscheper before that he ought to release his forthcoming book in index card format, if only as an interesting means of showing an example of what a zettelkasten looks like and how it might work.
-
level 1tristanjuricek · 4 hr. agoI’m not sure I see these products as anything more than a way for middle management to put some structure behind meetings, presentations, etc in a novel format. I’m not really sure this is what I’d consider a zettlecasten because there’s really no “net” here; no linking of information between cards. Just some different exercises.If you actually look at some of the cards, they read more like little cues to drive various processes forward: https://pipdecks.com/products/workshop-tactics?variant=39770920321113I’m pretty sure if you had 10 other people read those books and analyze them, they’d come up with 10 different observations on these topics of team management, presentation building, etc.
Historically the vast majority of zettelkasten didn't have the sort of structure and design of Luhmann's, though with indexing they certainly create a network of notes and excerpts. These examples are just subsets or excerpts of someone's reading of these books and surely anyone else reading any book is going to have a unique set of notes on them. These sets were specifically honed and curated for a particular purpose.
The interesting pattern here is that someone is selling a subset of their work/notes as a set of cards rather than as a book. Doing this allows different sorts of reading and uses than a "traditional" book would.
I'm curious what other sort of experimental things people might come up with? The "novel" Cain's Jawbone, for example, could be considered a "Zettelkasten mystery" or "Zettelkasten puzzle". There's also the subset of cards from Roland Barthes' fichier boîte (French for zettelkasten), which was published posthumously as Mourning Diary.
-
- Sep 2022
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/sscheper4 hours agoHelp Me Pick the Antinet Zettelkasten Book Cover Design! :)
I agree with many that the black and red are overwhelming on many and make the book a bit less approachable. Warm tones and rich wooden boxes would be more welcome. The 8.5x11" filing cabinets just won't fly. I did like some with the drawer frames/pulls, but put a more generic idea in the frame (perhaps "Ideas"?). From the batch so far, some of my favorites are #64 TopHills, #21 & #22 BigPoints, #13, 14 D'Estudio. Unless that pull quote is from Luhmann or maybe Eco or someone internationally famous, save it for the rear cover or maybe one of the inside flaps. There's an interesting and approachable stock photo I've been sitting on that might work for your cover: Brain and ZK via https://www.theispot.com/stock/webb. Should be reasonably licensable and doesn't have a heavy history of use on the web or elsewhere.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/jackbaty4 hours agoCard sizes .t3_xib133._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I've been on-again/off-again with paper for PKM, but one thing remains consistent each time: I don't enjoy using 4x6 index cards. I much prefer 3x5-inch cards. I realize that it's irrational, but there it is.My question is if I dive into building an antinet, will I regret using 3x5 cards? I already have hundreds of them. I have dividers, holders, and storage boxes for them. I just prefer how they _feel_, as weird as that sounds.I'd like to hear if people are using 3x5 cards successfully or if you've come to regret it.
While it may be slightly more difficult to find larger metal/wood cases for the 4x6 or 5x8 cards, it's a minor nuisance and anyone who wants them will eventually find the right thing for them. Beyond this, choose the card size that feels right to you.
If you don't have an idea of what you need or like, try things out for 10-20 cards and see how it works for you, your handwriting size, and general needs. People have been using 3x5, 4x6, and even larger for hundreds of years without complaining about any major issues. If Carl Linnaeus managed to be okay with 3x5, which he hand cut by the way, I suspect you'll manage too.
Of course I won't mention to the Americans the cleverness of the A6, A5, A4 paper standards which allows you to fold the larger sizes in half to get the exact next smaller size down. Then you might get the benefit of the smaller size as well as the larger which could be folded into your collection of smaller cards, you just have to watch out for accidentally wrapping ("taco-ing") a smaller card inside of a larger one and losing it. I suppose you could hand cut your own 5" x 6" larger cards to do this if you found that you occasionally needed them.
For the pocketbook conscious, 3x5 does have the benefit of lower cost as well as many more options and flexibility than larger sizes.
At least commercial card sizes are now largely standardized, so you don't have deal with changing sizes the way Roland Barthes did over his lifetime.
My personal experience and a long history of so many manuals on the topic saying "cards of the same size" indicates that you assuredly won't have fun mixing different sized slips together. I personally use 3x5" cards in a waste book sense, but my main/permanent collection is in 4x6" format. Sometimes I think I should have done 3 x 5, but it's more like jealousy than regret, particularly when it comes to the potential of a restored fine furniture card catalog. But then again...
-
-
twitter.com twitter.comTwitter1
-
@BenjaminVanDyneReplying to @ChrisAldrichI wish I had a good answer! The book I use when I teach is Joseph Harris’s “rewriting” which is technically a writing book but teaches well as a book about how to read in a writerly way.
Thanks for this! I like the framing and general concept of the book.
It seems like its a good follow on to Dan Allosso's OER text How to Make Notes and Write https://minnstate.pressbooks.pub/write/ or Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes https://amzn.to/3DwJVMz which includes some useful psychology and mental health perspective.
Other similar examples are Umberto Eco's How to Write a Thesis (MIT, 2015) or Gerald Weinberg's The Fieldstone Method https://amzn.to/3DCf6GA These may be some of what we're all missing.
I'm reminded of Mark Robertson's (@calhistorian) discussion of modeling his note taking practice and output in his classroom using Roam Research. https://hyp.is/QuB5NDa0Ee28hUP7ExvFuw/thatsthenorm.com/mark-robertson-history-socratic-dialogue/ Perhaps we need more of this?
Early examples of this sort of note taking can also be seen in the religious studies space with Melanchthon's handbook on commonplaces or Jonathan Edwards' Miscellanies, though missing are the process from notes to writings. https://www.logos.com/grow/jonathan-edwards-organizational-genius/
Other examples of these practices in the wild include @andy_matuschak's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 and TheNonPoet's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sdp0jo2Fe4 Though it may be better for students to see this in areas in which they're interested.
Hypothes.is as a potential means of modeling and allowing students to directly "see" this sort of work as it progresses using public/semi-public annotations may be helpful. Then one can separately model re-arranging them and writing a paper. https://web.hypothes.is/
Reply to: https://twitter.com/BenjaminVanDyne/status/1571171086171095042
-
-
mleddy.blogspot.com mleddy.blogspot.com
-
I've been spelunking through your posts from roughly the decade from 2005 onward which reference your interest in index cards. Thanks for unearthing and writing about all the great index card material from that time period. Have you kept up with your practices?
I noticed that at least one of your posts had a response by MK (Manfred Kuehn, maintainer of the now defunct Taking Note blog (2007-2018). Was it something you read at the time or kept up with?
Have you been watching the productivity or personal knowledge management space since roughly 2017 where the idea of the Zettelkasten (slip box or card index) has taken off (eg. https://zettelkasten.de/, Sonke Ahren's book How to Take Smart Notes, Obsidian.md, Roam Research, etc.?) I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on them or even what your practice has meant over time.
Thanks again.
Cheers! -CJA
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/piloteris16 hours agoCreative output examples .t3_xdrb0k._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I am curious about examples, if any, of how an anti net can be useful for creative or artistic output, as opposed to more strictly intellectual articles, writing, etc. Does anyone here use an antinet as input for the “creative well” ? I’d love examples of the types of cards, etc
They may not necessarily specifically include Luhmann-esque linking, numbering, and indexing, but some broad interesting examples within the tradition include: Comedians: (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten for references/articles) - Phyllis Diller - Joan Rivers - Bob Hope - George Carlin
Musicians: - Eminem https://boffosocko.com/2021/08/10/55794555/ - Taylor Swift: https://hypothes.is/a/SdYxONsREeyuDQOG4K8D_Q
Dance: - Twyla Tharpe https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SEOWBG/ (Chapter 6)
Art/Visual - Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/archive/archive-collections/verkn%C3%BCpfungszwang-exhibition/mnemosyne-materials
Creative writing (as opposed to academic): - Vladimir Nabokov https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html - Jean Paul - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00168890.2018.1479240 - https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/EJC34721 (German) - Michael Ende https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Endes-Zettelkasten-Skizzen-Notizen/dp/352271380X
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
Andy 10:31AM Flag Thanks for sharing all this. In a Twitter response, @taurusnoises said: "we are all participating in an evolving dynamic history of zettelkasten methods (plural)". I imagine the plurality of methods is even more diverse than indicated by @chrisaldrich, who seems to be keen to trace everything through a single historical tradition back to commonplace books. But if you consider that every scholar who ever worked must have had some kind of note-taking method, and that many of them probably used paper slips or cards, and that they may have invented methods relatively independently and tailored those methods to diverse needs, then we are looking at a much more interesting plurality of methods indeed.
Andy, I take that much broader view you're describing. I definitely wouldn't say I'm keen to trace things through one (or even more) historical traditions, and to be sure there have been very many. I'm curious about a broad variety of traditions and variations on them; giving broad categorization to them can be helpful. I study both the written instructions through time, but also look at specific examples people have left behind of how they actually practiced those instructions. The vast majority of people are not likely to invent and evolve a practice alone, but are more likely likely to imitate the broad instructions read from a manual or taught by teachers and then pick and choose what they feel works for them and their particular needs. It's ultimately here that general laziness is likely to fall down to a least common denominator.
Between the 8th and 13th Centuries florilegium flouished, likely passed from user to user through a religious network, primarily facilitated by the Catholic Church and mendicant orders of the time period. In the late 1400s to 1500s, there were incredibly popular handbooks outlining the commonplace book by Erasmus, Agricola, and Melancthon that influenced generations of both teachers and students to come. These traditions ebbed and flowed over time and bent to the technologies of their times (index cards, card catalogs, carbon copy paper, computers, internet, desktop/mobile/browser applications, and others.) Naturally now we see a new crop of writers and "influencers" like Kuehn, Ahrens, Allosso, Holiday, Forte, Milo, and even zettelkasten.de prescribing methods which are variously followed (or not), understood, misunderstood, modified, and changed by readers looking for something they can easily follow, maintain, and which hopefully has both short term and long term value to them.
Everyone is taking what they want from what they read on these techniques, but often they're not presented with the broadest array of methods or told what the benefits and affordances of each of the methods may be. Most manuals on these topics are pretty prescriptive and few offer or suggest flexibility. If you read Tiago Forte but don't need a system for work or project-based productivity but rather need a more Luhmann-like system for academic writing, you'll have missed something or will only have a tool that gets you part of what you may have needed. Similarly if you don't need the affordances of a Luhmannesque system, but you've only read Ahrens, you might not find the value of simplified but similar systems and may get lost in terminology you don't understand or may not use. The worst sin, in my opinion, is when these writers offer their advice, based only on their own experiences which are contingent on their own work processes, and say this is "the way" or I've developed "this method" over the past decade of grueling, hard-fought experience and it's the "secret" to the "magic of note taking". These ideas have a long and deep history with lots of exploration and (usually very little) innovation, but an average person isn't able to take advantage of this because they're only seeing a tiny slice of these broader practices. They're being given a hammer instead of a whole toolbox of useful tools from which they might choose. Almost none are asking the user "What is the problem you're trying to solve?" and then making suggestions about what may or may not have worked for similar problems in the past as a means of arriving at a solution. More often they're being thrown in the deep end and covered in four letter acronyms, jargon, and theory which ultimately have no value to them. In other cases they're being sold on the magic of productivity and creativity while the work involved is downplayed and they don't get far enough into the work to see any of the promised productivity and creativity.
-
-
twitter.com twitter.com
-
Jeff Miller@jmeowmeowReading the lengthy, motivational introduction of Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes (a zettelkasten method primer) reminds me directly of Gerald Weinberg's Fieldstone Method of writing.
reply to: https://twitter.com/jmeowmeow/status/1568736485171666946
I've only seen a few people notice the similarities between zettelkasten and fieldstones. Among them I don't think any have noted that Luhmann and Weinberg were both systems theorists.
-
-
forum.zettelkasten.de forum.zettelkasten.de
-
Jeremy August 31 Flag I read the book based on your enthusiasm, Chris, and while I learned something from the chapters on making notes, I was very disappointed in the second half, on writing. He is so wrong on the passive I find it hard to believe he ever actually researched it. But no matter, he is in good company on that. I just hope not too many people think they will truly understand the passive after reading this book.
Repy to https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/16382/#Comment_16382
@Jeremy I certainly take your point on that score. I had read through a previous edition of just the writing portion which was originally written by S.J. Allosso from a prior generation, so I didn't read through all of the second half of this edition of the book. I haven't compared them, so I'm not sure how much revision, if any, has happened in the writing advice part of the text. I was definitely more interested in his take on note making in the first half.
-
- Aug 2022
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Title for My Book
It's tough to do your own marketing and naming is hard. If you have an obscure short title, be sure to have a sharply defined subtitle, both for definition but to hit the keywords you'll want for discovery and search (SEO) purposes. Though be careful with keyword stuffing, if for no other reason than that Luhmann had a particularly sparse index.
Zettelkasten doesn't have much value for for native search (yet). Who besides a student that doesn't really want to buy it searches for a book on note taking?! Creativity, Productivity, and Writing are probably most of your potential market, so look at books in those areas for words to borrow (aka steal flagrantly). Other less common keywords to consider or throw into your description of the book, though not the title: research, research methods, literature review, thesis writing, Ph.D., etc.
Perhaps you've limited the question Scott. Instead ask everyone: What title would you want to see on such a book that would make you want to buy and read it? Everyone should brainstorm for 3 minutes and write down a few potential titles.
I'll start:
Antinet Method: Thought Development for Creativity and Productive Writing
Antinet Zettelkasten: A Modern Approach to Thought Development
Antinet: The Technique of Unreasonably Productive Intellectual Work (and Fun) [h/t F. Kuntze]
Mix and match away...
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Card Storage
reply on: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wzblc9/card_storage/
The smaller 1 to 3 drawer vintage metal card files are readily available on eBay usually between $15 and $40. This isn't bad given how expensive new files can run. Many were made with small fittings that allow them to be stackable. Usually these are sturdy, but light enough for relatively inexpensive shipping.
The larger multi drawer full cabinets can run a couple hundred, but their bigger issue is that they're so large and heavy that they can be in the range of $800 or more to ship anywhere. If you want something like this, your best bet is to try to find something local that you can drive to and pick up locally. If you're into 4x6" cards, double check with the seller to make sure that they'll fit. Often even the somewhat larger cabinets are a 1/4" too short for 4x6 cards, much less the slightly taller tabbed cards (A-Z) you might use for separating sections. I've refinished some old steel furniture like this in the past and it's not easy or cheap, but if someone is desperate...
https://www.ebay.com/b/Index-Card-File-Cabinet-In-Office-Filing-Cabinets/3299/bn_7022123911
Those who might want something new might also look into Bisley which makes some reasonably nice card index files with and without locks, though you might have to order them directly through their New York Offices. https://www.bisley.sk/userfiles/bisley/product/e84b22bf2d7156d048ad076ff74f895d.pdf
-
-
-
Posted byu/bdhfmswwd13 hours ago2 note systems? Zettelkasten vs reference notes
This might help:<br /> Zettelkasten Overreach https://boffosocko.com/2022/02/05/zettelkasten-overreach/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Digitizing and compressing notes - Question
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wv9hvq/digitizing_and_compressing_notes_question/
I've got a process I still use, though less frequently, that does both photos as well as optical character recognition (OCR) to digitize the words: https://boffosocko.com/2021/12/20/handwriting-my-website-with-a-digital-amanuensis/ The comments have some rich commentary with related ideas as well.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Posted byu/hog8541ss2 days agoUsing Notebooks With Your Antinet. .t3_wvn38a._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } How are you guys using notebooks along with your Antinet? What uses do you still find feasible for using them?
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wvn38a/using_notebooks_with_your_antinet/
Ross Ashby, a systems theorist like Luhmann, had a sophisticated hybrid notebook/index card system that some here might find an interesting and usable model, particularly if they're enamored of the notebook format. It's been digitized and is online for perusal: http://www.rossashby.info/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
fragments_shored · 1 hr. agoI don't have a specific edition to offer, but you asked "why don't publishers publish more books with scholar's margins?" and the answer is because it's expensive. More white space means more paper and binding material, longer time for the print run, more customization on the press, heavier and therefore more costly to ship. Book publishing operates on a very thin margin so it's not cost-effective, especially when most consumers don't care about the extra margin space and/or aren't willing to absorb the costs in the purchase price.What can consumers do to encourage publishers to change these practices? Be willing to spend the $80 for the scholar's margins instead of expecting to pay the normal $5 to $10.
The razor thin margins argument only works from the bookseller's perspective, and this is primarily due to excessive competition from Amazon. Beyond this, sure the product would be slightly more expensive, but (pun intended) only marginally so. Revenue margins on classics written before 1924 (which most of this class of books is) are also significantly higher because they're public domain and the company isn't paying royalties on them. Additionally, at scale, a company with a series like Penguin Classics has a pretty solid understanding of print runs and demand to more easily allow them to innovate like this. Take the Penguin Classics copy of Thucydides' The History of the Peloponnesian War which lists for $20 in paperback and sells for $12.00 on Amazon. (You'll notice that Amazon is essentially giving away their entire discount (aka margin, usually a 40% discount on the list price) here. At a 10,000 copy print run, the cost of the print/paper/print run is in the $2.00 per copy range or lower. Amazon is taking a razor margin for the sale, but Penguin is pocketing almost $10 in pure profit as I'm sure their marketing budget is very near zero here.<br /> They could easily still do very close to this with either larger book margins or even the same text printed on 6 x 9" instead of 5 x 8.25 (or even smaller pulp sizes) so they don't have to reset the entire book for pennies on the dollar at the publisher level. Given that the majority of this market is targeted at students, who could directly use these affordances (and often do but in more cramped space) for the small mark up (particularly in comparison to the $80 copies, which still don't fit the bill, when they exist), I would attribute their non-existence to laziness and lack of imagination on the part of the publishers. Perhaps a smaller publishers like Dover might take on such a project as a means of cheaply, but profitably improving their position in the market? Those making the argument for not marking up these sorts of copies to keep the book pristine for the next reader are missing the point. I also suspect that they haven't recently purchased these sorts of used copies that often go for under $4 on the used market. Even when treated well and not heavily annotated by the first reader, these books are not in good shape and really aren't designed to be read by more than three people. It's also the reason that most libraries don't purchase them. I might buy their argument for the more expensive hardcover collector's market, but not for the pulp mass market books which hold almost no value on the secondary market. Additionally the secondary market for this class of books doesn't usually reflect large value differences between heavily annotated/highlighted texts and those that aren't. Whether they mark them up or not, the first owner is responsible for the largest proportion of depreciated value. Tangentially, I find myself lamenting the cultural practices of prior generations who valued sharing annotated copies of texts with friends and lovers as tokens of their friendship and love. I'm guessing those who vitiate against annotation have never known these practices existed.
-
-
occidental.substack.com occidental.substack.com
-
Louis Menand had an interesting article on great books courses recently: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/20/whats-so-great-about-great-books-courses-roosevelt-montas-rescuing-socrates.
If you look closely at those photos of Adler, you'll notice that one is in context and the other is the same image of him cut and pasted onto a set of books.
Those who are into this broader topic may also appreciate Alex Beam's book "A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books". A while back I remember going though Lawrence Principe's Great Courses lecture series on the History of Science to 1700 which I suspect might help contextualize a tour through the great courses.
I'm curious if you're adding any other books that Adler et al left off their list?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
ManuelRodriguez331 · 8 hr. agotaurusnoises wrote on Aug 20, 2022: Technik des Wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens by Johannes Erich HeydeThe idea of grouping similar notes together with the help of index cards was mainstream knowledge in the 1920'er. Melvil Dewey has invented the decimal classification in 1876 and it was applied to libraries and personal note taking as well.quote: “because for every note there is a systematically related one in the immediate vicinity. [...] A good, scholarly book can grow out of the mere collection of notes — not an ingenious one, indeed" [1]The single cause why it wasn't applied more frequently was because of the limitation of the printing press. In the year 1900 only 100 scholarly journals were available in the world. There was no need to write more manuscripts and teach the art of Scientific Writing to a larger audience.[1] Kuntze, Friedrich: Die Technik der geistigen Arbeit, 1922
Index card systems were insanely popular in the early 1900's for note taking and uses of all other sorts (business administration, libraries, etc.). The note taking tradition of the slip box goes back even further in intellectual history with precedents including miscellanies, commonplace books, and florilegia. Konrad Gessner may have been one of the first to have created a method using slips of rearrangeable paper in the 1500s, but this general pattern of excerpting, note taking and writing goes back to antiquity with the concept of locus communis (Latin) and tópos koinós (Greek).
What some intellectual historians are hoping for evidence of in this particular source is a possible origin of the idea of the increased complexity of direct links from one card to another as well as the juxtaposition of ideas which build on each other. Did Luhmann innovate this himself or was this something he read or was in general practice which he picked up? Most examples of zettelkasten outside of Luhmann's until those in the present, could be described reasonably accurately as commonplace books on index cards usually arranged by topic/subject heading/head word (with or without internal indices).
Perhaps it was Luhmann's familiarity with Aktenzeichen (German administrative "file numbers") prior to his academic work which inspired the dramatically different form his index card-based commonplace took? See: https://hyp.is/CqGhGvchEey6heekrEJ9WA/www.wikiwand.com/de/Aktenzeichen_(Deutschland)
Is it possible that he was influenced by Beatrice Webb's ideas on note taking from Appendix C of My Apprenticeship (1924) which was widely influential in the humanities and particularly sociology and anthropology? Would he have been aware of the work of historians Ernst Bernheim followed by Charles Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos? (see: https://hypothes.is/a/DLP52hqFEe2nrIMdrd4U7g) Did Luhmann's law studies expose him to the work of jurist Johann Jacob Moser (1701-1785) who wrote about his practice in his autobiography and subsequently influenced generations of practitioners including Jean Paul and potentially Hegel?
There are obviously lots of unanswered questions...
-
-
-
level 2hog8541ssOp · 15 hr. agoVery nice! I am a pastor so I am researching Antinet being used along with Bible studies.
If you've not come across the examples, one of the precursors of the slip box tradition was the widespread use of florilegia from the 8th through the 13th centuries and beyond, and they were primarily used for religious study, preaching, and sermon writing.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florilegium
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book
- https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3Aflorilegium
A major example of early use was by Philip Melanchthon, who wrote a very popular handbook on how to keep a commonplace. He's one of the reasons why many Lutheran books are called or have Commonplace in the title.
A fantastic example is that of American preacher Jonathan Edwards which he called by an alternate name of Miscellanies which is now digitized and online, much the way Luhmann's is: http://edwards.yale.edu/research/misc-index Apparently he used to pin slips with notes on his coat jacket!
If I recall, u/TomKluender may have some practical experience in the overlap of theology and zettelkasten.
(Moved this comment to https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wth5t8/bible_study_and_zettelkasten/ as a better location for the conversation)
-
-
-
Lader756 · 1 day agoFascinating. Thanks for sharing.Given this post may attract others interested in Zettelkasten workflow by esteemed authors, I'll take the opportunity to ask: does anyone know of a description of Wittgenstein's?
I've got a few slips/references to Wittgenstein's practice available here: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=Wittgenstein
-
-
boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
-
“500 and 1000 cards” is a long way before perceiving some benefit. Maybe this is necessary because “mine is more textual and less visual than his [Michalsky’s]”. For me, benefit is visible after approx. 40 new notes, dropped on the canvas of my tool, rearranged and connected.
Thanks for this additional piece of Data Matthias! I have a feeling that some of the benefit will also come down to the level of quality of the notes and how well interlinked they may be. Those doing massive dumps of raw, unelaborated, and unlinked data using services like Readwise into their collections will certainly take longer than those who have more refined ideas well linked. My number is presuming something closer to the former while something along the lines of a tenth of that (an order of magnitude) would seem to fall in line with my current working model. It would be nice to have a larger body of data to work with though.
-
I’d be interested in hearing more about the ways oral cultures did their thinking, if you have resources on that handy. Otherwise if you recall your source for that could you pass it on?
Below are some sources to give you a start on orality. I've arranged them in a suggested watching/reading order with some introductory material before more technical sources which will give you jumping off points for further research.
- Modern Memory, Ancient Methods. TEDxMelbourne. Melbourne, Australia, 2018. https://www.ted.com/talks/lynne_kelly_modern_memory_ancient_methods.
- Kelly, Lynne. The Memory Code. Allen & Unwin, 2016.
- Kelly, Lynne. Knowledge and Power in Prehistoric Societies: Orality, Memory and the Transmission of Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107444973.
- Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Taylor & Francis, 2007.
- Parry, Milman, and Adam Parry. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford University Press, 1971.
- Neale, Margo, and Lynne Kelly. Songlines: The Power and Promise. First Knowledges, 1.0. Thames & Hudson, 2020.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'am stressed about relearning every thing about the antinet zettlekasten...
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/wsb1ff/iam_stressed_about_relearning_every_thing_about/
If it helps to frame things in smaller building blocks with progressive enhancement as you progress, this outline may be of help: https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/
Start small and you can evolve and revise as things progress, but you'll at least have a start.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I have it in Kindle version. The book is not bad, but for me there wasn't anything new. Probably because I have already read too much about notetaking and "thinking on paper" -- I have read too much, to be honest, it's becoming an obsession.Also, the book is meant for college students as a handbook on writing. I read only the first 7 chapters on notetaking, the rest of the book was about writing well.Little bit disappointed that the book doesn't have a reference/bibliography section at the end, even though he mentions in the book how important it is to reference your sources.
I too wished for more sources, especially on some of the great quotes.
Admittedly, for those who're already eyeball deep in note taking practice, there may not be much new, but for some who are confused or confounded by some of Ahrens' descriptions and presentation, this cuts through some of the details and gets more quickly to the point.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'm going as an onion johnny this halloween and would like to add some authenticity.
Will you also be traveling and singing with y fari lwyd? 🐴💀
-
-
-
I'm working on my zettelkasten—creating literature notes and permanent notes—for 90 min a day from Monday to Friday but I struggle with my permanent note output. Namely, I manage to complete no more than 3-4 permanent notes per week. By complete I mean notes that are atomic (limited to 1 idea), autonomous (make sense on their own), connected (link to at least 3 other notes), and brief (no more than 300 words).That said, I have two questions:How many permanent notes do you complete per week on average?What are your tips to increase your output?
reply to: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/wjigq6/how_do_you_increase_your_permanent_note_output
In addition to all the other good advice from others, it might be worth taking a look at others' production and output from a historical perspective. Luhmann working at his project full time managed to average about 6 cards a day.1 Roland Barthes who had a similar practice for 37 years averaged about 1.3 cards a day.2 Tiago Forte has self-reported that he makes two notes a day, though obviously his isn't the same sort of practice nor has he done it consistently for as long.3 As you request, it would be useful to have some better data about the output of people with long term, consistent use.
Given even these few, but reasonably solid, data points at just 90 minutes a day, one might think you're maybe too "productive"! I suspect that unless one is an academic working at something consistently nearly full time, most are more likely to be in the 1-3 notes a day average output at best. On a per hour basis Luhmann was close to 0.75 cards while you're at 0.53 cards. Knowing this, perhaps the best advice is to slow down a bit and focus on quality over quantity. This combined with continued consistency will probably serve your enterprise much better in the long run than in focusing on card per hour or card per day productivity.
Internal idea generation/creation productivity will naturally compound over time as your collection grows and you continue to work with it. This may be a better sort of productivity to focus on in the long term compared with short term raw inputs.
Another useful tidbit that some neglect is the level of quality and diversity of the reading (or other) inputs you're using. The better the journal articles and books you're reading, the more value and insight you're likely to find and generate more quickly over time.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Local libraries must be full of index card cabinets. Everything going digital, they might be willing to give them away or sell.
They're not as easy to come by as you might think, though they pop up from time to time. Given shipping costs, you're definitely better off finding something locally if you can.
OCLC started digital shared cataloging in 1971. The peak for pre-printed library catalog cards was in 1985, and they quit printing cards in bulk in 2015 after shipping more than 1.9 billion cards during that time.<sup>[1]</sup>
-
I just frowned at my cardboard boxes.I’m aiming to build something similar out of wood soon. But I also had an idea to build a bookshelf with drawers incorporated, a row of vertical draws on both sides of the shelf and/or one down the middle. Ideally creating book cubbies between the drawers where I could organize related books next to appropriate zettles. Not sure how attached to that idea I am though, seems like something I will like for the moment and find very novel in the future (pun certainly intended).
reply to GnauticalGnorman
Don't frown at cardboard. Everyone starts their journey with a single card and a humble box. Filling up a first box is an accomplishment that gives you time to dream about the box you want to have.
Of potential interest, the cost of index cards to fill these files will be almost the investment in the box itself. Is this similar to the rule of thumb in the art world that the price of the frame should reflect the investment in the artwork?
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
Continuing on the bouba/kiki effect thread, I thought some might appreciate this visualization, though I'm unsure of a more concrete method for tying it into my own practice (yet).
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FYCX1WpXEAcYphG?format=jpg&name=small
via
— Alex Tomlinson 🪶 (@hootalex) July 19, 2022
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Fiona McPherson has some good suggestions/tips in her book on Effective Notetaking. In general it revolves around using relevant icons for your illustrations and limiting your supporting text of the diagrams. (I.e. Have a good icon that explains the process and only 2-4 words paired with the icon).
I haven't delved into McPherson's work yet, but it's in my pile. She's one of the few people who've written about both note taking and memory, so I'm intrigued. I take it you like her perspective? Does she delve into any science-backed methods or is she coming from a more experiential perspective?
-
- Jul 2022
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I'll push back on this a bit. I suspect that even though one might create multiple links to digital notes in all directions like this, it really doesn't happen happen at scale like this in practice.
I'd be willing to guess that very few people in the digital space are linking their ideas to more than two or three others. In fact, I suspect that if you looked at many digital ZKs you'd find a lot of orphaned notes floating around.
Separately, even in the analog space, the two links (down or forward) isn't always correct either. I cross link all over the place. The one constant benefit of the analog is that you're generally required to create at least one link because you have to place the card somewhere, and this isn't the case in most digital contexts/tools.
I'd posit that it's a lot of work to link a new idea into your system once much less in multiple places. Generally the more ideas you can link/cross-link it to, the more likely you'll run across it in the future and have potential to reuse it. I'd also suggest that the more links it's got, the better you'll "own" it. These addition links will also allow you to better compare/contrast various ideas by juxtaposing them in the future.
Theorem: more (good/great) links = more complexity which yields more "life", serendipity, and surprise to be found in your slip box for future use.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Organization of both a commonplace book and pocket notebook .t3_w1vq6q._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
Historically, following a tradition from accounting ledgers, people kept small, convenient pocket notebooks called "waste books" for quickly capturing notes and ideas in daily life. Later, they'd either expand on them or copy them out in better detail and usually in a nicer hand with sources/citations, and indexing/cross referencing in their permanent commonplaces. When you're done with it, you'd simply dispose of or throw away the waste book.
As for arrangement or organization, it's been common for people to use something roughly similar to John Locke's indexing method from 1706 for arranging and finding material. Others use a card index file and index cards to be able to rearrange pieces or to more easily index and cross reference portions.
I often recommend https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book as a pretty solid resource with some history, books, articles, and lots of examples (both digital and analog/paper-based) one might look at to find what they think would be best for themselves.
-
-
-
@chrisaldrich meet @carterb5. An #edu522 student new to micro blog.
👋🏼@carterb5 ! I learned all my best tricks from @jgmac1106. And out of nostalgia, it's sometimes fun revisiting all my old notes: boffosocko.com/tag/edu52... Has it already been 4 years?!
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I broadly take most of my (online) notes using Hypothes.is for web pages and .pdf files. I then use the Hypothesidian set up with Templater to import all the pieces: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225
So far it's been pretty helpful and I spend a huge amount of time in Hypothes.is.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Glad I'm not the only one...
Depending on my particular mood, I'll call mine "Konrad" after Gessner, "Beatrice" after Webb, or "Bruce" (a quirky hat tip to The West Wing S7 E2: "His name is Bruce. He's a flight attendant on Aer Lingus. They've got a connecting hub out of Hamburg. You know, at first it was long walks along the Reeperbahn...")
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/w0x1m6/give_your_antinet_a_pen_name/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I think this one will be of interest to you
Thanks! Robert Greene's method has also been heavily written about by Ryan Holiday who worked for him, used it subsequently, and has delineated the process in reasonable detail in several posts on his own blog and in Lifehacker in 2013/2014: - https://lifehacker.com/im-ryan-holiday-and-this-is-how-i-work-1485776137 - https://ryanholiday.net/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/ - https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/
Commonplacing goes back over two millenia and was very popular in the 1500-1800s. I'm specifically more interested in examples of refined heavily linked zk techniques as one "comes down the stretch". Thus far there are incredibly few public examples in the space...
-
-
x28newblog.wordpress.com x28newblog.wordpress.com
-
https://x28newblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/13/pruning-for-output/comment-page-1/#comment-4960
I love that you're adding links to the responses back and forth for future reference. I remember doing this manually several years back, but its a practice I rarely see. Both Stephen and I are using the Webmention spec to do this for our selves in an automatic fashion. (Mine display on my site in the comments, though I don't think Stephen does presently.) On wordpress.com you'd likely need to have a higher paid tier to add the plugins to enable this for WordPress, though depending on how often you do this it may be worth it?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/vzertk/using_the_antinet_for_professional_conferences/
Thanks /ultwalt This seems to underline the aphorism, that the more you put into something, the more you'll get out of it. It's something that many miss as an underlying benefit to these processes in general.
-
-
threadreaderapp.com threadreaderapp.com
-
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1547390915689566211.html via https://twitter.com/nicolas_gatien/status/1547390946156969984
Nicolas, I broadly agree with you that many of these factors of reading and writing for understanding and retention are at play and the research in memory and spaced repetition underlines a lot of this. However in practice, one needs to be revisiting and actively using their notes for some particular project to remember them better. The card search may help to create both visual and physical paths that assist in memory too.
Reliance solely on a physical zettelkasten however may not be enough without active use over time, particularly for the majority of users. It's unlikely that all or even many may undertake this long term practice. Saying that this is either the "best", "optimum", or "only" way would be disingenuous to the diversity of learners and thinkers.
Those who want to add additional strength to these effects might also use mnemonic methods from indigenous cultures that rely on primary orality. These could include color, images, doodles (drolleries anyone?), or other associative methods, many of which could be easily built into an (antinet) zettelkasten. Lynne Kelly's work in this area can be highly illuminating. For pure practical application and diversity of potential methods, I recommend her book Memory Craft https://amzn.to/3zdqqGp, but she's got much more academic and in depth work that is highly illustrative.
With this background on orality and memory in mind we might all broadly view wood and stone circles (Stonehenge), menhir, standing stones, songlines, and other mnemonic devices in the archaeological and sociological records as zettelkasten which one keeps entirely in their memory rather than writing them down. We might also consider, based on this and the historical record concerning Druids and their association with trees that the trees served a zettelkasten-like function for those ancient societies. This continues to extend to lots of other cultural and societal practices throughout history. Knowledge from Duane Hamacher et al's book The First Astronomers and Karlie Noone and Krystal De Napoli's Astronomy: Sky Country will underline these theories and practices in modern indigenous settings.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
If it's continuing on 15a, then 15b would make most sense to me. Perhaps this example description helps? https://sociologica.unibo.it/article/view/8350/8270#the-system-of-numbering Try not to think "between" as it indicates links forwards and backwards, but what does this thought "continue on" or "follow"?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
For a Luhmannian Zettelkasten (Antinet), and for its output, we can turn to Luhmann's books. Also, there's my writing pieces from my book (which I've shared here and there). Everything I've put out started as notes in my Antinet.I think a lot of people in this community are still in the early stages. Until very recently with the introduction of my YouTube videos, there weren't any good resources for building an analog Zettelkasten.Right now people are in the incipient stages of developing knowledge with it. I think it will take some time (another 8-12 months) before people can provide links to their output (their books).Heck even myself, I can't provide a link to the Antinet Book yet because it's still being edited. The draft was finished around May.Soon I think there will be less hand-waving and more examples of output (books/dissertations) using the Antinet.You're spot on in your main point: output is the goal. The Antinet Zettelkasten is the airplane, the destination is the output.Apart from this, this community has some fantastic practitioners. Each person seems to be applying the fundamental component and then innovating on top of that in their own way.
Scott, I'm not looking for outputs themselves (there are many of these floating about, though they're infrequently seen or talked about in our spaces), but more the unseen work between having a deck of cards and how one pulls them out, potentially orders them around, and physically manufactures the text itself. I'm looking for the (likely) droll videos of the enthusiastic zettelmacher(in) crawling around on the floor moving cards about to actually form the content. Or photos or video of their living room covered with several hundred cards ordering them into the form of the ultimate output which they've already written down, but just need to put into a reasonable logical linear form. What do these look like in digital and analog form?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Well, this was a true early morning treat!You reeeeally botched that one. Like 180 degrees misinterpreted it.That thread is about how Luhmann developed a personal approach that worked for him (as we all do and should), and that there is no one way to work/do a zettelkasten. Ie. We all must (and inevitably will) interpret Luhmann's take on zettelkasten method (and any other tools/method/etc we encounter) in light of what our needs are.What's super dope, is that my whole jam in this ZK world is about showing the thread/lineage of these techniques and helping people specifically wrestle with some of the principles and practices Luhmann employed so that in the end they can apply them in whatever way they see fit. And yet, somehow....you actually miss that?Also, this.... (you)"We approach these methods from such a top down manner, in part, because our culture has broadly lost the thread of how these note taking practices were done historically. Instead of working with something that has always existed and been taught in our culture, and then using it to suit our needs, we're looking at it like a new shiny toy or app and then trying to modify it to make it suit our needs."... Is this....(me)"We're coming at [zettelkasten] top-down. We're appropriating something and trying to retrofit it in a desire to "be better." In doing so, we're trying "clean it up a bit."I'm critiquing this approach 😂 I'm saying we come at it top-down bc we see it as a reified object (which is incorrect) that is set in stone, when in fact those who present the "one true way" are actually presenting a "cleaned up version" of Luhmann's very personal approach and calling it "official." Again, I'm critiquing that! I am, by design and punk ethos, kinda against "official."Silly, dude. The whole thread is about not looking at it as a "shiny new toy" and seeing it as a more fluid aspect of note-taking and personal practice. It's about recognizing that the way to recreate Luhmann is to be flexible, interpret these methods for yourself. Why? Bc that's exactly what Luhmann did."Let the principles and practices guide your zettelkasten work. Throw them in a box with your defined workflow issues. Let them hash it out. Shake the box and let them tell you the "kind" of zk you should be working with." (thread the day before the above mentioned)Also, and you're gonna love this....Here's you above...."People have been using zettelkasten, commonplace books, florilegium, and other similar methods for centuries, and no one version is the "correct" one."And here's me....."The most well-known slip-boxes in the world have been employed by writers in service of their writing. Variations of the system date back to the 17th c., [3] and modern writers such as, Umberto Eco, Arno Schmidt, and Hans Blumenberg are all known for employing some version of the slip-box to capture, collect, organize, and transform notes into published work. Of course, today, the most famous zettelkasten is the one used...."Sound familiar? It's me citing you, ya dum dum 😂 Footnote numero tres....https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten-linking-your-thinking-and-nick-milos-search-for-ground/Such a funny thing to see this fine Friday morning! ☀
Sadly I think we're talking past each other somehow; I broadly agree with all of your original thread. Perhaps there's also some context collapse amidst our conversations across multiple platforms which doesn't help.
Maybe my error was in placing my comment on your original thread rather than a sub branch on one of the top several comments? I didn't want to target anyone in particular as the "invented by Luhmann myth" is incredibly wide spread and is unlikely to ever go away. It's obvious by some of the responses I've seen from your thread here in r/antinet that folks without the explicit context of the history default to the misconception that Luhmann invented it. This misconception tends to reinforce the idea that there's "one true way" (the often canonically presented "perfect" Luhmann zettelkasten, rather than the messier method that he obviously practiced in reality) when, instead, there are lots of methods, many of which share some general principles or building blocks, but which can have dramatically different uses and outcomes. My hope in highlighting the history was specifically to give your point more power, not take the opposite stance. Not having the direct evidence to the contrary, you'll noticed I hedged my statement with the word "seems" in the opening sentence. I apologize to you that I apparently wasn't more clear.
I love your comparison of LYT and zettelkasten by the way. It's reminiscent of the sort of comparison I'm hoping to bring forth in an upcoming review of Tiago Forte's recent book. His method—ostensibly a folder based digital commonplace book, which is similar to Milo's LYT—can be useful, but he doesn't seem to have the broader experience of history or the various use cases to be able to advise a general audience which method(s) they may want to try or for which ends. I worry that while he's got a useful method for potentially many people, too many may see it and his platform as a recipe they need to follow rather than having a set of choices for various outcomes they may wish to have. Too many "thought leaders" are trying to "own" portions of the space rather than presenting choices or comparisons the way you have. Elizabeth Butler is one of the few others I've seen taking a broader approach. A lot of these explorations also means there are multiple different words to describe each system's functionality, which I think only serves to muddy things up for potential users rather than make them clearer. (And doing this across multiple languages across time is even more confusing: is it zettelkasten, card index, or fichier boîte? Already the idea of zettelkasten (in English speaking areas) has taken on the semantic meaning "Luhmann's specific method of keeping a zettelkasten" rather than just a box with slips.)
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/vy4abk/interesting_thread_on_twitter_about_the_need_and/
Thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1547208663768748032.html
That thread by u/taurusnoises (Bob Doto aka @thehighpony) seems to explicitly buy into the rumor that Luhmann invented the zettelkasten. He assuredly did not and was most likely taught it or some version of it by one or more teachers or colleagues in his lifetime. We're unlikely to know if he tweaked or modified it extensively from the version he was taught, but studying the methods of others may be illustrative. How did Wittgenstein use it? Newton? Georg Christoph Lichtenberg? John Locke? Barthes? Marcel Mauss? Claude Lévi-Strauss? Heck, even comedian George Carlin, dancer/choreographer Twyla Tharp, and battle rapper/musician Eminem have slip box systems that they explicitly used for their creativity and work.
People have been using zettelkasten, commonplace books, florilegium, and other similar methods for centuries, and no one version is the "correct" one. What is useful is finding a system that works for you (and not finding a system that you work for). Everyone here is assuredly doing exactly as Luhmann did, you're taking a tool with a broad set of ideas, principles, and practices and putting it to use in a way that works for you. This is part of the reason why there are so many people with so many questions about the what and why in this and other fora.
We approach these methods from such a top down manner, in part, because our culture has broadly lost the thread of how these note taking practices were done historically. Instead of working with something that has always existed and been taught in our culture, and then using it to suit our needs, we're looking at it like a new shiny toy or app and then trying to modify it to make it suit our needs.
Of course to be sure, Luhmann's version of the tool as he used it is one of the most powerful forms of commonplacing we've seen, but this doesn't mean that someone doesn't change or innovate on the methods to make something even more powerful or emergent. (I'd caution against low level attempts as this ground has been heavily tread by millions of people over time.)
To add onto Nicolas-Gatien and dynodiaper's list, how about? 4. Idea generation/creation and innovation
And for those who want the bumper sticker version: https://www.zazzle.com/niklas_luhmann_bumper_sticker-128462770354241554 Or maybe, for Scott, the coffee mug version? 😁☕https://www.zazzle.com/niklas_luhmann_mug-168394795838388324
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Instead of building a comments section, why not build it to send/accept Webmentions? (Webmention.io and Webmention.js with some help from Brid.gy) could implement this pretty quickly without much additional work.) This would allow your digital garden to communicate directly with others' as well as other sites online including Twitter?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What is the difference between digital garden and zettelkasten .t3_lvtvko._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
Asked in March 2021, there's some interesting nascent differentiation between the two forms of note taking and display. Almost all zettelkasten were private at this point and digital gardens were an emerging phenomenon.
There's some indication of the difference delineated on the IndieWeb wiki, particularly for digital versions: - https://indieweb.org/Zettelk%C3%A4sten - https://indieweb.org/digital_garden
-
-
-
I have compiled, at latest reckoning, 35,669 posts - my version of a Zettelkasten.
Stephen, to get a general grip on note taking practices, I've been collecting rough numbers of notes per day over spans of time from people. You mention 35,669 posts here. Over what span of time (years/days) does that currently represent?
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Realizing that my prior separate advice wasn't as actionable or specific, I thought I'd take another crack at your question.
Some seem to miss the older techniques and names for this sort of practice and get too wound up in words like categories, tags, #hashtags, [[wikilinks]], or other related taxonomies and ontologies. Some become confounded about how to implement these into digital systems. Simplify things and index your ideas/notes the way one would have indexed books in a library card catalog, generally using subject, author and title.
Since you're using an approach more grounded in the commonplace book tradition rather than a zettelkasten one, put an easy identifier on your note (this can be a unique title or number) and then cross reference it with any related subject headings or topical category words you find useful.
Here's a concrete example, hopefully in reasonable detail that one can easily follow. Let's say you have a quote you want to save:
No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.—Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
In a paper system you might give this card the identification number #237. (This is analogous to the Dewey Decimal number that might be put on a book to find it on the shelves.) You want to be able to find this quote in the future using the topical words "power", "information", "connections", and "quotes" for example. (Which topical headings you choose and why can be up to you, the goal is to make it easier to dig up for potential reuse in future contexts). So create a separate paper index with alphabetical headings (A-Z) and then write cards for your topical headings. Your card with "power" at the top will have the number #237 on it to indicate that that card is related to the word power. You'll ultimately have other cards that relate and can easily find everything related to "power" within your system by using this subject index.
You might also want to file that quote under two other "topics" which will make it easy to find: primarily the author of the quote "Umberto Eco" and the title of the source Foucault's Pendulum. You can add these to your index the same way you did "power", "information", etc., but it may be easier or more logical to keep a bibliographic index separately for footnoting your material, so you might want a separate bibliographic index for authors and sources. If you do this, then create a card with Umberto Eco at the top and then put the number #237 on it. Later you'll add other numbers for other related ideas to Eco. You can then keep your card "Eco, Umberto" alphabetized with all the other authors you cite. You'll effect a similar process with the title.
With this done, you now have a system in which you don't have to categorize a single idea in a single place. Regardless of what project or thing you're working on, you can find lots of related notes. If you're juggling multiple projects you can have an index file or document outline for these as well. So your book project on the History of Information could have a rough outline of the book on which you've got the number #237 in the chapter or place where you might use the quote.
Hopefully this will be even more flexible than Holiday's system because that was broadly project based. In practice, if you're keeping notes over a lifetime, you're unlikely to be interested in dramatically different areas the way Ryan Holiday or Robert Greene were for disparate book projects, but will find more overlapping areas. Having a more flexible system that will allow you to reuse your notes for multiple settings or projects will be highly valuable.
For those who are using digital systems, ask yourself: "what functions and features allow you to do these analog patterns most easily?" If you're using something like Obsidian which has #tagging functionality that automatically creates an index of all your tags, then leverage that and remove some of the manual process. The goal is to make sure the digital system is creating the structure to allow you to easily find and use your notes when you need them. If your note taking system doesn't have custom functionalities for any of these things, then you'll need to do more portions of them manually.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Thanks for all the fantastic literature tips! Added to the list 😊
If these are the types of things that are interesting, you might also try a shared bibliography that a handful of readers/researchers share and contribute to: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought
-
I've spend a lot of time in the education, pedagogy, and instructional design spaces in the past decade. I can guarantee you that he hasn't solved the problem. People have been talking about education reform for centuries and it's still no where close to being solved. If anything perhaps it's even gotten worse, particularly in Western culture.
If this is your area, I'd recommend taking a look at some of Andy Matuschak's work on mnemonic medium and Lynne Kelly's work on orality and memory which take some non-standard approaches to some of these wholly unsolved questions. Annie Murphy Paul's recent book The Extended Mind will also outline some fun recent work and potentially show you gaping holes in the thought enterprise.
-
-
danallosso.substack.com danallosso.substack.com
-
I wonder if Scott P. Scheper has done any videos on his writing/composing process for getting material out of his card file for creating his book for which I've seen portions of a few chapters floating around. I've loosely followed his YouTube channel and his r/antinet community on Reddit, but I haven't seen this portion of his process in any detail.
This (export) part also seems like one of the more intense, manual, and heaving lifting pieces of the process. I've yet to see any digital tools which automate or make this portion of the work easier.
Perhaps a graph view of connected nodes with titles in which one can highlight nodes as a selection method and then export them in some process to a space where they might be potentially reordered or shuffled into a linear order for further editing and ultimately publishing, might be useful? Even saying this takes forever much less doing it easily with an inspiring user interface..
Link to: https://hyp.is/9PV1jP5OEeyPumNKyckR1A/danallosso.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-on-paper
Syndication links: - https://danallosso.substack.com/p/zettelkasten-on-paper/comment/7610486
-
-
marshallk.com marshallk.com
-
Marshall, in looking at your cards, I'm curious how easy/hard you feel it is to remember longer portions of full quotes like your H.L. Menken example using only spaced repetition? I usually find it far more taxing and not as long lasting as using other more classical mnemonic methods (method of loci/songlines).
Piotr Wozniak has some material on creating/designing more concrete cards for spaced repetition that I've found generally helpful. I know that Andy Matuschak and Soren Bjornstad have some ideas, experience, and research in the space but I've yet to see more deep research on the effectiveness of these more specific practices at scale or beyond the anecdotal.
https://marshallk.com/7-steps-i-take-to-get-value-from-what-i-read-notes-on-note-taking-review
-
-
ariadne.space ariadne.space
-
reply to: https://ariadne.space/2022/07/01/a-silo-can-never-provide-digital-autonomy-to-its-users/
Matt Ridley indicates in The Rational Optimist that markets for goods and services "work so well that it is hard to design them so they fail to deliver efficiency and innovation" while assets markets are nearly doomed to failure and require close and careful regulation.
If we view the social media landscape from this perspective, an IndieWeb world in which people are purchasing services like easy import/export of their data; the ability to move their domain name and URL permalinks from one web host to another; and CMS (content management system) services/platforms/functionalities, represents the successful market mode for our personal data and online identities. Here competition for these sorts of services will not only improve the landscape, but generally increased competition will tend to drive the costs to consumers down. The internet landscape is developed and sophisticated enough and broadly based on shared standards that this mode of service market should easily be able to not only thrive, but innovate.
At the other end of the spectrum, if our data are viewed as assets in an asset market between Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, et al., it is easy to see that the market has already failed so miserably that one cannot even easily move ones' assets from one silo to another. Social media services don't compete to export or import data because the goal is to trap you and your data and attention there, otherwise they lose. The market corporate social media is really operating in is one for eyeballs and attention to sell advertising, so one will notice a very health, thriving, and innovating market for advertisers. Social media users will easily notice that there is absolutely no regulation in the service portion of the space at all. This only allows the system to continue failing to provide improved or even innovative service to people on their "service". The only real competition in the corporate silo social media space is for eyeballs and participation because the people and their attention are the real product.
As a result, new players whose goal is to improve the health of the social media space, like the recent entrant Cohost, are far better off creating a standards based service that allows users to register their own domain names and provide a content management service that has easy import and export of their data. This will play into the services market mode which improves outcomes for people. Aligning in any other competition mode that silos off these functions will force them into competition with the existing corporate social services and we already know where those roads lead.
Those looking for ethical and healthy models of this sort of social media service might look at Manton Reece's micro.blog platform which provides a wide variety of these sorts of data services including data export and taking your domain name with you. If you're unhappy with his service, then it's relatively easy to export your data and move it to another host using WordPress or some other CMS. On the flip side, if you're unhappy with your host and CMS, then it's also easy to move over to micro.blog and continue along just as you had before. Best of all, micro.blog is offering lots of the newest and most innovative web standards including webmention notificatons which enable website-to-website conversations, micropub, and even portions of microsub not to mention some great customer service.
I like to analogize the internet and social media to competition in the telecom/cellular phone space In America, you have a phone number (domain name) and can then have your choice of service provider (hosting), and a choice of telephone (CMS). Somehow instead of adopting a social media common carrier model, we have trapped ourselves inside of a model that doesn't provide the users any sort of real service or options. It's easy to imagine what it would be like to need your own AT&T account to talk to family on AT&T and a separate T-Mobile account to talk to your friends on T-Mobile because that's exactly what you're doing with social media despite the fact that you're all still using the same internet. Part of the draw was that services like Facebook appeared to be "free" and it's only years later that we're seeing the all too real costs emerge.
This sort of competition and service provision also goes down to subsidiary layers of the ecosystem. Take for example the idea of writing interface and text editing. There are (paid) services like iA Writer, Ulysses, and Typora which people use to compose their writing. Many people use these specifically for writing blog posts. Companies can charge for these products because of their beauty, simplicity, and excellent user interfaces. Some of them either do or could support the micropub and IndieAuth web standards which allow their users the ability to log into their websites and directly post their saved content from the editor directly to their website. Sure there are also a dozen or so other free micropub clients that also allow this, but why not have and allow competition for beauty and ease of use? Let's say you like WordPress enough, but aren't a fan of the Gutenberg editor. Should you need to change to Drupal or some unfamiliar static site generator to exchange a better composing experience for a dramatically different and unfamiliar back end experience? No, you could simply change your editor client and continue on without missing a beat. Of course the opposite also applies—WordPress could split out Gutenberg as a standalone (possibly paid) micropub client and users could then easily use it to post to Drupal, micro.blog, or other CMSs that support the micropub spec, and many already do.
Social media should be a service to and for people all the way down to its core. The more companies there are that provide these sorts of services means more competition which will also tend to lure people away from silos where they're trapped for lack of options. Further, if your friends are on services that interoperate and can cross communicate with standards like Webmention from site to site, you no longer need to be on Facebook because "that's where your friends and family all are."
I have no doubt that we can all get to a healthier place online, but it's going to take companies and startups like Cohost to make better choices in how they frame their business models. Co-ops and non-profits can help here too. I can easily see a co-op adding webmention to their Mastodon site to allow users to see and moderate their own interactions instead of forcing local or global timelines on their constituencies. Perhaps Garon didn't think Webmention was a fit for Mastodon, but this doesn't mean that others couldn't support it. I personally think that Darius Kazemi's Hometown fork of Mastodon which allows "local only" posting a fabulous little innovation while still allowing interaction with a wider readership, including me who reads him in a microsub enabled social reader. Perhaps someone forks Mastodon to use as a social feed reader, but builds in micropub so that instead of posting the reply to a Mastodon account, it's posted to one's IndieWeb capable website which sends a webmention notification to the original post? Opening up competition this way makes lots of new avenues for every day social tools.
Continuing the same old siloing of our data and online connections is not the way forward. We'll see who stands by their ethics and morals by serving people's interests and not the advertising industry.
-
- Jun 2022
-
www.paulplowman.com www.paulplowman.com
-
http://www.paulplowman.com/stuff/isle-of-wight-map-hidden-names/
Names hidden in maps sounds like the same sort of trap that Genius.com used with Google copying their lyrics https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/genius-google-stole-lyrics-morse-code-848781/
Syndication link: http://www.paulplowman.com/stuff/isle-of-wight-map-hidden-names/#comment-316603
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Luhmann’s zettelkasten use case .t3_vlape5._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; } I was just thinking… I wonder what Luhmann’s use case for his zettelkasten was. By this I mean, was his original use for it for knowledge development, then his papers/books came as a successful bi-product? Or was his original intention to use it to actually write books/papers in the first place… Does anyone have any insight on this?
When asked by Bielefeld University to report on his research projects, Luhmann famously replied:
“Theory of society; duration: 30 years; costs: none”.
In this there is a tremendously large nod to his zettelkasten to permit this work to be done.
Though technically at the current price of $11.78 for 1,000 index cards on Amazon right now and a total of 92,000 cards, Luhmann should have better budgeted 1083.76 for the paper not to mention the cost of pens and pencils.
Luhmann, N. (1997). Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft (2 vols). Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Suhrkamp. Published in translation as Theory of society (2 vols.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2012–2013.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
The correlation between the antinet and programming languages. They bought have an output of some sort. For the antinet it could be a book and an app for the other. When building up your antinet you are literally writing you’re output. Each main card eventually will flow into a larger text. Reformulated or not. When programming you make code-blocks. Small chunks of code to use in other parts of the program. Those small chunks were made previously or taken from an other program and re formulated to work in that new program you are working on. From all those small pieces of code you make a big program your output. In bought cases most of the work is done before hand. Building it up is the easy part because you don’t begin with an empty screen or paper.
You're sure to love Markus Krajewski's book Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929 (History and Foundations of Information Science) which covers this very idea from a historical perspective.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
can someone explain to me the relationship between Luhmann's numbering and the "categories" of Wikipedia (1000-6000)? I can't find the video where Scott explains that the first number used by Luhmann for the entry note is of the order of thousands and that it indicated a general category?
Since I just happen to have an antinet laying around 🗃️😜🔎 I can do a quick cross referenced search for antinet, youtube, and numbering systems to come up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrjUg4toZqw.
Hopefully it's the one (or very similar) to what you're looking for.
Since it was also hiding in there in a linked card, an added bonus for you:
"Here I am on the floor showing you freaking note cards, which really means that I have made it in life." —Scott P. Scheper
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Looking for advice on how to adapt antinet ideas for my own system .t3_vkllv0._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
Holiday's system is roughly similar to the idea of a commonplace book, just kept and maintained on index cards instead of a notebook. He also seems to advocate for keeping separate boxes for each project which I find to be odd advice, though it's also roughly the same advice suggested by Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit and Tiago Forte's recent book Building a Second Brain which provides a framing that seems geared more toward broader productivity rather than either the commonplacing or zettelkasten traditions.
I suspect that if you're not linking discrete ideas, you'll get far more value out of your system by practicing profligate indexing terms on your discrete ideas. Two topical/subject headings on an individual idea seems horrifically limiting much less on an entire article and even worse on a whole book. Fewer index topics is easier to get away with in a digital system which allows search across your corpus, but can be painfully limiting in a pen/paper system.
Most paperbound commonplaces index topics against page numbers, but it's not clear to me how you're numbering (or not) your system to be able to more easily cross reference your notes with an index. Looking at Luhmann's index as an example (https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_001_V) might be illustrative so you can follow along, but if you're not using his numbering system or linking your cards/ideas, then you could simply use consecutive numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., 92000, 92001, ... on your cards to index against to easily find the cards you're after. It almost sounds to me that with your current filing system, you'd have to duplicate your cards to be able to file them under more than one topic. This obviously isn't ideal.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Fiction 🖼 the past days I’ve been working on a branch about emptiness. Don’t ask me to explain i don’t grasp it. I’m deeply into it 1500 cards far but still fuzzy. I do know emptiness is empty of inherent existence if you denied that you should make a branch called nihilism 🖼1st pict added 🖼 growing
At some point that's what Nabokov's slip box looked like too.
https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/23/lifestyles-of-the-note-takers-intellectuals-vladimir-nabokov/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
https://www.reddit.com/r/DigitalGardens/comments/vidqg6/new_to_digital_gardens/
There's lots of detail, articles, examples, and exploration documented here: https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Tiago's book follows the general method of the commonplace book, but relies more heavily on a folder-based method and places far less emphasis and value on having a solid index. There isn't any real focus on linking ideas other than putting some things together in the same folder. His experience with the history of the space in feels like it only goes back to some early Ryan Holiday blog posts. He erroneously credits Luhmann with inventing the zettelkasten and Anne-Laure Le Cunff created digital gardens. He's already retracted these in sketch errata here: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/endnotes.
I'll give him at least some credit that there is some reasonable evidence that he actually used his system to write his own book, but the number and depth of his references and experience is exceptionally shallow given the number of years he's been in the space, particularly professionally. He also has some interesting anecdotes and examples of various people including and array of artists and writers which aren't frequently mentioned in the note taking space, so I'll give him points for some diversity of players as well. I'm mostly left with the feeling that he wrote the book because of the general adage that "thought leaders in their space should have a published book in their area to have credibility". Whether or not one can call him a thought leader for "re-inventing" something that Rudolphus Agricola and Desiderius Erasmus firmly ensconced into Western culture about 500 years ago is debatable.
Stylistically, I'd call his prose a bit florid and too often self-help-y. The four letter acronyms become a bit much after a while. It wavers dangerously close to those who are prone to the sirens' call of the #ProductivityPorn space.
If you've read a handful of the big articles in the note taking, tools for thought, digital gardens, zettelkasten space, Ahren's book, or regularly keep up with r/antinet or r/Zettelkasten, chances are that you'll be sorely disappointed and not find much insight. If you have friends that don't need the horsepower of Ahrens or zettelkasten, then it might be a reasonable substitute, but then it could have been half the length for the reader.
-
-
spencergreenhalgh.com spencergreenhalgh.com
-
I regularly check in on comments for this website and will generally respond!
@spgreenhalgh, Are you checking for comments manually only?
I've seen a few doing this pattern before:<br /> - https://boffosocko.com/2021/03/25/hypothes-is-as-a-comment-system-receiving-mentions-and-notifications-for-your-website/<br /> - https://boffosocko.com/2020/05/26/55771462/
I use an RSS feed through IFTTT to trigger email notifications to help out and @judell's facet tool can be useful: https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?max=10000&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&wildcard_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fspencergreenhalgh.com%2F*
-
-
-
level 2ojboal · 2 hr. agoNot quite understanding the value of Locke's method: far as I understand it, rather than having a list of keywords or phrases, Locke's index is instead based on a combination of first letter and vowel. I can understand how that might be useful for the sake of compression, but doesn't that mean you don't have the benefit of "index as list of keywords/phrases" (or did I miss something)?
Locke's method is certainly a compact one and is specifically designed for notebooks of several hundred pages where you're slowly growing the index as you go within a limited and usually predetermined amount of space. If you're using an index card or digital system where space isn't an issue, then that specific method may not be as ideal. Whichever option you ultimately choose, it's certainly incredibly valuable and worthwhile to have an index of some sort.
For those into specifics, here's some detail about creating an index using Hypothes.is data in Obsidian: https://boffosocko.com/2022/05/20/creating-a-commonplace-book-or-zettelkasten-index-from-hypothes-is-tags/ and here's some detail for how I did it for a website built on WordPress: https://boffosocko.com/2021/09/04/an-index-for-my-digital-commonplace-book/
I'm curious to see how others do this in their tool sets, particularly in ways that remove some of the tedium.
-
Perhaps it may be helpful to dramatically reframe the question of how to keep a zettelkasten? One page blog posts from people who've only recently seen the idea and are synopsizing it without a year or more practice themselves are highly confusing at best. Can I write something we don't see enough of in spaces relating to zettelkasten? Perhaps we should briefly consider the intellectual predecessor of the slip box?
Start out by forgetting zettelkasten exist. Instead read about what a commonplace book is and how that (simpler) form of note taking works. This short article outlined as a class assignment is a fascinating way to start and has some illustrative examples: https://www.academia.edu/35101285/Creating_a_Commonplace_Book_CPB_. If you're a writer, researcher, or journalist, perhaps Steven Johnson's perspective may be interesting to you instead: https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb
Collect interesting passages, quotes, and ideas as you read. Keep them in a notebook and call it your commonplace book. If you like call these your "fleeting notes" as some do.
As you do this, start building an index of subject headings for your ideas, perhaps using John Locke's method (see: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685).
Once you've got this, you've really mastered the majority of what a zettelkasten is and have a powerful tool at your disposal. If you feel it's useful, you can add a few more tools and variations to your set up.
Next instead of keeping the ideas in a notebook, put them on index cards so that they're easier to sort through, move around, and re-arrange. This particularly useful if you want to use them to create an outline of your ideas for writing something with them.
Next, maybe keep some index cards that have the references and bibliographies from which your excerpting and note taking comes from. Link these bibliographical cards to the cards with your content.
As you go through your notes, ideas, and excerpts, maybe you want to further refine them? Write them out in your own words. Improve their clarity, so that when you go to re-use them, you can simply "excerpt" material you've already written for yourself and you're not plagiarizing others. You can call these improved notes, as some do either "permanent notes" or "evergreen notes".
Perhaps you're looking for more creativity, serendipity, and organic surprise in your system? Next you can link individual notes together. In a paper system you can do this by following one note with another or writing addresses on each card and using that addressing system to link them, but in a digital environment you can link one note to many multiple others that are related. If you're not sure where to start here, look back to your subject headings and pull out cards related to broad categories. Some things will obviously fit more closely than others, so be more selective and only link ideas that are more intimately connected than just the subject heading you've used.
Now when you want to write or create something new on a particular topic, ask your slip box a question and attempt to answer it by consulting your index. Find cards related to the topic, pull out those and place them in a useful order to create an outline perhaps using the cross links that already exist. (You've done that linking work as you went, so why not use it to make things easier now?) Copy the contents into a document and begin editing.
Beyond the first few steps, you're really just creating additional complexity to a system to increase the combinatorial complexity of juxtaposed ideas that you could potentially pull back out of your system for writing more interesting text and generating new ideas. Some people may neither want nor need this sort of complexity in their working lives. If you don't need it, then just keep a simple commonplace book (or commonplace card file) to remind you of the interesting ideas and inspirations you've seen and could potentially reuse throughout your life.
The benefit of this method is that beyond creating your index, you'll always have something useful even if you abandon things later on and quit refining it. If you do go all the way, concentrate on writing out just two short solid ideas every day (Luhmann averaged about 6 per day and Roland Barthes averaged 1 and change). Do it until you have between 500 and 1000 cards (based on some surveys and anecdotal evidence), and you should begin seeing some serendipitous and intriguing results as you use your system for your writing.
We should acknowledge that that (visual) artists and musicians might also keep commonplaces and zettelkasten. As an example, Eminem keeps a zettelkasten, but it is so minimal that it is literally just a box and slips of paper with no apparent organization beyond this. If this fits your style and you don't get any value out of having cards with locators like 3a4b/65m1, then don't do that useless work. Make sure your system is working for you and you're not working for your system.
Sadly, it's generally difficult to find a single blog post that can accurately define what a zettelkasten is, how it's structured, how it works, and why one would want one much less what one should expect from it. Sonke Ahrens does a reasonably good job, but his explanation is an entire book. Hopefully this distillation will get you moving in a positive direction for having a useful daily practice, but without an excessive amount of work. Once you've been at it a while, then start looking at Ahrens and others to refine things for your personal preferences and creative needs.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Perhaps the more intriguing question isn't one of process, but of content? What do florilegia and commonplaces have to do with zettelkasten?!? 😉
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Mortimer J. Adler's slip box collection (Photo of him holding a pipe in his left hand and mouth posing in front of dozens of boxes of index cards with topic headwords including "law", "love", "life", "sin", "art", "democracy", "citizen", "fate", etc.)
Though if we roughly estimate this collection at 1000 cards per box with roughly 76 boxes potentially present, the 76,000 cards are still shy of Luhmann's collection. It'll take some hunting thigs down, but as Adler suggests that people write their notes in their books, which he would have likely done, then this collection isn't necessarily his own. I suspect, but don't yet have definitive proof, that it was created as a group effort for the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World and its two-volume index of great ideas, the Syntopicon.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
The addressing system that many digital note taking systems offer is reminiscent of Luhmann's paper system where it served a particular use. Many might ask themselves if they really need this functionality in digital contexts where text search and other affordances can be more directly useful.
Frequently missed by many, perhaps because they're befuddled by the complex branching numbering system which gets more publicity, Luhmann's paper-based system had a highly useful and simple subject heading index (see: https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_001_V, for example) which can be replicated using either #tags or [[wikilinks]] within tools like Obsidian. Of course having an index doesn't preclude the incredible usefulness of directly linking one idea to potentially multiple others in some branching tree-like or network structure.
Note that one highly valuable feature of Luhmann's paper version was that the totality of cards were linked to a minimum of at least one other card by the default that they were placed into the file itself. Those putting notes into Obsidian often place them into their system as singlet, un-linked notes as a default, and this can lead to problems down the road. However this can be mitigated by utilizing topical or subject headings on individual cards which allows for searching on a heading and then cross-linking individual ideas as appropriate.
As an example, because two cards may be tagged with "archaeology" doesn't necessarily mean they're closely related as ideas. This tends to decrease in likelihood if one is an archaeologist and a large proportion of cards might contain that tag, but will simultaneously create more value over time as generic tags increase in number but the specific ideas cross link in small numbers. Similarly as one delves more deeply into archaeology, one will also come up with more granular and useful sub-tags (like Zooarcheology, Paleobotany, Archeopedology, Forensic Archeology, Archeoastronomy, Geoarcheology, etc.) as their knowledge in sub areas increases.
Concretely, one might expect that the subject heading "sociology" would be nearly useless to Luhmann as that was the overarching topic of both of his zettelkästen (I & II), whereas "Autonomie" was much more specific and useful for cross linking a smaller handful of potentially related ideas in the future.
Looking beyond Luhmann can be highly helpful in designing and using one's own system. I'd recommend taking a look at John Locke's work on indexing (1685) (https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/john-lockes-method-for-common-place-books-1685 is an interesting source, though you're obviously applying it to (digital) cards and not a notebook) or Ross Ashby's hybrid notebook/index card system which is also available online (http://www.rossashby.info/journal/index.html) as an example.
Another helpful tip some are sure to appreciate in systems that have an auto-complete function is simply starting to write a wikilink with various related subject heading words that may appear within your system. You'll then be presented with potential options of things to link to serendipitously that you may not have otherwise considered. Within a digital zettelkasten, the popularly used DYAC (Damn You Auto Complete) may turn into Bless You Auto Complete.
-
-
sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com
-
https://sustainingcommunity.wordpress.com/2019/02/01/4-types-of-power/#comment-122967
Given your area, if you haven't found it yet, you might appreciate going a generation further back in your references with: Mary P. Follett. Dynamic Administration: The Collected Papers of Mary Parker Follett, ed. by E. M. Fox and L. Urwick (London: Pitman Publishing, 1940). She had some interesting work in organization theory you might appreciate. Wikipedia can give you a quick overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Parker_Follett#Organizational_theory
-
- May 2022
-
yishunlai.medium.com yishunlai.medium.com
-
Chris, this is a great take, thanks! Visiting the origins of the system doesn't fit into my current interests, but I'm very happy to know more about them.I gave a mini-lecture to my students last night about this system; really it's more about the idea of networking your ideas over anything else, isn't it? My students, who are all working on creative nonfiction projects, were so relieved to have someplace to put and process all the things they inevitably flag in the books they read.
I've been collecting some feedback on folks who've introduced this to students. I'm curious how your experiment ultimately went? Did they take to it? Do you feel like some are still using or even experimenting with the methods?
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I would love to hear how other Christians are using the antinet for bible studies.
There's a tremendously long history here. Some related words and areas of intellectual history to study here for examples include "florilegia", "commonplace books", and even "miscellanies".
Philip Melanchthon wrote several handbooks on the topic and had some useful historical examples including one of the most influential: De locis communibus ratio (Augsberg, 1593). You might appreciate this article on some of the tradition: https://blog.cph.org/study/systematic-theology-and-apologetics/why-are-so-many-great-lutheran-books-called-commonplaces-or-loci
- Philip Melanchthon, Institutiones rhetoricae. Wittenberg [1536].
- Philip Melanchthon, Rhetorices elementa. Lyon, 1537.
Jonathan Edwards had a significant version which he called his Miscellanies though his was written in book form, though it can now also be found digitized online at http://edwards.yale.edu/research/misc-index.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
This is reminiscent of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) reading method which became popular for a while a few years back, got squashed by patent claims, and then has slowly been coming back as the method was reported in the early 1970s.
-
-
www.niemanlab.org www.niemanlab.org
-
I'm curious if any publications have experimented with the W3C webmention spec for notifications as a means of handling comments? Coming out of the IndieWeb movement, Webmention allows people to post replies to online stories on their own websites (potentially where they're less like to spew bile and hatred in public) and send notifications to the article that they've mentioned them. The receiving web page (an article, for example) can then choose to show all or even a portion of the response in the page's comments section). Other types of interaction beyond comments can also be supported here including receiving "likes", "bookmarks", "reads" (indicating that someone actually read the article), etc. There are also tools like Brid.gy which bootstrap Webmention onto social media sites like Twitter to make them send notifications to an article which might have been mentioned in social spaces. I've seen many personal sites supporting this and one or two small publications supporting it, but I'm as yet unaware of larger newspapers or magazines doing so.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Scott, I'll spend some more in-depth time with it shortly, but in a quick skim of topics I pleasantly notice a few citations of my own work. Perhaps I've done a poor job communicating about wikis, but from what I've seen from your work thus far I take much the same view of zettelkasten as you do. Somehow though I find that you're quoting me in opposition to your views? While you're broadly distinguishing against the well-known Wikipedia, and rightly so, I also broadly consider (unpublished) and include examples of small personal wikis and those within Ward Cunningham's FedWiki space, though I don't focus on them in that particular piece. In broad generalities most of these smaller wikis are closer to the commonplace and zettelkasten traditions, though as you point out they have some structural functional differences. You also quote me as someone in "information theory" in a way that that indicates context collapse. Note that my distinctions and work in information theory relate primarily to theoretical areas in electrical engineering, physics, complexity theory, and mathematics as it relates to Claude Shannon's work. It very specifically does not relate to my more humanities focused work within intellectual history, note taking, commonplaces, rhetoric, orality, or memory. In these areas, I'm better read than most, but have no professional title(s). Can't wait to read the entire piece more thoroughly...
-
-
www.openculture.com www.openculture.com
-
https://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-umberto-eco-walk-through-his-immense-private-library.html
The video here is an excerpt of this longer piece which includes credits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hq66X9f-zgc
[Syndication link](https://www.openculture.com/2017/03/watch-umberto-eco-walk-through-his-immense-private-library.html#comment-3249414]
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Don't worry, Niklas Luhmann never 'got' the whole evergreen vs. fleeting notes thing either. They're Ahrensian inventions. They're not Zettelkasten concepts, they're Ahrenskasten concepts.
Ahrens uses the phrase permanent notes and never uses the words evergreen notes. Evergreen notes stems from Andy Matuschak's reading of Ahrens, likely with a side reference to the idea of evergreen articles which is a closely related commonplace idea in journalism.
The difference between the permanent(evergreen) and fleeting comes from where one chooses to put the actual work into their system. One can collect thousands of fleeting notes in their system, but it's more likely that it will eventually collapse on itself and do the author no good. Better is to put as much work in up front to get to a good permanent note that is reusable in potentially many contexts.
Much of this stems back at least as far as Vincentius Placcius in De Arte Excerpendi: Of Scholarly Book Organization (1689) where he offers a contemporary set of instructions on excerpting knowledge from books as well as a history of the subject of note taking. In the book, he warns specifically against the practice exhibited by Joachim Jungius (1585-1657) who left behind approximately 150,000 slips (or scraps) of paper (zettels). Because there was no index to it or links between the notes Jungius' collection was ostensibly useless following his death. His scraps were literally a "scrap heap".
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
A few weeks back I joined the Schoenberg Institute's ongoing series "Coffee with a Codex" which featured two manuscripts the Penn Libraries have relating to Rhetorica ad Herennium. One is MS Codex 1630, a 15th century copy of the text itself, and MS Codex 1629 which is a 14th century commentary on Rhetorica.
As a few here are interested in some of the older memory texts and having access to older copies from the Renaissance is rare, I thought I'd share some of the resources from that session including photos, descriptions, and the videos themselves which have recently been posted online. For those who are interested in these spaces, I hope this is as much of a treat as I thought it was.
A blog post with some details, links, and great photos: https://schoenberginstitute.org/2022/03/09/ms-codex-1630-ms-codex-1629-rhetoric/
A short video introduction to the MS Codex 1630: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpFbbHgNQ4
And here's the full 30 minute video of the walk through session of both manuscripts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vT6Qdgz93Ec&list=PL8e3GREu0zuC-jTFRF27a88SzTQ6fSISy&index=8
Full digital copies of both books and bibliographic details for them can be found below: Ms. Codex 1630: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9958935643503681
Ms. Codex 1629: https://franklin.library.upenn.edu/catalog/FRANKLIN_9958752123503681
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What's your opinion on the note card system? Do you personally use it? .t3_ugqnle._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
For commonplace items, I've found notebooks with good indices more valuable. Note cards are better if you're taking atomic notes that you plan on actively reusing in your writing work which is more of a zettelkasten feature/functionality cards are easier to move around, re-arrange, and create outlines for your writing when you get to that point. Historically it was the ability to re-arrange and reuse one's commonplace items that helped to spawn and popularize the idea of zettelkasten, which are often more frequently used by writers, researchers, and academics for creating new content. Historically it was the ability to re-arrange and reuse one's commonplace items that helped to spawn and popularize the idea of zettelkasten, which are often more frequently used by writers, researchers, and academics for creating new content.
Some of the difference can be personal choice, practicality, ease-of-use, and the functionality you hope to get out of one method or the other. Honestly there's no reason you couldn't do both if you chose, but it may help to have a common index which will allow you to search for and find things you need. A set of useful historical examples can be found in the mid-twentieth century comedians including Bob Hope (pages he kept in files), Phyllis Diller (index cards), Joan Rivers (index cards), and actor/politician Ronald Reagan who maintained what some might call a commonplace book of quotes which he kept on index cards, but held in a notebook-like binder similar to a photo album with pages that he could place the cards in, but still allow him to move them around (both from slot to slot, or move whole pages at a time). The loosest system I've yet seen is that of Eminem who kept ideas and lyrics written on hotel stationery or random slips of paper which he kept wholly unorganized and unindexed in a cardboard box in a method he called "stacking ammo." Do what you think will work best for you and try it out for a while. You can always change methods later on if your needs change.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What is that tool under the pencil?
Sorry, just seeing this now. It's assuredly a sliderule, which would have been a common tool for engineers and mathematicians of his era to have had. They became less common with the advent and proliferation of calculators.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
I love this!! thank you so much, I'm going to try it out!
How did this work out? I'm curious to hear your thoughts.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Are you scanning all your analogue note cards?
I do scan them, though in a somewhat different workflow than the batch processing that some might imagine. The broad outline and some of the specific details can be found here: Handwriting my Website with a Digital Amanuensis. The comments section of that post has some useful tips for folks on other platforms.
-
If you're in software development, start your zettelkasten by documenting the step-by-step instructions to fresh install your development environment. Windows Utilities, Dev Tools, IDE, all those config options not already in your dotfiles, etc...I promise it'll be useful and get you started
I tend to take a much narrower view of the use and function of a zettelkasten for the reuse of atomic ideas. As a result, from experience I'd recommend these sorts of details are probably better suited for future search in your blog, a personal wiki, or even a commonplace book format than for use in your zettelkasten. I've outlined some of the broad idea for this in an article: Zettelkasten Overreach. On the other hand, if an outline form of these things is imminently abstractable for future very active reuse in other programming environments, then perhaps it's worthwhile, but then you'd need to reach the appropriate level of abstraction for this reuse and you may have lost the more specific details for direct recreation needed as reminders for your future self.
-
-
finiteeyes.net finiteeyes.net
-
Leave a Reply
Just a note to say that there are a handful of us who have "quietly" read and enjoyed this piece Matthew, see: https://via.hypothes.is/https://finiteeyes.net/pedagogy/extending-the-mind/
Thanks for your work.
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
This is all too correct. Sadly the older methods for writing, note taking, thinking, and memory have fallen by the wayside, so most literate moderns don't have the tradition most of (elite educated) Western culture has had for the past 2000+ years. The long tradition of commonplace books and their related versions including waste books, florilegium, sudelbücher, scholia, glossae, notebooks, anthologies, sylvae, table books, vade mecum, memoranda books, diaries, miscellanies, pocket books, thesauruses, etc. underlines your thesis well. The Zettelkasten, exactly like almost all of these others, is simply an iteration of the commonplace book instantiated into index card form. One of the reasons that Umberto Eco's advice on writing seems so similar to the zettelkasten method is that he was a medievalist scholar who was aware of these long traditions of writing, note taking, and memory and leveraged these for himself, though likely in a slightly different manner. Would anyone suggest that he didn't have a voluminous output or an outsized impact on society and culture? If one really wants to go crazy on the idea of backlinks and the ideas of creativity and invention, perhaps they ought to brush up on their Catalan and read some Ramon Llull? He was an 11th century philosopher and polymath who spent a lot of time not only memorizing much of his personal knowledge, but who invented combinatorial creative methods for juxtaposing his volumes of information to actively create new ideas. I guarantee no backlinking system held a match to his associative methods. Now if someone wanted to mix some mysticism into the fray, then perhaps there might be a competition... Many who are now writing so positively about Zettelkasten or backlinks are doing so in much the same way that humanist scholars like Desiderius Erasmus, Rodolphus Agricola, and Philip Melanchthon did when writing about and re-popularizing commonplace books in the 1500s. The primary difference being that the chance that they leave as lasting a legacy is much smaller. Worse many of them are crediting Luhmann for the actual invention of the Zettelkasten when his is but one instantiation on a long evolution of many note taking devices over literal millennia. I'm still waiting for folks to spend more time talking about Carl Linnaeus' revolutionary invention and use of the index card. Or John Locke's system for creating a new indexing system for commonplace books. Generally we don't talk about these innovations because their users spent more of their time using their systems to get other more important things done for their legacies. In the end, the message seems clear, anyone can be incredibly productive; most of it boils down to having some sort of system of reading, thinking, note taking, and new production and sticking with it for a while. Have a system; use your system; evolve it slowly to work well for you and the way you think and work.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Does anyone know of someone's public Zettelkasten somewhere on the internet? I am trying to write literature notes and permanent notes, and am trying to refine my own system but do not really think I am doing things all too well. I have read a decent amount of content on how one should write literature and permanent notes, but I think I am at the point where reading through someone else's Zettelkasten to get inspiration for how I create my own would be useful. However, I cannot find a good specific Zettelkasten one. I saw on github a list of digital gardens but most did not seemed geared towards the Zettelkasten approach, and the only one I saw that fit the bill was in Spanish...
There are lots of people writing/saying they've got a digital zettelkasten online, but few actually are in the mold you're actively looking for. Most are wikis, digital gardens, commonplace books, or simply webpages or more blog-like in form.
This IndieWeb wiki page has some of the few useful digital examples I'm aware of: https://indieweb.org/Zettelk%C3%A4sten
I've got the start of a potential online site with some sample cards, though they're not all properly interlinked, online at https://notes.boffosocko.com. My Hypothes.is account is relatively zettelkasten-like in many of the ways you might be considering, though individual notes aren't heavily interlinked in the way one would like, though they are reasonably well indexed with keywords: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich. Many notes may be more fleeting in nature, so look for the journal articles/books that have 10 or more annotations versus documents with under 5. Generally these all get moved into a digital system where they're further refined and interlinked.
-
-
community.reclaimhosting.com community.reclaimhosting.com
-
https://community.reclaimhosting.com/t/mastodon-on-reclaim-cloud/3225
For those interested in doing it for edtech/classroom settings, it might be worth looking at the Hometown fork of Mastodon: https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/wiki/Local-only-posting
The link is to a special feature that most Mastodon instances don't have: local only posting which would allow students a level of privacy and separation from the rest of the federated timeline if they choose.
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/what-language-s-are-you-studying/73190
I've been studying Welsh on and off now for just over a year.
I've been using a mix of Duolingo for it's easy user interface and it's built in spaced repetition. I like the way that it integrates vocabulary and grammar in a holistic way which focuses on both reading, writing, and listening.
However, I've also been using the fantastic platform Say Something in Welsh. This uses an older method of listening and producing based teaching which actually makes my brain feel a bit tired after practice. The focus here is solely on listening and speaking and forces the student to verbally produce the language. It's a dramatically different formula than most high school and college based courses I've seen and used over the years having taken 3 years of Spanish, 2 of French, and 2 of Latin.
The set up consists of the introduction of a few words which are then used in a variety of combinations to create full sentences. The instructors say a sentence in English and the listener is encouraged in just a few seconds to attempt to produce it in the target language (Welsh, in my case), then the instructor says the sentence in Welsh with a pause for the student to repeat it properly, another instructor says it in Welsh with a pause for a third repeat. This goes on for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. The end result is that the learner gets into the language much more quickly and can begin both understanding the spoken language as well as produce it much more rapidly than older school based methods (at least in my experience, though I have known some college language labs to use a much more limited version of a similar technique). Each lesson adds new material, but also reviews over older material in a spaced repetition format as well so you're always getting something new mixed in with the old to make new and interesting sentences for conversation.
SSiW also has modules for Manx, Cornish, Dutch, and Spanish.
I find that the two done hand in hand has helped me produce much faster results in language acquisition in an immersive manner than I have done previously and with much less effort.
-
-
datatracker.ietf.org datatracker.ietf.org
- Apr 2022
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
https://forum.artofmemory.com/t/the-contestant-who-outsmarted-the-price-is-right/43337
Circling back to this a few years later... I just watched the documentary Perfect Bid: The Contestant who Knew Too Much (2017) which follows the story of Theodore Slauson from the article. Apparently he had spent a significant amount of time watching/taping the show and documenting the prices.
The documentary provides a single example of Slauson using a visual mnemonic for remembering the price of one item. The majority of his method seemed to be the fact that he put his pricing lists into a self-made spaced repetition system which he practiced with extensively. For some of his earliest visits to the show he mentions that a friend who travelled with him quizzed him on items on his price list on the way to the show. This, likely combined with an above average natural memory, allowed him to beat TPIR.
Outside of the scant memory portion portrayed, it was a reasonably entertaining watch.
-
-
-
Crossover physical note / digital note system? .t3_u1wtbk._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
Does this count? https://boffosocko.com/2021/12/20/55799844/
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Do you manage “wiki”-type notes and permanent notes separately? .t3_uapyj9._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
I personally and always recommend people keep separate folders for zettelkasten and wiki like patterns primarily because you could and should be using each of them in dramatically different ways. If you're putting your zettelkasten notes into a wiki setting, then you're starting to actively place those notes into a final written form (Ahrens calls these "projects" in his book How to Take Smart Notes as a catchall for articles, chapters, books, or other long form writing.)
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
Quick question regarding organizing your .obsidian vaults .t3_ubqkap._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; } questionHi, started using Obsidian just about a week ago and love it. But I can't make up my mind about this: I have several projects I'm working on at the same time that are not totally independent from each other and share some sources (---> so I'd say, put them in the same vault) but on the other hand I'm someone who easily gets distracted. Even within the one project I started working on with Obsidian so far I manage to just look at an older note's title and get lost in deepening the info contained, although I was trying to focus on something else (--> so I'd say put different projects into different vaults just to avoid this permanent distraction and also to have a better overview).Maybe I just didn't figure out yet how to filter and sort properly?I guess at the end of the day this is a question of own preferences/work style and up to me to decide - but I'd really appreciate any of your opinions and experiences, or hints what I missed about filters, tags and sorting of notes.Thanks in advance! (and if I don't answer anymore today I probably got distracted by something completely different, lol)
Another option is to have a top level folder (vault) for all your notes and keep the projects you want to maintain in sub-folders within that primary vault. Then when you want to focus on a sub-topic you can open that sub-folder as its own vault (open a pre-existing folder as a vault). If you copy your main .obsidian file into each of the sub-folders, that keeps all of your Obsidian settings which will stay the same between your vaults. The primary thing to keep in mind is that when you're in a sub-folder you can't easily [[cross link]] to content in your other folders until you move up to the top level folder/vault because your sub-folder vault can only see files at it's own level.
-
-
www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
-
What do I need to see to believe that the zettelkasten method is working? .t3_uc59sc._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; }
Luhmann is not an outlier, he's just the only example known in English social media and the blogosphere over the past couple of years. Try searching for "card index" (English), "fichier boîte" (French), or even "commonplace book" (a simplified version of and predecessor of the zettelkasten) and you'll find lots of examples. Over the past year or so I've been working at improving the number of examples available. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettelkasten. Recently I've just uncovered Roland Barthes (12,250+ index cards) and Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita fame: https://www.openculture.com/2014/02/the-notecards-on-which-vladimir-nabokov-wrote-lolita.html).
Some of the common things I see people doing wrong are not putting in the work and particularly not creating links between their cards. Others don't have a clear reason why they're actually doing the practice. Based on anecdotal evidence from people who are well practiced at it and have done it a while, it can take from 500 to 1000 cards to see the sort of fun serendipity and value in having a zettelkasten. Having something specific or even an area in which you actively want to write as an end goal can be very helpful. If you're writing even 1-3 solid cards a day, that is the leverage in productivity. Barthes averaged about 1 and change compared to Luhmann's 6 cards a day. Once you have lots of cards that are all linked together, pick your favorite up with all the ones that go with it and you've got a solid article or even the start of a book.
-
-
mastodon.social mastodon.social
-
The historian in me always wants to look back at how this sort of media control has played out historically, so thinking about examples like William Randolph Hearst, Henry Luce, David Sarnoff, Axel Springer, Kerry Packer, or Rupert Murdoch across newspapers, radio, television, etc. might be interesting. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_proprietor
Tim Wu's The Master Switch is pretty accessible in this area.
On the intercultural front, the language (very careful public relations and "corporate speak") used in this leaked audio file of the most recent Twitter All Hands phone call might be fascinating and an interesting primary source for some of the questions you might be looking at on such an assignment. https://peertube.dk/w/2q8cdKR1mTCW7RyMQhcBEx
Who are the multiple audiences (acknowledged and unacknowledged) being addressed? (esp. as they address leaks of information in the call.)
-
-
winnielim.org winnielim.org
-
You've got some excellent examples of people's websites with notes, similar to those at https://indieweb.org/note. But it feels a bit like you're approaching it from the perspective of deeper ideas and thoughts than one might post to Twitter or other social media. Is this your intent?
Note to myself: It would be worthwhile looking at examples of people's practices in this space that are more akin to note taking and idea building, perhaps in the vein of creating "digital gardens" or the use of digital social annotation tools like Hypothes.is.
-
-
www.zylstra.org www.zylstra.org
-
https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2022/04/three-questions-about-annotating-in-hypothesis/
Thanks for asking these questions Ton! I've been meaning to spend some time writing up my use cases and methods for this for a while, and your questions have created a scaffold for getting a large chunk of it done in some bite sized pieces. Now I should be able to roll up my answers into an article, do some light editing and be on my way.
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
Last night while watching a video related to The First Astronomers, I came across a clip in which Australian elder Uncle Ghillar Michael Anderson indicates that indigenous dendroglyphs (markings on trees) or petroglyphs (markings on stone in the stony territories) are the libraries of the Indigenous peoples who always relate (associate) their stories from the markings back up to the sky (stars, constellations).
These markings remind me of some of those found on carved stone balls in neolithic European contexts described by Dr. @LynneKelly in The Memory Code and Memory Craft and carvings on coolamon in Knowledge and Power.
Using the broad idea of the lukasa and abstract designs, I recently bought a small scale version of the Aberlemno Pictish Cross as a small manual/portable memory palace, which is also an artwork that I can hang on the wall, to use to associate memories to the designs and animals which are delineated in 18 broad areas on the sculpture. (Part of me wonders if the communities around these crosses used them for mnemonic purposes as well?)
Is anyone else using abstract designs or artwork like this for their memory practice?
Anyone know of other clever decorative artworks one could use and display in their homes/offices for these purposes?
For those interested in the archeological research on dendroglyphs in Australia: - The Western Yalanji dendroglyph: The life and death of an Aboriginal carved tree - Review: The Dendroglyphs or ‘Carved Trees’ of New South Wales by Robert Etheridge (Content warning: historical erasure of Indigenous culture)
-
- Mar 2022
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
timapple I’m looking for feedback on my blog’s look. Thanks! Tim’s Blog #indieweb #blog 2022-03-30 9:16 am
@timapple Spring colors in dark mode is pretty cool, particularly in your code blocks. 🤩
Tags
Annotators
URL
-
-
movement-ontology.brandazzle.net movement-ontology.brandazzle.net
-
Investigate further into issues of semiotic theory and dance/music
This sounds like the sort of place where one might apply Walter Ong's work on orality or Lynne Kelly and Margo Neale's Songlines (Thames & Hudson, 2021).
-
-
github.com github.com
-
I already have several highlights made by external pdf applications like ocular. These annotations are being detected by the pdf viewer used by this plugin. I wanted a way to add the existing annotations to markdown instead of having to repeat the process. As you can see, the highlights' metadata is being detected upon clicking the highlights. What can be done is add 2 options - Either import all existing annotations and highlights Import the selected annotation/highlight I would love to see this feature being added
The work to add this particular feature to the plugin may be quite a lot, but for those who want it in the erstwhile and for the developers as an example, one might try looking at https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536.
-
-
groups.google.com groups.google.com
-
I've been using the Hypothesis Obsidian annotator to annotate PDFs in an Obsidian vault—so I have a bunch of annotations as markdown files. I am now attempting to publish the Obsidian vault as a website at movement-ontology.brandazzle.net, but the plugin apparently isn't supported on website, as the annotations do not render. Is there any way I could host the Hypothesis tools on the website and connect my annotations so that viewers can see my annotations?
Brandon,
Obsidian Annotator (https://github.com/elias-sundqvist/obsidian-annotator), which I'm presuming you're using, looks like it's working from within Obsidian instead of a web page and is very clever looking, but without some significant work, I don't think it's going to provide you with the results you're looking for. It sounds like you want an all-public chain of work and Obsidian Annotator currently defaults to an all-private chain.
From my brief perusal of what's going on, the plugin appears to be tied to a single Hypothes.is account (likely the developer's) which defaults all annotations to private (only you) and as a result, even if you had the permalink to the annotations you'd not be able to see them presented on the web as they're all private and you wouldn't have access to the account. You could try filing some issues on the related Github repository to see if the developer might add the ability to make public annotations using your own personal account, which I'm sure would require your personal API key for Hypothes.is to be put into the settings page for the plugin in Obsidian. Another issue I see is that it's taking Hypothesis tags and turning them into Obsidian tags, which is generally fine, but the developer isn't accounting for multi-word tags which is creating unintended tag errors along the way that will need to be manually fixed.
If you're open to an alternate method of annotating and doing so in public, I can recommend a workflow that will allow you to do what it sounds like you're attempting. It starts with annotating .pdf files (either on the web, or as local files in your browser) in public using your own Hypothes.is account. (Most of this also works with private annotations, but if you want them to appear on public versions of web-hosted .pdf files with the same fingerprints, you'll want them to be public so others can see/interact with them.) Next set up the Hypothesidian script described here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225. There are some useful hints further down the thread on that page, so read the whole thing. The Github repository for it is here: https://github.com/SilentVoid13/Templater/discussions/191 if you need it. I've documented a few modifications I've made to the built-in template to suit my particular needs and which might serve as a template if you find it useful: https://boffosocko.com/2021/07/08/hypothes-is-obsidian-hypothesidian-for-easier-note-taking-and-formatting/.
You can then use the functionality of Hypothesidian to pull in the annotations you want (by day, by document, only your annotations, all the annotations on a document, etc.) For .pdf files, you may require Jon Udell's facet tool https://jonudell.info/h/facet/ to search your personal account for the name of the file or one of the tags you used. When you find it, you can click on it and it will open a new browser window that contains the appropriate urn file "key" you'll need to put into Hypothesidian to grab the annotations from a particular .pdf file. It will be in the general form: urn:x-pdf:1234abcd5678efgh9101112ijkl13. I haven't found an easier means of pulling out the URN/fingerprint of pdf files, though others may have ideas.
When you pull in your annotations you can also get/find permalinks to the annotations on the web if you like. I usually hide mine in the footnotes of pages with the labels "annotation in situ" and "syndication links", a habit I've picked up from the IndieWeb community (https://indieweb.org/posts-elsewhere). You can see a sample of how this might be done at https://notes.boffosocko.com/where-are-the-empty-spaces-on-the-internet where I've been doing some small scale Hypothes.is/Obsidian/Web experiments. (I'm currently using Blot.im to get [[wikilinks]] to resolve.)
Another strong option you're probably looking for is to use "via" links (https://web.hypothes.is/blog/meetvia/) on the URLs for your pdf files so that people can automatically see the annotation layer. (This may require whitelisting on Hypothes.is' end depending on where the files are hosted; alternately https://docdrop.org/ may be useful here.) Then if you've annotated those publicly, they'll also be able to see them that way too.
Another side benefit of this method is that it doesn't require the Data View plugin for Obsidian to render your annotations within Obsidian which also means you'll have cleaner looking pages of annotations in your web published versions. (ie. none of the %% code blocks which don't render properly on the web)
As I notice you're using some scanned .pdf files which often don't have proper OCR and can make creating annotations with appropriate Hypothes.is anchors, you might also appreciate the functionality of docdrop for this as well.
Given your reliance on documents and the fact that you've annotated some in what looks like Adobe Acrobat or a similar .pdf program, you might additionally enjoy using Zotero with Obsidian, Zotfile, and mdnotes as outlined here: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-zotfile-mdnotes-obsidian-dataview-workflow/15536. It's relatively slick, but requires additional set up, reliance on more moving pieces, and isn't as nice an overall user interface in comparison to Hypothes.is. It also misses all of the potential useful social annotation you might get with Hypothes.is.
Hopefully this is all reasonably clear and helpful. I'd be interested in hearing about options from others who are using Hypothes.is in conjunction with Obsidian or other related note taking tools and publishing them to the web after-the-fact.
Best, Chris Aldrich
-
-
forum.artofmemory.com forum.artofmemory.com
-
ehcolstonMay '21Such as these seals: File:Memory-seals.jpg - Wikimedia Commons 37 I can’t find out which book these seals appear in, or what they’re for.
The best reference for this and a broad perspective of Bruno with respect to memory is Frances A. Yates' The Art of Memory (University of Chicago, 1966). She covers Bruno and the seals fairly extensively in Chapter XI.
-
-
micro.blog micro.blog
-
pratik This may be too late to be a Micro Camp topic but does anyone knows if any UX research exists on the ideal post length for a timeline view? Twitter has 280 chars (a remnant from SMS). I think FB truncates after 400 chars. But academic abstracts are 150-300 words (not chars).
@pratik Mastodon caps at 500 as a default. The information density of the particular language/character set is certainly part of the calculus.
Here's a few to start (and see their related references): - https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/How-Constraints-Affect-Content%3A-The-Case-of-Switch-Gligoric-Anderson/de77e2b6abae20a728d472744557d722499efef5 - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0280-3
-
-
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
-
Nice to see someone speaking so joyously about annotations. :) Looks like you've got a heavier analog version of the digital version of what I'm doing. I often use Kindle hightlights/annotations and then import them to Obsidian. Alternately I use Hypothes.is on online .pdf copies and then use Hypothesidian (https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225) to import all my digital notes into Obsidian. I love being able to keep the original context of the text close for either creating literature notes or expanding fleeting notes into permanent ones. When I am in a more analog mode (who doesn't love the feel of a nice fountain pen on paper?) I have a method for doing optical character recognition on my handwritten notes to save the time of typing them out again: https://boffosocko.com/2021/12/20/55799844/
-
- Feb 2022
-
macwright.com macwright.com
-
I recently attended an IndieWeb pop-up session on distributed libraries.It was thoroughly refreshing.
😍
-