3,919 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2021
    1. A solid overview article about the architectural deficiencies of the web for long term archival and access as well as some ideas for fixing the issue and a plea to attempt to make things better for the future.

    1. On the difference for writing for one's self and for others. Of course there's also the need to be able to re-decifer one's notes again in the future. It may be best to keep more detailed for your future self as if you're writing for the public.

      I like the idea of distance in "communication space" which comes up in the comments. This is related to context collapse and shared contexts which are often too-important in our communication with regard to being understood in the far future.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Matthias Melcher</span> in Commonplace Book | x28's new Blog (<time class='dt-published'>07/06/2021 11:13:34</time>)</cite></small>

    1. In the future, we recommend that toasters be sold in six-packs to accomodate important SPT research.

      Definitely an important finding! :)

    1. A great overview of some of the various definitions of small web and what it might entail.

    1. The Swedish 18th-century naturalist Carolus (Carl) Linnaeus is habitually credited with laying the foundations of modern taxonomy through the invention of binominal nomenclature. However, another innovation of Linnaeus' has largely gone unnoticed. He seems to have been one of the first botanists to leave his herbarium unbound, keeping the sheets of dried plants separate and stacking them in a purpose built-cabinet. Understanding the significance of this seemingly mundane and simple invention opens a window onto the profound changes that natural history underwent in the 18th century.

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Wikipedia</span> in Index card - Wikipedia (<time class='dt-published'>07/03/2021 21:36:58</time>)</cite></small>

      Bookmarked at 10:41 PM

      Read 11:09 PM

    1. Welcome to Flancia! It is both a place and a draft.

      I love the idea of a web document or digital garden always being considered a draft.

    1. Wikilinks are great because they allow for very easy linking: you just [[link it as you go along]], then the link either works (because someone wrote that node/article/resource already) or you can click through and backfill it. I call this procedure link-driven writing. Whenever there is more than one [[node]] with a given wikilink in an Agora (typical use case: notes kept on a certain topic by different users), the Agora will surface all of them when resolving the wikilink in question.

      What if browsers could allow the user to click and choose the resolving resource for a wikilink in much the way that they allow one to choose their search provider? Then one might have the option to choose between the [[agora]] or their own personal wiki for the search?

    1. Roberts noted that the risks of physical danger to donors are heightened “with each passing year” as changes in technology enables “anyone with access to a computer” to “compile a wealth of information about” anyone.

      He's going to be shocked at what's in his Facebook (shadow) profile...

    1. Revisiting this essay to review it in the framing of digital gardens.

      In a "gardens and streams" version of this metaphor, the stream is flow and the garden is stock.

      This also fits into a knowledge capture, growth, and innovation framing. The stream are small atomic ideas flowing by which may create new atomic ideas. These then need to be collected (in a garden) where they can be nurtured and grow into new things.

      Clippings of these new growth can be placed back into the stream to move on to other gardeners. Clever gardeners will also occasionally browse through the gardens of others to see bigger picture versions of how their gardens might become.

      Proper commonplacing is about both stock and flow. The unwritten rule is that one needs to link together ideas and expand them in places either within the commonplace or external to it: essays, papers, articles, books, or other larger structures which then become stock for others.

      While some creators appear to be about all stock in the modern era, it's just not true. They're consuming streams (flow) from other (perhaps richer) sources (like articles, books, television rather than social media) and building up their own stock in more private (or at least not public) places. Then they release that article, book, film, television show which becomes content stream for others.

      While we can choose to create public streams, but spending our time in other less information dense steams is less useful. Better is to keep a reasonably curated stream to see which other gardens to go visit.

      Currently is the online media space we have structures like microblogs and blogs (and most social media in general) which are reasonably good at creating streams (flow) and blogs, static sites, and wikis which are good for creating gardens (stock).

      What we're missing is a structure with the appropriate and attendant UI that can help us create both a garden and a stream simultaneously. It would be nice to have a wiki with a steam-like feed out for the smaller attendant ideas, but still allow the evolutionary building of bigger structures, which could also be placed into the stream at occasional times.

      I can imagine something like a MediaWiki with UI for placing small note-like ideas into other streams like Twitter, but which supports Webmention so that ideas that come back from Twitter or other consumers of one's stream can be placed into one's garden. Perhaps in a Zettelkasten like way, one could collect atomic notes into their wiki and then transclude those ideas into larger paragraphs and essays within the same wiki on other pages which might then become articles, books, videos, audio, etc.

      Obsidian, Roam Research do a somewhat reasonable job on the private side and have some facility for collecting data, but have no UI for sharing out into streams.

    1. The relationship between Phillips — one of whose most famous works is A Humument, an ongoing-for-decades collage/manipulation/adaptation of a Victorian book — and Eno is a fascinating one in the history of aleatory or, as I prefer, emergent art.

      Humument sounds interesting, particularly the descriptions of collage/manipulation

      aleatory is a great word that one sees infrequently and all too randomly

    2. Alan Jacobs seems to be delving into the area of thought spaces provided by blogs and blogging.

      In my view, they come out of a cultural tradition of commonplace books becoming digital and more social in the the modern era. Jacobs is obviously aware of the idea of Zettelkasten, but possibly hasn't come across the Sonke Ahrens' book on smart notes or the conceptualization of the "digital garden" stemming from Mike Caulfield's work.

      He's also acquainted with Robin Sloane, though it's unclear if he's aware of the idea of Stock and Flow.

    1. Ha! This is almost exactly what I expected it to be about.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in re-setting my mental clock – Snakes and Ladders (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 14:58:05</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Against Canvas

      I love that he uses this print of Pablo Picasso's Don Quixote to visually underline this post in which he must feel as if he's "tilting at windmills".

    1. After a good deal of reflection and consultation with my family, I have decided that (aside from pre-existing commitments, of which I have a few) I will no longer give lectures or participate in conferences, whether in person or via video link. I have a great deal that I want to think about and write about, and a dwindling supply of time in which to pursue the tasks I care about most. I understand that this decision might limit sales of my books, and make me even more isolated and ignored than I am already. That’s a trade-off that I simply must make. I feel sure that this is the right thing to do; indeed, the necessary thing to do. I hope that the work I produce in the future will bear out that judgment.

      An interesting take on valuing one's time.

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in control and surrender, architecture and gardening – Snakes and Ladders (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 09:42:40</time>)</cite></small>

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Alan Jacobs</span> in July Check-In · Buttondown (<time class='dt-published'>07/01/2021 09:19:13</time>)</cite></small>

      Idea of John Paul II's encyclical being a form of blogging in a different era. They're all essays in form, it's just about distribution...

  2. Jun 2021
    1. Tell me on Twitter @bionicjulia and have your tweet show up below!

      Or alternately write about it on your own site and send a webmention. :)

    1. I've run into Phil Jones in the digital gardens telegram group, but not looked very closely at [[Cardigan Bay]] before.

      Based on the idea of teh [[Smallest Federated Wiki]], Cardigan Bay is a wiki engine in Clojure which can be found on GitHub at interstar/cardigan-bay.

      Be sure to invite Jones to [[Gardens and Streams II]].

    1. For example, the Wikipedia article on Martin Luther King, Jr cites the book To Redeem the Soul of America, by Adam Fairclough. That citation now links directly to page 299 inside the digital version of the book provided by the Internet Archive. There are 66 cited and linked books on that article alone. 

      I'd love to have a commonplace book robot that would do this sort of linking process within it for me. In the meanwhile, I continue to plod along.

      This article was referenced today at [[I Annotate 2021]] by [[Mark Graham]].

    1. This is awesome and moves a bit closer in functionality for how one might use the platform as a commonplace book. Not sure how it's different to the main search except that it's geared toward smaller groups rather than the public timeline which is too large to view.

      My first impressions:

      • It doesn't seem to show within Firefox.
      • It overloads in the Public timeline

      via: Michael mention at IAnno21

    1. Looks like this is the sort of community that would attempt to put into action some of the ideas behind the book Ruined by Design.

    1. I Annotate 2021 the conference for open annotation practices and technologies

      I can't wait to catch I Annotate 2021 starting tomorrow morning.


      Syndicated to:

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Art Kavanagh </span> in note (<time class='dt-published'>06/16/2021 06:24:59</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Synopsis of two different methods for creating a Zettelkasten in Roam Research:

      • page based method
      • block reference method

      Nothing earth shattering here, though one must wonder about import/export of notes into other potential useful systems.

      Nothing dramatically new here.

    1. The “bed of Procrustes,” or “Procrustean bed,” has become proverbial for arbitrarily—and perhaps ruthlessly—forcing someone or something to fit into an unnatural scheme or pattern.
    1. More history here on the page than I would have thought.

      Definitely worth digging into some of the older examples going back to [[Conrad Gessner]] and [[Johann Jacob Moser]].

    1. <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>juanjosefernandez</span> in 📚-reading (<time class='dt-published'>06/04/2021 16:32:12</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Seth Long takes a closer look at the number of memory treatises from 1550-1650 to come up with a more concrete reason for the disappearance of mnemonic imagery (and the method of loci) in English rhetoric and pedagogic traditions. Some writers have attributed it to the rise of more writing and publishing. Long extends Frances Yates' idea of its decline to the rise of Ramism by presenting some general data about the number and quality of memory treatises published during the time period in question. Comparison of this data with European continental publications helps to draw some more concrete conclusions.

      In particular, he highlights an example of a Ramist sympathizer re-writing a previous treatise and specifically removing the rhetorical imagery from the piece.

    2. von Feinaigle, Gregor.The New Art of Memory: Founded Upon the Principles Taught by M. Gregor von Feinaigle. London, 1813.

      I thought this was in my reading list and my library, but perhaps it's not? Doublecheck.

    3. Delaney, Ian, Kate Danskin, Erin Clinch, eds.William Fulwood’s The Castel of Memorie. CreateSpace IndependentPublishing, 2013.
    4. Other treatises exemplifying the retreat of imagery from the fourth canon include Henry Herdson’sThe Art of Memory Made Plaine, which saw two printings in 1651 and another in 1654, and ThomasFuller’s 1641 bookThe Holy State and the Profane State, which contains a section“On Memory.”

      Add these to our list.

    5. Willis’s primary interest was shorthand writing—he is chiefly noted forArt of Stenographie—andhis memory treatise is clearly influenced by shorthand’s mechanism of one-to-one correspondence.

      John Willis's Mnemonica (Latin 1618, English 1621, 1654, and 1661) covers memory, but he was apparently more interested in shorthand writing and also wrote Art of Stenographie.

      I'll have to read this for a view into the overlap of memory and shorthand with respect to the development of the major system. Did this influence others in the chain of history? It definitely fits into the right timeline.

    1. Another problem was the ambiguity of RFC 3066 regarding the generative syntax. The idea of "language-dash-region" language tags was easy enough to grasp; most users didn't read RFC 3066 directly or consider the unstated-but-realized implication that other subtags might sometimes occur in the second position.

      unstated-but-realized

  3. May 2021
    1. You can see the implementation here: https://github.com/sveltejs/sapper/blob/339c417b24e8429d3adc9c9f196bf159a5fce874/runtime/src/server/middleware/get_page_handler.ts#L137
    1. I like the idea of where Downes is going here in taking a book and turning it into a feed for a course.

      Could professors create a syllabus at the start of the semester and then add things to a main class feed slowly over time in combination with feeds from various students to unroll the course over time?

    1. Whether or not digital gardens should follow any standards is an interesting question.

      What features/functionality should a digital garden have? Is there a canonical list yet?

      I wish more supported Webmention to enable the Memex dream...

    1. As Sirianni documents, in the first months of the revolution hundreds of firms were taken over spontaneously from below by groups of workers forming factory committees. But as he also documents, the Bolshevik leadership sought very strenuously to hold back and reverse this wave of spontaneous expropriations

      Interesting book of Carmen Siriani about the factory soviets.

    2. Indeed, as T. H. Rigby demonstrates in his study of the formation of the ‘Soviet’ system of government in Russia

      Must be interesting study to read about soviet Russia.

    1. Salvinorin A, a kappa-opioid receptor agonist hallucinogen: pharmacology and potential template for novel pharmacotherapeutic agents in neuropsychiatric disorders

      I think this may be the best review of salvinorin A that I have ever looked at. I definitely need to sit down and read the full article at some point.

    1. Lynne Kelly describes her experiences with some elementary school students using her rapscallions, songlines, and a woodhenge to memorize their math and social studies classwork and present it to their peers.

    1. Keep in mind that this may not be the actual email as received. It likely is, but since it's posted by a third party in a contentious situation, chances are that it may not be.