compare with scrap heaps or even the method of Eminem's zettelkasten (Eminem's gloryhole ???). rofl...

The time it takes to make notes is an important investment. If it's not worth the time, what were you actually doing? Evergreen/permanent notes are only useful if you're going to use them later in some sort of output. Beyond this they may be useful for later search.

But if you're not going to search them or review them, which the writer says they didn't, then what was the point?

Have a reason for taking a note is of supreme importance. Otherwise, you're just collecting scraps...

People who have this problem shouldn't be using digital tools they should be spending even more time writing by hand. This will force them into being more parsimonious.

Connecting ideas across space and time when you don't know how they'll fully relate in advance is a tough design problem.

Outliner programs, first developed for computers in 1968, are great if you know the structure of a space in advance, but creating hierarchies by guessing about relationships in advance often turn out wrong or create other problems as one progresses.

Being willing to capture an idea by spending the time writing it out in full is an incredibly strong indicator that it is actually worth capturing. Often those who use cut and paste or other digital means for their note capture will over-collect because the barrier is low and simple.

More often than not, if one doesn't have some sort of barrier for capturing notes, they will become a burden and ultimately a scrap heap of generally useless ideas.

In the end, experience will eventually dictate one's practice as, over time, one will develop an internal gut feeling of what is really worth collecting and what isn't. Don't let your not having this at the beginning deter you. Collect and process and over time, you'll balance out what is useful.

Lord Acton read widely and collected notes which he kept in pigeonholed desks and cabinets with thousands of compartments. Sadly he died in 1902 without having written anything using them, and being only made sense of by the compiler were broadly useless.

the scrap heap problem

I really like the idea of a scrap.blog...

1. Regesten Da wir gesehen haben, wieviel auf tibersichtliche Ordnung bei der Zusammenstellung des Materials ankommt, muß man auf die praktische Einrichtung seiner Materialiensammlung von Anfang an bewußte Sorgfalt verwenden. Selbstverständlich lassen sich keine, im einzelnen durchweg gültigen Regeln aufstellen; aber wir können uns doch über einige allgemeine Gesichtspunkte verständigen. Nicht genug zu warnen ist vor einem regel- und ordnungslosen Anhäufen und Durcheinanderschreiben der Materialien; denn die zueinander gehörigen Daten zusammenzufinden erfordert dann ein stets erneutes Durchsehen des ganzen Materials; auch ist es dann kaum möglich, neu hinzukommende Daten an der gehörigen Stelle einzureihen. Bei irgend größeren Arbeiten muß man seine Aufzeichnungen auf einzelne lose Blätter machen, die leicht umzuordnen und denen ohne Umstände Blätter mit neuen Daten einzufügen sind. Macht man sachliche Kategorieen, so sind die zu einer Kategorie gehörigen Blätter in Umschlägen oder besser noch in Kästen getrennt zu halten; innerhalb derselben kann man chronologisch oder sachlich alphabetisch nach gewissen Schlagwörtern ordnen.

Google translation:

1. Regesture Since we have seen how much importance is placed on clear order in the gathering of material, conscious care must be exercised in the practical organization of one's collection of materials from the outset. It goes without saying that no rules that are consistently valid in detail can be set up; but we can still agree on some general points of view. There is not enough warning against a disorderly accumulation and jumble of materials; because to find the data that belong together then requires a constant re-examination of the entire material; it is also then hardly possible to line up newly added data at the appropriate place. In any large work one must make one's notes on separate loose sheets, which can easily be rearranged, and sheets of new data easily inserted. If you make factual categories, the sheets belonging to a category should be kept separate in covers or, better yet, in boxes; Within these, you can sort them chronologically or alphabetically according to certain keywords.

In a pre-digital era, Ernst Bernheim warns against "a disorderly accumulation and jumble of materials" (machine translation from German) as it means that one must read through and re-examine all their collected materials to find or make sense of them again.

In digital contexts, things are vaguely better as the result of better search through a corpus, but it's still better practice to have things with some additional level of order to prevent the creation of a "scrap heap".

link to: - https://hyp.is/i9dwzIXrEeymFhtQxUbEYQ

In 1889, Bernheim suggests making one's notes on separate loose sheets of paper so that they may be easily rearranged and new notes inserted. He suggested assigning notes to categories and keeping them separated, preferably in boxes. Then one might sort them in a variety of different ways, specifically highlighting both chronological and alphabetical order based on keywords.

(This quote is from the 1903 edition, but presumably is similar or the same in 1889, but double check this before publishing.)

Link this to the earlier section in which he suggested a variety of note orders for historical methods as well as for the potential creation of insight into one's work.

He says this, but his advice on how to use them is too scant and/or flawed. Where are they held? How are they indexed? How are they linked so that finding and using them in the future? (especially, other than rote memory or the need to have vague memory and the ability to search for them in the future?)

Would maintaining a multi-user, potentially public zettelkasten have positive outcomes? Would it face the issue of becoming a scrap heap for those who don't work with it regularly? There might be an issue of trust for individual assertions which aren't properly cited our sourced.

Tummelling and solid design would probably be necessary to prevent toxicity as seen in many areas of social media.

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)

Previous historical examples of note taking ended up in large scrap heaps that provided value only to their creators, who had at least some knowledge of their context. Those who inherited them found them relatively useless because they required vast amounts of work to make useful. Linking notes and cross referencing or indexing them with subject headings and links to their sources can go a long way to immeasurably increase their value both to the initial user, who may forget these things, but also to subsequent users. The small amounts of work required upfront when making one's notes will pay off immeasurably in the long term.

Link this to the specific examples in Paper Machines (chapter 2) just before the time of Vincentius Placcius.

69 Yeo, ‘Loose Notes’, 336

Robert Boyle kept loose sheets of notes, which he called memorials or adversaria. He didn't have a system of organization for them and tried out variations of colored strings, labels made of letters, and numerical codes. Ultimately his scrap heap failed him for lack of any order and his trust in memory to hold them together failed.

I love the idea of calling one's notes adversaria. The idea calls one to compare one note to another as if they were combatants in a fight (for truth).

Are working with one's ideas able to fit into the idea of adversarial interoperability?

from Foucault 1975, p. 363, n. 49; see Foucault 1966, pp. XV and passim for discourse analysis.

Is he talking here about the invention of the index card about the same time as the rise of the scientific method? With index cards one can directly compare and contrast two different ideas as if weighing them on a balance to see which carries more weight. Then the better idea can win while the lesser is discarded to the "scrap heap"?

Remove this text

Early versions of annotations. Sad to realize that most of them likely perished.

Interesting to think of this problem of note taking actually coining the phrase "scrap heap".