Value of knowledge in a zettelkasten as a function of reference(use/look up) frequency; links to other ideas; ease of recall without needing to look up (also a measure of usefulness); others?

Define terms and create a mathematical equation of stocks and flows around this system of information. Maybe "knowledge complexity" or "information optimization"? see: https://hypothes.is/a/zejn0oscEe-zsjMPhgjL_Q

takes into account the value of information from the perspective of a particular observer<br /> relative information value

cross-reference: Umberto Eco on no piece of information is superior: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw

Inspired by idea in https://hypothes.is/a/CdoMUJCYEe-VlxtqIFX4qA

inspired by, but definitely not take from as not in evidence

Many people have "daily notes" and "project notes" in what they consider to be their zettelkasten workflow. These can be thought of as subcategories of reference notes (aka literature notes, bibliographic notes). The references in these cases are simply different sorts of material than one would traditionally include in this category. Instead of indexing the ideas within a book or journal article, you're indexing what happened to you on a particular day (daily notes) or indexing ideas or progress on a particular project (project notes). Because they're different enough in type and form, you might keep them in their own "departments" (aka folders) within your system just the same way that with enough material one might break out their reference notes to separate books from newspapers, journal articles, or lectures.

In general form and function they're all broadly serving the same functionality and acting as a ratchet and pawl on the information that is being collected. They capture context; they serve as reminder. The fact that some may be used less or referred to less frequently doesn't make them necessarily less important

ideative connectivity sounds fun, but ???<br /> Sounds like a Nick Milo neologism...

potentially a stab at combinatorial creativity?

Connexions definition

Miles is specifically advising the card system user to write down the "connecting link between each Idea ad the Idea that follows".

He does this in the context of using headings and sub-headings as a means of organizing and re-organizing material for writing. There isn't much of a jump from here to the idea of folgezettel. Which is happening in many people system in a looser fashion than Luhmann's.

Miles, 1905 uses an arrow symbol with a hash on it to indicate a "connecting link between two Sentences or Paragraphs, etc."

It's certainly an early example of what we would now consider a hyperlink. It actively uses a "pointer" in it's incarnation.

Are there earlier examples of these sorts of idea links in the historical record? Surely there were circles and arrows on a contiguous page, but what about links from one place to separate places (possibly using page numbers?) Indexing methods from 11/12C certainly acted as explicit sorts of pointers.

Interesting to see a mention of Alphonse Loisette here!

But also nice to see the concept of linking ideas and association (associative memory) pop up here in the context of note making, writing, and creating card systems.

for - link rot - digital decay - internet is emphemeral - dead links - from - Verge article on digital decay and link rot

from - Verge article on Link Rot - https://hyp.is/n9nmpHdbEe-NPHOh3n31PA/www.theverge.com/2021/5/21/22447690/link-rot-research-new-york-times-domain-hijacking

for - digital delay stats - Pew Research

summary - That digital decay and link rot are digital facts of life means that annotating information on the page that is relevant for you to preserve is a good practice. - It may appear redundant but if that page disappears in the future, you will be glad you have preserved it in a place accessible to you - in your annotations!

for - Link rot study - on NY Times archive - show how pervasive it is - stats - link rot - NY Times study - digital decay - link rot - internet is ephemeral - dead links

for - digital delay stats - Pew Research

summary - That digital decay and link rot are digital facts of life means that annotating information on the page that is relevant for you to preserve is a good practice. - It may appear redundant but if that page disappears in the future, you will be glad you have preserved it in a place accessible to you - in your annotations!

for - stats - link rot - digital decay study - NY Times - 550,000 articles - 2.2 million links - 6% dead in 2018 articles - 72% dead in 1998 articles.

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/side-profile-of-traditional-wooden-library-card-royalty-free-image/1374216041?searchscope=image%2Cfilm

Another fun photo of "linked" strings wrapped around a library card catalog representing the links between ideas within a paper database.

https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/photo/traditional-wooden-library-card-catalog-cabinet-royalty-free-image/1379469553?searchscope=image%2Cfilm

fun photo of "linked" strings wrapped around a library card catalog representing the links between ideas within a paper database.

https://www.literatureandlatte.com/scapple/overview

Referenced by Tim

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

I've felt guilty in the past that often we don't directly discuss the book and what it says, but since we've each individually had our own "conversations with the author", our sessions then become a method of taking those extant (hidden discussions) and bringing them to a group to have not only discussions with each other, but extend those discussions with other books we've read and connecting them with reading, watching, listening we've done with other sources. In some sense, we're creating connections (conversations) with all the other things rather than necessarily discussing the exact thing at hand. This is a different form of work than the work of the initial discussion we individually have with the author (in this case Adrian Johns) and this is something many book groups don't go past.

I don't feel so guilty about it anymore...

That's unfortunate. Can't use auto-submit form to protect from such behavior then.

"History Workshop movement" here (https://hypothes.is/a/pzSbkDSWEe-GVmsfDdhvrg) is another good example of the serendipity of autocomplete functionality in Hypothes.is helping to link together disparate examples of ideas which I'd long since forgotten. In this case to a tangential idea I'd read about a year prior (https://hypothes.is/a/bxMX5MKJEe2Wkq_zinG3iw) and been interested in, but completely forgotten about.

Now I've got a link from that to the founder of the movement in 1967.

Adler recommends annotating portions of books with page numbers for related ideas as a means to link those ideas together.

Catchwords (broad or even narrow topics) can be useful, but one should expand beyond these short words to full phrases or even sentences/paragraphs which contain atomic (or perhaps molecular) ideas that can be linked.

We could reframe the atomic as simple catchwords, and make molecular ideas combinations of these smaller atoms which form larger and fuller thoughts which can be linked and remixed with others.

Dennis Duncan (2022) touches on this in his book on Indexing when he looks at indexes which contained portions of their fuller text which were later removed and thereby collapsing context. Having these pieces added back in gave a fuller picture of ideas within an index. Connect this idea with his historical examples.

Great indexes go beyond the catchword to incorporate full ideas with additional context. To some extent this is what Luhmann was doing at larger scale compared to his commonplacing brethren who were operating far more closely to the catchword (tag) level. (Fortunately they held the context in their heads and were thus able to overcome some of the otherwise inherent problems.)

The development of all of this historically seems to follow the principle of small pieces loosely joined.

Kaiser speaks here of the issue of missing index entries in commercial and even library-based indexes versus the personal indexing of one's own card index/zettelkasten.

Some of the problem comes down to a question of scale as well as semantics, but there's also something tied up with the levels of specificity from broad category headwords to more specific, and finally down to the level of individual ideas. Some of this can be seen in the levels of specificity within the Syntopicon though there aren't any (?, doublecheck) of links from one idea directly to another.

Note that while there may be direct links from a single idea to another, there is still infinite space by which one can interpose additional ideas between them.

Cross references in Kaiser's card system are broadly similar to links from one item to another as a means of helping to associate them or "bringing these materials together again when required."

Hartlib Papers 30/4/47A, Ephemerides 1640, Part 2.

In extolling the Ark of Studies created by Thomas Harrison, Samuel Hartlib indicated that the combinations of information and the potential links between them created the "argumentative part" of the system. In some sense this seems to be analogous to the the processing power of an information system if not specifically creating its consciousness.

Hookmark https://hookproductivity.com/

zwei klassen gesellschaft, klassenjustiz, doppeldenk, doublethink, irrational, rechte sind bürger zweiter klasse, rechte sind untermenschen, ...

dieses "klischeehafte denken" aka "die sind alle gleich" ist ein zuverlässiges merkmal für idioten.

diese leute reden immer nur über ihre feinde (über sekundärquellen wie "der spiegel"), aber nie mit ihren feinden (sonst müsste man kompromisse machen, sonst würde man die eigene radikale haltung verlieren, und "die guten" haben ein monopol auf radikale haltung)

"demokratie" ist nur ein anderes wort für sozialismus, und "die nazis" von 1933 waren auch sozialisten. damals nationale sozialisten, heute globale sozialisten, die gleiche scheinheiligkeit, die gleichen lügen, die gleichen heuchler, die gleiche aggressive dummheit und zerstörung...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxgUkHTvXNob8166Ezozo8NpcJ2Idn7Kw

tagline for AT&T commercials.

I saw one today watching football.

apparently Hortense S. Endo wrote about the idea of using datetime stamps as idea links

https://web.archive.org/web/20060422014759/http://that4.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/stationery/1021438965/l50

Interesting to see people using datetime stamps as unique identifiers in 2006 to link notes together.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/192480328/in/album-72157594200490122/

The PoIC system allows linking of cards using date/timestamps for indexing/finding. Interestingly they were all kept in chronological order rather than in idea order as in Luhmann's zettelkasten.

What are the pros/cons of this?<br /> - more searching and hunting through cards certainly is a drawback for lack of "threaded" ideas - others...

hawkexpress apparently learned this technique on the 2-channel.

(Edited 2022-10-13, 2023-12-27)

Wells would really hate social media, which he seems to have perfectly defined with this statement.

Ted Nelson felt visible connections between text were the most important part of his Xanadu project.

There are close parallels between these in digital spaces and songlines and related orality based mnemonic techniques.

„Alle AfDler gehören in die Gaskammer.“ – Bianca Deubel (LINKE) am 25.12.2018 Ein Verfahren wegen Volksverhetzung wurde im November 2021 ohne Auflagen eingestellt, weil Bianca Deubel nicht vorbestraft war und man ihren Satz einfach so verstehen wollte, „dass ein Besuch einer KZ-Gedenkstätte aus pädagogischen Gründen nahegelegt wird.“ „Ich freue mich schon, wenn ich auf ihrem Grab tanzen kann.“ – Bianca Deubel (LINKE) an Erika Steinbach am 25.12.2018 Für diesen zur selben Zeit geschriebenen Satz brauchte man dann nicht einmal mehr nach pädagogischen Gründen zu suchen – der fiel einfach unter den Tisch. Auf so viel Verständnis sollte Daniel Halemba allerdings nicht hoffen – als AfDler hat er schließlich sein Menschsein verwirkt. „Die AfD besteht aus Menschen, die ihr Menschsein verwirkt haben.“ – Pianist Igor Levit am 01.11.2015 Schließlich wird das von derselben Justiz, die Daniel Halemba verfolgt, bis heute nicht als Volksverhetzung gesehen.

aah, der "gute" hass, de juute hass, der hass von oben

erinnert an die hetze gegen impfgegner ("das sind volksschädlinge! wir brauchen impfzwang!")<br /> oder an die hetze von israel gegen palästina ("das sind tiere! wir brauchen bomben!")<br /> oder an die hetze gegen visegrad-staaten ("das sind nazis! die brauchen migranten!")<br /> oder an die hetze gegen kiffer ("das sind verrückte! die brauchen knast!")

solche zitate sollte "irgendwer" sammeln, ähnlich wie https://www.afd.de/einzelfallticker/<br /> andererseits: zeitverschwendung, wir haben besseres zu tun als zitate sammeln...

https://www.pi-news.net/2021/02/bianca-deubel-alle-afdler-gehoeren-in-die-gaskammer/<br /> "Bomber Harris, do it again" -- Antifa<br /> "Ich will Deutsche sterben sehen" -- Sarah Rambatz<br /> "We love Volkstod"<br /> "AFD ist ein Krebsgeschwür" -- Elmar Brok, CDU<br /> "AFDler sind Gesindel" -- Friedrich Merz, CDU<br /> "AFDler sind Pack", "AFD ist offen rassistische, völkische Gesellschaft", "AFDler sind rechtsradikale Menschenfeinde", "echte Nazis" -- Sigmar Gabriel, SPD<br /> "AFDler sind Vulgär-Rassisten", "AFDler sind eine Bande von Zynikern und geistigen Brandstiftern" -- Thomas Oppermann, SPD<br /> "AFDler sind giftiger Abschaum" -- Marco Wanderwitz, CDU<br /> "AFDler sind die Mischpocke" -- Cem Özdemir, Grüne, Moslem<br /> "AFDler gehört zurück in ihre Rattenlöcher" -- Raed Saleh, SPD, Moslem<br /> "AFDler sind rechte Rattenfänger" -- Markus Ulbig, CDU "AFDler sind Untermenschen", "AFDler sind Ratten" -- Matthias Zimmer, CDU<br /> "AFDler sollen am Galgen hängen", "CDUler sollen ins Gulag" -- Jonas Stickelbroeck, Grüne Jugend<br /> "das eine Prozent der Reichen sollten wir erschießen" -- Sandra Lust, Die Linke<br /> "ACAB", "All cops are bastards" -- Antifa<br /> "Eat the rich" -- Antifa<br /> "Black Lives Matter"<br /> "Afrika den Afrikanern"<br /> "Ungläubige Deutsche sind eine Köterrasse"<br /> (Vergewaltigung gegen Nicht-Moslems ist okay)<br /> "das Sterben vom deutschen Volk ist Volkssterben von seiner schönsten Seite"

https://philosophia-perennis.com/2023/09/18/auf-dem-linken-auge-blind/<br /> "Vielleicht sollte man Sachsen einfach kontrolliert abbrennen lassen." -- Robert Schlick, die Grünen<br /> "Deutschland hat eine eklige weiße Mehrheitsgesellschaft." "Wir sollten alle Weißen aus Afrika rausfegen." -- Sarah-Lee Heinrich, Grüne Jugend<br /> "Bald ist Schluss mit dem lustigen Leben als Weißbrot." "Alle hoffen auf Besserung, auf ein Ende von Rassismus und Abschottungspolitik. Ich fürchte, dass das nicht kommt, solange Deutschland existiert. Das ist alles so verfestigt und in den regelhaften Strukturen fest verankert, das ist mit Reformen nicht zu lösen." -- Axel Steier, Flüchtlingshelfer

https://www.unzensuriert.at/55273-allahu-akbar-die-stadt-gehoert-uns-radikale-islamisten-und-linksextreme-netzwerke-gegen-afd/<br /> "Die Stadt gehört uns" -- Moslem zu AFDler<br /> "Bullen sind faschistoide Schweine" -- Antifa<br /> "Kapitalismus muss zerstört werden" -- Antifa

"Bildet Banden!" -- Antifa

https://ansage.org/die-pantisano-gesinnungsmafia-bruederliches-hetzen-gegen-heteros-und-afd/<br /> "Du Hetero-Sau!" -- Alfonso Pantisano, Berlins Queer-Beauftragter<br /> "Mit AFDlern sollte man nicht reden." "Wenn die AFD Mal irgendwas sinnvolles vorschlägt, sollten wir es ablehnen." "Keine Zustimmung für gar nichts was von der AfD kommt." "Mit den Stimmen der AfD darfst Du niemals Politik betreiben, sonst machst Du Dich mitschuldig an ihrer rassistischen Politik." -- Luigi Pantisano, Die Linke, Antifa<br /> "Ich liebe und fördere den Volkstod." -- Christin Löchner, Die Linke, 20.01.2012<br /> "Enteignen ist hart, aber fair!" -- Lucy Redler, Die Linke, 11.03.2018<br /> "Dazu ist … eine zentrale Unterbringung für Neonazis notwendig." -- Tobias Himpenmacher, Die Linke, 08.10.2018<br /> "Hinter jedem AfDler im Anzug kann ein Nazi mit Waffe stehen, der schießt." -- Katja Kipping, Die Linke, 25.08.2019<br /> "Man sollte die Diskussion beginnen über ein Verbot der AfD, juristisch und politisch." -- Martina Renner, Die Linke, 08.12.2022<br /> "Die AfD ist die Partei der Verrohung." -- Martin Schirdewan, Die Linke, 27.06.2023

aka: klassenjustiz, machtdemonstration, provokation, opfer auf rachefeldzug, chauvinismus, orthodoxie, pseudoobjektivismus, sklavenmoral<br /> https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes

So much to unpack here...

What is the full list of types of links?

There are (associative) links created by the author (of an HTML document) as well as associative (and sometimes unwritten) mental links which may be suggested by either the context of a piece and the author's memory.

There are the links made by the reader as they think or actively analyze the piece they're reading. They may make these explicit in their own note taking or even more strongly explicit with tools like Hypothes.is which make these links visible to others.

tacit/explicit<br /> suggested mentally / directly written or made<br /> made by writer / made by reader<br /> others?

lay these out in a grid by type, creator, modality (paper, online, written/spoken and read/heard, other)

links can be used for search

links remind you of questions you need to ask

links can suggest other future potential links of which one isn't yet aware or which haven't fully manifested, this is some of the "magic" of the zettelkasten—it creates easy potential for future links not yet manifest.

In Re: to folgezettel or not? in an unlogged chat:

Zettelkasten (slips) or not (commonplaces, notebooks, paper, files, other), you're going to have a variety of related ideas which you'll juxtapose, especially if you're regularly writing. Those who practice folgezettel are putting in some of the work/heavy lifting from the start versus those who don't and are leaving the work until some later point closer to composition. Folgezettel also helps to encourage the emergence of ideas, but requires work to do so. This doesn't mean that this emergence or new ideas may not arrive without Folgezettel and/or Zettelkasten, but one needs to have some process or affordances which help to foster them. Victor Margolin's process put more of his work on the back end in comparison to Luhmann, but his version obviously works all the same. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxyy0THLfuI

Being an author is having the final cut on a string of ideas placed in a particular order.

reply to u/JonasanOniem at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ss0yu/comment/k2buxsc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

In digital contexts it is much easier and very common to create orphaned notes that aren't connected to anything. In a paper zettelkasten, you are forced to file your note somewhere and give it a number (only to be able to find it again—it's difficult, but try not to make the mistake of conflating your number with the idea of category). The physical act of placing it in your slipbox creates an implicit link to the things around it. As a result, your four notes would all initially seem to be directly related because they're nearby, but over time, they will naturally drift apart as you intersperse new notes between and among them. Though if they're truly directly interrelated, you can write down explicit links from notes at one end of your thought space to notes which seem distant.

In your example, you may see some sort of loose link between your first and fourth notes relating to music. While it may be a distant one, given what you have, putting marching band "next to" digestible music is really the only place to put it. Over time, you'll certainly find other notes that come between them which will tend to split them apart and separate them by physical distance, but for now, if it's what you've got, then place them into the same neighborhood by giving them addresses (numbers) to suggest they live nearby. (Some note applications like Obsidian make this much harder to do, and as a result orphaned notes will eventually become a problem.)

This physical process is part of the ultimate value of building knowledge from the bottom up. Like most people, you've probably been heavily trained to want to create a hierarchy from the top down (folder-based systems on computers of the late 20th century are a big factor here) which is exactly why you're going to have problems like this at the start. You'll want to place that music note somewhere else, or worse, orphan it. For some people who may not be able to immediately trust the process, it can be easier to create a few dozen or a hundred notes and then come back to them later to file and arrange them. This will allow you to seed some ground from which to continually build and help to bridge the gap between the desire to move top-down in a system designed to move from bottom-up.

Depending on one's zettelkasten application (Obsidian, Zettlr, Logseq, The Archive, et al.) some do a better job of allowing the creation of "soft links" versus the more explicit hard or direct links (usually using [[WikiLinks]]). The soft links are usually best done by providing a number that places one note into proximity with another, but not all systems work this way. As a result, it's much easier to build a traditional commonplace book with Obsidian than it is to build a Luhmann-artig zettelkasten (see: https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/22/the-two-definitions-of-zettelkasten/). The concept of tags/categories in many systems is another form of soft link that can hold ideas together, so use this affordance if your application offers it as well. But also keep in mind that if sociology is your life's work, you'll eventually amass such a huge number of digital notes tagged with "sociology" that this affordance will become useless as it won't scale well for discovery and creating links.

reply to u/JonasanOniem at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/16ss0yu/linking_new_notes/

This sort of practice is harder when you start out in most digital apps because there is usually no sense of "closeness" of ideas in digital the way that is implied by physical proximity (or "neighborhood") found in physical cards sitting right next to or around each other. As a result, you have to create more explicit links or rely on using tags (or indexing) when you start. I've not gotten deep into the UI of Zettlr, but some applications allow the numbering (and the way numbered ideas are sorted in the user interface) to allow this affordance by creating a visual sense of proximity for you. As you accumulate more notes, it becomes easier and you can rely less on tags and more on direct links. Eventually you may come to dislike broad categories/tags and prefer direct links from one idea to another as the most explicit tag you could give a note . If you're following a more strict Luhmann-artig practice, you'll find yourself indexing a lot at the beginning, but as you link new ideas to old, you don't need to index (tag) things as heavily because the index points to a card which is directly linked to something in the neighborhood of where you're looking. Over time and through use, you'll come to recognize your neighborhoods and the individual "houses" where the ideas you're working with all live. As an example, Luhmann spent his life working in sociology, but you'll only find a few links from his keyword register/subject index to "sociology" (and this is a good thing, otherwise he'd have had 90,000+ listings there and the index entry for sociology would have been utterly useless.)

Still, given all this, perhaps as taurusnoises suggests, concrete examples may help more, particularly if you're having any issues with the terminology/concepts or how the specific application affordances are being presented.

I've seen this quote earlier today, but interesting seeing another source quote it.

—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook E, #46, 1775–1776

In this single paragraph quote Lichtenberg, using the model of Italian bookkeepers of the 18th century, broadly outlines almost all of the note taking technique suggested by Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes. He's got writing down and keeping fleeting notes as well as literature notes. (Keeping academic references would have been commonplace by this time.) He follows up with rewriting and expanding on the original note to create additional "explanations" and even "connections" (links) to create what Ahrens describes as permanent notes or which some would call evergreen notes.

Lichtenberg's version calls for the permanent notes to be "separated and ordered" and while he may have kept them in book format himself, it's easy to see from Konrad Gessner's suggestion at the use of slips centuries before, that one could easily put their permanent notes on index cards ("separated") and then number and index or categorize them ("ordered"). The only serious missing piece of Luhmann's version of a zettelkasten then are the ideas of placing related ideas nearby each other, though the idea of creating connections between notes is immediately adjacent to this, and his numbering system, which was broadly based on the popularity of Melvil Dewey's decimal system.

It may bear noticing that John Locke's indexing system for commonplace books was suggested, originally in French in 1685, and later in English in 1706. Given it's popularity, it's not unlikely that Lichtenberg would have been aware of it.

Given Lichtenberg's very popular waste books were known to have influenced Leo Tolstoy, Albert Einstein, Andre Breton, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Reference: Lichtenberg, Georg Christoph (2000). The Waste Books. New York: New York Review Books Classics. ISBN 978-0940322509.) It would not be hard to imagine that Niklas Luhmann would have also been aware of them.

Open questions: <br /> - did Lichtenberg number the entries in his own waste books? This would be early evidence toward the practice of numbering notes for future reference. Based on this text, it's obvious that the editor numbered the translated notes for this edition, were they Lichtenberg's numbering? - Is there evidence that Lichtenberg knew of Locke's indexing system? Did his waste books have an index?

There is a difference between the sorts of links one might make when placing an idea into an (analog) zettelkasten. A folgezettel link is more valuable than a simple tag/category link because it places an idea into a more specific neighborhood than any handful of tags. This is one of the benefits of a Luhmann-artig ZK system over a more traditional commonplace one, particularly when the work is done up front instead of being punted to a later time.

For those with a 1A2B3Z linking system (versus a pure decimal system), it may be more difficult to insert a card before other cards rather than after them because of the potential gymnastics of numbering and the natural tendency to put things into a continuing linear order.

See also: - https://hypothes.is/a/ToqCPq1bEe2Q0b88j4whwQ - https://hyp.is/WtB2AqmlEe2wvCsB5ZyL5A/docdrop.org/download_annotation_doc/Introduction-to-Luhmanns-Zette---Ludecke-Daniel-h4nh8.pdf

Poner un link a "Cómo detectar un bulto en tu seno"

While most of the jokes in Phyllis Diller's gag file were individual, stand-alone cards, the archivist who scanned them noted that there was a surprising number of cards that were associated with one another. (jokerfolgezettel, anyone?) She was able to distinguish jokes which spanned several cards by either their paperclips (when extant), or physical markings (rust/paper bending) which indicated prior paperclipping or other association which had long since been removed.

Notes about what you don't know (open questions), empty outline slots, red links as [[wikilinks]], and other "holes" in tools for thought provide a bookmark for where one may have quit exploring, but are an explicit breadcrumb for picking up that line of thought and continuing it at a future time.

Linear writing in one's notebooks, books they're reading, and other places doesn't always provide an explicit space which invites the reader or writer to fill them in. One has to train themselves to annotate in the margins to have a conversation with the text. Until one sees these empty spaces as inviting spaces they can be invisible to the eye.

A statement of the common "one idea per card" (or per note). He doesn't state it, but links to an article whose title is "One Thought Per Note".

Who else has use this or similar phrasing in the historical record? - Beatrice Webb certainly came pretty close. - Others?

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Go_links

reply to u/Efficient_Earth_8773 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/15fjb97/does_anyone_has_its_zettelkasten_in_google_docs/

Experimenting can be interesting. I've tried using spreadsheet software like Google Sheets or Excel which can be simple and useful methods that don't lose significant functionality. I did separate sheets for zettels, sources, and the index. Each zettel had it's own row with with a number, title, contents, and a link to a source as well as the index.

Google Docs might be reasonably doable, but the linking portion may be one of the more difficult affordances to accomplish easily or in a very user-centric fashion. It is doable though: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/45893?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop, and one might even mix Google Docs with Google Sheets? I could see Sheets being useful for creating an index and or sources while Docs could be used for individual notes as well. It's all about affordances and ease of use. Text is a major portion of having and maintaining a zettelkasten, so by this logic anything that will allow that could potentially be used as a zettelkasten. However, it helps to think about how one will use it in practice on a day-to-day basis. How hard will it be to create links? Search it? How hard will it be when you've got thousands of "slips"? How much time will these things take as it scales up in size?

A paper-based example: One of the reasons that many pen and paper users only write on one side of their index cards is that it saves the time of needing to take cards out and check if they do or don't have writing on the back or remembering where something is when it was written on the back of a card. It's a lot easier to tip through your collection if they're written only on the front. If you use an alternate application/software what will all these daily functions look like compounded over time? Does the software make things simpler and easier or will it make them be more difficult or take more time? And is that difficulty and time useful or not to your particular practice? Historian and author David McCullough prefers a manual typewriter over computers with keyboards specifically because it forces him to slow down and take his time. Another affordance to consider is how much or little work one may need to put into using it from a linking (or not) perspective. Using paper forces one to create a minimum of at least one link (made by the simple fact of filing it next to another) while other methods like Obsidian allow you to too easily take notes and place them into an infinitely growing pile of orphaned notes. Is it then more work to create discrete links later when you've lost the context and threads of potential arguments you might make? Will your specific method help you to regularly review through old notes? How hard will it be to mix things up for creativity's sake? How easy/difficult will it be to use your notes for writing/creating new material, if you intend to use it for that?

Think about how and why you'd want to use it and which affordances you really want/need. Then the only way to tell is to try it out for a bit and see how one likes/doesn't like a particular method and whether or not it helps to motivate you in your work. If you don't like the look of an application and it makes you not want to use it regularly, that obviously is a deal breaker. One might also think about how difficult/easy import/export might be if they intend to hop from one application to another. Finally, switching applications every few months can be self-defeating, so beware of this potential downfall as you make what will eventually need to be your ultimate choice. Beware of shiny object syndrome or software that ceases updating in just a few years without easy export.

This is the first time I've seen someone use the phrase "ghost note" to mean a future implied note which could be created by using wiki syntax [[*]] which in some systems like Obsidian or WikiMedia creates a (red) link which one could click on to create that note.

via u/THX-Eleven38 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/14ox2tw/what_is_the_proper_way_to_create_a_moc_note_from/

https://geniuslink.com/

First saw via Ryan Holiday.

Also saw a live example on 2023-06-16 at https://personalknowledgegraphs.com/#/page/pkg for an affiliate link for a book.

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

In addition to using the three dots on the Analog system's cards to indicate how much one accomplished (modest value), Jeff Sheldon suggests using them to "link cards together", though he doesn't suggest how one could or should do this. Presumably he means to use the possible dot patterns as a code, but then one only has 2^3 or 8 ways of doing this, so the number of possible links is incredibly low. Some of this seems related to edge notched cards, though here, there's no suggestion of punching holes in these cards, so sorting or finding these cards isn't necessarily easy unless one otherwise indexes them, a functionality which falls outside of the minimalist scope of the product.

To expand on this method he also, more profitably, suggests adding titles to cards in the blank line at the top which is also frequently used for dating cards.

link to: - https://boffosocko.com/2022/05/14/55804938/ - Aby Warburg's coinage of Verknüpfungszwang

This section is almost exactly the same as Umberto Eco's description of a slip box practice:

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

See: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw

Interestingly, these structures map reasonably well onto Paul Baran's work from 1964:

The subject heading based filing system looks and functions a lot like a centralized system where the center (on a per topic basis) is the subject heading or topical category and the notes related to that section are filed within it. Luhmann's zettelkasten has the feel of a mixture of the decentralized and distributed graphs, but each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.

Cross reference:<br /> Baran, Paul. “On Distributed Communications: I. Introduction to Distributed Communications Networks.” Research Memoranda. Santa Monica, California: RAND Corporation, August 1964. https://doi.org/10.7249/RM3420.

—Detlef Stern, 2023-03-21, https://mastodon.social/@t73fde/110062851811483123

A note not referenced by another note is not a note. (translation mine)

One can make links between ideas more explicit using words like x ["supports", "contradicts", "supports", "challenges", "extends", "contradicts", etc] y. However it can be even more useful and beneficial to not only state the connection in the loosest of terms, but to explore and develop what that connection is and how it works. The more explicit one can be, the better.

If it's a metaphor, analogy, or abstraction, how far can one push those relationships before they collapse? Can the abstraction be encompassed in a mathematical sense that one case completely consumes another?

Collecting for collections' sake is a fools errand. Collecting to connect and create is where the magic happens.

A partial answer to note taking why.

https://linkingmanifesto.org/

Manifesto for Ubiquitous Linking

Some interesting early signers here... Brett Terpstra, Frode Alexander Hegland, Mark Bernstein (Tinderbox)...

re: https://hypothes.is/a/HqT-lG1fEeqHX7fnzQAfGg

A zettelkasten provides a catalytic surface to which ideas in the "solution of life" can more easily adhere to speed their reaction with ideas you've already seen and collected.

Once combined via linking, further thinking and writing, they can be released as novel ideas for everyone to use.

reply to u/jackbaty at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10mjwq9/ive_decided_i_dont_care_too_much_where_new_notes/

u/jackbaty, If it doesn't make sense for you (yet, or for your specific needs), you can always follow in the footsteps of the hundreds of thousands who used a topical subject heading method of the commonplace book before Luhmann's example shifted the space over the last decade. If it worked for Francis Bacon, you'll probably be alright too... (See: https://boffosocko.com/2022/06/10/reframing-and-simplifying-the-idea-of-how-to-keep-a-zettelkasten/)

I find that sometimes, it is useful to bank up a few dozen cards before filing/linking them together. Other times I'll file them by category in a commonplace book like system to ruminate a bit only later to move them to a separate Luhmann-esque zettelkasten area where they're more tightly linked with the ideas around them. After you've been doing it a while, it will be easier to more tightly integrate the three-way conversation or argument you're having between yourself, your card index, and the sources you're thinking about (or reading, watching, listening to). You mention that "my brain needs at least some level of structure", and I totally get it, as most of us (myself included) are programmed to work that way. I've written some thoughts on this recently which may help provide some motivation to get you around it: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/

It helps to have a pointed reason for why you're doing all this in the first place and that reason will dramatically help to shape your practice and its ultimate structure.

The active links linked to the text is a good web accessibility example because it is operable. The user interface components and nvaigtion are operable because there is no hover interaction, the links are accessible without using a mouse

Most only get so far as, what could/should I connect this to and don't get any farther.

Some good questions for mulling over here though.

The Brain in some of its views (see for eg: Jerry Michalski's default brain view) instantiates this sort of directional semantics for ideas.

Note too, that The Brain makes it much easier to help create connections between multiple ideas as a basic functionality.

!!!!

Henry David Thoreau from 1852

Despite doing the lion's share of the work of linking cards along the way, Scheper shows that there's still some work of laying out an outline and moving cards around to achieve a final written result.

compare this with Victor Margolin's process: https://hypothes.is/a/oQFqvm3IEe2_Fivwvx596w

also compare with the similar processes of Ryan Holiday and Robert Greene

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/swift-selection-search/

Swiftly access your search engines in a popup panel when you select text in a webpage.

A quick UI method for selecting text and then searching within it using a variety of engines, wikis, etc.

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. 😁🗃️🤣

https://david.shanske.com/2022/12/19/syndication-links-for-wordpress-version-4-4-released/

Hooray!

Thus far, Scheper has only been making the argument to do as I say because I know best. He's not laying out the reasons or affordances that justify this approach.

In this second principle it's ostensibly just "the possibility of linking", but this was broadly done previously using subject headings or keywords along with indices and page numbers which are logically equivalent to these note card addresses.

HTTP: method: safe methods: GETs have to be safe, just in case a machine crawls it.

Hypothes.is + Wiki -> Global Knowledge Graph

Cathy Marshall was an early digital gardener!

Connecting ideas across space and time when you don't know how they'll fully relate in advance is a tough design problem.

Outliner programs, first developed for computers in 1968, are great if you know the structure of a space in advance, but creating hierarchies by guessing about relationships in advance often turn out wrong or create other problems as one progresses.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Amsler

Apparently follow my blog. :)

Makes me wonder how we might better process and semantically parse peoples' personal notes, particularly when they're atomic and cross-linked?

I'm not sure how frequent this pattern is within fleeting notes, but it's something I do myself to create at least a temporary shorthand context of how things interrelate and which can easily be cleaned up later in the longer form permanent notes.

The tougher thing is to always capture these sorts of things which one won't remember, but which quite often create better and stronger insights down the road.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS-b_RUtL1A

LATCH method for search within note taking (Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy)

He's literally drawing out bi-directional links to other ideas in his collection of notes as he creates fleeting notes so that he doesn't forget them in the future.

The link here to Luhmann's article is a https://geniuslink.com/ which is specifically built for influencers to use for tracking and affiliate marketing.

Take notes for your most imperfect, forgetful future self. You're assuredly not only not going to remember either the thing you are taking notes for in the first place, but you're highly unlikely to remember why you thought it was interesting or intriguing or that clever thing you initially thought of at the same time.

Capture all of this quickly in the moment, particularly the interesting links to other things in your repository of notes. These ideas will be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for one to remember.

The first demo of TidlyWiki from 2004 took the ideas of wiki and applied them to fragments rather than entire pages. The hypothesis was that it would be easier to write in small interlinked chunks that could be gradually massaged into a linear narrativehttps://t.co/v2v6dyL3Oy pic.twitter.com/MJO7tyopr2

— TiddlyWiki (@TiddlyWiki) September 20, 2022

relationship with zettelkasten in the history of historical methods?

https://www.loom.com/share/a05f636661cb41628b9cb7061bd749ae

Synopsis: Maggie Delano looks at some of the affordances supplied by Tana (compared to Roam Research) in terms of providing better block-based user interface for note type creation, search, and filtering.

These sorts of tools and programmable note implementations remind me of Beatrice Webb's idea of scientific note taking or using her note cards like a database to sort and search for data to analyze it and create new results and insight.

It would seem that many of these note taking tools like Roam and Tana are using blocks and sub blocks as a means of defining atomic notes or database-like data in a way in which sub-blocks are linked to or "filed underneath" their parent blocks. In reality it would seem that they're still using a broadly defined index card type system as used in the late 1800s/early 1900s to implement a set up that otherwise would be a traditional database in the Microsoft Excel or MySQL sort of fashion, the major difference being that the user interface is cognitively easier to understand for most people.

These allow people to take a form of structured textual notes to which might be attached other smaller data or meta data chunks that can be easily searched, sorted, and filtered to allow for quicker or easier use.

Ostensibly from a mathematical (or set theoretic and even topological) point of view there should be a variety of one-to-one and onto relationships (some might even extend these to "links") between these sorts of notes and database representations such that one should be able to implement their note taking system in Excel or MySQL and do all of these sorts of things.

Cascading Idea Sheets or Cascading Idea Relationships

One might analogize these sorts of note taking interfaces to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). While there is the perennial question about whether or not CSS is a programming language, if we presume that it is (and it is), then we can apply the same sorts of class, id, and inheritance structures to our notes and their meta data. Thus one could have an incredibly atomic word, phrase, or even number(s) which inherits a set of semantic relationships to those ideas which it sits below. These links and relationships then more clearly define and contextualize them with respect to other similar ideas that may be situated outside of or adjacent to them. Once one has done this then there is a variety of Boolean operations which might be applied to various similar sets and classes of ideas.

If one wanted to go an additional level of abstraction further, then one could apply the ideas of category theory to one's notes to generate new ideas and structures. This may allow using abstractions in one field of academic research to others much further afield.

The user interface then becomes the key differentiator when bringing these ideas to the masses. Developers and designers should be endeavoring to allow the power of complex searches, sorts, and filtering while minimizing the sorts of advanced search queries that an average person would be expected to execute for themselves while also allowing some reasonable flexibility in the sorts of ways that users might (most easily for them) add data and meta data to their ideas.

Jupyter programmable notebooks are of this sort, but do they have the same sort of hierarchical "card" type (or atomic note type) implementation?

The original PoIC didn't include bi-directional links, but the idea was brought up and considered.

Goutor recommends cross-referencing or linking ideas between cards "at the bottom of the note-card, as soon as the note itself is completed." Links shouldn't be trusted to memory and should be noted as soon as possible. Further he recommends periodically sorting through cards and adding adding additional cross references as one ruminates. While he indicates that cross-referencing may seem "cumbersome at first sight, experience will show that it enhances the usefulness of the card file when the time comes to retrieve the information it contains." (p32-33)

Beyond this he doesn't indicate any additional benefits of creativity or serendipity that have been seen in similar treatises.

On page 24, Goutor cross references one note to another, but only does so at the level of the bigger book or text and not at the level of the individual notes themselves.

Was this on purpose?

Finding order and relations (and their particular types), is a form of linking ideas found in some of the more complex zettelkasten and knowledge management spaces. It's not as explicit here and he doesn't seem to be focusing on stating or writing explicit links within his notes. He does, however, place some focus on the quality and types of links he's making (or at least thinking about), something which isn't frequently seen in the current PKM space. For example, no one is creating user interfaces that show links between ideas which are opposite (or in opposition or antonym relation) to each other.

What a lot to unpack here.

He's actively looking through all parts of his files to find potential links and connections between ideas. He brings up the idea of "unsuspected connections" which touches on Luhmann's idea of serendipity, Llull's combinatorial arts, or what one might call combinatorial creativity.

The function of memory served by having written notes is what allows the serious researcher or thinker to have greater confidence in their work, potentially more free from cognitive bias as one idea can be directly compared and contrasted with another by direct juxtaposition.

An explicit reference in 1931 in a section on note taking to cross links between entries in accounting ledgers. This linking process is a a precursor to larger database processes seen in digital computing.

Were there other earlier references that are this explicit within either note making or accounting contexts? Surely... (See also: Beatrice Webb's scientific note taking)

Just the word "digital" computing defines that there must have been an "analog' computing which preceded it. However we think of digital computing in much broader terms than we may have of the analog process.

Human thinking is heavily influenced by associative links, so it's only natural that we should want to link our notes together on paper as we've done for tens of thousands of years (at least.)

• Update link

• Update link

• Update link

• Update link

Finally a concrete statement about actively cross-linking ideas on note cards together!

an example within this essay of a cross reference from one note to another showing the potential linkages of individual notes within one's own slipbox.

missing some textual context here for full quote...

Dutcher is recommending arranging notes and cards by topical headings in a commonplace sort of method. He does recommend a sub-arrangement of placing them in logical order for one's writing however. He goes even further and indicates one may "make cross references for notes which may be needed for use in more than one place." Which provides an early indication of linking or cross linking cards to multiple places within in one's card index. (Has this cross referencing (linking) idea appeared in the literature specifically before, or is this an early instantiation of this idea?)