1,230 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2023
    1. Commonplacing, florilegia, anthologies, miscellanies, zettelkasten are such a fascinating tradition. They make a lovely ratchet for thinking.

      Commonplacing, florilegia, anthologies, miscellanies, zettelkasten are a ratchet for thinking.

    1. Circling back around to this after a mention by Tim Bushell at Dan Allosso's Book Club this morning. Nicole van der Hoeven has been using it for a while now and has several videos.

      Though called Napkin, which conjures the idea of (wastebook) notes scribbled on a napkin, is a card-based UI which has both manual and AI generated tags in a constellation-like UI. It allows creating "stacks" of notes which are savable and archivable in an outline-esque form (though the outline doesn't appear collapsible) as a means of composition.

      It's got a lot of web clipper tooling for saving and some dovetails for bringing in material from Readwise, but doesn't have great data export (JSON, CSV) at the moment. (Not great here means that one probably needs to do some reasonably heavy lifting to do the back and forth with other tools and may require programming skills.)

      At present, it looks like just another tool in the space but could be richer with better data dovetailing with other services.

    1. The Margins of Marginalia by Tom Peters, ALA TechSource on 2011-05-02

      Peters talks about his own reading practices and his annotation habits throughout his life. There's some discussion of the oncoming annotation functionality in the digital space in 2011.

    2. the Openmargin iPad app announced in late April (http://www.the- digital-reader.com/2011/04/28/openmargin-brings-margin-notes-to-life/) looks very interesting.
  2. Apr 2023
    1. Musician John Mayer, too, describes his typewriter as more of an emotional companion than a logistical tool. He laments writing lyrics with the judgemental “red squiggly line” of spell check, which he says stops the creative process because he feels compelled to fix the error, and turning to a typewriter which “doesn’t judge you, it just goes, ‘right away, sir, right away’.”
    1. My biggest realization recently is to do whatever the opposite of atomicity is.

      Too many go too deep into the idea of "atomic notes" without either questioning or realizing their use case. What is your purpose in having atomic notes? Most writing about them online talk about the theoretical without addressing the underlying "why".

      They're great for capturing things on the go and having the ability to re-arrange and reuse them into much larger works. Often once you've used them a few times, they're less useful, specially for the average person. (Of course it's another matter if you're an academic researcher, they're probably your bread and butter.) For the beekeepers of the world who need some quick tidbits which they use frequently, then keeping them in a larger outlined document or file is really more than enough. Of course, if you're creating some longer book-length treatise on beekeeping, then it can be incredibly helpful to have them at atomic length.

      There's a spectrum from the small atomic note to the longer length file (or even book). Ask yourself, "what's your goal in having one or the other, or something in between?" They're tools, choose the best one for your needs.

  3. Mar 2023
    1. “Normally, a dictionary just tells you what words mean – and of course we do that – but the scale of the project gives us the space and opportunity to say what we’re not sure of too,” he said. “This is important because it leaves the door open for further scholarship and it gives the reader choices rather than dictating to them what to think. The dictionary can be a catalyst for more research and this is what makes the dictionary a living thing.”

      We need more scholarship which leaves open thinking spaces for future scholars.

    1. Auch die Korrektur einer Textstelle ist in der Datenbank sofort global wirksam. Im Zettelarchiv dagegen ist es kaum zu leisten, alle alphabetisch einsortierten Kopien eines bestimmten Zettels zur Korrektur wieder aufzufinden.

      Correcting a text within a digital archive or database allows the change to propagate to all portions of the collection compared with a physical card index which has the hurdle of multiple storage and requires manual changes on all of the associated copies.

      This sort of affordance can be seen in more modern note taking tools like Obsidian which does this sort of work with global search and replace of double bracketed words which change everywhere in the collection.

    1. Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23. FAccT ’21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.

      Would the argument here for stochastic parrots also potentially apply to or could it be abstracted to Markov monkeys?

    1. GPT and other large language models are aesthetic instruments rather than epistemological ones. Imagine a weird, unholy synthesizer whose buttons sample textual information, style, and semantics. Such a thing is compelling not because it offers answers in the form of text, but because it makes it possible to play text—all the text, almost—like an instrument.

      ChatGPT as an instrument that allows one to play text like an instrument.

    1. one of the things I value about writing, is the act of writing itself. It is an embodied process that connects me to my own humanity, by putting me in touch with my mind, the same way a vigorous hike through the woods can put me in touch with my body.
    1. HTML templating and streaming response library for Worker Runtimes such as Cloudflare Workers.

      js function handleRequest(event: FetchEvent) { return new HTMLResponse(pageLayout('Hello World!', html` <h1>Hello World!</h1> ${async () => { const timeStamp = new Date( await fetch('https://time.api/now').then(r => r.text()) ); return html`<p>The current time is ${timeEl(timeStamp)}.</p>` }} `)); }

    1. how did you teach yourself zettelkasten? .t3_11ay28d._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/laystitcher at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ay28d/how_did_you_teach_yourself_zettelkasten/

      Roughly in order: - Sixth grade social studies class assignment that used a "traditional" index card-based note taking system. - Years of annotating books - Years of blogging - Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. - Locke, John, 1632-1704. A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. 1685. Reprint, London, 1706. https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock/mode/2up. - Erasmus, Desiderius. Literary and Educational Writings, 1 and 2. Edited by Craig R. Thompson. Vol. 23 & 24. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1978. https://utorontopress.com/9781487520731/collected-works-of-erasmus. - Kuehn, Manfred. Taking Note, A blog on the nature of note-taking. December 2007 - December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181224085859/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/ - Ahrens, Sönke. How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking – for Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. Create Space, 2017. - Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. - Webb, Beatrice Potter. Appendix C of My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. - Schmidt, Johannes F. K. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.” Sociologica 12, no. 1 (July 26, 2018): 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350. - Hollier, Denis. “Notes (On the Index Card).” October 112, no. Spring (2005): 35–44. - Wilken, Rowan. “The Card Index as Creativity Machine.” Culture Machine 11 (2010): 7–30. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines. - Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.

      And many, many others as I'm a student of intellectual history.... If you want to go spelunking on some of my public notes, perhaps this is an interesting place to start: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22note+taking%22 I also keep a reasonable public bibliography on this and related areas: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought

  4. Feb 2023
    1. "Personal knowledge management is an aid to your work, not the work itself." —Sam Matla #

      This is entirely dependent on what and how you're doing it. If you're actively reading and annotating, and placing it somewhere, then that is the work, just in small progressive steps.

      He needs to be more specific about what he means by "personal knowledge management" as a definition of something.

    1. sometimes I’m afraid I’m more fighting the tools than doing research. Sometimes it seems to me there’s too much friction, and not the productive kind.

      relation to Note taking problem and proposed solution?

      This seems to be a common reality and/or fear.

    1. Döring, Tanja, and Steffi Beckhaus. “The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, 87–90. TEI ’07. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226986.

      This looks fascinating with respect to note taking and subsequent arranging, outlining, and use of notes in human computer interaction space for creating usable user interfaces.

    1. he research skills that Eco teaches areperhaps even more relevant today. Eco’s system demandscritical thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, attention todetail, and academic pride and humility; these are preciselythe skills that aid students overwhelmed by the ever-grow-ing demands made on their time and resources, and confusedby the seemingly endless torrents of information availableto them.

      In addition to "critical thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, attention to detail, and academic pride and humility", the ability to use a note card-based research system like Umberto Eco's is the key to overcoming information overload.

    2. He understood that the writing of a thesis forcedmany students outside of their cultural comfort zone, andthat if the shock was too sudden or strong, they would giveup.

      The writing of a thesis is a shock to many specifically because information overload has not only gotten worse, but because the underlying historical method of doing so has either been removed from the educational equation or so heavily watered down that students don't think to use it.

      When I think and write about "note taking" I'm doing it in a subtly different way and method than how it seems to be used in common parlance. Most seem to use it solely for information extraction and as a memory crutch which they may or may not revisit to memorize or use and then throw away. I do it for some of these reasons, but my practice goes far beyond this for generating new ideas, mixing up ideas creatively, and for writing. Note reuse seems to be the thing missing from the equation. It also coincidentally was the reason I quit taking notes in college.

    1. LaMDA's safety features could also be limiting: Michelle Taransky found that "the software seemed very reluctant to generate people doing mean things". Models that generate toxic content are highly undesirable, but a literary world where no character is ever mean is unlikely to be interesting.
    2. If I were going to use an AI, I'd want to plugin and give massive priority to my commonplace book and personal notes followed by the materials I've read, watched, and listened to secondarily.

    3. Several participants noted the occasionally surreal quality of Wordcraft's suggestions.

      Wordcraft's hallucinations can create interesting and creatively surreal suggestions.

      How might one dial up or down the ability to hallucinate or create surrealism within an artificial intelligence used for thinking, writing, etc.?

    4. Writers struggled with the fickle nature of the system. They often spent a great deal of time wading through Wordcraft's suggestions before finding anything interesting enough to be useful. Even when writers struck gold, it proved challenging to consistently reproduce the behavior. Not surprisingly, writers who had spent time studying the technical underpinnings of large language models or who had worked with them before were better able to get the tool to do what they wanted.

      Because one may need to spend an inordinate amount of time filtering through potentially bad suggestions of artificial intelligence, the time and energy spent keeping a commonplace book or zettelkasten may pay off magnificently in the long run.

    5. language models are incredible "yes, and" machines, allowing writers to quickly explore seemingly unlimited variations on their ideas.
    6. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      The interface of Wordcraft sounds like some of that interface that note takers and thinkers in the tools for thought space would appreciate in their

      Rather than pairing it with artificial intelligence and prompts for specific writing tasks, one might pair tools for though interfaces with specific thinking tasks related to elaboration and continuation. Examples of these might be gleaned from lists like Project Zero's thinking routines: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

    7. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      The sense of writing partner here is similar to that mentioned by Niklas Luhmann in Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account (1981), though in his case his writing partner was a carefully constructed database archive of his past notes.

      see: Luhmann, Niklas. “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen: Ein Erfahrungsbericht.” In Öffentliche Meinung und sozialer Wandel / Public Opinion and Social Change, edited by Horst Baier, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, and Kurt Reumann, 222–28. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-87749-9_19.<br /> translation at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm.

    1. What we ultimately should care about is being able to use our knowledge to produce something new, whatever that may be. To not merely reproduce you must understand the material. And understanding requires application, a hermeneutic principle that particularly Gadamer worked out extensively. If you really want to measure your level of understanding, you should try to apply or explain something to yourself or someone else.
    1. If the jargon points to a coherent phenomenon, it can be very useful.

      When jargon or argot points to "coherent phenomenon" or provides a taxonomic purpose, it can be useful beyond its alternate function of gatekeeping areas of thought.

    1. I agree.After thinking about it for a bit, a common symbol for "the present card/note" is the one I'm most wanting.For the other stuff, I'm thinking:The squigly arrow symbol in latex is probably enough to do fuzziness. Then it could be squigly arrow to the current card or squigly arrow to not symbol current card. And for pen and paper, just use the biochem flat arrow with a squigly body for "somewhat contradicts" or is in tension with.

      reply to stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6x52ce/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Luhmann often used the shorthand of red numbers to indicate a link to nearby card in the current branch/stem, which Scott Scheper calls "stemlinks" in Antinet Zettelkasten (2022) p234. So, for example, on card ZKII 9/8 there is a red "1" which indicates the branching card ZKII 9/8,1. Scott uses a more computer science oriented notation of "/1" to indicate this as if he were traversing up or down a folder structure. Since there isn't really a (useful) idea of a root or home folder, and one wouldn't often want to refer to their zettelkasten itself, one might consider using the solidus "/" to indicate the current card? I personally do this, but not very frequently, though I might do it more often with respect to indicating argumentation within and among other cards.

      Some languages have location/proximity identifiers or markers (similar to here/there/over there). I'll sometimes use the Japanese markers (ko-so-a-do) as shorthand to provide rough approximation of idea relationships particularly when I have open questions. (example: kore, sore, are, dore -> this one, that one, that one over there, which one?) Many ideas are marked あ to indicate "just out of reach" or "needs additional thought". When ideas are adjacent or nearby, but by happenstance are relatively far away within my ZK (with respect to physical card distance in the box) they'll be pre-pended like こ/510/4b/3 (aka "ko"/510/4b/3).

  5. Jan 2023
    1. 个人学习可能取决于他人行为的主张突出了将学习环境视为一个涉及多个互动参与者的系统的重要性
    1. The words toki pona can be translated as “the language of good”. Its purpose is to help its speakers simplify their thoughts, focus on basic things, immediate surroundings, and induce positive thoughts. According to the wikipedia page of Toki Pona, this means the language and its purpose are in accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which says that a language influences the way a person thinks and behaves.

      Link to https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

    1. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

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


      link to Toki Pona as a conlang


      Link to https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

    1. https://www.catholic.org/saints/patron.php

      Potential patron saints of note takers, writers, knowledge workers, tools for thought, etc.

      • Apothecaries - Cosmas and Damian
      • archives - Laurent (Lawrence)
      • archivists, librarians, libraries - Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome, Laurent (Lawrence)
      • cabinetmakers - Anne, Joseph, Vincent de Paul
      • contemplatives, contemplative life - John of the Cross, Mary Magdalene
      • Craftworkers - Luke
      • Editors John Bosco, Francis de Sales
      • enlightenment - Holy Spirit, Our Lady of Good Counsel
      • file makers - Theodosius the Cenobriarch
      • Information Workers - Archangel Gabriel
      • inquisitors - Peter of Verona
      • Joiners - Joseph, Thomas, Apostle
      • knowledge - Holy Spirit
      • Learning - Ambrose, Catherine of Alexandria
      • liberal arts - Catherine of Bologna
      • linguists - Gotteschalk
      • net makers - Peter the Apostle
      • Notaries - Luke, Mark, Ivo of Kermartin
      • pencil makers - Thomas Aquinas
      • Scholars - Bridgid of Ireland, Thomas Aquinas
      • scribes - Catherine of Alexandria
      • Shorthand writers - Cassian of Imola
      • Students - Catherine of Alexandria, Thomas Aquinas, Gabriel Possenti
      • Students (examinees) - Joseph of Cupertino
    1. Here I’ve summarized Christian Tietze’s process, which I’m presently adopting / adapting:

      Andy is Adapting the approach of zettelkasten writer Christian Tietze

    2. You need to take a step back and form a picture of the overall structure of the ideas. Concretely, you might do that by clustering your scraps into piles and observing the structure that emerges. Or you might sketch a mind map or a visual outline.

      Andy suggests taking a step back and clustering annotations into piles or using a mind map or visualisations to identify common themes.

      I wonder if this is a bit overkill for the number of notes I tend to take or a sign that I'm not taking enough notes?

      What tools are out there that could integrate with my stack and help me do this.

    1. Tobeuseful,thenotestakenatmedicallecturesshouldbeasummaryonly;noattempt shouldbemadetotakeaverbatimreport

      Verbatim notes are not the goal.

      The idea of note taking as a means of sensemaking and understanding is underlined in an 1892 article in a shorthand magazine whose general purpose was to encourage shorthand and increasing one's writing speed, often to create verbatim records:

      To be useful, the notes taken at medical lectures should be a summary only; no attempt should be made to take a verbatim report.

    1. Record keeping using small clay ‘tokens’ was present in the Near Eastern Neolithic in the tenth millennium bc, these objects widespread and abundant by the sixth millennium bc, and by the fourth millennium bc it is clear they were functioning, perhaps as generalized elements for simple counting tasks recording time, resources and the like, albeit among other functions that did not have a mnemonic function (Bennison-Chapman Reference Bennison-Chapman2018, 240).
    1. Actually, using the hypothesis BOOKMARKLET is much more convinient than 'paste a link' or typing "via.hypothes.is/" in front of every link you want to annotate. With the bookmarklet all you need to do is, when you find a page that you want to bookmark, in the search bar of the mobile browser search for the name you saved the bookmarklet as and click it. It will immediately load hypothesis on the page just like clicking the hypothesis extention would do in pc. To bookmark the bookmarklet link (which can be found in https://web.hypothes.is/start) in the mobile browser, copy the link address of the bookmarklet link (which is a javascript code) and just edit an existing (useless) bookmark already there in the mobile browser replace the url with the bookmarklet link. Also give it a title (like "bookmarklet hypothesis") which you would type in the address bar of the mobile browser to find the bookmarklet bookmark.

      Manual to use hypothes.is in mobile Firefox

      via.hypothes.is does not work as they stopped providing an open proxy. It makes all URL forwarders and standalone apps on Android close to useless.

      The piece of advice provided here works, but it is highly unintuitive.

      The mechanics is this: 1. open a page where you want to add annotation 2. click on a bookmark as if you are opening a new page 3. since the bookmark is actually just a piece of javascript, it will simply load hypothes.is client 4. profit.

      To make it work in Firefox mobile, the instruction is this: 1. create a new arbitrary bookmark on some page. It will appear in the list of your bookmarks. 2. copy the bookmarklet javascript code. I was not able to do it directly in the FF mobile, so I copied it on my desktop and sent it to the phone via an IM 3. edit the newly created bookmark and a) give it a name, e.g., "hypothesize"; and b) replace the URL with the piece of copied javascript code 4. now when you want to add an annotation, follow the process above.

    1. Over time, they have been expanded and organized: it is the scaffolding of our conversation, left behind as a structure to think in. 

      "they" = "notes"

    1. After Ahrens' book I see an awful lot of people talking about "processing" books. There are too many assumptions about what this can mean and this hides many levels of inherent work involved in analyzing and synthesizing knowledge. I would suggest that we're better off talking about reading them, annotating, excerpting, and thinking about them, or maybe writing about and combining them with other knowledge than "processing" them.

  6. Dec 2022
    1. https://mochi.cards

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

    1. https://tellico-project.org/

      Tellico<br /> Collection management software, free and simple

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

    1. https://borretti.me/article/unbundling-tools-for-thought

      He covers much of what I observe in the zettelkasten overreach article.

      Missing is any discussion of exactly what problem he's trying to solve other than perhaps, I want to solve them all and have a personal log of everything I've ever done.

      Perhaps worth reviewing again to pull out specifics, but I just don't have the bandwidth today.

    1. Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.
    1. https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/designing-a-workflow-for-thinking

      Quick preface of Steven Johnson's forthcoming series of essays on thinking strategies.

    2. So I’ve started a routine where every few years, I block out a couple of days to sit down and review all my idea tools—and other rituals of how I structure my creative thinking— to see if there's something that can be improved upon.

      As a strategy for avoiding shiny object syndrome, one can make a routine of making a "creative inventory" of one's tools.

      There is generally a high switching cost, so tools need to be an order of magnitude more useful, beneficial, or even fun to make it worthwhile.

    1. I think one of the the things that 00:00:27 really separates us from the high primates is that we're tool builders and I read a a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet the Condor used 00:00:41 the least energy to move a kilometer and humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list it was not not too proud of a showing for the crown of 00:00:53 creation so that didn't look so good but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle or human on a bicycle 00:01:07 blew the Condor away completely off the top of the charts and that's what a computer is to me what a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with and it's the 00:01:19 equivalent of a bicycle for our minds

      Cleaned up quote:

      I think one of the [the] things that really separates us from the high primates is that [uh] we're tool builders. And I read a [uh] study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The Condor used the least energy to move a kilometer and [uh] humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. It was not [not] too proud of a showing for the crown of creation. So [uh] that didn't look so good, but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycle or human on a bicycle blew the Condor away—completely off the top of the charts and that's what a computer is to me. [uh] What a computer is to me is: it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.<br /> —Steve Jobs in Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress. Documentary. Krainin Productions, 1990.

      Snippet from full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c

    1. For example I had a few notes on principles of modern cryptography that came in handy when I had to write a paper about a related topic for my studies. But these cases were rare at best, most of these notes were never looked at again.

      The one shining moment in the whole essay and they don't seem to realize where the benefit or use actually was. They finally had a reason to have taken notes and the ideas shone here. But they've written off the tools because they didn't understand when to use them.

      Hammers are cool, but unless you're a professional carpenter, you don't carry it around all the time and use it constantly to hammer things. The same is true of note taking as a tool. You might use it regularly if you're a writer or an academic perhaps, but for hourly use in your day-to-day? Almost definitely not.

    1. https://www.movetodon.org/

      What a lovely looking UI.

      The data returned will also give one a strong idea of how many of their acquaintances have made the jump as well as how active they may be, particularly for those who moved weeks ago and are still active within the last couple of days. For me the numbers are reasonably large. 860 of 4942 have accounts presently and in scrolling through it appears that 80% or so have been active within a day or so regardless of account age.

    1. Thinking about the circular relationship between UX and human behaviour - how they shape each other. The affordances of the system determine certain usage patterns, but people subvert those affordances, turn them to unexpected ends, and the system is often changed (if not directly by the designers, then indirectly through reinterpretation by the users) as a result.

      We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us....

    1. Forks that do have a custom limit usually expose it as the max_toot_chars field in /api/v1/instance

      https://discourse.joinmastodon.org/t/get-character-limit-from-instance/3643/2

      Appending /api/v1/instance to a Mastodon instance will return a lot of interesting data about it and how it's set up.

    1. It’s always worth gathering information, nurturing other projects, and putting together some backup plans. You’ll need to define what success means to you for each of them, because you won’t make overnight progress; instead, you’re best served picking projects that you can learn critical lessons from, even if you fail

      It's interesting because this way of thinking is eminently compatible with the zettelkasten way of thinking e.g. don't necessarily set out with a hypothesis in mind that you're trying to prove but rather explore until something interesting emerges.

  7. Nov 2022
    1. Set the endpoint to Mailgun's Postbin. A Postbin is a web service that allows you to post data, which is then displayed through a browser. This allows you to quickly determine what is actually being transmitted to Mailgun's API.
    1. Automated personalization, localization, recommendation, f iltering, classif ication, evaluation, aggregation, synthetization, or ad hoc generation of information are similarly pervasive practices that do not require explicit user input to select, sequence, arrange, or modulate some set of digital items
    2. Search has become a dominant means to access and order the masses of digital and dataf ied bits and pieces that clutter the environments we inhabit.
    1. Matthew Thomas has created a remote follow tool called apfollow, with source available. This creates a page where you can follow a Mastodon account by entering your own details in a box and it redirects you to your home server to do the follow. Here’s a link to follow my Mastodon.ie account.

      This looks cool.

    1. Donations

      To add some other intermediary services:

      To add a service for groups:

      To add a service that enables fans to support the creators directly and anonymously via microdonations or small donations by pre-charging their Coil account to spend on content streaming or tipping the creators' wallets via a layer containing JS script following the Interledger Protocol proposed to W3C:

      If you want to know more, head to Web Monetization or Community or Explainer

      Disclaimer: I am a recipient of a grant from the Interledger Foundation, so there would be a Conflict of Interest if I edited directly. Plus, sharing on Hypothesis allows other users to chime in.

    1. Aram Saroyam and, I believe, Jackson Maclow produced something similar. MacLow's The Pronouns was super important to me back in grad school.

      reply to Bob Doto on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/z3f8kb/comment/ixlocl7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Do you have something particular on Saroyam for this? I found The Pronouns by Jackson Mac Low, but only tangential hits on Saroyam.

      Similar useful efforts, though not in as clear-cut card format are: * Project Zero's thinking routines: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines * Untools: https://untools.co/

    1. https://untools.co/

      Tools for better thinking Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Howard Rheingold</span> in Howard Rheingold: "Y'all know about "Tools for …" - Mastodon (<time class='dt-published'>11/13/2022 17:33:07</time>)</cite></small>


      Looks similar to Project Zero https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

    1. Whilst at school, Eno used a tape recorder as a musical instrument[17]

      I personally did something akin to this when I was a child sometime between 9 and 12 with our family tape recorder. Did I do so because it was simply a creativity tool, which is generally how I used it, in my environment, or had Brian Eno and others' influences seeped into the culture encouraging this? Where does zeitgeist start and stop?

    2. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking.
  8. tinysubversions.com tinysubversions.com
    1. A tool that turns Twitter threads into blog posts, by Darius Kazemi.

      https://tinysubversions.com/spooler/

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Darius Kazemi</span> in Darius Kazemi: "thread unroller apps" - Friend Camp (<time class='dt-published'>11/16/2022 08:27:44</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Athens Research is winding down their note taking application.

      Potentially the first of more to come?

      Athens the OSS project is winding down. The company is still operating, but taking time to reset and explore new ideas. Open to chats and convos. Thanks all ❤️ https://t.co/Y7ROM86WSy

      — Jeff Tang 🏛 (Ohio) (@tangjeff0) November 11, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. I'm pretty much done thinking about "tools for thought". It quickly becomes an infinity of navel gazing and a complete waste of time. It's an easy topic for budding "influencers" because you don't actually need to know anything. All they need is to spend some time with a new bit of software and tell people how they should use it and the next thing you know they're selling an online course via their budding YouTube channel.

      scathing, but broadly true...

    1. David Brooks talks about what he calls the “theory of maximum taste.” It’s similar to what Murphy is saying. “Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness,” Brooks writes. “If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you [don’t].”
    2. This reminded me of Robert Greene’s definition of creativity, which is that creativity is a function of putting in lots of tedious work. “If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading,” Robert says, “hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you.” 

      Robert Green's definition of creativity sounds like it's related to diffuse thinking processes. read: https://billyoppenheimer.com/august-14-2022/

      Often note taking, and reviewing over those notes is more explicit in form for creating new ideas.

      Come back to explore these.

    1. https://dainty-sable-264aa3.netlify.app/project/measuring_thinking_tools.html

      Openness should be broken out into smaller subsections to highlight the importance of supporting standards as a primary item by itself. Many of these axes are easier, low-hanging fruit that developers will iterate on anyway. Focusing on the harder and more subtle features like standards is a better way to go for the audience that can really use this now.

      Many of these axes are better for a commercial market.

    1. e. T. F. T.

      What is this editor's actual name?

      My first guess is "Tools for Thought", but that can't be right. 🤣

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Zettelkasten with the complicated digestive system of a ruminant. All arbitrary ideas, all coincidences of readings, can be brought in. The internal connectivity then decides.

      another in a long line of using analogizing thinking to food digestion.... I saw another just earlier today.

    2. The Zettelkasten Method is based on this experience: One cannot think without writing - at least not in demanding contexts that anticipate selective access to memory. This also means: without notching differences one cannot think.

      Sönke Ahrens roughly quoted this passage or one like it (check the reference), but I criticized it for not being inclusive of indigenous people or oral methods. Luhmann, however, went further and was at least passively more inclusive by saying that one needs to be able to "notch differences" to be able to think, and this is a much better framing.

  9. Oct 2022
    1. November 7, 1916: "I expect to vote for Woodrow Wilson

      I wonder if others use the sense making features of a note card system to think through their voting decisions? This seems an interesting and useful exercise which Paxson has done.

    2. the author must not merely articulate his sources; he mustdigest them. A long passage quoted or closely followed "remainsan undigested bit of foreign matter." "Over quotation may meanunder thought."
    1. Meta App 在产品体验上更像是专注型 App,不同的 Meta App 可以用来处理不同的使用场景。与专注型 App 不同之处在于,所有的 Meta App 都能共享相同的资料库、并且遵守一套如何处理这些资料的协议。不同的 Meta App 能让你用不同的方式使用你的资料,并在必要时为这些资料加上特定的 meta data。举例来说,你有一份文件,负责白板思考的 Meta App 可以把它解读成一个白板上的便利贴,并加上颜色、长宽等 meta data;负责专案管理的 Meta App 可以把这份文件解读成一个 Task,并加上像是“已完成”、“进行中”等 meta data;负责部落格后台管理的 Meta App 可以把它解读成一则贴文,并加上发布日期、浏览数、讚数等 meta data。换言之,使用者的资料是集中的,但是透过不同的 Meta App,你既可以享受到专注型 App 在单点上的强大,又能享受到通用型 App 的整合性。

      同一个数据 不同处理方式 这个我似乎也想到过 这个配合logseq的datalog模式, 其实可以考虑以logseq+excali的技术模式本地化实现 。 表格 数据库也是一种方式 可能某种交互协作也是一种方式

  10. www.indxd.ink www.indxd.ink
    1. https://www.indxd.ink/

      A digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional).

      It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.

      This could potentially be used by those who have analog zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.


      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>sgtstretch </span> in @Gaby @pimoore so a good friend of mine makes [INDXD](https://www.indxd.ink/) which is for indexing analog notebooks and being able to find things. I don't personally use it, but I know @patrickrhone has written about it before. (<time class='dt-published'>10/27/2022 17:59:32</time>)</cite></small>

    1. Supabase is an open source Firebase alternative. Start your project with a Postgres database, Authentication, instant APIs, Edge Functions, Realtime subscriptions, and Storage.

      https://supabase.com/


      Found as presumably it's being used by https://www.explainpaper.com/ with improper configurations

    1. https://www.explainpaper.com/

      Another in a growing line of research tools for processing and making sense of research literature including Research Rabbit, Connected Papers, Semantic Scholar, etc.

      Functionality includes the ability to highlight sections of research papers with natural language processing to explain what those sections mean. There's also a "chat" that allows you to ask questions about the paper which will attempt to return reasonable answers, which is an artificial intelligence sort of means of having an artificial "conversation with the text".

      cc: @dwhly @remikalir @jeremydean

    1. The bullshit is believing in a technology silver bullet. We constantly see that BS sells.

      This is the underpinning of the current hypelet, plus that having forgotten what went before (centuries ago, or as little as 2 decades ago) obscures how to tap into existing practices which reinforces the shiny new tool effect.

    1. Several templates and tools are available to assist in formatting, such as Reflinks (documentation), reFill (documentation) and Citation bot (documentation)

      I clicked the link for reFill and thought it looked interesting. Would like to look into this further.

    1. if you're thinking without 00:03:26 writing chances are you're fooling yourself we're only

      If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking. —Leslie Lamport.“Thinking Above the Code.” Lecture presented at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Research, July 15, 2014. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/leslie-lamport-thinking-code/. Timestamp: 03:26

      Link to:<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/rvisgFDXEe2s-SuJJGw3cA<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w

      Note that the spoken quote is different from the written quote.

    1. https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/

      History of Philosophy: Summarized & Visualized

      This could be thought of as a form of digital, single-project zettelkasten dedicated to philosophy. It's got people, sources, and ideas which are cross linked in a Luhmann-sense (without numbering) though not in a topical index-sense. Interestingly it has not only a spatial interface and shows spatial relationships between people and ideas over time using a timeline, but it also indicates—using colored links—the ideas of disagreement/contrast/refutation and agreement/similarity/expansion.

      What other (digital) tools of thought provide these sorts of visualization affordances?

    1. Sayers, Dorothy L. The Lost Tools of Learning. E. T. Heron, 1948.

    2. For the sole true end of educationis simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whateverinstruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
    3. We have lostthe tools of learning—the axe and the wedge, the hammer and the saw, thechisel and the plane—that were so adaptable to all tasks. Instead of them, wehave merely a set of complicated jigs, each of which will do but one task andno more, and in using which eye and hand receive no training, so that no manever sees the work as a whole or “looks to the end of the work.”
    4. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and everysubject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get themastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effortexpended by the person who has not the tools at his command.
    5. Thewhole of the Trivium was in fact intended to teach the pupil the proper use ofthe tools of learning, before he began to apply them to “subjects” at all

      The point of putting the Trivium in front of the Quadrivium is that the student is first taught the use of the "tools of learning" before they are then taught how to apply them to broad subjects as a means of learning how to learn.

  11. app.sane.fyi app.sane.fyi
    1. Ida JosefiinaInfopunk. Into pdfs, information systems that support intentional thinking, cyborgs, and the future of humanity. This thought space is an introduction to me and my work.

      https://app.sane.fyi/space/ida-ida-josefiina-75044

    1. Doch ganz gleich, ob der Zettelkasten auf ein Buch, ein Werk oder auf eine Gedankenwolke mit wechselnder Niederschlagsneigung hinauslief - er ist stets mehr als das Ganze, dessen Teile er gesammelt hat. Denn es stecken stets noch andere Texte in ihm als diejenigen, die aus ihm hervorgegangen sind. Insofern wäre die Digitalisierung des einen oder anderen Zettelkastens ein Geschenk an die Wissenschaft.

      machine translation (Google):

      But regardless of whether the Zettelkasten resulted in a book, a work, or a thought cloud with varying degrees of precipitation - it is always more than the whole whose parts it has collected. Because there are always other texts in it than those that emerged from it.

      There's something romantic about the analogy of a zettelkasten with a thought cloud which may have varying degrees of precipitation.

      Link to other analogies: - ruminant machines - the disappointment of porn - others?

    1. https://glasp.co/home

      Glasp is a startup competitor in the annotations space that appears to be a subsidiary web-based tool and response to a large portion of the recent spate of note taking applications.

      Some of the first users and suggested users are names I recognize from this tools for thought space.

      On first blush it looks like it's got a lot of the same features and functionality as Hypothes.is, but it also appears to have some slicker surfaces and user interface as well as a much larger emphasis on the social aspects (followers/following) and gamification (graphs for how many annotations you make, how often you annotate, streaks, etc.).

      It could be an interesting experiment to watch the space and see how quickly it both scales as well as potentially reverts to the mean in terms of content and conversation given these differences. Does it become a toxic space via curation of the social features or does it become a toxic intellectual wasteland when it reaches larger scales?

      What will happen to one's data (it does appear to be a silo) when the company eventually closes/shuts down/acquihired/other?

      The team behind it is obviously aware of Hypothes.is as one of the first annotations presented to me is an annotation by Kei, a cofounder and PM at the company, on the Hypothes.is blog at: https://web.hypothes.is/blog/a-letter-to-marc-andreessen-and-rap-genius/

      But this is true for Glasp. Science researchers/writers use it a lot on our service, too.—Kei

      cc: @dwhly @jeremydean @remikalir