Tagging and linking with AI (Napkin.one) by Nicole van der Hoeven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2E3gRXiLYY

Nicole underlines the value of a good user interface for traversing one's notes. She'd had issues with tagging things in Obsidian using their #tag functionality, but never with their [[WikiLink]] functionality. Something about the autotagging done by Napkin's artificial intelligence makes the process easier for her. Some of this may be down to how their user interface makes it easier/more intuitive as well as how it changes and presents related notes in succession.

Most interesting however is the visual presentation of notes and tags in conjunction with an outliner for taking one's notes and composing a draft using drag and drop.

Napkin as a visual layer over tooling like Obsidian, Logseq, et. al. would be a much more compelling choice for me in terms of taking my pre-existing data and doing something useful with it rather than just creating yet another digital copy of all my things (and potentially needing sync to keep them up to date).

What is Napkin doing with all of their user's data?

Circling back around to this after a mention by Tim Bushell at Dan Allosso's Book Club this morning. Nicole van der Hoeven has been using it for a while now and has several videos.

Though called Napkin, which conjures the idea of (wastebook) notes scribbled on a napkin, is a card-based UI which has both manual and AI generated tags in a constellation-like UI. It allows creating "stacks" of notes which are savable and archivable in an outline-esque form (though the outline doesn't appear collapsible) as a means of composition.

It's got a lot of web clipper tooling for saving and some dovetails for bringing in material from Readwise, but doesn't have great data export (JSON, CSV) at the moment. (Not great here means that one probably needs to do some reasonably heavy lifting to do the back and forth with other tools and may require programming skills.)

At present, it looks like just another tool in the space but could be richer with better data dovetailing with other services.

• Provisional Validity is useful
• Provisional Validity for Statements Goal
• Criticism Contests Provisional Validity.

• Argument Generative Statement Based on proof.
• Critical Statement test Burden of Proof and Generative Efficiency.
• Meeting and Satisfying Criticism is part of Generative Process.
• Pragma-Dialectical Theory

• Informal Arguments
• Tentative or Plausible Reasoning Structure rather than definitive. Bound to evidential contestation.

Substack slowly adding features and functionality to make them a full stack blogging/social platform... first long form, then short note features...

Also pushing in on Twitter's lunch as Twitter is having issues.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/17617#Comment_17617

There is definitely something here from a usability (and reusability) perspective when notes are broken down into smaller pieces the way that is encouraged by Hypothes.is or by writing on index cards.

Compare: - ://www.evernote.com/shard/s170/sh/d69cf793-1f14-48f4-bd48-43f41bd88678/DapavVTQh954eMRGKOVeEPHm7FxEqxBKvaKLfKWaSV1yuOmjREsMkSHvmQ - https://via.hypothes.is/https://www.otherlife.co/pkm/

The first may be most useful for a note taker who is personally trying to make sense of material, but it becomes a massive wall of text that one is unlikely to re-read or attempt to reuse at a later date. If they do attempt to reuse it at a later date, it's not clear which parts are excerpts of the original and which are the author's own words. (This page also looks like it's the sort of notes, highlighting, and underlining recommended by Tiago Forte's Building a Second Brain text using progressive summarization.)

The second set, are more concrete, more atomic, more understandable, and also as a result much more usable.

A fascinating combination of office furniture types in 1906!

The Adjustable Table Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan manufactured a combination table for both telephones and index cards. It was designed as an accessory to be stood next to one's desk to accommodate a telephone at the beginning of the telephone era and also served as storage for one's card index.

Given the broad business-based use of the card index at the time and the newness of the telephone, this piece of furniture likely was not designed as an early proto-rolodex, though it certainly could have been (and very well may have likely been) used as such in practice.

I totally want one of these as a side table for my couch/reading chair for both storing index cards and as a temporary writing surface while reading!

This could also be an early precursor to Twitter!

Folks have certainly mentioned other incarnations: - annotations in books (person to self), - postcards (person to person), - the telegraph (person to person and possibly to others by personal communication or newspaper distribution)

but this is the first version of short note user interface for both creation, storage, and distribution by means of electrical transmission (via telephone) with a bigger network (still person to person, but with potential for easy/cheap distribution to more than a single person)

One of the benefits of journaling on an index card is that the small space is much less intimidating than a large blank sheet, particularly when one isn't in the mood but feels like they ought to write. This is similar to the idea that many people find that microblogs (Twitter, Mastodon, Tumblr) are much easier to maintain than a long form blog.

It also acknowledges the heuristics of visual manipulation, which “hard-core” command-line enthusiasts sometimes dismiss or forget. Visual manipulation can be powerful in ways that CLIs just can’t allow. And vice-versa: the versatility, fine-grain control of lower-level / text-based interfaces make them easier to manipulate programmatically, or just literally (tweaking a numerical value directly or adding a custom attribute which would require more fastidious work in the GUI).

Thoughts on Vulcan (Philosophy and Commentary) by Harlan (developer)

Mentioned by Jerry Michalski

Wordcraft Writers Workshop by Andy Coenen - PAIR, Daphne Ippolito - Brain Research Ann Yuan - PAIR, Sehmon Burnam - Magenta

cross reference: ChatGPT

This is, in part, why the tools for thought space should be looking at intellectual history to see how people have worked in the past.

Rather than looking at how writers have previously worked and building something specific that supports those methods, they've taken a tool designed for something else and just thrown it into the mix. Perhaps useful creativity stems from it in a new and unique way, but most likely writers are going to continue their old methods.

The interface of Wordcraft sounds like some of that interface that note takers and thinkers in the tools for thought space would appreciate in their

Rather than pairing it with artificial intelligence and prompts for specific writing tasks, one might pair tools for though interfaces with specific thinking tasks related to elaboration and continuation. Examples of these might be gleaned from lists like Project Zero's thinking routines: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

https://500ish.com/mastodon-brought-a-protocol-to-a-product-fight-ba9fda767c6a

An interface type is defined as a set of method signatures.

A method is a function with a special receiver argument.

``` // interface type Abser intreface { Abs() float64 } // method type Vertex struct { X, Y float }

func (v Vertex) Abs() float64 { return math.Sqrt(v.X * v.X + v.Y * v.Y) }

```

An interface type is defined as a set of method signatures.

A method is a function with a special receiver argument.

``` // interface type Abser intreface { Abs() float64 } // method type Vertex struct { X, Y float }

func (v Vertex) Abs() float64 { return math.Sqrt(v.X * v.X + v.Y * v.Y) }

```

I've only just noticed it now, but there is a "Verified" tab in my Twitter Notifications page to filter out notifications from verified users.

And this, in part, is just what makes social readers so valuable: a tight(er) integration of a reading and conversational interface.

https://simonwillison.net/2022/Nov/8/mastodon-is-just-blogs/

https://twitter.com/codexeditor/status/1590314248370286593

Index card and file folder influenced computer user interfaces.

https://pinafore.social/

Pinafore is a web client for Mastodon, designed for speed and simplicity.

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Jessica Smith</span> in Small Web - Jayeless.net (<time class='dt-published'>07/03/2021 23:34:42</time>)</cite></small>

https://readwise.io/reader/shared/01ge4efpkxh985s8eszbb9dr2e/

Simple user interface example of highlighting and annotations on an article in Readwise Reader.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_interface

https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/browse/

History of Philosophy: Summarized & Visualized

This could be thought of as a form of digital, single-project zettelkasten dedicated to philosophy. It's got people, sources, and ideas which are cross linked in a Luhmann-sense (without numbering) though not in a topical index-sense. Interestingly it has not only a spatial interface and shows spatial relationships between people and ideas over time using a timeline, but it also indicates—using colored links—the ideas of disagreement/contrast/refutation and agreement/similarity/expansion.

What other (digital) tools of thought provide these sorts of visualization affordances?

Natto https://natto.dev<br /> built by Paul Shen https://twitter.com/_paulshen

https://www.loom.com/share/a05f636661cb41628b9cb7061bd749ae

Synopsis: Maggie Delano looks at some of the affordances supplied by Tana (compared to Roam Research) in terms of providing better block-based user interface for note type creation, search, and filtering.

These sorts of tools and programmable note implementations remind me of Beatrice Webb's idea of scientific note taking or using her note cards like a database to sort and search for data to analyze it and create new results and insight.

It would seem that many of these note taking tools like Roam and Tana are using blocks and sub blocks as a means of defining atomic notes or database-like data in a way in which sub-blocks are linked to or "filed underneath" their parent blocks. In reality it would seem that they're still using a broadly defined index card type system as used in the late 1800s/early 1900s to implement a set up that otherwise would be a traditional database in the Microsoft Excel or MySQL sort of fashion, the major difference being that the user interface is cognitively easier to understand for most people.

These allow people to take a form of structured textual notes to which might be attached other smaller data or meta data chunks that can be easily searched, sorted, and filtered to allow for quicker or easier use.

Ostensibly from a mathematical (or set theoretic and even topological) point of view there should be a variety of one-to-one and onto relationships (some might even extend these to "links") between these sorts of notes and database representations such that one should be able to implement their note taking system in Excel or MySQL and do all of these sorts of things.

Cascading Idea Sheets or Cascading Idea Relationships

One might analogize these sorts of note taking interfaces to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). While there is the perennial question about whether or not CSS is a programming language, if we presume that it is (and it is), then we can apply the same sorts of class, id, and inheritance structures to our notes and their meta data. Thus one could have an incredibly atomic word, phrase, or even number(s) which inherits a set of semantic relationships to those ideas which it sits below. These links and relationships then more clearly define and contextualize them with respect to other similar ideas that may be situated outside of or adjacent to them. Once one has done this then there is a variety of Boolean operations which might be applied to various similar sets and classes of ideas.

If one wanted to go an additional level of abstraction further, then one could apply the ideas of category theory to one's notes to generate new ideas and structures. This may allow using abstractions in one field of academic research to others much further afield.

The user interface then becomes the key differentiator when bringing these ideas to the masses. Developers and designers should be endeavoring to allow the power of complex searches, sorts, and filtering while minimizing the sorts of advanced search queries that an average person would be expected to execute for themselves while also allowing some reasonable flexibility in the sorts of ways that users might (most easily for them) add data and meta data to their ideas.

Jupyter programmable notebooks are of this sort, but do they have the same sort of hierarchical "card" type (or atomic note type) implementation?

One might suggest that the freedom, flexibility, and customization of these systems is actually an unuseful time suck for many users which only encourages shiny object syndrome. From a design perspective, try starting out building a system that works for you before beginning on design for others. Research and looking at the user interfaces offered by the competition will helpful as well. Which are the most popular? fun to use? Why? What actual affordances do those interfaces and functionalities allow? are they truly productive?

Possibly more productive, what sorts of standards can you leverage to make people's pre-existing notes more useful? Can you take pre-existing stores of .txt or .md files and provide different views or perspectives on them? This will allow people to pick and choose which applications might work with their stores of data to provide different views or perspectives on them. Why reinvent a text editor or tools like Logseq or Obsidian when you can leverage the local stores of data to provide the sorts of services you're not seeing in the broader space? For example, on the "social media" side, there are existing solutions for taking your locally stored notes, putting them into the cloud and displaying them on the web, but the various steps are highly technical and require a relatively large amount of work and admin tax to maintain. A service that allows one to point at their local store of data and automatically host it on a website and keep it synced would be a major boon for the non-technical user.

Separately, Matuschak did not invent evergreen notes. The first clear cut instantiation I've seen in the literature is from Konrad Gessner in 1548, and honestly even his idea really stems from a longstanding tradition of working with commonplace sententiae preceding his work. (see https://hypothes.is/a/uEboYlOwEeykkotYs594LA) Matuschak simply applied the definition/idea of "evergreen" (meaning easily reusable) articles or content from journalism to describe his notes which could be reused in various contexts. (Example: Why rewrite an article on how to decorate and entertain for the holidays, when you can reuse the same article you've been publishing for years, perhaps along with some updated photos?) "Atomic" notes is another variation on this same theme, but is one which underlies the ability to re-use notes in combination with one or more other notes to generate new ideas.

I love that he closes the pamphlet again with a nod to comfort and ease of use.

...what this pamphlet has sought to do is to make it possible for the researcher to develop a way of doing things which will be as productive and as comfortable as possible.

...the usefulness of a note-taking system has an ultimate limit beyond which it becomes self-defeating. [...] After all, the ultimate purpose of the exercise is not to produce beautiful notes displaying the researcher's technical prowess, but rather usable notes to build the mosaic.<br /> —Jacques Goutor (p33)

Unlike many note taking manuals, Goutor advises that within the small list of rules and standards which he's laid out, one should otherwise default to maximizing the comfort of their note taking system. This may be as small as using one's favorite writing instruments or inks. (p28)

It's nice to see him centering self-care and small things which contribute to the researchers' mental health within note taking design and user interface.

Finding order and relations (and their particular types), is a form of linking ideas found in some of the more complex zettelkasten and knowledge management spaces. It's not as explicit here and he doesn't seem to be focusing on stating or writing explicit links within his notes. He does, however, place some focus on the quality and types of links he's making (or at least thinking about), something which isn't frequently seen in the current PKM space. For example, no one is creating user interfaces that show links between ideas which are opposite (or in opposition or antonym relation) to each other.

https://render.plexus.earth/

One of my favorite things about Hypothes.is is that with a quick click, I've got a space to write and type and my thinking is off to the races.

Sometimes it's tacitly (linked) attached to another idea I've just read (as it is in this case), while other times it's not. Either way, it's coming out and has at least a temporary place to live.

Later on, my note is transported (via API) from Hypothes.is to my system where I can figure out how to modify it or attach it to something else.

This one click facility is dramatically important in reducing the friction of the work for me. I hate systems which require me to leave what I'm doing and opening up another app, tool, or interface to begin.

https://www.kevinmarks.com/memex.html

I got stuck over the weekend, so I totally missed Kevin Marks' memex demo at IndieWebCamp's Create Day, but it is an interesting little UI experiment.

I'll always maintain that Vannevar Bush really harmed the first few generations of web development by not mentioning the word commonplace book in his conceptualization. Marks heals some of this wound by explicitly tying the idea of memex to that of the zettelkasten however. John Borthwick even mentions the idea of "networked commonplace books". [I suspect a little birdie may have nudged this perspective as catnip to grab my attention—a ruse which is highly effective.]

Some of Kevin's conceptualization reminds me a bit of Jerry Michalski's use of The Brain which provides a specific visual branching of ideas based on the links and their positions on the page: the main idea in the center, parent ideas above it, sibling ideas to the right/left and child ideas below it. I don't think it's got the idea of incoming or outgoing links, but having a visual location on the page for incoming links (my own site has incoming ones at the bottom as comments or responses) can be valuable.

I'm also reminded a bit of Kartik Prabhu's experiments with marginalia and webmention on his website which plays around with these ideas as well as their visual placement on the page in different methods.

MIT MediaLab's Fold site (details) was also an interesting sort of UI experiment in this space.

It also seems a bit reminiscent of Kevin Mark's experiments with hovercards in the past as well, which might be an interesting way to do the outgoing links part.

Next up, I'd love to see larger branching visualizations of these sorts of things across multiple sites... Who will show us those "associative trails"?

Another potential framing for what we're all really doing is building digital versions of Indigenous Australian's songlines across the web. Perhaps this may help realize Margo Neale and Lynne Kelly's dream for a "third archive"?

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/projects/2022/roe-opinion-annotated/

An interesting example of visual user interface of highlights and marginalia on a news site to help tell and report on a story.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N4LYLwa2lSq9BizDaJDimOsWY83UMFqqQc1iL2KEpfY/edit

P.R.O.B.E. rubric participation (exceeds, meets fails), respectful, open, brave, educational

Mentioned in the chat at Hypothes.is' SOCIAL LEARNING SUMMIT: Spotlight on Social Reading & Social Annotation

in the session on Bringing the Margins to Center: Introduction to Social Annotation

Looking at the idea of rubrication, I feel like I ought to build a Tampermonkey or Greasemonkey script that takes initial capitals on paragraphs and makes them large, red, or even illuminated. Or perhaps something that converts the CSS of Hypothes.is and makes it red instead of yellow?

What if we had a collection of illuminated initials and some code that would allow for replacing capitals at the start of paragraphs? Maybe a repository like giphy or some of the meme and photo collections for reuse?

How might we design better digital reading interfaces that take advantage of a wider range of modes of thinking and reading?

Certainly adding audio to the text helps to bring in benefits of orality, but what other axes are there besides the obvious spatial benefits?

If digital user interfaces and navigational difficulties inhibited reading comprehension in the modern age, what did similar interfaces do to early reading practices?

What methods do we have to tease out data of these sorts of early practices?

What about changes in modes of reading (reading out loud vs. reading quietly)?

I'm reminded of this as a hyperbolic answer, but still the root question may be an apt one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

https://blog.mojeek.com/2022/02/search-choices-enable-freedom-to-seek.html

User interface options in multiple search provider selection

Spencer's example of user interface below his posts to indicate how readers might comment on his website.

This wording seems quite profound.

It means that by creating a personification of our tools, we can more easily communicate with them.

Do people personify their computers? I remember in the late 80s and early 90s computer workstations, especially in university settings, having personified names.

Link this to the personification of rocks w.r.t. talking rocks and oral traditions.

link to: https://hypothes.is/a/KosdVt1qEeykU2dTuVZT3Q

In an ever-increasing sphere of digital print, why can't publishers provide readers a digitally programmed selection of footnote references in texts?

This digital version of Annie Murphy Paul's book has endnotes with links from the endnotes back to the original pages, but the opposite links from the reading don't go to the endnotes in an obvious way.

I'd love to be able to turn on/off a variety of footnote options so that I can see them on the pages they appear, as pop up modals, or browse through them in the end notes after-the-fact as I choose. This would allow me to have more choice and selection from a text based on what I want to get out of it rather than relying on a publisher to make that choice for me.

Often in publishing a text written for the broad public will "hide" the footnotes at the end of the text in unintuitive ways where as more scholarly presses will place them closer to their appearance within the text. Given the digital nature of texts, it should be possible to allow the reader to choose where these items appear to suit their reading styles.

The ability to resize the Hypothes.is drawer is already built into the Hypothes.is interface natively. In the top left of the drawer there is a ">" tab that you can drag to resize the annotations window to suit your needs. Clicking on it will allow you to open and close the pane as needed. If it's closed (the icon appears as "<"), you can highlight and choose "annotate" or "highlight" and it will automatically re-open the Hypothes.is interface.

While being able to view the history of a problem space from the perspective of a creation process is interesting, in reverse, it is also an interesting way to view a potential learning experience.

I can't help but think about the branching tree networks of knowledge in some math texts providing potential alternate paths through the text to allow learners to go from novice to expert in areas in which they're interested. We need more user interfaces like this.

Given the propensity for technologists in the late 90s and early 00s to have rose colored glasses with respect to their technologies, it's nice to see at least some nod to potential misuses and bad actors within the design of future tools.

This sounds a lot like the management philosophy of W. Edwards Deming who encouraged managers to empower workers to take ownership of their craft and work.

https://www.denizcemonduygu.com/philo/big-upgrade-portraits-name-clicking-new-filters-mobile-version-and-more/

https://x28newblog.wordpress.com/2019/12/11/inspiring-or-distracting/

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'> Matthias Melcher

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'> Matthias Melcher </span> in Matthias Melcher on Twitter: "@ChrisAldrich I agree. The simple zettelkasten is a TOOL for thought, but many people want a prosthesis for thought. See https://t.co/N9lDSM7guD" / Twitter (<time class='dt-published'>02/05/2022 15:27:06</time>)</cite></small>

This truism is certainly much older than John Palmer, but an interesting quote none-the-less.

It could be useful to meditate on the ideas of "spatial interfaces" and "spatial software" as useful affordances within the application and design spaces.

https://collect.readwriterespond.com/can-distraction-free-devices-change-the-way-we-write/

Most wikis have a user interface problem between their read and edit modes. Switching between the two creates additional and unnecessary friction for placing content and new information into them.

Specifically highlighting that the "focus must be on the 'using', not the 'thing'".

This quote is very reminiscent of John M. Culkin's quote (often misattributed to McLuhan) "We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us."

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Linus Lee</span> in Towards a research community for better thinking tools | thesephist.com (<time class='dt-published'>12/01/2021 08:23:07</time>)</cite></small>

Didn't understand at first: How is it because interface can be re-opened?

Found the answer here: https://hyp.is/Nyiq5js7Eey8Gpe0OK6smQ/stackoverflow.com/questions/67184371/type-session-is-not-assignable-to-type-recordstring-unknown

Integrating the minimalist journal in an interface for system thinking of the personal, social, economic, political, and ecological as nested holobionts.

Mark Wagnon shared a product that is exploring the integration of humans with machines.

New technologies don't always have the user interface to make them better than old methods.

Cet outil est en effet pratique, bien qu'il nécessite un compte. Je comprends le choix en terme pratique et en terme de référencement du projet. Mais n'aurait-il pas été intéressant de créer un site et un outil par soi-même? En tant que designer éditorial, il me parait primordial de réfléchir et se réapproprier la forme plutôt que de se conformer à des formes standardisées (ici une forme plutôt classique finalement). Une question très contemporaine je pense, quand on voit ce que sont devenues nos interfaces : les Géants laissent peu de place à la personnalisation, à l'appropriation des outils, et l'utilisateur est quelque peu infantilisé.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BehSciAsk/comments/jkzuig/ideas_for_discussion_how_can_research_interface/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

ReconfigBehSci. (2020, November 9). Session 2: The policy interface followed with a really helpful presentation by Lindsey Pike, from Bristol, and then panel discussion with Mirjam Jenny (Robert Koch Insitute), Paulina Lang (UK Cabinet Office), Rachel McCloy (Reading Uni.), and Rene van Bavel (European Commission) [Tweet]. @SciBeh. https://twitter.com/SciBeh/status/1325795286065815552

Anderson, Ian, and Wendy Wood. ‘Habits and the Electronic Herd: The Psychology behind Social Media’s Successes and Failures’. PsyArXiv, 23 November 2020. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/p2yb7.

Willem, L., Hoang, T. V., Funk, S., Coletti, P., Beutels, P., & Hens, N. (2020). SOCRATES: An online tool leveraging a social contact data sharing initiative to assess mitigation strategies for COVID-19 [Preprint]. Epidemiology. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.03.20030627

Invisible and Very Busy - Olia Lialina

I assume this means text-based UI?? First time I've seen this term.