4,132 Matching Annotations
  1. Jul 2021
    1. For the second keynote, I took copious notes and followed the spaced interval formula. A month later, by golly, I remember virtually all of the material. And in case if you're wondering, both talks were equally interesting to me--the difference was the reversal of Ebbinghaus' Forgetting Curve.

      Not exactly a real scientific trial, but...

      Note also that the other part was his having taken notes and actively engaged with the material as he heard it. The notes also formed the basis of his ability to do the spaced repetition.

      Mnemonic methods could be used in place of the note taking for the properly trained. Visual memory just goes to expand on it.

      This is an awfully fluff article that's probably too prescriptive. I wonder how many people it influences to try it out? How successful will they be without a more specific prescription?

    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. 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. 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. 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.

  2. Jun 2021
    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. 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. 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.

    3. 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.

  3. May 2021
    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?