Liquid Margins 41: Driving Engagement and Building Community, Insights from Partners on the Hypothesis Impact : Hypothesis

See also: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/02/27/tell/ for details on misattribution on Benjamin Franklin quote in the video.

The misattribution of this quote often seen in educational settings likely stems from Richards & Rodgers from 1986.

See also: - https://hypothes.is/a/cKMkaAZQEe6dq0fkeyNabA - https://hypothes.is/a/YWrJKgZPEe6dy2sJU5KcSw

The frequent educational quote "Tell me and I forget, teach me and I remember, involve me and I learn.", often misattributed to Benjamin Franklin, is most attributable to 3rd century Confucian philosopher Kunzi (Xun Kuang or 荀子) who wrote:

Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops . . .

The translation of which appears in Xunzi: The Complete Text, Translated by Eric L. Hutton, Chapter 8: The Achievements of the Ru, Quote Page 64, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey. 2014.

Variations of the sentiment and attributions have appeared frequently thereafter.

Tell Me and I Forget; Teach Me and I May Remember; Involve Me and I Learn<br /> by Quote Investigator®

I'm curious if anyone has ever experimented with making an online Luhmann-esque Zettelkasten using WikiMedia as their platform?

What were the pros/cons you found for doing so?

Have you tried other methods (index cards, Obsidian, other(s)?), and if so what affordances did MediaWiki provide or were lacking for what you were attempting to accomplish?

Did you use transclusion functionality?

Did you attempt to build or implement backlink functionality? Use the API or plugins for this?

Did you build some sort of custom index (manually, programatically, other)?

If you used it for writing, what methods did you attempt with respect to taking the smaller pieces/ideas and building them up into longer written pieces?

Links to specific public examples are welcome here. I'll also accept links to public versions of commonplace books or similar forms which also use MediaWiki as their infrastructure.

syndication link: https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/144hzn9/zettelkasten_with_mediawiki/

I would argue that it is more subtle than this. It allows you to forget, but the aim is to allow you to learn, remember, and slowly build.

Are You Rude? Take The Test - The Oprah Winfrey Show

2008-10-15 original airing

reply to

my daughter, when very young, once said to me ‘when are you going to write something that people want to read?’ and i am continually haunted —Shawn Graham @electricarchaeo@scholar.social https://scholar.social/@electricarchaeo/110503595819290672

and to Kathleen Fitzpatrick at https://hcommons.social/@kfitz/110503673214772574

@kfitz @electricarchaeo@scholar.social My friend P.M. Forni was always saddened when he spoke about his life's scholarly work only being read by "at most 4 people". But he felt kindness, civility, and generosity were the telos of life. He didn't want his students to be Renaissance experts and then be rude to an old woman in the street, so he wrote "Choosing Civility". He was thrilled when an Oprah appearance we got him garnered it instantaneous audience and overnight best seller status. He still sweated it out for his four readers. I'm certain his advice to you would to not be haunted, but keep sweating it out with kindness. You're influencing more people than you'll ever know. Thank you both for your arete and generosity.

reply to u/coachdan007 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13ygoz9/comment/jn80a7z/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Mostly these references were using Hypothesis, though I do have some material in Zotero. I don't use Raindrop. IIRC, I knew I'd seen the topics before and did a search for the tag bible and then narrowed it down my adding on zettelkasten and it popped up immediately. A large number of my replies here are just querying my digital ZK and spitting out pre-packaged answers or pointers to relevant material. I also occasionally do the same thing with my analog version, though with those I have to type them out. I follow roughly the same process for doing my own queries and writing. You get surprisingly good at it after a while, particularly when you know it's in there somewhere. Of course r/ has it's own internal search function too, so you could check out: - https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/search/?q=bible&restrict_sr=1 - https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/search/?q=bible&restrict_sr=1

and have a slightly wider net to get the fishes and loaves you're seeking. With the proper notes at hand, perhaps you'll soon be able to turn water into wine? Interestingly, I think you're the first who's ever asked this question here (or other related fora). I hope people don't think I spend all my time writing all these custom answers when I'm just tipping out my zettelkasten. (Though I do always keep my original answers too in the eventuality that I ever want to turn all of these thoughts into an article or book.)

reply to u/coachdan007 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13ygoz9/comment/jn6fwzr/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Thanks u/coachdan007. I've heard of the EPP, but never delved heavily into it. There's still a lot of digging I want to do into Edwards' Miscellanies, but I just haven't had the time, sadly. Perhaps I'll find it over the summer? While you're searching around you might also find it interesting/useful to have an interleaved bible as well to give you bigger "margins" to write in as you go. This may make some of the direct thinking on the page a bit easier. Don't think too hard about some super custom method, just start practicing something that makes sense and evolve it as you go and as you need to.

As for Hypothesis, following my account or reading past notes may be useful/helpful. For the day to day, I've documented pieces of it along with tips and tricks over time on my site at https://boffosocko.com/tag/hypothes.is/. Some of the older posts when I was first starting out are probably more interesting as more recent ones can be sort of meta.

reply to Sascha at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2583/tipps-for-purchasing-a-dictation-device#latest:

I've got an older Livescribe Pulse pen I love with a small pocket notebook or Post-It Notes. It has an optical character reader and special paper but also records audio and links it to the written text (either before or after the fact). I primarily use it for longer lectures where I'll take scant notes, but have the ability to add to them based on the recorded audio later. They've also got some 3rd party OCR solutions that will take your handwriting and convert it to digital text later. While they do larger sized notebooks and a variety of other papers as well (including printing your own), the small pocket size and ease of use has been fantastic. I've owned one version or another for more than a decade and really love them for this sort of audio on-the-go functionality. Since it's a digital pen, it's also unobtrusive in meetings. The added ability to share pdf documents with embedded audio after the fact isn't bad for classmates or meeting attendees.

https://www.nichd.nih.gov/research/supported/nrp

https://www.ebay.com/itm/256099662210

American Business Systems Co. at 212 Summer Street, Boston, MA manufactured six drawer wooden card indexes some time circa early 1900s.

What sort of tutoring was this?! At 8 hours a day for the entire month this cost comes down to $18/hour!!!

More likely 2.5 hours a day on workdays would still net out at $90/hour and even this would have to be quackery of the highest magnitude.

source for claim in final sentence?

This is a painful statement to be said by an educator, a word whose root means to "lead out".

Many developed countries have national curricula and specific teacher-training standards, but the United States does not. Instead decisions on curricular and standards are created and enforced at the state and local levels, often by politically elected figures including governors, mayors, superintendents, and school boards.

This leaves early education in the United States open to a much greater sway of political influence. This can be seen in examples of Texas attempting to legislate the display the ten commandments in school classrooms in 2023, reading science being neglected in the adoption of Culkins' Units of Study curriculum, and other footballs like the supposed suppression of critical race theory in right leaning states.

Calkins' Units of Study curriculum has been estimated to be used by nearly 25% of the 67,000 elementary schools in the United States in 2023.

Columbia University Teachers College education professor Lucy Calkins, a leader of the "balanced literacy" teaching philosophy in reading, has been influential in how millions of children have been learning to read for decades.

https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2014/06/epic-refill-guide-rollerball-gel-and-ballpoints/

A solid list of pen refills and compatible options.

https://www.jetpens.com/Retro-51-Tornado-Classic-Lacquers-Rollerball-Pen-0.7-mm-Stainless-Body/pd/8233/refills

JetPens has a pretty comprehensive list of Parker style refills that will work with the Retro 51 Tornados, including ballpoints and a variety of nib sizes from broad to fine.

https://retro51.com/collections/retailer-exclusives/products/anderson-pens-palmer-rollerball

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rohdesign/5815595176/

Mike Rohde has previously had luck with the Bic Gel 0.7mm refill chopped down to fit his Retro 51 pens. Similarly he's done the Parker Gel 0.7mm refill and the Pentel Energel 0.7mm refill chopped down to fit.

https://www.wellappointeddesk.com/2015/10/ask-the-desk-retro-51-refills/

The Schmidt P8126 capless rollerball refill is compatible with the Retro 51 Tornado standard pens.

https://www.therefillguide.com/product-category/brand/retro1951/

In addition to their own branded rollerball refills, Retro 51 pens will also take a Parker style G2 ballpoint and capless rollerball refills.

Schmidt is another brand or compatible refills that is sold in Retro 51 packaging

https://www.jptamerica.com/

Retro 51: New Pens, New Collaborations And New Ownership by Nancy Olson

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2017/09/12/free-pencil-day/

A list of quotes from famous writers about pencils in The Paris Review.

At 9¢/card these are very expensive in comparison to bulk cards which usually can be found for 1-2¢/card. The difference however is in the luxuriousness of the silky smooth texture. Whether you're writing with your favorite fountain pen or a carefully chosen pencil. I don't know if these are the same brand of Bristol cards that Vladimir Nabokov used for his writing, but one could easily image him using such lovely material.

These provide a very smooth writing experience for fountain pens, gel pens and pencils. I particularly love the way my Tennessee Reds and Blackwing 602s glide over their surface. In comparison to some Japanese stationery, I'd put these cards somewhere between tsuru tsuru (slippery) and sara sara (smooth). If you're looking for a toothier paper, you'll definitely want to look elsewhere. They take fountain pens pretty well with no feathering or ghosting. My juiciest fountain pen dries in about 15 seconds, while a drier extra fine is dry in about 7 seconds, so it may take some care not to smear ink if you're on the messier end of the spectrum.

Pencil erases reasonably well, though there may be some minimal residual ghosting here. At 205 gsm, they've got a satisfying thickness unseen in most index cards and one is unlikely to rip or crinkle them when erasing. They're also thick enough that the wettest Sharpie won't bleed much less ghost through. You have to hold a card up to a backlight to see the appearance of any ghosting through it and even then, not well.

For the sticklers used to using standard 4 x 6" index cards, one should take note that the dimensions of these are slightly shorter in both dimensions—they're closer to 3.94" x 5.91". This means that you might have to take some care that while flipping through mixed company of cards your Exacompta can potentially hide between larger imperial sized cards. They're also close to, but not quite A6 in size either (105 x 148.5 mm or 4.1 x 5.8 inches).

https://www.bulkofficesupply.com/

https://www.raiseright.com/

The variety of formats which OER resources are available in (.epub, .pdf, .html, and other formats, including future formats like audio and potentially video (.mp3, .mp4) are a form of accessibility.

Is anyone placing OER materials into online channels which center piracy as a means of advertising or distribution?

(Library Genesis, SciHub, Pirate Bay, et. al.)

https://moonwoodcoffee.com/

Catered Alverno mental health event in May 2023.

The Way to Make Note Templates Yourself - BOOX - Medium

Havron, Anna. “Getting the Right Things Done,” 2023. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f64c2a45a59eb66a7264992/t/6468cc1048157b44f53b2e08/1684589584608/Handout+and+worksheet+for+making+a+values+plan%2C+Micro+Camp+2023.pdf.

https://thepalaceproject.org/

Mentioned by Dan Cohen

Technology is valuable and empowering, but at what end direct cost? Consumers don't have available data for the actual costs of the options they're choosing in many contexts.

What if that reprocessing costs the equivalent of three glasses of waters? Is it worth it for our environment, especially when the direct costs to the "consumer" are hidden into advertising models.

(via Brenna)

OEG Live: Audiobook Versions of OER Textbooks (and AI Implications)

Host: Alan Levine<br /> Panelists: Brian Barrick (LA Harbor College), Delmar Larsen, Brenna, Jonathan, Amanda Grey (KPU), Steel Wagstaff (Pressbooks).

Find out more information and discuss this topic on OEG Connect: https://oeg.pub/439V1Bc

LibreTexts Espanol

Amazon Polly Pricing

OpenAI API

Descript

All-in-one video & podcast editing, easy as a doc.

Alan Levine has been using this to do podcast editing and it allows for snipping out and replacing audio segments.

SoundStorm

We present SoundStorm, a model for efficient, non-autoregressive audio generation. SoundStorm receives as input the semantic tokens of AudioLM, and relies on bidirectional attention and confidence-based parallel decoding to generate the tokens of a neural audio codec. Compared to the autoregressive generation approach of AudioLM, our model produces audio of the same quality and with higher consistency in voice and acoustic conditions, while being two orders of magnitude faster. SoundStorm generates 30 seconds of audio in 0.5 seconds on a TPU-v4. We demonstrate the ability of our model to scale audio generation to longer sequences by synthesizing high-quality, natural dialogue segments, given a transcript annotated with speaker turns and a short prompt with the speakers' voices.

writeout.ai

Recommended by Steel Wagstaff at OEG Live 2023-06-02.

OpenStax American Government Audiobook

discussed in OEG Live: Audiobook Versions of OER Textbooks (and AI Implications)

libraries vs. publishers – The Homebound Symphony by Alan Jacobs

Why didn't university libraries take on the role of publishing and maintaining academic journals rather than ceding the function to major for-profit corporations which they now pay heavily to license that material back from?

In the Fight Over Ebooks, It’s Publishers vs. Librarians by Dan Cohen

E-books have caused the missions of many libraries to shift away from institutions that provide democratic access to a preserved culture.

Will libraries have the same problems with the digital transition that music and journalism have had?

College Students Aren't Checking Out Books by Dan Cohen

via https://contextisking.com/2020/12/01/how-digital-pennies-vs-analog-dollars-became-digital-trillions-vs-analog-billions/

Project Tailwind by Steven Johnson

This sounds like the sort of personalized AI tool I've been wishing for since the early ChatGPT models if not from even earlier dreams that predate that....

Vladimir Nabokov recorded sixty-four dreams on 118 index cards beginning on October 14, 1964 as an experiment. He was following the instructions of John Dunne, a British philosopher, in An Experiment with Time. The results were published by Princeton University Press in Insomniac Dreams: Experiments with Time by Vladimir Nabokov which was edited by Gennady Barabtarlo.

The lost index cards of Harold Innis :: Writing Slowly — by Richard (aka u/atomicnotes)

snippets on my note with some brief extensions...

I'm aware that HI's collection is now missing, but it could be partially recreated from typescript and the numbered notes.

Presumably the archives which contain the papers of Harold Innis.

https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/

http://writingball.blogspot.com/2014/09/mystery-machine-specialized-lc-smith.html

I quite like the idea of "combinatorial synthesis"as a phrase with relation to the framing of "combinatorial creativity" as an output.

via Andy

Andy indicates that this review functionality isn't specific to zettelkasten, but it still sits in the framework of note taking. Given this, are there really "other" ways available?

Sardarli, Arzu, and Ida Swan. Cree Dictionary of Mathematical Terms with Visual Examples. University of Regina, 2022. https://opentextbooks.uregina.ca/creemathdictionary/.

via Tagged Cooltech: Cree Dictionary of Mathematical Terms with Visual Examples by Adam Levine

Gallagher, John. Review of As the Priest Said to the Nun, by Carla Roth. London Review of Books, June 1, 2023. https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v45/n11/john-gallagher/as-the-priest-said-to-the-nun.

The level of orality in societies can radically change our perceptions of their histories, though quite often this material is missing in our evaluations.

Relationship to sprezzatura?

There's a somewhat poetic connection between the "conversational arsenal" of Johannes Rütiner and the "stacking ammo" of Eminem who used his notes in rap battles.

Zettelkasten Lesson Plan Intro

Not much here beyond his longer article, though it does have a sample format for zettel which can be useful for those starting out.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/334894285475

On a postcard dated 1942-07-01, the Wabash Cabinet Company announced the "Removal of its New York Office on July 1st to 60 EAST 42nd STREET, (Lincoln Building)".

reply to u/drogers8 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13wlfbs/how_to_select_a_keyword_for_your_main_card/

I'm don't think I've ever seen that advice anywhere in my own reading. I've been doing this for ages and would suggest that it's actively bad advice. Use a keyword that seems useful, beneficial, and which you're likely to have the most interest in in the future. What do you suspect the future you will use to search for that card or a branch on that idea in the future? Use that.

Also, don't overthink this stuff. Just practice. You're going to make some mistakes, but with a small number of cards you'll start to figure it out on your own before things get too large. Your practice today is not going to look like your practice in 6 months and it'll change again 6 months after that.

https://garrickvanburen.com/yes-all-software-should-have-a-philosophy-txt-file/

Makes me want all projects included a Philosophy.txt file along with the README.txt and License.txt. It’s far more useful and people-oriented than humans.txt

https://www.ionos.com/help/index.php?id=144

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/81126#authentication

https://random-blather.com/2014/04/28/information-isnt-power/

Illustration by David Somerville based on the original by Hugh McLeod.

Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/ysRBGgACEe6UNPvIvmWBkQ

This diagram is roughly a cartoon of the zettelkasten process, especially if the panels are labeled: reading, excerpting/synopsis, linking, serendipity, writing.

Santalucia, Nick. “The Zettelkasten in the Secondary Classroom.” Blog, July 6, 2021. https://www.nicksantalucia.com/blog/the-zettelkasten-in-the-secondary-classroom-k12.

speed zetteling!

Teachers Pay Teachers? https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/

Example of a teacher talking about the great conversation in the framing of the humanities....

The eternal student question, "Why do we need to learn this?" should always have a fantastic answer from their teachers.

https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2014/01/22/information-vs-knowledge/

https://getupnote.com/

Suggested by Cato Minor<br /> Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, Android

https://new.nsf.gov/funding/opportunities/building-prototype-open-knowledge-network-proto

https://www.inkandswitch.com/peritext/

https://ogm.agor.ai/users

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/an-illustrated-guide-to-mouth-gestures-and-their-meanings-around-the-world/

Broadly an extended excerpt of François Caradec's Dictionary of Gestures.

My first impressions of the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C<br /> by Cato Minor

Commonly known was that using an apostrophe, the back space key and a period would allow one to type an exclamation point on a typewriter. Less common were some of these additional special characters:

• Division (÷): colon and hyphen
• Pound Sterling (£): Hyphen and small f
• Equation (=): Hyphens turning the variable slightly (unlocking the platen and moving it up)
• Cedilla (ç): small c, backspace and comma
• Paragraph mark )( parentheses

p. 16

Typewriters had switches to allow the typewriter to use different portions of the typewriter ribbon. Some were utilized to differentiate between colors on multi-colored ribbons (typically between black and red) while others allowed the use of the top or bottom of a ribbon to get more use (economy) out of them. Many also made the ribbon inoperative so that the type struck directly against a sheet to allow for stencil cutting.

p. 12

Card Grip. (Right and Left). Hold cards firmly against the platen.

p 5

“The Remington Noiseless Way.” Remington Rand Inc., ca 1940. From the Peter Weil Typewriter Archives. https://site.xavier.edu/polt/typewriters/RemingtonNoiseless10.pdf.

reply to u/enabeh at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13s6dsg/comment/jluovm9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

If you're curious, I've been collecting examples of teachers/professors who used their zettelkasten for teaching: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27card+index+for+teaching%27 Examples include Mario Bunge, Frederic L. Paxson, Gotthard Deutsch, Roland Barthes, and Joachim Jungius. In more recent contexts, I've seen Dan Allosso (aka u/danallosso), Mark Robertson (aka calhistorian u/calhistorian), and Sean Graham (https://electricarchaeology.ca/) using zettelkasten or linked notes using Obsidian, Roam, etc. for teaching. Perhaps we should get the group together to trade stories? Ping me with an email if you're interested.

• via u/enabeh at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13s6dsg/comment/jluovm9/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

reply to u/muhlfriedl by way of reply to u/chounosumuheya at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/13s6dsg/comment/jlpt8ai/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Examples of zettelkasten users

S.D. Goitein, Beatrice Webb, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harold Innis, Victor Margolin, Eminem, Aby Warburg, Antonin Sertillanges, Jacques Barzun, C. Wright Mills, Gotthard Deutsch, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Vladimir Nabokov, Gerald Weinberg, Michael Ende, Twyla Tharp, Hans Blumenberg, Keith Thomas, Arno Schmidt, Mario Bunge, Sönke Ahrens, Dan Allosso for a few more. If you go with those who used commonplace books and waste books, which are notebook-based instead of index card-based, there are thousands upon thousands more.

Historically the easier question might be: what creators didn't use one of these systems and was successful?!? The broad outlines of these methods go back much, much farther than Niklas Luhmann. These patterns are not new...

Personally, I've used my own slip box to write large portions of the articles on my website. I also queried it to compile this reply.

https://sellhelp.valorebooks.com/article/44-grading-guidelines

Reply to Will Simpson at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17939/#Comment_17939

There should be more conversation about zettelkasten as both a "ratchet" as well as a "flywheeel". Sometimes I feel like it's hard to speak of these things for either lack of appropriate words/naming and/or having a shared vocabulary for them.

Even Luhmann's "second memory" has a mushiness to it, but I certainly see your sense of it as a thing which moves forward. I have the same sort of sense with the Aboriginal cultural idea of a "songline" which acts as both a noun as well as having an internal sense of being a verb to me. The word "google" has physically and specifically undergone the transition from noun to verb in a way which "second memory" and "songline" haven't, though perhaps they should? The difference is that the word google is much more concrete and simple while second memory and songline have a lot more cultural material and meaning sitting with them if you know them and their fuller attendant practices.

@Will Thanks for always keeping up with your regular threads and considerations.

I've been keeping examples of people talking about the "magic of note taking" for a bit. I appreciate your perspectives on it. Personally I consider large portions of it to be bound up with the ideas of what Luhmann termed as "second memory", the use of ZK to supplement our memories, and the serendipity of combinatorial creativity. I've traced portions of it back to the practices of Raymond Llull in which he bound up old mnemonic techniques with combinatorial creativity which goes back to at least Seneca.

A web search for "combinatorial creativity" may be useful, but there's a good attempt at what it entails here: https://fs.blog/seneca-on-combinatorial-creativity/

Will Simpson feels that the magic of note taking stems from "the repetition of adding your thoughts to the notes you take and reviewing notes regularly".

I think it sems more from the serendipitous connections and resultant combinatorial creativity.

cross reference: https://hypothes.is/a/QLyD4P6mEe2uC4O7z2QOOQ

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/13tv9ls/question_how_fast_did_you_name_your_antinet/

Mine was a bit into the process, but not until I got the filing cabinet where they'll all ultimately live: https://boffosocko.com/2022/08/08/55808119/#Naming

See examples of people naming them here including: - Cvrie (Fallout 4 reference) - torspedia (after username on MediaWiki installation) - Todd (Bad Words reference to study binder) - Plumeria (after 4 months) - Hamilton after video - Epictetus (meaning "to acquire" from stoicism) - Zeke (short for Ezekiel) - Stewie (personal communication, Scheper's nickname, not mentioned on this page)

Bob Ross' "happy accidents" tied to the idea of serendipity or the outcome of combinatorial creativity within a zettelkasten.

Ross's version is related to experimentation and the idea of adjacent possible. Taking a current known and extending it to see what will happening and accepting the general outcome. This was one of the roots of his creative process.

Noticing that the title of this isn't original itself (or is it?) There's a similar post entitled "Combinatorial Creativity and the Myth of Originality" by Maria Popova at https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/combinatorial-creativity-and-the-myth-of-originality-114843098/

Perhaps the William Inge quote is incredibly apropos here: https://hypothes.is/a/Fvkz-i8rEe2hJYM4oINfpw

https://www.cygnoir.net/2023/05/20/week-notes-how.html

@cygnoir considering leaving?!

https://www.paperbistro.com/browse-by-brand/exacompta/paper/index-cards.html

Manufacturer direct

https://www.baum-kuchen.net/blogs/journal/ichigo-ichie-in-hamburg-love-letter-may-2023

quote via https://forum.zettelkasten.de/profile/dandennison84

reply to dandennison84 at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17921/#Comment_17921

I've written a bit before on The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten, the latter of which has been emerging since roughly 2013 in English language contexts. Some of it is similar to or extends @dandennison84's framing along with some additional history.

Because of the richness of prior annotation and note taking traditions, for those who might mean what we're jokingly calling ZK®, I typically refer to that practice specifically as a "Luhmann-esque zettelkasten", though it might be far more appropriate to name them a (Melvil) "Dewey Zettelkasten" because the underlying idea which makes Luhmann's specific zettelkasten unique is that he was numbering his ideas and filing them next to similar ideas. Luhmann was treating ideas on cards the way Dewey had treated and classified books about 76 years earlier. Luhmann fortunately didn't need to have a standardized set of numbers the way the Mundaneum had with the Universal Decimal Classification system, because his was personal/private and not shared.

To be clear, I'm presently unaware that Dewey had or kept any specific sort of note taking system, card-based or otherwise. I would suspect, given his context, that if we were to dig into that history, we would find something closer to a Locke-inspired indexed commonplace book, though he may have switched later in life as his Library Bureau came to greater prominence and dominance.

Some of the value of the Dewey-Luhmann note taking system stems from the same sorts of serendipity one discovers while flipping through ideas that one finds in searching for books on library shelves. You may find the specific book you were looking for, but you're also liable to find some interesting things to read on the shelves around that book or even on a shelf you pass on the way to find your book.

Perhaps naming it and referring to it as the Dewey-Luhmann note taking system or the Dewey-Luhmann Zettelkasten may help to better ground and/or demystify the specific practices? Co-crediting them for the root idea and an early actual practice, respectively, provides a better framing and understanding, especially for native English speakers who don't have the linguistic context for understanding Zettelkästen on its own. Such a moniker would help to better delineate the expected practices and shape of a note taking practice which could be differentiated from other very similar ones which provide somewhat different affordances.

Of course, as the history of naming scientific principles and mathematical theorems after people shows us, as soon as such a surname label might catch on, we'll assuredly discover someone earlier in the timeline who had mastered these principles long before (eg: the "Gessner Zettelkasten" anyone?) Caveat emptor.

Reply to Nick at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17926/#Comment_17926

Some pieces of social media come close to the sort of sense making and cognition you're talking about, but none does it in a pointed or necessarily collaborative way. The Hypothes.is social annotation tool comes about as close to it as I've seen or experienced beyond Wikipedia and variations which are usually a much slower boil process. As an example of Hypothes.is, here's a link to some public notes I've been taking on the "zettekasten output problem" which I made a call for examples for a while back. The comments on the call for examples post have some rich fodder some may appreciate. Some of the best examples there include videos by Victor Margolin, Ryan Holiday (Robert Greene's protoge), and Dustin Lance Black along with a few other useful examples that are primarily text-based and require some work to "see".

For those interested, I've collected a handful of fascinating examples of published note collections, published zettelkasten, and some digitized examples (that go beyond just Luhmann) which one can view and read to look into others' practices, but it takes some serious and painstaking work. Note taking archaeology could be an intriguing field.

Dan Allosso's Obsidian book club has kept up with additional books (they're just finishing Rayworth's Doughnut Economics and about to start Simon Winchester's new book Knowing What We Know, which just came out this month.) Their group Obsidian vault isn't as dense as it was when they started out, but it's still an intriguing shared space. For those interested in ZK and knowledge development, this upcoming Winchester book looks pretty promising. I'd invite everyone to join if they'd like to.

Keep Comments Open! by Dan Allosso

Some thoughts about the ability to turn off public comments on Substack posts, which may diminish the conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk

I wish he'd gotten into more of the detail of the research and index card making here as that's where most of the work lies. He does show some of his process of laying out and organizing the cards into some sort of sections using 1/3 cut tabbed cards. This is where his system diverges wildly from Luhmann's. He's now got to go through all the cards and do some additional re-reading and organizational work to put them into some sort of order. Luhmann did this as he went linking ideas and organizing them up front. This upfront work makes the back side of laying things out and writing/editing so much easier. It likely also makes one more creative as one is regularly revisiting ideas, juxtaposing them, and potentially generating new ones along the way rather than waiting until the organization stage to have some of this new material "fall out".

https://blog.blackwing602.com/introducing-volume-1138-2/

While the Volume 1138 edition celebrates sci-fi and Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon, the number itself calls to mind the George Lucas/Walter Murch joint THX 1138.

https://www.levenger.com/collections/pocket-briefcases/products/bomber-jacket-international-pocket-briefcase?variant=42485604778133#

Levenger sells a line of various "pocket briefcases" which include space for 3 x 5" index card "ticklers" which are similar in form to the old Memindex.

A 9 x 5" card that folds in three to make a 3 x 5" card for planning out one's entire week.

This is quite clever with respect the space of cards like Analog and 3x5 Life.