21 Matching Annotations
  1. Jan 2024
  2. Feb 2023
    1. On Ahrens' shipping container analogy to the zettelkasten

      @ZettelDistraction said Perhaps the shipping hub is a better analogy for the Zettelkasten than the shipping container (Ahrens, 40).

      We should be careful to separate the ideas of analogy and metaphor. Analogies are usually more direct and well-defined in scope.

      While there's an apt and direct correlation between shipping containers and zettelkasten as boxes, Ahrens was making the analogy with respect to the shift that shipping containers made to the overall system:

      shipping containers : shipping industry and globalism :: zettelkasten : thinking and writing/content creation

      As with many analogies, stretching it the way one might stretch metaphors isn't usually fruitful or even possible.

      In hindsight, we know why they failed: The ship owners tried to integrate the container into their usual way of working without changing the infrastructure and their routines. They tried to benefit from the obvious simplicity of loading containers onto ships without letting go of what they were used to.

      He's saying one needs to consider how one's note taking method fits into their work in a more integrative way. Without properly integrating it into one's workflow seamlessly the system will fail. This is also one of the most difficult problems many zettelkasten aspirants have. In addition to creating a zettelkasten, they're often also simultaneously trying to integrate new (digital) tools into their process at the same time and they get distracted by them rather than focusing on the move to increasing writing/creating and creativity overall (globalism).

      To focus on Ahrens' analogy a bit, if Obsidian, for example, is your "ship", is it as custom built for your specific purpose the way a container ship would be for a cargo container? Might you be better off with something like The Archive, ZKN3, or simple index cards that help to limit you to only do the function you want rather than all the other possible functions (wiki, blog, to do list, calendar, journal, kanban, etc.)? Obsidian and many other applications can be a proverbial row boat, a yacht, a tugboat, a steamer, a cruise ship, and even a warship in addition to a container ship, so one has to be extra careful how they choose to use it.

  3. Jan 2023
    1. Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, "Brief Mention," American Journal of Philology 20.1 (1899) 108-113 (at 108): With all our advance in scientific astronomy, the average modern man is not so familiar with the sky as was his antique brother, and some of the blunders in modern works of fiction that are scored from time to time in scientific journals would hardly have been possible for a ploughman of antiquity, not to say a sailor. The world needs every now and then a reminder that the modern head holds different things from the ancient brain-pan, not necessarily more.

      How painfully true this may have been in 1899, it's now much worse in 2023!


      Specialization of knowledge tends to fit the lifeways of the people who hold and maintain it. Changing lifeways means one must lose one or more domains and begin using or curating different domains of knowledge.

      In a global world of specialization, humans who specialize are forced to rely more heavily on the experience and veracity of those around them who have also specialized. One may be able to have a Ph.D. in astrophysics, but their knowledge of the state of the art in anthropology or economic policy may be therefore utterly undeveloped. As a result they will need to rely on the knowledge and help of others in maintaining those domains.

      This knowledge specialization means that politicians will need to be more open about what they think and say, yet instead politicians seem to be some of the least knowledge about almost anything.

      This is just the start of a somewhat well-formed thesis I've developed elsewhere, but not previously written out... more to come...

  4. Apr 2022
    1. One of those factors is globalization which has helped lift hundreds and millions out of poverty, most notably in China and India, but which, along with automation has also ended entire economies, accelerated global inequality, and left millions of others feeling betrayed and angry at existing political institutions.

      An awareness of other structural, economic issues that are weakening democracy: Globalization, Automation, Inequality.

  5. Jan 2022
  6. Sep 2021
    1. No one but Humboldt had looked at the relationship between humankind and nature like this before.

      Apparently even with massive globalization since the 1960s, many humans (Americans in particular) are still unable to see our impacts on the world in which we live. How can we make our impact more noticed at the personal and smaller levels? Perhaps this will help to uncover the harms which we're doing to each other and the world around us?

  7. Aug 2020
  8. Jul 2020
  9. May 2020
    1. Blair Reeves, a friend, and an occasional Margins contributor (on remote teams) wrote a persuasive piece on how companies should people based on what value they add, not pay them differently based on where they want to live. In some ways, I understand. People who live in more expensive neighborhoods in NYC or SF should not get paid more than those who decide to live farther away.

      Actually, they kinda do? Salaries should be a function of local prices. An expensive city should have higher salaries for workers to be able to afford living in it. The fact that now companies became so huge to cross world-wide borders (a relatively new phenomenon) doesn't change that.

  10. Feb 2020
    1. Commerce follows theland and sea routes of the earth, going to whatever country hasany thing to exchange, be it a monarchy or a republic. Let us bein union with the whole world and not with just a part of it, notwith one part against another.
  11. Dec 2018
    1. ltbach and Knight (2007) def ine globalization as “the economic, political, and societal forces pushing 21st centur y higher education toward greater international Audem_06.indd 9911/22/12 7:17 PM100AUDEMinvolvement” (p. 290).

      Globalization definition

  12. Nov 2018
  13. Jul 2018
    1. in a more polychronic culture, people would stand closer to each other while talking. So time and space are related in the social as well as the physical world.

      Could the relationship between polychronicity and physical proximity help to explain the use of situated and/or spatial language in globalized, virtual social coordination work?

      Note: National studies of polychronicity have been conducted through qualitative methods (observation and interviews)

  14. Dec 2017
    1. Globalisation is a process of deeper international economic integration that involves a rapid expansion of international trade in goods and servicesbetween countries, and a huge increase in the value of transfers of financial capitalacross national boundaries,including the expansion of foreign direct investment (FDI) by transnational companies.The globalisation process in the last decades has accelerated, due in a large part to rapid developments in information and communications technology,resulting in falling transport cost and faster information flows

      This is a text of globalization's definition which includes the characteristics of it.

  15. Mar 2017
    1. Arctic Circle

      The Region that lies beyond the 66.5 degree latitudinal line is widely accepted as the Arctic Circle. However, there are other indicators of an arctic region such as 10 degree celsius as the maximum air temperature, tundra to taiga biomes, or continuous permafrost. Despite these different labeling standards the Arctic Circle encompasses roughly 15% of the earths land area and 5% of the world ocean. Some areas in this region can go upwards of 130 days with out experiencing a sunrise. This period of time is known as a Polar Night, but is only experienced at latitudes north of 72degrees. Rather than Polar Night, much of the Arctic Circle experiences an extremely long twilight due to the gentle angle at which the sun rises and sets. As technology and globalization has improved, exploration in the Arctic Circle has increased substantially. The Arctic is an incredible asset to scientific researchers as we begin to increase our understanding of the region. Its variation in natural landscapes and ecosystems provide researchers with an extremely biodiverse system to study. This region is also home to an abundance of rich raw materials including gold and natural gas. As industrial interest in this region increase, there will also be an increased need for actors with stake in the region to communicate properly. With almost 30 different territories having claims in the Arctic and an estimated 200 million indigenous peoples living in the region, there are constant socioeconomic and political issues that need to be resolved.

      1)Burn, C.r. "Where Does The Polar Night Begin?" The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 39, no. 1 (1995): 68-74. doi:10.1111/j.1541-0064.1995.tb00401.x. 2)Marsh, William M., and Martin M. Kaufman. Physical geography: great systems and global environments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 3)Young, Oran R. Arctic Politics Conflict and Cooperation in the Circumpolar North. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2000. 4)"Maritime jurisdiction and boundaries in the Arctic region ..." Accessed March 9, 2017. http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=3A1010B3AB3B42069672D55F84DE5213&CID=1CC31139A229699C242B1B79A318680A&rd=1&h=7tqBibkrhXoO_0f49soB5YPVU1UMalDfYlMRDxGhdv8&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fnews.bbc.co.uk%2f2%2fshared%2fbsp%2fhi%2fpdfs%2f06_08_08_arcticboundaries.pdf&p=DevEx,5071.1.

  16. Nov 2015
  17. May 2015
  18. www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu www.jstor.org.mutex.gmu.edu
    1. Annual Reviews is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annual Review of Anthropology. http://www.jstor.org The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity

      Finally an open-source, open access option for sharing research!