5 Matching Annotations
  1. Aug 2023
    1. N+7 algorithm used by the Oulipo writers. This algorithm replaces every noun—every person, place, or thing—in Hacking the Academy with the person, place, or thing—mostly things—that comes seven nouns later in the dictionary. The results of N+7 would seem absolutely nonsensical, if not for the disruptive juxtapositions, startling evocations, and unexpected revelations that ruthless application of the algorithm draws out from the original work. Consider the opening substitution of Hacking the Academy, sustained throughout the entire book: every instance of the word academy is literally an accident.

      How might one use quirky algorithms in interestingly destructive or even generative ways to combinatorially create new things?

  2. Dec 2022
    1. No es magia.

      I love that he points this out explicitly.

      Some don't see the underlying processes of complexity within note taking methods and as a result ascribe magical properties to what are emergent properties or combinatorial creativity.

      See also: The Ghost in the Machine zettel from Luhmann

      Somehow there's an odd dichotomy between the boredom of such a simple method and people seeing magic within it at the same time. This is very similar to those who feel that life must be divinely created despite the evidence brought by evolutionary and complexity theory. In this arena, there is a lot more evolved complexity which makes the system harder to see compared to the simpler zettelkasten process.

  3. Nov 2022
    1. I think that there’s also the kind of what Brian Eno called scenius, that there are times like Xerox PARC in the 1970s or Florence during the Renaissance when there are just a number of people in contact with each other, and their ideas spark each other. And again, it’s a matter of building on what has been done before.

      Definition of scenius, a portmanteau of scene and genius, meaning roughly the output of combining the ideas of zeitgeist with combinatorial creativity to create sustained output which might be considered genius level work.

      Generally it gives more credit to the people and time than is generally seen in other instances which are often frame as lone genius.

      My definition may be more complex and nuanced than that of the version coined (?) by Brian Eno.

  4. Aug 2022
    1. Apart from a higher probability to retrieve particular note sheets, that advantage lies in thecircumstance that notes having a similar keyword will, as the box grows, find themselves atthe same location because of the alphabetical structure. That means not only an automaticcollection of content, but also a comparative review of those related note sheets, which inturn leads to new thoughts basd on the relation between the note sheets with identicalkeywords
  5. Feb 2022
    1. By adding these links between notes, Luhmann was able to addthe same note to different contexts.

      By crosslinking one's notes in a hypertext-like manner one is able to give them many different contexts. This linking and context shifting is a solid method for helping one's ideas to have sex with each other as a means of generating new ideas.


      Is there a relationship between this idea of context shifting and modality shifting? Are these just examples of building blocks for tools of thought? Are they sifts on different axes? When might they be though of as the same? Compare and contrast this further.