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.

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https://hypothes.is/users/StanDunn

Met in @DanAllosso's book club on Smart Notes.

Google translation:

9/8g The Zettelkasten technique is based on experience: You can't think without writing—at least not in contexts that require selective access to memory.

That also means: you can't think without notching differences.

There's something interesting about the translation here of "notching" occurring on an index card about ideas which can be linked to the early computer science version of edge-notched cards. Could this have been a subtle and tangential reference to just this sort of computing?

The idea isn't new to me, but in the last phrase Luhmann tangentially highlights the value of the zettelkasten for more easily and directly comparing and contrasting the ideas on two different cards which might be either linked or juxtaposed.

Link to:

• Graeber and Wengrow ideas of storytelling

• Shield of Achilles and ekphrasis thesis

• https://hypothes.is/a/I-VY-HyfEeyjIC_pm7NF7Q With the further context of the full quote including "with selective access to memory" Luhmann seemed to at least to make space (if not give a tacit nod?) to oral traditions which had methods for access to memories in ways that modern literates don't typically give any credit at all. Johannes F.K .Schmidt certainly didn't and actively erased it in Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1N02UyrTQJo&t=2s

The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture by Juhani Pallasmaa

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Hand-Existential-Embodied-Architecture/dp/0470779292/

This sounds a bit like some of the physical and external memory ideas in The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul.

This book came up in Dan Allosso's book club on How to Take Smart Notes.

It should be recognized that these basic note types are very different than the digital garden framing of 📤 (seedbox), 🌱 (seedling), 🪴 (sapling), 🌲 (evergreen), etc. which are another measure of the growth and expansion of not just one particular idea but potentially multiple ideas over time. These are a project management sort of tool for focusing on the growth of ideas. Within some tools, one might also use graph views and interconnectedness as means of charting this same sort of growth.

Sönke Ahrens' framing of fleeting note, literature note, and permanent note are a value assignation to the types of each of these notes with respect to generating new ideas and writing.

How to Take Smart Notes was a procrastination project.