- Last 7 days
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www.remastery.net www.remastery.net
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Beyond the cards mentioned above, you should also capture any hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry on separate cards. Regularly go through these to make sure that you are covering everything and that you don’t forget something.I consider these insurance cards because they won’t get lost in some notebook or scrap of paper, or email to oneself.
Julius Reizen in reviewing over Umberto Eco's index card system in How to Write a Thesis, defines his own "insurance card" as one which contains "hard-to-classify thoughts, questions, and areas for further inquiry". These he would keep together so that they don't otherwise get lost in the variety of other locations one might keep them
These might be akin to Ahrens' "fleeting notes" but are ones which may not easily or even immediately be converted in to "permanent notes" for one's zettelkasten. However, given their mission critical importance, they may be some of the most important cards in one's repository.
link this to - idea of centralizing one's note taking practice to a single location
Is this idea in Eco's book and Reizen is the one that gives it a name since some of the other categories have names? (examples: bibliographic index cards, reading index cards (aka literature notes), cards for themes, author index cards, quote index cards, idea index cards, connection cards). Were these "officially" named and categorized by Eco?
May be worthwhile to create a grid of these naming systems and uses amongst some of the broader note taking methods. Where are they similar, where do they differ?
Multi-search tools that have full access to multiple trusted data stores (ostensibly personal ones across notebooks, hard drives, social media services, etc.) could potentially solve the problem of needing to remember where you noted something.
Currently, in the social media space especially, this is not a realized service.
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- Aug 2024
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Michael: Pam, I have ideas on a daily basis. I know I do. I have a clear memory of telling people my ideas. Um, is there any chance you wrote any of my ideas down? In a folder? A "Michael-idea" folder?Pam: Sorry.Michael: That's unfortunate. How 'bout the suggestion box? There's tons of ideas in there.
via Season 2 Episode 8: “Performance Review” - The Office<br /> https://genius.com/The-office-usa-season-2-episode-8-performance-review-annotated
Here we see in Michael Scott's incompetence the potential value of writing down our ideas as we go. Had he written down his ideas, his upcoming meeting with his boss would have gone better.
Isn't it telling that he hits on the idea of leveraging a commonly used communal zettelkasten structure (the suggestion box) to dig himself out?
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- Jul 2024
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zettelkasten.de zettelkasten.de
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(9/8a2) Zettelkasten als Klärgrube – nicht nur abgeklärte Notizen hineintun. Aufschieben des Prüfens und Entscheidens – auch eine Tempofrage. Zettelkasten as a septic tank – don’t put just treated notes in. Suspending of examination and decision making – also a question of speed.
I have always misinterpreted this idea.
I thought it referred to the rumination of ideas... Don't put notes you just made in it (from any source, like reading a book), instead let it ruminate.
I was wrong. I realized this when chatting with Gemini Advanced.
But either way, the DeepL translation of this paragraph: "Slip box as a clarification pit - don't just put clarified notes in it. Postponing reviewing and deciding - also a question of speed."
It is moreso related to the idea of fleeting notes and unprocessed ideas. Have to think a bit more about what Luhmann meant. Maybe @chrisaldrich knows something.
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- Apr 2024
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Local file Local file
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When our stock of information has been systematically arranged,and is available for use, it has ceased to be a mere note-book,which it may have been at the start; it h;i^ x'adually developedinto tin- nucleus of an intelligence department, «>\crin- .-illthe subjects and their ramifications within the scope of oaractivity.
intelligence department!!!
subtlety in definition of "mere note-book" versus card index
Kaiser doesn't give a strong definition of the difference between notes (here taking on a fleeting sort of definition), and notes indexed and arranged, but he gives it a powerful sounding name and implies that there is useful power within the practice of doing so.
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- Feb 2024
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writing.bobdoto.computer writing.bobdoto.computer
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The term "fleeting note" comes from Sonke Ahrens' book, How to Take Smart Notes, and describes a note which is impermanent or, to use Ahrens' language, not permanently stored in your zettelkasten.
Fleeting notes aren't permanently stored in the zettelkasten
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- Jan 2024
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Local file Local file
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taking random (and un-filed) notes
"unfiled notes" as "fleeting notes" which aren't expanded upon and turned into "permanent notes"
how are these related to his "fringe thoughts"
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" f r i n g e - t h o u g h t s "
C. Wright Mills' idea of "fringe-thoughts" is similar to Ahrens framing of "fleeting notes".
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Annotators
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- Nov 2023
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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posted reply:
I appreciate that you're centering some of the Cornell notes workflow into a linked note taking system. I don't think many (any?) of the note taking platforms have made it easy for students to quickly or easily create questions from their Cornell notes and build them into a spaced repetition practice. I've seen a handful transfer their work into other platforms like Anki, Mnemosyne, etc. for this purpose, but it would be interesting to see Protolyst and others offer this as out of the box functionality for following up on Cornell notes workflows. I've not seen it mentioned in any parts of the note taking space, but Cornell notes are essentially a Bibliography note/card (where the source is typically a lecture) + fleeting notes which stem from it (in a Niklas Luhmann-artig zettelkasten framing) out of which one would build their permanent notes as well as create questions for spaced repetition and review. User interfaces like that of Protolyst could potentially leverage these common workflows to great advantage.
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Cornell notes = ZK bibliography notes + ZK fleeting notes + questions for spaced repetition
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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I like that she's explicit about not migrating over all of one's highlights and annotations after the fact. Few people focus on this piece which is highly important and many beginners fall trap to thinking that they need to write down, save, and link everything.
What if the initial exercise of making the fleeting note was enough to have a baseline knowledge of a thing that really isn't going to be used again? Save the time and effort for the really important ideas. Build these.
An annotation like 2+2=4 is useful in 2nd grade and will be remembered/used for your lifetime. It's so ubiquitously commonplace that it doesn't need to be commonplaced into your zettelkasten. Similarly for basic ideas that anyone in a particular sub-field will already know. Delve deeper for building true insights.
This is related to the idea of collector's fallacy, but is subtly different from the usual framing. It has to do with focus against the commonplace.
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- Sep 2023
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Merchants and traders have a waste book (Sudelbuch, Klitterbuch in GermanI believe) in which they enter daily everything they purchase and sell,messily, without order. From this, it is transferred to their journal, whereeverything appears more systematic, and finally to a ledger, in double entryafter the Italian manner of bookkeeping, where one settles accounts witheach man, once as debtor and then as creditor. This deserves to be imitatedby scholars. First it should be entered in a book in which I record everythingas I see it or as it is given to me in my thoughts; then it may be enteredin another book in which the material is more separated and ordered, andthe ledger might then contain, in an ordered expression, the connectionsand explanations of the material that flow from it. [46]
—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?
Tags
- academic writing
- note taking advice
- Dewey Decimal System
- Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- John Locke
- zettelkasten numbering
- Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten
- idea links
- Konrad Gessner
- waste books
- quotes
- intellectual history
- accounting influence on note taking
- Sönke Ahrens
- open questions
- numbering systems
- zettelkasten transmission
- fleeting notes
Annotators
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- May 2023
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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Even three or four words are often worth jotting down if they will evoke a thought, an idea or a mood. In the barren periods, one should browse through the notebooks. Some ideas may suddenly start to move. Two ideas may combine, perhaps because they were meant to combine in the first place. —Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction
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jillianhess.substack.com jillianhess.substack.com
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As you go about town…constantly observe, note, and consider the circumstances and behavior of men as they talk, quarrel, or laugh, or come to blows. — Codex Ash.
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- Apr 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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reply to u/noobinPython at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/12rfku6/how_has_the_zettelkasten_system_changed_the_way/
Historically there is the popular idea of a waste book, which originally comes from double entry accounting, in which one might keep quick scribbled notes and ephemera. Upon reaching a quiet space for work and reflection one would then transcribe all the most important ideas into a more permanent place in their commonplace book or zettelkasten. I suspect this historical practice is part of where Ahrens came up with the often used terms "fleeting notes" and "permanent notes" which serve the same purpose.
I follow this practice and either have a small pocket notebook (usually a small Field Notes) or an index card at hand for writing things down throughout the day. Then every evening or every few days at worst, I transcribe/rewrite the idea.
As examples, Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's Waste Books were ultimately published and were highly influential. Isaac Newton developed his version of the Calculus in his waste book.
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- Mar 2023
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www.raulpacheco.org www.raulpacheco.org
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the Content Index Card is a combination type of index card that includes direct quotations, draft notes and ideas, conceptual diagrams, etc. that are all associated with the main article, book chapter or book discussed in the index card. I use larger (5″ x 8″) index cards for those cases.
Pacheco-Vega defines a "combined" or "content index card" or one might say a content note as a one with "direct quotations, draft notes and ideas, conceptual diagrams, etc. that are associated with" the work in question. These seem similar to Ahrens' fleeting notes, though seem a bit more fleshed out.
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www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
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A few times in his Grand Fichier, Barthes includes notebook paper from other sources which he's cut down to fit into his box or clippings of newspapers which he's taped to cards and included. ᔥ [00:32:00]
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- Feb 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I started capturing everything directly in Obsidian but it has two major drawbacks. The first is that I will inevitably end up taking a lot of fleeting notes that I don't want to be included in the literature note. By taking the fleeting notes and highlights in Zotero, and then exporting a copy to Obsidian, I have the piece of mind that much raw material (that I might possibly need one day) is in Zotero, but that a more polished and reduced version is in my literature notes. The clutter stays in Zotero, in other words, while Obsidian is the home of the more processed notes.
Keeping one's fleeting notes separate from their permanent notes can be useful for managing the idea of clutter.
Luhmann generally did this by keeping things in different boxes. Modern academics may use different digital applications (Zotero/Obsidian, Hypothes.is/Zettlr, etc.as examples) for each as long as there is some reasonable dovetail between the two for data transfer when necessary.
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- Jan 2023
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I'd recommend a Book-to-Maincard approach for this (instead of the 2-step Bibcard Method). And I'd recommend Reformulation notes (i.e., summarization notes) instead of Excerpts.
reply to u/sscheper at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/10o4jnl/comment/j6ii64d/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
Is this about as close as Scott Scheper comes to recommending taking Cornell Notes?!? 😂
Let's be honest that this is roughly what this (and Bibcards) ultimately is. You take some general notes on a lecture (book or other material) as a sense making tool to help you better understand the material. You write down some bits you want to remember and use for some brief spaced repetition perhaps. You write down some pointed questions to help review for a test later. The subtle difference is that Cornell notes were designed to do the sense making, summary, and repetition portions well for students and learners, but didn't focus as much on the longer tail of knowledge creation using analysis, and synthesis. To fill in the last mile for your card index, take the best idea(s) (maybe one or two at most) and flesh it out to create a useful maincard.
If it's useful try some 8 x 12" paper for your lecture notes, and take them Bibcard or Cornell Notes style. Once you've excerpted your main card notes, you can fold your sheet in half twice and file it with your Bibcards, naturally taking care to have the paper's spine face up to prevent other slips from becoming lost in between. (This obviously works best for those using 4 x 6" index cards though if you're in the 3 x 5" camp, then use 6" x 10" sheets for folding.) For those with middle grades or high school students, this may be a more profitable method for introducing these methods to their study, learning, and creation patterns.
Summary: Cornell Notes can be an excellent method for capturing session-based fleeting notes and distilling them down into permanent notes. Cornell Notes focus on the lower levels of Bloom's Taxonomy rather than the broader spectrum that a zettelkasten method might.
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- Nov 2022
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www.obsidianroundup.org www.obsidianroundup.org
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For example, if I've left myself a note like #pkm/xref this reminds me of something the Carthage expert I like said, but I can't remember her name I will search my notes to figure out the name of the Carthage expert I like, cross-reference the highlight with things she said, and add links and update notes as appropriate. If I said something like This reminds me of the article about the guy a crane is in love with when I was taking notes on something without access to my notes, I will go find the article and link to my notes about it so that my backlinks and graph are updated.
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.
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billyoppenheimer.com billyoppenheimer.com
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When I come across something that reminds me of some other story or idea or etc., I write “<=> INSERT RELATED THING” in the margin.
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.
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- Oct 2022
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Very nice to differentiate between core notes (notes that we have worked a lot on) and peripheral notes.
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Very nice to differentiate between core notes (notes that we have worked a lot on) and peripheral notes.
— Bianca Pereira | PKM Coach and Researcher (@bianca_oli_per) October 24, 2022Coming from the Strange New Worlds Plugin, Bianca Pereira defines core notes (those worked on and thus likely of more value) versus peripheral notes.
Core notes have a similar connotation to so-called permanent notes while peripheral notes have connection to fleeting notes, though peripheral notes would seem to have a higher connotation of value than fleeting notes.
Some of this is similar to my commonplacing practice and collection versus my more focused Luhmann-esque zettelkasten practice.
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another long forgotten manual for students, History and Historical Research (1928) by C.G. Crump of the Public Record Office: ‘Never make a note for future use in such a form ... that even you yourself will not know what it means, when you come across it some months later.’
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I'd really love to see and hear more about people incorporating dreams, visions, non-ordinary experiences and the like in their zettelkasten.
taurusnoises https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/xyhpq4/2015_exhibition_of_roland_barthes_zettelkasten/
Me too. This is one of the reasons I'm not the biggest fan of the "fleeting note" framing of Ahrens, as it's more likely to marginalize these sorts of smaller daily ideas and discourage people from placing some of these types of things into their zettelkasten as potentially "unimportant". I feel like from what I see and hear anecdotally his framing encourages too many to only put in things which are significant, deep, academic, or which have a certain sense of gravitas.
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archive.org archive.org
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Goutor defines self-help notes as notes which one would use to refresh their memory about what remains to be done or researched, problems that remain to be solved, or information which is needed to be researched or found. (p26) These are akin in some sense to what I call "open questions". He also indicates that these notes might be triggered by one's daily activities or occasional musings which relate to one's project but occur outside of its active pursuit. In this sense, they have a similar feel to the idea of Ahrens' fleeting notes, but in Goutor's practice they aren't defined as occurring while one is doing active reading or research.
He suggests that one keeps these notes in a separate area so that they might be systematically and regularly visited for review, further research, or answering as the opportunities to do so present themselves. Once the questions have been answered and appropriate notes updated or added, these self-help notes can be discarded.
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- Sep 2022
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web.archive.org web.archive.org
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https://web.archive.org/web/20080412071219/http://eastgate.com/catalog/Briefcase.html
Eastgate systems used to make a "3x5 Card Briefcase" to capture short notes on the go which could later "be scanned or transcribed to Tinderbox."
Tinderbox was one of the first digital tools to be used in a way very similar to zettelkasten of old, particularly by academics, who are a large portion of their power user base.
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www.getfrictionless.com www.getfrictionless.com
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Capture Cards (red) 4.00 Beautifully Useful 3″ x 5″ Index Cards (Pack of 100)I created my Capture Cards to help make it easier for me to capture ideas, make notes, and record tasks as they happen. Good tools have a way of removing frustration and stress from a workflow, and for me, these cards do just that.Just enough structure to help you capture, but not enough to get in the way.They’re printed full-bleed on 70lb (heavy and durable) premium smooth white cover stock, and you get 100 2-sided cards in each pack. They feel great in your hand, yet hold up well in your pocket.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140707053048/http://www.getfrictionless.com/products/capture-cards-red
Simple index cards, but sold with a purpose in mind: capturing notes!
One is reminded here of waste books and fleeting notes.
Image:<br />
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- Aug 2022
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boffosocko.com boffosocko.com
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“500 and 1000 cards” is a long way before perceiving some benefit. Maybe this is necessary because “mine is more textual and less visual than his [Michalsky’s]”. For me, benefit is visible after approx. 40 new notes, dropped on the canvas of my tool, rearranged and connected.
Thanks for this additional piece of Data Matthias! I have a feeling that some of the benefit will also come down to the level of quality of the notes and how well interlinked they may be. Those doing massive dumps of raw, unelaborated, and unlinked data using services like Readwise into their collections will certainly take longer than those who have more refined ideas well linked. My number is presuming something closer to the former while something along the lines of a tenth of that (an order of magnitude) would seem to fall in line with my current working model. It would be nice to have a larger body of data to work with though.
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www.jasongilbertson.com www.jasongilbertson.com
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Fleeting notes capture quick thoughts
use Flomo to capture fleeting notes but it is temporary and should to be filtered through your brain something unimportant to be cleared
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- Jul 2022
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www.reddit.com www.reddit.com
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I broadly take most of my (online) notes using Hypothes.is for web pages and .pdf files. I then use the Hypothesidian set up with Templater to import all the pieces: https://forum.obsidian.md/t/retrieve-annotations-for-hypothes-is-via-templater-plugin-hypothes-idian/17225
So far it's been pretty helpful and I spend a huge amount of time in Hypothes.is.
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chrome.google.com chrome.google.com
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- Jun 2022
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Local file Local file
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There’s no need to capture every idea; the best ones willalways come back around eventually.
While one can certainly capture a lot of cruft that isn't actionable or easily reusable, it's a fable that the best ideas will come back around. All too often the really brilliant ideas can be quickly lost to the wind if not captured immediately.
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“I think it’s important to put your impressions down on the firstreading because those are the initial instincts about what youthought was good or what you didn’t understand or what you thoughtwas bad.”
First gut reactions can be highly valuable and should be noted because it's incredibly difficult to remember what it was like before you knew a thing. It's hard to revisit a thing with beginner's eyes and those reactions can help one to improve and refine a thing.
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For anyone who reads music, the sketchbooks literally record the progress of hisinvention. He would scribble his rough, unformed ideas in his pocket notebook andthen leave them there, unused, in a state of suspension, but at least captured withpencil on paper. A few months later, in a bigger, more permanent notebook, you canfind him picking up that idea again, but he’s not just copying the musical idea intoanother book. You can see him developing it, tormenting it, improving it in the newnotebook. He might take an original three-note motif and push it to its next stage bydropping one of the notes a half tone and doubling it. Then he’d let the idea sit therefor another six months. It would reappear in a third notebook, again not copied butfurther improved, perhaps inverted this time and ready to be used in a piano sonata.
Beethoven kept a variation of a waste book in that he kept a pocket notebook for quick capture of ideas. Later, instead of copying them over into a permanent place, he'd translate and amplify on the idea in a second notebook. Later on, he might pick up the idea again in a third notebook with further improvements.
By doing this me might also use the initial ideas as building blocks for more than one individual piece. This is very clever, particularly in musical development where various snippets of music might be morphed into various different forms in ways that written ideas generally can't be so used.
This literally allowed him to re-use his "notes" at two different levels (the written ones as well as the musical ones.)
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them birth, and it is galling to have to say, "Now, what wasthat bright idea I had about this?"
Do not omit these last- they will not come back at will, even when you return to the item that gave
When reading, it's important to sketch out your own novel ideas and thoughts as you go as they will be difficult or impossible to recover them.
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- Apr 2022
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discarding has always been a central feature of effective note-taking. Dis-carding enhances the utility of the notes that are saved by removing materialsthat have been superseded.
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- Mar 2022
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ratfactor.com ratfactor.com
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They get harder to read the longer I wait to transcribe them.
He's using his Field Notes notebooks as waste books and transcribing the important pieces into other places as necessary.
He also indicates that he's taking brief, reminder notes (or fleeting notes) contemporaneously and then expanding upon them later as necessary.
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- Feb 2022
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twitter.com twitter.com
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Amy Rae Fox@thoughtafoxYES I underline and highlight when I read and YES I know xyz studies demonstrate highlighting is not an 'effective learning technique' ... but not all learning is about remembering #toolsforthought9:41 PM · Feb 1, 2022·Twitter Web App
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>YES I underline and highlight when I read and YES I know xyz studies demonstrate highlighting is not an 'effective learning technique' ... but not all learning is about remembering #toolsforthought
— Amy Rae Fox (@thoughtafox) February 2, 2022An interesting perspective. Worth comparing the ideas of learning and remembering and what relationship they have to each other.
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Local file Local file
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Permanent notes, on the other hand, are written in a way that canstill be understood even when you have forgotten the context theyare taken from.
Integrate this into the definition of permanent notes.
Fleeting notes are context collapse (context apocalypse?) just waiting to happen.
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These kinds of notes are just reminders of athought, which you haven’t had the time to elaborate on yet.
Integrate this into the definition of fleeting notes.
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Just collecting unprocessedfleeting notes inevitably leads to chaos.
Collecting fleeting notes and not processing them into something more useful and permanent will eventually end in abject failure.
An example can be seen in the note taking of Joachim Jungius in 1657. He compiled approximately 150,000 slips (also known as scraps) with excerpts and ideas without any sort of order, arrangement, index or reference system. Following his death his students and heirs could make nothing of the massive "scrap heap". As a result, Vincent Placcius in De Arte Excerpendi (1689) specifically warns against this practice (p. 72).
(cross reference from : https://hypothes.is/a/SyenKlO2Eeys0esqwOgjUw)
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Make literature notes.
Related to literature notes, but a small level down are the sorts of basic highlights that one makes in their books/reading. For pedagogy's sake they're a sort of fleeting note that might be better rewritten in a progressive summarization form. Too often they're not, but sit there on the page in a limbo between the lowest form of fleeting note and a literature note.
Hierarchy of annotations and notes: - fleeting notes - highlights - marginalia marks: ?, !, ⁕, †, ‡, ⁂, ⊙, doodles, phatic marks, tags, categories, topic headings, etc., - very brief annotations - literature notes (progressive summaries) - permanent notes
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Make fleeting notes. Always have something at hand to write withto capture every idea that pops into your mind.
Fleeting notes are similar to the sorts of things one would have traditionally kept in a waste book.
Francesco Sacchini recommended the use of two notebooks:
“Not unlike attentive merchants... [who] keep two books, one small, the other large: the first you would call adversaria or a daybook (ephemerides), the second an account book (calendarium) and ledger (codex).” —Francesco Sacchini "Chapter 13". De ratione libros cum profectu legendi libellus. Wurzburg. p. 91. (1614).
(See also Blair, Ann M. (2004). "Note taking as an art of transmission". Critical Inquiry. 31 (1): 91. doi:10.1086/427303.)
The root word ephemeral in this context is highly suggestive of the use and function of fleeting notes.
The Latin word "ephemerides" can also be translated as "newspaper", useful for only a short period of time.
Recall also that in a general sense Cicero contrasted the short-lived memoranda of the merchant with the more carefully kept account book designed as a permanent record.
Reference: Cicero (1930). Pro Quinto Roscio comoedo oratio,"The Speeches". Translated by Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, Massachusetts. pp. 278–81.
Tags
- notebooks
- collector's fallacy
- marginalia
- circumpunct
- progressive summarization
- context collapse
- Vincentius Placcius
- highlights
- Francesco Sacchini
- memoranda
- adversaria
- hierarchies
- scrap heap
- ephemerides
- literature notes
- note taking methods
- accounting
- wastebooks
- semantic shift
- permanent notes
- ephemera
- Joachim Jungius
- context
- Cicero
- ars notaria
- fleeting notes
Annotators
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- Jul 2021
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x28newblog.wordpress.com x28newblog.wordpress.com
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One thing expected from the note-taking tools, makes me particularly skeptical: their collaborative/ public use. I think the lifecycle of notes cannot be continuous from capturing to communication, unless I forgo the possibility of cryptic, sloppy, abbreviated shorthand meant just for the “me later” that Magdalena Böttger depicted so aptly in 2005.
Some of the value of notes being done and readable in public means that one typically puts a bit more effort into them at the start. This can make them much more useful and valuable later on. It also means that they usually have more substance and context for use by others in collaboration or other reuses.
Short notes are often called fleeting notes which may or may not be processed into something more substantive. The ones that do become more substantive can more easily be reused in other future settings.
Sonke Ahrens' book How to Take Smart Notes is one of the better arguments for the why and how of note taking.
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