What comes after Roam's renaissance? — LessWrong<br /> by [[Itay Dreyfus]]<br /> accessed on 2025-08-30T23:55:03

came to via: https://writingslowly.com/2025/08/24/use-case-for-the-zettelkasten.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20250603172833/https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-startup-boom-raises-questions-of-exaggerated-tech-savvy-11565775004

2019 WSJ report on the vaporware Build.ai. Folded 6 yrs later. Meaning investors turned a blind eye for all that time.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250603172659/https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/30/builder-ai-raises-100m-series-c-led-by-insight-partners-to-scale-up-its-software-automation/

March 2022 Techcrunch article already pointing to the vapor aspect of Builder.ai which folded in June 2025. Points back to 2019 reports where the same issue was already raised. Meaning later investors were wilfully blind for 6 yrs.

'AI' softw dev company, is actually a pool of 700 India based coders. Exposed because they couldn't meet payroll....

This guy discovers music through Beatport.

Main principle: Look through artists, producers and labels of music you like.

This way you discover new but similar music to what you already like and increase your awareness.

Custom edits can be useful too, but requires more domain know-how

What was that old news editor adagio again? Never use a question mark in the title bc it signals the answer is 'No'. (If it is demonstrably yes, then the title would be affirmative. Iow a question means you're hedging and nevertheless choose the uncertain sensational for the eyeballs.)

AI hype in material science. Google shows an allergy to being pointed to fundamental issues. Another example of pointing out obvious mistakes or issues is not only not welcomed but actively ignored (vgl examples of AI as search engine, where pointing out the first three of the top ten results were wrong resulted in being shouted at, or the blogpost writing video in which presented 'facts' were 1 wikipedia click away from being shown made-up. False citations etc.) It's not bad per se that AI can be wrong, no tool is infallible, but the problem is n:: the extreme asymmetry between the machine effort needed to make stuff up in heaps, and the human effort needed to wade through all the crap and point that out. Vgl [[Spammy handelings assymmetrie 20201220072726]] [[It is easier to F things up than fix things 20180610073041]] Creating entropy is way easier than reducing it, always. We don't need our tools to create ever more entropy on purpose, if only we can reduce it again. Our tools need to help decrease entropy. Decreasing entropy is the definition of life, increasing it should be anathema. Esp if it is unclear where a tool is increasing entropy.

https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992428117467615333/1163824618759520318

He then pushes a button and "plays back" the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.

This seems to be a reasonable argument to make for those who ask, why read? why take notes? especially when we can use search and artificial intelligence to do the work for us. Can we really?

https://medium.com/intelliboosters/is-tiago-fortes-build-a-second-brain-still-relevant-in-the-age-of-chatgpt-b7a7c5e8637c

These articles kill me. They sit at surface level and don't delve any deeper for actual insight. And this is why these techniques are necessary. (BTW, these methods go back thousands of years... Tiago didn't invent them.)

Iris van Rooij means to counteract edu sector buying into the AI hype

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Fernando Borretti</span> in Unbundling Tools for Thought (<time class='dt-published'>12/29/2022 15:59:17</time>)</cite></small>

There are likely far more people talking about zettelkasten and writing short, simple blogposts and articles about it than those who are actually practicing it and seeing benefit from it.

Finding public examples of people practicing and showing their work in the zettelkasten space are few and far between.

This effect likely increases the availability bias of Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten which is frequently spoken of, but it also has the benefit of being online, even if it's primarily written in German.

always be marketing... there's a hidden nudge here that there might be knowledge in the course that isn't contained in this book...

Some great marketing copy, but I'm anticipating a book that is going to lay out some general techniques that go under the topic of commonplace book, a concept that goes back over 2,000 years. This is the opposite of revolutionary.

I will agree that there are far too many "influencers" and "gurus" out there selling something in the note taking space. Almost none of them know what the hell they're talking about.

As the result of online business models and SEO, most writing becomes about chasing clout and audience eyeballs rather than providing thought provoking insight and razor sharp analysis. The audience reaction has weakened with the anger reaction machines like Twitter.

We need better business models that aren't built on hype.

https://www.theinformation.com/articles/why-influencer-journalists-should-not-be-the-future-of-journalism

Hypehouse (collab house) examples: * https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22877013/hype-house-netflix-show * https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a34655703/tiktok-sway-house/ * https://harpers.org/archive/2021/06/tiktok-house-collab-house-the-anxiety-of-influencers/ * Does Clubhouse, the app, count? It seemed like a hypehouse for hyping hype.

What happens when hype runs amok?

Hype example at the very start of a project.

https://johannesklingebiel.de/2022/01/12/hype-as-a-scale.html

Since the term “disruptive” has come to be associated with Clay Christensen’s model, there might be something closer to a reappropriation model like Hippies appropriating VW Beetles, Roadsworth painting pedestrian crossings into zippers, or circuit benders making musical instruments out of old toys. Somewhere, someone may subvert a MOOC into something useful. In fact, Arshad Ahmad once described a successful MOOC which had lost its instructors. Learners started owning their learning activities.

Alan Levine’s comment also needs to be kept for posterity:

I so appreciate the framing of this history for the oMOOC (Original) as "courses of lectures" which seems not focused on the lectures but the discussions generated. And thanks for the mention of the ds106 assignment bank (a concept I seem to suggest in every project) but I must make a small historical credit. Grant Potter was definitely part of the foundation, but his great contribution was DS106 Radio. The person who credit for the Assignment Bank must go to is Martha Burtis who did this and more for co-creating DS106, but she's often invisible in the Shadow of Groom. I did the archeology on the Assignment Bank history: http://cogdogblog.com/2016/10/ds106-history-details/ I dream that someone would fund you to roll out the model described, maybe it's a dMOOC (Downsian) not that it would likely overtake the xMOOC Hype Train (which all its is shiny conductors have jumped off the train, i just keeps rolling through burgs like EdSurge).

In some ways, the strongest indictment of the MOOC hype.

That sure is one way to put it. Same expectation for #NGDLE?

Sounds like MOOCs have been part of his role, at least in UT’s collaboration with edX. Which brings an interesting context to the piece, especially in view of what we might call “the end of the MOOC moment”.

This puts MOOC hype in perspective, including the Matthew Effect.

Why does she use the word "we"? What is the rhetorical strategy at work here?

Cue Rolin Moe, who has investigated the MOOC hype so thoroughly. We may still follow a Gartner Cycle (Merton did warn us about self-fulfilling prophesies). But much of those phases have been documented.

Timely. Sent it to a few people, already, as it connects with several discussions we’ve been having on neocolonialism in EdTech, including the content side of Open Education (OER). Some of it reminds me of Crissinger’s critical take on OER, based on her experience with Open Access.

We often think of the hype cycle but two things this post reveals about MOOC hype: 1) There can be regional differences in the timing of those cycles. 2) We might be in a broad shift from MOOC as a thing to MOOC as a pretext for openness.

My thoughts exactly. Same was true of McG’s Tony Massi saying that MOOCs got a few science teachers to rethink their teaching for the first time in decades.