For true deep processing and learning, intellectualism, one must think beyond the single source they are consuming and think about everything they know. Although keep in mind selective attention for true learning and thinking.
This process is habitualized by means of Zettelkasten and further aided in tool like hypothes.is
Unrelated to the song itself. It is interesting that different people interpret the song's meaning differently. Likely due to individual differences in perspective, history, culture, etc.
Makes me reflect. Is knowledge/wisdom contained solely in content and words? Or is knowledge/wisdom rather contained in the RELATIONSHIP, the INTERACTION, between past experience, previous knowledge (identity) and substance?
Currently I am inclined to go for the latter.
(~6:30)
I think the major point here is that Adler points out our minds, and thus our thinking, changes over time. Therefore, when a book is read at a later point in time, our notes are different.
Perhaps his argument to "think again as to make the thought more current" is antithetical to Luhmann's Zettelkasten, which principles upon continuing previous lines of thought, even decades later.
(future note, about half an hour later)... I think in the Zettelkasten the problem is dealt with adequately, since you actually can make new notes expressing why your thought changes... So in this sense it is even more expanded upon the point that Adler makes even though at first sight it seems the complete opposite.
(1:20.00-1:40.00) What he describes is the following: Most of his notes originate from the digital using hypothes.is, where he reads material online and can annotate, highlight, and tag to help future him find the material by tag or bulk digital search. He calls his hypothes.is a commonplace book that is somewhat pre-organized.
Aldrich continues by explaining that in his commonplace hypothes.is his notes are not interlinked in a Luhmannian Zettelkasten sense, but he "sucks the data" right into Obsidian where he plays around with the content and does some of that interlinking and massage it.
Then, the best of the best material, or that which he is most interested in working with, writing about, etc., converted into a more Luhmannesque type Zettelkasten where it is much more densely interlinked. He emphasizes that his Luhmann zettelkasten is mostly consisting of his own thoughts and is very well-developed, to the point where he can "take a string of 20 cards and ostensibly it's its own essay and then publish it as a blog post or article."
Actually, as Davidson argues, multitasking helps us see more and do more, and experience texts and tasks in different ways. There’s no evidence that anyone ever was deeply reading for hours on end with no interruptions. All we have are claims from Plato saying that writing is going to kill our ability to memorize. Our minds have always been wandering; we’ve always been distractible. We’ve always been doodling on the sides of pages, or thinking about our lunch, or stopping to converse with someone. Now we just have distraction that’s more readily available and purposefully attuned to distracting us — like popup ads, notifications; things that quite literally fly across your screen to distract you. But the fact that we have students who have grown up with those and have trained themselves to deal with those in such interesting ways is something that I think we should bring into the classroom and be talking about and critically thinking about
1) the point that multitasking can offer different experiences with texts and tasks is interesting to me. initially, the comparison between multitasking and single-tasking seems like a clear distinction between what is beneficial (focus) and what is detrimental (distraction)
2) taking a bold stance, i would venture to say that there exists a significant number of individuals who engage in deep work, which is perhaps one of the most profound pursuits throughout human history. after all, most of us have experienced a state of flow at least once, to some extent, and our brains subconsciously crave this state of heightened focus and productivity
3) this observation all the more underscores the rarity of deep work in a world that is perpetually plagued by distractions
here is one of my notes from deep work by cal newport:
the connection between depth and meaning in human experience is undeniable. whether approached from the perspectives of neuroscience, psychology, or philosophy, there appears to be a profound correlation between engaging in deep, meaningful activities and a sense of fulfillment. this suggests that our species may have evolved to thrive in the realm of deep work and purposeful engagement
We have to endlessly scroll and parse a ton of images and headlines before we can find something interesting to read.
The randomness of interesting tidbits in a social media scroll help to put us in a state of flow. We get small hits of dopamine from finding interesting posts to fill in the gaps of the boring bits in between and suddenly find we've lost the day. As a result an endless scroll of varying quality might have the effect of making one feel productive when in fact a reasonably large proportion of your time is spent on useless and uninteresting content.
This effect may be put even further out when it's done algorithmically and the dopamine hits become more frequent. Potentially worse than this, the depth of the insight found in most social feeds is very shallow and rarely ever deep. One is almost never invited to delve further to find new insights.
How might a social media stream of content be leveraged to help people read more interesting and complex content? Could putting Jacques Derrida's texts into a social media-like framing create this? Then one could reply to the text by sentence or paragraph with their own notes. This is similar to the user interface of Hypothes.is, but Hypothes.is has a more traditional reading interface compared to the social media space. What if one interspersed multiple authors in short threads? What other methods might work to "trick" the human mind into having more fun and finding flow in their deeper and more engaged reading states?
Link this to the idea of fun in Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes.
Instead read this gems brief source code completely before use OR copy the code straight into your codebase.
Deep reading, as Maryanne Wolf argues, is indistinguishable from deep thinking.
I like this concept of deep reading.
Compare/contrast with close reading and distant reading.
What other types of reading might we imagine?
Levy, D.M. (1997) "I read the news today oh boy".
Check out this article and share with JD.