- Mar 2024
-
-
Samuel Hartlib was well aware of this improvement. While extolling the clever invention of Harrison, Hartlib noted that combinations and links con-stituted the ‘argumentative part’ of the card index.60
Hartlib Papers 30/4/47A, Ephemerides 1640, Part 2.
In extolling the Ark of Studies created by Thomas Harrison, Samuel Hartlib indicated that the combinations of information and the potential links between them created the "argumentative part" of the system. In some sense this seems to be analogous to the the processing power of an information system if not specifically creating its consciousness.
-
-
writingslowly.com writingslowly.com
-
https://writingslowly.com/2024/03/13/the-card-index.html
Richard ties together the "aliveness" of card indexes, phonographs, and artificial intelligence in an interesting way. He also links it to the living surroundings of indigenous cultures which see these things in ways that westerners don't.
-
People marveled at new invention after new invention and there was a tendency to see mechanical and especially electrical advances as somehow endowed with life. The phonograph, for example, was held to be alive and print adverts even claimed it had a soul.
I love the tying together of the "aliveness" of a zettelkasten with the "soul" of the phonograph here.
-