578 Matching Annotations
  1. Mar 2024
    1. The only true praise is thought. The only thing that can back-bone an essay is thought.Robert Frost (1874-1963)
    1. By having a longer historical view, it actually tends to extend our time horizons in both directions. So, by thinking more about the past, it sets us up to think more about a long-term future and to challenge ourselves to think more expansively and ambitiously about what might come by having the sense of a wider aperture to think about rather than just thinking about the here and now or what’s coming out in the next cycle.
    1. when I finish reading an article, I'm excited to go to Tinderbox and play with what I've just learned. And that is just rare. Normally that sort of work is is tedium and it doesn't feel that way.

      not all tools are fun and each may be different for different people

  2. Feb 2024
    1. https://kumu.io/

      Make sense of your messy world. Kumu makes it easy to organize complex data into relationship maps that are beautiful to look at and a pleasure to use.

      tagline:

      The art of mapping is to create a context in which others can think.


      Tool mentioned on [[2022-06-02]] by Jerry Michalski during [[Friends of the Link]] meeting.

  3. Jan 2024
    1. https://vimeo.com/905326134/0a2a7388eb

      While ostensibly about apps for note taking, Dan Allosso gives a good thumbnail sketch of his background.

      Fascinatingly he feels he needs to justify doing videos on note taking process as a historian, which is a platform from which many note taking and research process (and historiography) related books have stemmed. (ie, historically, Dan has a better platform for doing this than most in the tools for thought space.)

    1. Hiya - I'm just curious about how people use Obsidian in academia. I guess you could say I'm looking for examples of what it's used for (e.g. to take short notes or to link ideas) and in what kind of systems may guide people's vaults (e.g. Zettelkasten). I'm also just keen on connecting with other PhD candidates through these blogs. No one at my uni that I know of is currently using Obsidian for academic work

      Reply to Couscous at https://discord.com/channels/686053708261228577/722584061087842365/1197392837952684052


      A quick survey of currently active academics, teachers, and researchers who are blogging about note taking practices and zettelkasten-based methods.

      Individuals

      Dan Allosso is a history professor at Bemidji State University who has used Obsidian in his courses in the past. He frequently writes about related topics on his Substack channels. One can also find related videos about reading, writing, and research process as well as zettelkasten on his YouTube channel. In addition to this, Dan has a book on note taking and writing which focuses on using a card index or zettelkasten centric process.

      Shawn Graham has both a blog as well as a prior course on the history of the internet using Obsidian. In the course materials he has compiled significant details and suggestions for setting up an Obsidian vault for students interested in using the tool.

      Kathleen Fitzpatrick has a significant blog which covers a variety of topics centered around her work and research. Her current course Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing (2024) focuses on writing, note taking (including Zettelkasten) and encourages students to try out Obsidian, which she's been using herself. A syllabus for an earlier version of the course includes some big name bloggers in academia whose sites might serve as examples of academic writing in the public. The syllabus also includes a section on being an academic blogger and creating platform as a public intellectual.

      Morganeua is a Ph.D. candidate who has a fairly popular YouTube channel on note taking within the academic setting (broadly using Obsidian, though she does touch on other tools from time to time).

      Chris Aldrich is independent research who does work at the intersection of intellectual history and note taking methods and practices. He's got an active website along with a large collection of note taking, zettelkasten, commonplace books, and sense-making related articles. His practice is a hybrid one using both analog and digital methods including Obsidian and Hypothes.is.

      Bob Doto is a teacher and independent researcher who focuses on Luhmann-artig zettelkasten practice and writing. He uses Obsidian and also operates a private Discord server focused on general Zettelkasten practice.

      Manfred Kuehn, a professor of philosophy at Boston University, had an influential blog on note taking practices and culture from 2007 to 2018 on Blogspot. While he's taken the site down, the majority of his work there can be found on the Internet Archive.

      Andy Matuschak is an independent researcher who is working at the intersection of learning, knowledge management, reading and related topics. He's got a Patreon, YouTube Channel and a public wiki.

      Broader community-based efforts

      Here are some tool-specific as well as tool-agnostic web-based fora, chat rooms, etc. which are focused on academic-related note taking and will have a variety of people to follow and interact with.

      Obsidian runs a large and diverse Discord server. In addition to many others, they have channels for #Academia and #Academic-tools as well as #Knowledge-management and #zettelkasten.

      Tinderbox hosts regular meetups (see their forum for details on upcoming events and how to join). While their events are often product-focused (ways to use it, Q&A, etc.), frequently they've got invited speakers who talk about their work, processes, and methods of working. Past recorded sessions can be found on YouTube. While this is tool-specific, much of what is discussed in their meetups can broadly be applied to any tool set. Because Tinderbox has been around since the early 00s and heavily focused on academic use, the majority of participants in the community are highly tech literate academics whose age skews to the over 40 set.

      A variety of Zettelkasten practitioners including several current and retired academicians using a variety of platforms can be found at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/.

      Boris Mann and others held Tools for Thought meetups which had been regularly held through 2023. They may have some interesting archived material for perusal on both theory, practice, and a wide variety of tools.

      Others?

      I've tried to quickly tip out my own zettelkasten on this topic with a focus on larger repositories of active publicly available web-based material. Surely there is a much wider variety of people and resources not listed here, but it should be a reasonable primer for beginners. Feel free to reply with additional suggestions and resources of which you may be aware.

    1. This is why choosing an external system that forces us todeliberate practice and confronts us as much as possible with ourlack of understanding or not-yet-learned information is such a smartmove.

      Choosing an external system for knowledge keeping and production forces the learner into a deliberate practice and confronts them with their lack of understanding. This is a large part of the underlying value not only of the zettelkasten, but of the use of a commonplace book which Benjamin Franklin was getting at when recommending that one "read with a pen in your hand". The external system also creates a modality shift from reading to writing by way of thinking which further underlines the value.

      What other building blocks are present in addition to: - modality shift - deliberate practice - confrontation of lack of understanding

      Are there other systems that do all of these as well as others simultaneously?


      link to Franklin quote: https://hypothes.is/a/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA

  4. Dec 2023
    1. limits the time window

      Although if you're continuously monitoring, chances are high you can even track IP address changes.

      Assuming that - there are only so many devices that at most one at a time is detected to have changed its IP address. - it's the same device, not a new one.

    1. I don't use private personal wikis, so my interpretation is: Zettelkasten is the private work space, personal wiki is a form of publication. Maybe not polished for publishing, but edited and redacted where needed, so I can trust that I can be stupid in my Zettelkasten without anyone noticing.

      reply to ctietze at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/15201/#Comment_15201

      I can be stupid in my [private] Zettelkasten without anyone noticing.

      I too have a private space exactly for this purpose. On the other hand, writing and publishing in public spaces forces me to do some additional thinking/polishing work that I might not otherwise, and that often provides some spectacular results as well as useful feedback for improvement over time.

  5. Nov 2023
    1. https://myboogieboard.com/<br /> A groups of portable writing boards with an associated app.

      A sleeker version of Rocketbook notebooks, but with only one "page". A modern day version of the wax tablet.

    1. Protolyst <br /> https://protolyst.org/

      • Freemium model
      • Focus on group collaboration over individual use

      You can export Pages in your workspace as PDFs with more export formats to be added in the future (I did see one other snippet that indicated .csv format export, but it doesn't appear to have .md support to dovetail with all the other tools which use this as a baseline)

      Found ᔥDr. Maddy in the description from Want a Simplified Zettelkasten? For Beginners

    1. Good tools for thought should be more than just substitutions for tools or methods one had before.

      In fact, any tool or technology, if valuable, should allow for the leverage of extension and transformation, otherwise is it really a tool?

    2. Do digital note taking tools extend the ranges of affordances versus their analog counterparts with respect to the SAMR model?

      On the augmentation front, they allow one to capture things faster, but may do so at the loss of understanding due to the lack of active learning (versus passive as the tool may be robbing them of the interaction with the material).

      There may be some workflow modification, but it's modest at best. Is it measurably better?

      I'm unaware of anyone talking about technological redefinition of digital note taking affordances, though some of the surface level AI-related things may emerge here.

      In some sense, I still think that the ease of remapping and rearranging/linking/relinking/outlining ideas in digital spaces doesn't exist, so digital note taking tools aren't doing very well even at the root substitution level.

      I suspect that some people weren't exposed to the general process of good note taking and their subsequent use for linking, developing, and then creating and as a result of learning this, they're attributing their advances to the digital nature of their tools rather than the original analog process which was always there and isn't necessarily improved measurably by the digital modality.

  6. Oct 2023
    1. Jacobs, Alan. “The Garden and the Stream.” Digital magazine. The New Atlantis (blog), May 4, 2018. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/text-patterns/the-garden-and-stream.

    2. Links are made by readers as well as writers. A stunning thing that we forget, but the link here is not part of the author’s intent, but of the reader’s analysis. The majority of links in the memex are made by readers, not writers. On the world wide web of course, only an author gets to determine links. And links inside the document say that there can only be one set of associations for the document, at least going forward.

      So much to unpack here...

      What is the full list of types of links?

      There are (associative) links created by the author (of an HTML document) as well as associative (and sometimes unwritten) mental links which may be suggested by either the context of a piece and the author's memory.

      There are the links made by the reader as they think or actively analyze the piece they're reading. They may make these explicit in their own note taking or even more strongly explicit with tools like Hypothes.is which make these links visible to others.

      tacit/explicit<br /> suggested mentally / directly written or made<br /> made by writer / made by reader<br /> others?

      lay these out in a grid by type, creator, modality (paper, online, written/spoken and read/heard, other)

    3. Links are associative. This is a huge deal. Links are there not only as a quick way to get to source material. They aren’t a way to say, hey here’s the interesting thing of the day. They remind you of the questions you need to ask, of the connections that aren’t immediately evident.

      links can be used for search

      links remind you of questions you need to ask

      links can suggest other future potential links of which one isn't yet aware or which haven't fully manifested, this is some of the "magic" of the zettelkasten—it creates easy potential for future links not yet manifest.

    4. Let’s look at some of the attributes of the memex. Your machine is a library not a publication device. You have copies of documents is there that you control directly, that you can annotate, change, add links to, summarize, and this is because the memex is a tool to think with, not a tool to publish with.

      Alan Jacobs argues that the Memex is not a tool to publish with and is thus fundamentally different from the World Wide Web.

      Did Vannevar Bush suggest the Memex for writing or potentially publishing? [Open question to check] Would it have been presumed to have been for publishing if he suggests that it was for annotating, changing, linking and summarizing? Aren't these actions tantamount to publishing, even if they're just for oneself?

      Wouldn't academics have built the one functionality in as a precursor to the other?

    5. “A tool to think with, not a tool to publish with” — this seems to me essential. I feel that I spend a lot of time trying to think with tools meant for publishing.

      Which tools for thought and tools for publishing overlap? Which diverge?

      Overlap: Obsidian<br /> card indexes<br /> Microsoft Excel

      Publishing Only<br /> Microsoft word

      Thinking Only: <br /> ...

    6. “A tool to think with, not a tool to publish with” — this seems to me essential. I feel that I spend a lot of time trying to think with tools meant for publishing.
    1. If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get theinspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put ittogether. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will goaway. You didn’t fulfill it—and that’s just a heartache.
    2. It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any givenmoment, when you get an idea, you have the place and the tools tomake it happen.
    3. There’s a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee oryour milk shake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, andalways come back to the safety of the diner.
  7. Sep 2023
    1. Starting a blog .t3_16v8tfq._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } Hey everyone- I’m still trying to wrap my head on how to organize this.I have my antinet growing and I want to start a blog with the use of one of my notes as a springboard.Do I9 votesWork on the blog and store the index cards after the note that I’m drawing inspiration fromCreate a new blog section in my antinet and place them thereStore them in wherever and create an hub note that points to them

      reply to u/RobThomasBouchard at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/16v8tfq/starting_a_blog/

      The answer is:<br /> D: Start a "blog" where you post your notes as status updates and interlink them a bit. When you've got enough, you organize them into a mini thesis and write a longer article/blog post about it.

      Examples: - https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22thought%20spaces%22 and - https://indieweb.org/commonplace_book#The_IndieWeb_site_as_a_Commonplace_book

      tl;dr: Use your website like a public, online zettelkasten. 🕸️🗃️

    1. The ability toretain the child's view of the world, with at the same time amature understanding of what it means to retain it, is extremelyrare-and a person who has these qualities is likely to be ableto contribute something really important to our thinking.

      Curiosity as a tool for thought.

    1. Creating a "signpost user interface" can help to uncover directions to take in digital contexts as out of sight is out of mind. Having things sit in your way within one's note taking workflow can remind them to either link things, or move in particular directions for discovering new avenues of thought.

      Example: it would be interesting if Jerry's The Brain would have links directly to material in Flancian's Agora to remind him to search or find relevant material there. This could help with combinatorial creativity with inputs from others, though it needs to be narrow so as not to result in rabbit holes which draw away attention.

      Link to: https://hypothes.is/a/iQvo7l1zEe6dZ5_9d9rrVw

    1. Sweden Poised to Miss the Long-Term Climate Target It Pioneered
      • for: Indyweb test
      • title:Sweden Poised to Miss the Long-Term Climate Target It Pioneered
      • comment
        • for an indyweb test on mapping thought vectors in idea space
        • various perspectives on this thread
    1. the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist. To see that, it is useful to consider what it might be like to have the freedom to control what thought one had next.
      • for: quote, quote - Michael Levin, quote - self as control agent, self - control agent, example, example - control agent - imperfection, spontaneous thought, spontaneous action, creativity - spontaneity
      • quote: Michael Levin

        • the Bodhisattva vow can be seen as a method for control that is in alignment with, and informed by, the understanding that singular and enduring control agents do not actually exist.
      • comment

        • adjacency between
          • nondual awareness
          • self-construct
          • self is illusion
          • singular, solid, enduring control agent
        • adjacency statement
          • nondual awareness is the deep insight that there is no solid, singular, enduring control agent.
          • creativity is unpredictable and spontaneous and would not be possible if there were perfect control
      • example - control agent - imperfection: start - the unpredictability of the realtime emergence of our next exact thought or action is a good example of this
      • example - control agent - imperfection: end

      • triggered insight: not only are thoughts and actions random, but dreams as well

        • I dreamt the night after this about something related to this paper (cannot remember what it is now!)
        • Obviously, I had no clue the idea in this paper would end up exactly as it did in next night's dream!
    1. There has also been special debate about the right way to think of development in infancy.

      A thought does come around on the "right way to think" This seems like the perfect opportunity for the differences in right or wrong and how the outcome of the infant might be affected by it. The right way to think seems more of a realization on what is socially normal or socially acceptable when thinking of the right way to think. Now that thought is the process figures out, but what must an adult realize?

  8. Aug 2023
    1. Whereas ChatGPT may be a bullshitter, Claude can be a co-reader whose output specifically references and works to make “meaning” in response to another author’s words.

      "Reading with an artificial intelligence" seems like a fascinating way to participate in the Great Conversation.

    2. Nonetheless, Claude is first AI tool that has really made me pause and think. Because, I’ve got to admit, Claude is a useful tool to think with—especially if I’m thinking about, and then writing about, another text.
    1. Here’s a child node. It could be a comment on the thought -- an aside, a critique, whatever. It could be something which goes under the heading.

      Lone child nodes cry out for siblings.

      When I was in middle school a teacher told me only to put a sub-bullet point in an outline only if it wasn't an orphan (if you had one sub-point it should have at least one sibling, otherwise don't include it). This was miserable advice because it ended trains of thought which might otherwise grow into something.

      On the other hand it could be better framed that if you have only one child, you should brainstorm to come up with others.

    2. I could continue a thread anywhere, rather than always picking it up at the end. I could sketch out where I expected things to go, with an outline, rather than keeping all the points I wanted to hit in my head as I wrote. If I got stuck on something, I could write about how I was stuck nested underneath whatever paragraph I was currently writing, but then collapse the meta-thoughts to be invisible later -- so the overall narrative doesn’t feel interrupted.

      Notes about what you don't know (open questions), empty outline slots, red links as [[wikilinks]], and other "holes" in tools for thought provide a bookmark for where one may have quit exploring, but are an explicit breadcrumb for picking up that line of thought and continuing it at a future time.

      Linear writing in one's notebooks, books they're reading, and other places doesn't always provide an explicit space which invites the reader or writer to fill them in. One has to train themselves to annotate in the margins to have a conversation with the text. Until one sees these empty spaces as inviting spaces they can be invisible to the eye.

    3. When I was learning to write in my teens, it seemed to me that paper was a prison. Four walls, right? And the ideas were constantly trying to escape. What is a parenthesis but an idea trying to escape? What is a footnote but an idea that tried -- that jumped off the cliff? Because paper enforces single sequence -- and there’s no room for digression -- it imposes a particular kind of order in the very nature of the structure.-- Ted Nelson, demonstration of Xanadu space
    1. A pro-gram of social reform cannot be achieved through the educa-tional system unless it is one that the society is prepared toaccept. The educational system is the society's attempt toperpetuate itself and its own ideals.

      Current day book banners (2022-2023) wouldn't agree here.

  9. Jul 2023
    1. Sometimes it means telling them something they knew unconsciously but had never put into words. In fact those may be the more valuable insights, because they tend to be more fundamental.

      The art of the "aha" moment.

    1. When you run out of ideas and desperate, try thinking “opposite” like Fosbury.

      Worth adding to the list of oblique strategies...

      related to methods of proof: direct proofs by day, contradiction by night

      Changing methods of approach to problems

      via khimtan at https://www.instagram.com/p/CpkJHCfJnyW/

  10. Jun 2023
    1. Today, you either thrive on that word processor model or you don’t. I really don’t, which is why I’ve invested effort, as you have, in researching previous writing workflows, older than the all-conquering PC of the late 1980s and early 90s. At the same time, new writing tools are challenging the established Microsoft way, but in doing so are drawing attention to the fact that each app locks the user into a particular set of assumptions about the drafting and publishing process.
  11. May 2023
    1. https://xtiles.app/6249b3f811d8db0dcd173512

      Fascinating to see an xTiles page named "competitive analysis", but an interesting example of "eating their own dogfood" to make it.

    1. Introducing BOOX Tab Ultra C: Let the Colors Help You Work Better

      They're primarily touting one of the few e-ink tablets that does color (beginning in 2023), but it's fascinating to see the Boox marketing department using this video to sell the idea of color on a screen as a tool for thought this way.

      It's subtle and something we take for granted, so they have a point, but somehow odd none the less, perhaps because of its ubiquity.

      Let the colors help you think, organize, and work better.

      Let the colors help you work better.

      Colors inspire

    1. Commonplacing, florilegia, anthologies, miscellanies, zettelkasten are such a fascinating tradition. They make a lovely ratchet for thinking.

      Commonplacing, florilegia, anthologies, miscellanies, zettelkasten are a ratchet for thinking.

  12. Apr 2023
    1. We’re taught to see splitting  — coming up with weird special cases or new distinctions between categories — as a tactic that people use to save their pet theories from contradictory evidence. You can salvage any theory just by saying that it only works sometimes and not others — it only happens at night, you need to use a special kind of wire, the vitamin D supplements from one supplier aren’t the same as from a different supplier, etc. Splitting has gotten a reputation as the sort of thing scientific cheats do to draw out the con as long as possible.
    2. Real explanations will sometimes sound weird, crazy, or too complicated because reality itself is often weird, crazy, or too complicated.

      Great point

    3. Reality is very weird, and you need to be prepared for that. Like the hypothetical Holst, most of us would be tempted to discard this argument entirely out of hand. But this weird argument is correct, because reality is itself very weird. Looking at this “contradictory” evidence and responding with these weird bespoke splitting arguments turns out to be the right move, at least in this case.

      Such a great point. Often we discard what we presume to be fringe case ideas when they might true because "reality is very weird".

    1. Musician John Mayer, too, describes his typewriter as more of an emotional companion than a logistical tool. He laments writing lyrics with the judgemental “red squiggly line” of spell check, which he says stops the creative process because he feels compelled to fix the error, and turning to a typewriter which “doesn’t judge you, it just goes, ‘right away, sir, right away’.”
    1. My biggest realization recently is to do whatever the opposite of atomicity is.

      Too many go too deep into the idea of "atomic notes" without either questioning or realizing their use case. What is your purpose in having atomic notes? Most writing about them online talk about the theoretical without addressing the underlying "why".

      They're great for capturing things on the go and having the ability to re-arrange and reuse them into much larger works. Often once you've used them a few times, they're less useful, specially for the average person. (Of course it's another matter if you're an academic researcher, they're probably your bread and butter.) For the beekeepers of the world who need some quick tidbits which they use frequently, then keeping them in a larger outlined document or file is really more than enough. Of course, if you're creating some longer book-length treatise on beekeeping, then it can be incredibly helpful to have them at atomic length.

      There's a spectrum from the small atomic note to the longer length file (or even book). Ask yourself, "what's your goal in having one or the other, or something in between?" They're tools, choose the best one for your needs.

    1. Recommended Source

      Under the "More on Philosophies of Copyright" section, I recommended adding the scholarly article by Chinese scholar Peter K. Yu that explains how Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang can address the contradictions in effecting or eliminating intellectual property laws. One of the contradictions is in intellectual property laws protecting individual rights while challenging sustainability efforts for future generations (as climate change destroys more natural resources.

      Yu, Peter K., Intellectual Property, Asian Philosophy and the Yin-Yang School (November 19, 2015). WIPO Journal, Vol. 7, pp. 1-15, 2015, Texas A&M University School of Law Legal Studies Research Paper No. 16-70, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2693420

      Below is a short excerpt from the article that details Chinese philosophical thought on IP and sustainability:

      "Another area of intellectual property law and policy that has made intergenerational equity questions salient concerns the debates involving intellectual property and sustainable development. Although this mode of development did not garner major international attention until after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the Yin-Yang school of philosophy—which “offers a normative model with balance, harmony, and sustainability as ideals”—provides important insight into sustainable development."

  13. Mar 2023
    1. “Normally, a dictionary just tells you what words mean – and of course we do that – but the scale of the project gives us the space and opportunity to say what we’re not sure of too,” he said. “This is important because it leaves the door open for further scholarship and it gives the reader choices rather than dictating to them what to think. The dictionary can be a catalyst for more research and this is what makes the dictionary a living thing.”

      We need more scholarship which leaves open thinking spaces for future scholars.

    1. Auch die Korrektur einer Textstelle ist in der Datenbank sofort global wirksam. Im Zettelarchiv dagegen ist es kaum zu leisten, alle alphabetisch einsortierten Kopien eines bestimmten Zettels zur Korrektur wieder aufzufinden.

      Correcting a text within a digital archive or database allows the change to propagate to all portions of the collection compared with a physical card index which has the hurdle of multiple storage and requires manual changes on all of the associated copies.

      This sort of affordance can be seen in more modern note taking tools like Obsidian which does this sort of work with global search and replace of double bracketed words which change everywhere in the collection.

    1. Bender, Emily M., Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell. “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜” In Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency, 610–23. FAccT ’21. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445922.

      Would the argument here for stochastic parrots also potentially apply to or could it be abstracted to Markov monkeys?

    1. GPT and other large language models are aesthetic instruments rather than epistemological ones. Imagine a weird, unholy synthesizer whose buttons sample textual information, style, and semantics. Such a thing is compelling not because it offers answers in the form of text, but because it makes it possible to play text—all the text, almost—like an instrument.

      ChatGPT as an instrument that allows one to play text like an instrument.

    1. In a piece like this, writing is the expression and exploration of an idea (or collection of ideas). It is only through the writing that I can fully understand what I think.
    2. one of the things I value about writing, is the act of writing itself. It is an embodied process that connects me to my own humanity, by putting me in touch with my mind, the same way a vigorous hike through the woods can put me in touch with my body.
    1. how did you teach yourself zettelkasten? .t3_11ay28d._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; }

      reply to u/laystitcher at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/11ay28d/how_did_you_teach_yourself_zettelkasten/

      Roughly in order: - Sixth grade social studies class assignment that used a "traditional" index card-based note taking system. - Years of annotating books - Years of blogging - Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven, CT: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 2001. - Locke, John, 1632-1704. A New Method of Making Common-Place-Books. 1685. Reprint, London, 1706. https://archive.org/details/gu_newmethodmaki00lock/mode/2up. - Erasmus, Desiderius. Literary and Educational Writings, 1 and 2. Edited by Craig R. Thompson. Vol. 23 & 24. Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 1978. https://utorontopress.com/9781487520731/collected-works-of-erasmus. - Kuehn, Manfred. Taking Note, A blog on the nature of note-taking. December 2007 - December 2018. https://web.archive.org/web/20181224085859/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/ - 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. - Sertillanges, Antonin Gilbert, and Mary Ryan. The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods. First English Edition, Fifth printing. 1921. Reprint, Westminster, MD: The Newman Press, 1960. http://archive.org/details/a.d.sertillangestheintellectuallife. - Webb, Beatrice Potter. Appendix C of My Apprenticeship. First Edition. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1926. - Schmidt, Johannes F. K. “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity.” Sociologica 12, no. 1 (July 26, 2018): 53–60. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/8350. - Hollier, Denis. “Notes (On the Index Card).” October 112, no. Spring (2005): 35–44. - Wilken, Rowan. “The Card Index as Creativity Machine.” Culture Machine 11 (2010): 7–30. - Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age. Yale University Press, 2010. https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300165395/too-much-know. - Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929. Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information Science. MIT Press, 2011. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/paper-machines. - Goutor, Jacques. The Card-File System of Note-Taking. Approaching Ontario’s Past 3. Toronto: Ontario Historical Society, 1980. http://archive.org/details/cardfilesystemof0000gout.

      And many, many others as I'm a student of intellectual history.... If you want to go spelunking on some of my public notes, perhaps this is an interesting place to start: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%22note+taking%22 I also keep a reasonable public bibliography on this and related areas: https://www.zotero.org/groups/4676190/tools_for_thought

  14. Feb 2023
    1. Autobibliographie annotée (2018-2022) <br /> by Arthur Perret on 2023-02-20 (accessed:: 2023-02-24 11:30:20)

      Perret looks back at several years of blogposts and comments on his growth over the intervening years. This sort of practice and providing indicators of best posts is an interesting means of digital gardening.

    1. sometimes I’m afraid I’m more fighting the tools than doing research. Sometimes it seems to me there’s too much friction, and not the productive kind.

      relation to Note taking problem and proposed solution?

      This seems to be a common reality and/or fear.

    1. 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.

    2. One might have considered some of this part of his (Roland Barthes') fichier boîte (French for zettelkasten) as a journal/diary or what some might today consider a private microblog of thoughts and observations.

    1. Döring, Tanja, and Steffi Beckhaus. “The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History.” In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, 87–90. TEI ’07. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, 2007. https://doi.org/10.1145/1226969.1226986.

      This looks fascinating with respect to note taking and subsequent arranging, outlining, and use of notes in human computer interaction space for creating usable user interfaces.

    1. he research skills that Eco teaches areperhaps even more relevant today. Eco’s system demandscritical thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, attention todetail, and academic pride and humility; these are preciselythe skills that aid students overwhelmed by the ever-grow-ing demands made on their time and resources, and confusedby the seemingly endless torrents of information availableto them.

      In addition to "critical thinking, resourcefulness, creativity, attention to detail, and academic pride and humility", the ability to use a note card-based research system like Umberto Eco's is the key to overcoming information overload.

    2. He understood that the writing of a thesis forcedmany students outside of their cultural comfort zone, andthat if the shock was too sudden or strong, they would giveup.

      The writing of a thesis is a shock to many specifically because information overload has not only gotten worse, but because the underlying historical method of doing so has either been removed from the educational equation or so heavily watered down that students don't think to use it.

      When I think and write about "note taking" I'm doing it in a subtly different way and method than how it seems to be used in common parlance. Most seem to use it solely for information extraction and as a memory crutch which they may or may not revisit to memorize or use and then throw away. I do it for some of these reasons, but my practice goes far beyond this for generating new ideas, mixing up ideas creatively, and for writing. Note reuse seems to be the thing missing from the equation. It also coincidentally was the reason I quit taking notes in college.

    1. If I were going to use an AI, I'd want to plugin and give massive priority to my commonplace book and personal notes followed by the materials I've read, watched, and listened to secondarily.

    2. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      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

    3. In addition to specific operations such as rewriting, there are also controls for elaboration and continutation. The user can even ask Wordcraft to perform arbitrary tasks, such as "describe the gold earring" or "tell me why the dog was trying to climb the tree", a control we call freeform prompting. And, because sometimes knowing what to ask is the hardest part, the user can ask Wordcraft to generate these freeform prompts and then use them to generate text. We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written. This way, Wordcraft becomes both an editor and creative partner for the writer, opening up new and exciting creative workflows.

      The sense of writing partner here is similar to that mentioned by Niklas Luhmann in Communicating with Slip Boxes: An Empirical Account (1981), though in his case his writing partner was a carefully constructed database archive of his past notes.

      see: Luhmann, Niklas. “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen: Ein Erfahrungsbericht.” In Öffentliche Meinung und sozialer Wandel / Public Opinion and Social Change, edited by Horst Baier, Hans Mathias Kepplinger, and Kurt Reumann, 222–28. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-87749-9_19.<br /> translation at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm.

    1. Categories mean determination of internal structure less flexibility, especially “in the long run“ of knowledgemanagement and storage

      The fact that Luhmann changed the structure of his zettelkasten with respect to the longer history of note taking and note accumulation allowed him several useful affordances.

      In older commonplacing and slip box methods, one would often store their notes by topic category or perhaps by project. This mean that after collection one had to do additional work of laying them out into some sort of outline to create arguments and then write them out for publication. This also meant that one was faced with the problem of multiple storage or copying out notes multiple times to file under various different subject headings.

      Luhmann overcame both of these problems by eliminating categories and placing ideas closest to their most relevant neighbor and numbering them in a branching fashion. Doing this front loads some of the thinking and outlining work which would often be done later, though it's likely easier to do when one has the fullest context of a note after they've made it when it is still freshest in their mind. It also means that each note is linked to at least one other note in the system. This helps notes from being lost and allows a simpler indexing structure whereby one only needs to use a few index entries to get close to the neighborhood of an idea as most other related ideas are likely to be nearby within a handful or more of index cards.

      Going from index to branches on the tree is relatively easy and also serves the function of reminding one of interesting prior reading and ideas as one either searches for specific notes or searches for placing future notes.

      When it comes to ultimately producing papers, one's notes already have a pre-arranged sort of outline which can then be more easily copied over for publication, though one can certainly still use other cross-links and further rearranging if one wishes.

      Older methods focused on broad accretion of materials into subject ordered piles while Luhmann's practice not only aggregated them, but slowly and assuredly grew them into more orderly trains of thought as he collected.

      Link to: The description in Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens (section 1.2 Die Kartei) at https://hypothes.is/a/-qiwyiNbEe2yPmPOIojH1g which heavily highlights all the downsides, though it doesn't frame them that way.

    1. If the jargon points to a coherent phenomenon, it can be very useful.

      When jargon or argot points to "coherent phenomenon" or provides a taxonomic purpose, it can be useful beyond its alternate function of gatekeeping areas of thought.

    1. I agree.After thinking about it for a bit, a common symbol for "the present card/note" is the one I'm most wanting.For the other stuff, I'm thinking:The squigly arrow symbol in latex is probably enough to do fuzziness. Then it could be squigly arrow to the current card or squigly arrow to not symbol current card. And for pen and paper, just use the biochem flat arrow with a squigly body for "somewhat contradicts" or is in tension with.

      reply to stjeromeslibido at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/10qw4l5/comment/j6x52ce/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Luhmann often used the shorthand of red numbers to indicate a link to nearby card in the current branch/stem, which Scott Scheper calls "stemlinks" in Antinet Zettelkasten (2022) p234. So, for example, on card ZKII 9/8 there is a red "1" which indicates the branching card ZKII 9/8,1. Scott uses a more computer science oriented notation of "/1" to indicate this as if he were traversing up or down a folder structure. Since there isn't really a (useful) idea of a root or home folder, and one wouldn't often want to refer to their zettelkasten itself, one might consider using the solidus "/" to indicate the current card? I personally do this, but not very frequently, though I might do it more often with respect to indicating argumentation within and among other cards.

      Some languages have location/proximity identifiers or markers (similar to here/there/over there). I'll sometimes use the Japanese markers (ko-so-a-do) as shorthand to provide rough approximation of idea relationships particularly when I have open questions. (example: kore, sore, are, dore -> this one, that one, that one over there, which one?) Many ideas are marked あ to indicate "just out of reach" or "needs additional thought". When ideas are adjacent or nearby, but by happenstance are relatively far away within my ZK (with respect to physical card distance in the box) they'll be pre-pended like こ/510/4b/3 (aka "ko"/510/4b/3).

  15. Jan 2023
    1. Every day, thousands of strangers upload little slices of their consciousness directly into my mind. My concern is that I'm prone to mistake their thoughts for my own — that some part of me believes I'm only hearing myself think.

      Letting others think for us -- groupthink -- though recognition that as social animals it is important to us to know how others think; problem of any type of feed, even RSS, is telling us what to be thinking about -- thoughtful curation of sources vital

    2. the lack of external input—of content to consume—is terrifying to people, to the extent that singular artifacts of media aren't sufficient. you need multiple inputs at once, to hedge against the possibility that one of them will fail to hold your attention and force you to sit in the quiet of your own mind.

      Overwhelming the senses, numbing thought -- antithetical to meditation, blocking thought rather than releasing it, detachment from reality and immersion in the created world, embracing overwhelm instead of deep experience

    1. The words toki pona can be translated as “the language of good”. Its purpose is to help its speakers simplify their thoughts, focus on basic things, immediate surroundings, and induce positive thoughts. According to the wikipedia page of Toki Pona, this means the language and its purpose are in accordance with the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, which says that a language influences the way a person thinks and behaves.

      Link to https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

    1. The hypothesis of linguistic relativity, also known as the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis /səˌpɪər ˈwɔːrf/, the Whorf hypothesis, or Whorfianism, is a principle suggesting that the structure of a language influences its speakers' worldview or cognition, and thus people's perceptions are relative to their spoken language.

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


      link to Toki Pona as a conlang


      Link to https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.

    1. https://www.catholic.org/saints/patron.php

      Potential patron saints of note takers, writers, knowledge workers, tools for thought, etc.

      • Apothecaries - Cosmas and Damian
      • archives - Laurent (Lawrence)
      • archivists, librarians, libraries - Catherine of Alexandria, Jerome, Laurent (Lawrence)
      • cabinetmakers - Anne, Joseph, Vincent de Paul
      • contemplatives, contemplative life - John of the Cross, Mary Magdalene
      • Craftworkers - Luke
      • Editors John Bosco, Francis de Sales
      • enlightenment - Holy Spirit, Our Lady of Good Counsel
      • file makers - Theodosius the Cenobriarch
      • Information Workers - Archangel Gabriel
      • inquisitors - Peter of Verona
      • Joiners - Joseph, Thomas, Apostle
      • knowledge - Holy Spirit
      • Learning - Ambrose, Catherine of Alexandria
      • liberal arts - Catherine of Bologna
      • linguists - Gotteschalk
      • net makers - Peter the Apostle
      • Notaries - Luke, Mark, Ivo of Kermartin
      • pencil makers - Thomas Aquinas
      • Scholars - Bridgid of Ireland, Thomas Aquinas
      • scribes - Catherine of Alexandria
      • Shorthand writers - Cassian of Imola
      • Students - Catherine of Alexandria, Thomas Aquinas, Gabriel Possenti
      • Students (examinees) - Joseph of Cupertino
    1. Among other things, I have traditionally used my Journal to think out loud to myself about my work in hand: the progress I’m making, the problems I’m encountering, and so on. Many of my best ideas have arisen by writing to myself like this.

      Richard Carter uses his writing journal practice to "think out loud" to himself. Often, laying out extended arguments helps people to refine and reshape their thinking as they're better able to see potential holes or missing pieces of arguments. It's the same sort of mechanism which is at work in rubber duck debugging of computer code: by explaining a process one is more easily able to see the missing pieces, errors, or problems with the process at hand.

      Carter's separate note taking and writing journal practice being used as a thought space or writing workshop of sorts is very similar to the process seen in my preliminary studies of Henry David Thoreau's work in which he kept commonplace books and separate (writing) journals which show evidence of his trying ideas on for size and working them before committing them to his published works.

    1. Here I’ve summarized Christian Tietze’s process, which I’m presently adopting / adapting:

      Andy is Adapting the approach of zettelkasten writer Christian Tietze

    2. You need to take a step back and form a picture of the overall structure of the ideas. Concretely, you might do that by clustering your scraps into piles and observing the structure that emerges. Or you might sketch a mind map or a visual outline.

      Andy suggests taking a step back and clustering annotations into piles or using a mind map or visualisations to identify common themes.

      I wonder if this is a bit overkill for the number of notes I tend to take or a sign that I'm not taking enough notes?

      What tools are out there that could integrate with my stack and help me do this.

    1. Tobeuseful,thenotestakenatmedicallecturesshouldbeasummaryonly;noattempt shouldbemadetotakeaverbatimreport

      Verbatim notes are not the goal.

      The idea of note taking as a means of sensemaking and understanding is underlined in an 1892 article in a shorthand magazine whose general purpose was to encourage shorthand and increasing one's writing speed, often to create verbatim records:

      To be useful, the notes taken at medical lectures should be a summary only; no attempt should be made to take a verbatim report.

    1. Record keeping using small clay ‘tokens’ was present in the Near Eastern Neolithic in the tenth millennium bc, these objects widespread and abundant by the sixth millennium bc, and by the fourth millennium bc it is clear they were functioning, perhaps as generalized elements for simple counting tasks recording time, resources and the like, albeit among other functions that did not have a mnemonic function (Bennison-Chapman Reference Bennison-Chapman2018, 240).
    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYj1jneBUQo

      Forrest Perry shows part of his note taking and idea development process in his hybrid digital-analog zettelkasten practice. He's read a book and written down some brief fleeting notes on an index card. He then chooses a few key ideas he wants to expand upon, finds the physical index card he's going to link his new idea to, then reviews the relevant portion of the book and writes a draft of a card in his notebook. Once satisfied with it, he transfers his draft from his notebook into Obsidian (ostensibly for search and as a digital back up) where he may also be refining the note further. Finally he writes a final draft of his "permanent" (my framing, not his) note on a physical index card, numbers it with respect to his earlier card, and then (presumably) installs it into his card collection.

      In comparison to my own practice, it seems like he's spending a lot of time after-the-fact in reviewing over the original material to write and rewrite an awful lot of material for what seems (at least to me—and perhaps some of it is as a result of lack of interest in the proximal topic), not much substance. For things like this that I've got more direct interest in, I'll usually have a more direct (written) conversation with the text and work out more of the details while reading directly. This saves me from re-contextualizing the author's original words and arguments while I'm making my arguments and writing against the substrate of the author's thoughts. Putting this work in up front is often more productive at least for areas of direct interest. I would suspect that in Perry's case, he was generally interested in the book, but it doesn't impinge on his immediate areas of research and he only got three or four solid ideas out of it as opposed to a dozen or so.

      The level of one's conversation with the text will obviously depend on their interest and goals, a topic which is relatively well laid out by Adler & Van Doren (1940).

    1. Over time, they have been expanded and organized: it is the scaffolding of our conversation, left behind as a structure to think in. 

      "they" = "notes"

    2. Are we really on the main branch here? And all of these things that Torbjörn is screaming—are they more or less generative than usual? If less, in what way can I change the way I probe the conversation to make us more generative?

      How often does one meet a conversational partner that is interested in generative thought? This practice takes some work, but how could one particularly encourage it in classroom setting?

    1. After Ahrens' book I see an awful lot of people talking about "processing" books. There are too many assumptions about what this can mean and this hides many levels of inherent work involved in analyzing and synthesizing knowledge. I would suggest that we're better off talking about reading them, annotating, excerpting, and thinking about them, or maybe writing about and combining them with other knowledge than "processing" them.

  16. Dec 2022
    1. https://mochi.cards

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Fernando Borretti</span> in Unbundling Tools for Thought (<time class='dt-published'>12/29/2022 15:59:17</time>)</cite></small>

    1. https://borretti.me/article/unbundling-tools-for-thought

      He covers much of what I observe in the zettelkasten overreach article.

      Missing is any discussion of exactly what problem he's trying to solve other than perhaps, I want to solve them all and have a personal log of everything I've ever done.

      Perhaps worth reviewing again to pull out specifics, but I just don't have the bandwidth today.

    1. “If something is not definitely ‘yes’, it is definitely ‘no’”. This is the leading idea of Greg McKeown’s great book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
    1. Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s). The term is most often associated with procedures in which the chance element involves a relatively limited number of possibilities.
    1. https://adjacentpossible.substack.com/p/designing-a-workflow-for-thinking

      Quick preface of Steven Johnson's forthcoming series of essays on thinking strategies.

    2. So I’ve started a routine where every few years, I block out a couple of days to sit down and review all my idea tools—and other rituals of how I structure my creative thinking— to see if there's something that can be improved upon.

      As a strategy for avoiding shiny object syndrome, one can make a routine of making a "creative inventory" of one's tools.

      There is generally a high switching cost, so tools need to be an order of magnitude more useful, beneficial, or even fun to make it worthwhile.

    1. I think one of the the things that 00:00:27 really separates us from the high primates is that we're tool builders and I read a a study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet the Condor used 00:00:41 the least energy to move a kilometer and humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list it was not not too proud of a showing for the crown of 00:00:53 creation so that didn't look so good but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle and a man on a bicycle or human on a bicycle 00:01:07 blew the Condor away completely off the top of the charts and that's what a computer is to me what a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with and it's the 00:01:19 equivalent of a bicycle for our minds

      Cleaned up quote:

      I think one of the [the] things that really separates us from the high primates is that [uh] we're tool builders. And I read a [uh] study that measured the efficiency of locomotion for various species on the planet. The Condor used the least energy to move a kilometer and [uh] humans came in with a rather unimpressive showing about a third of the way down the list. It was not [not] too proud of a showing for the crown of creation. So [uh] that didn't look so good, but then somebody at Scientific American had the insight to test the efficiency of locomotion for a man on a bicycle. And a man on a bicycle or human on a bicycle blew the Condor away—completely off the top of the charts and that's what a computer is to me. [uh] What a computer is to me is: it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds.<br /> —Steve Jobs in Memory & Imagination: New Pathways to the Library of Congress. Documentary. Krainin Productions, 1990.

      Snippet from full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob_GX50Za6c

    1. For example I had a few notes on principles of modern cryptography that came in handy when I had to write a paper about a related topic for my studies. But these cases were rare at best, most of these notes were never looked at again.

      The one shining moment in the whole essay and they don't seem to realize where the benefit or use actually was. They finally had a reason to have taken notes and the ideas shone here. But they've written off the tools because they didn't understand when to use them.

      Hammers are cool, but unless you're a professional carpenter, you don't carry it around all the time and use it constantly to hammer things. The same is true of note taking as a tool. You might use it regularly if you're a writer or an academic perhaps, but for hourly use in your day-to-day? Almost definitely not.

    1. Thinking about the circular relationship between UX and human behaviour - how they shape each other. The affordances of the system determine certain usage patterns, but people subvert those affordances, turn them to unexpected ends, and the system is often changed (if not directly by the designers, then indirectly through reinterpretation by the users) as a result.

      We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us....

    1. It’s always worth gathering information, nurturing other projects, and putting together some backup plans. You’ll need to define what success means to you for each of them, because you won’t make overnight progress; instead, you’re best served picking projects that you can learn critical lessons from, even if you fail

      It's interesting because this way of thinking is eminently compatible with the zettelkasten way of thinking e.g. don't necessarily set out with a hypothesis in mind that you're trying to prove but rather explore until something interesting emerges.

  17. Nov 2022
    1. Aram Saroyam and, I believe, Jackson Maclow produced something similar. MacLow's The Pronouns was super important to me back in grad school.

      reply to Bob Doto on https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/z3f8kb/comment/ixlocl7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

      Do you have something particular on Saroyam for this? I found The Pronouns by Jackson Mac Low, but only tangential hits on Saroyam.

      Similar useful efforts, though not in as clear-cut card format are: * Project Zero's thinking routines: https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines * Untools: https://untools.co/

    1. https://untools.co/

      Tools for better thinking Collection of thinking tools and frameworks to help you solve problems, make decisions and understand systems.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Howard Rheingold</span> in Howard Rheingold: "Y'all know about "Tools for …" - Mastodon (<time class='dt-published'>11/13/2022 17:33:07</time>)</cite></small>


      Looks similar to Project Zero https://pz.harvard.edu/thinking-routines

    1. Whilst at school, Eno used a tape recorder as a musical instrument[17]

      I personally did something akin to this when I was a child sometime between 9 and 12 with our family tape recorder. Did I do so because it was simply a creativity tool, which is generally how I used it, in my environment, or had Brian Eno and others' influences seeped into the culture encouraging this? Where does zeitgeist start and stop?

    2. In the mid-1970s, he co-developed Oblique Strategies, a deck of cards featuring aphorisms intended to spur creative thinking.
    1. Athens Research is winding down their note taking application.

      Potentially the first of more to come?

      Athens the OSS project is winding down. The company is still operating, but taking time to reset and explore new ideas. Open to chats and convos. Thanks all ❤️ https://t.co/Y7ROM86WSy

      — Jeff Tang 🏛 (Ohio) (@tangjeff0) November 11, 2022
      <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
    1. I'm pretty much done thinking about "tools for thought". It quickly becomes an infinity of navel gazing and a complete waste of time. It's an easy topic for budding "influencers" because you don't actually need to know anything. All they need is to spend some time with a new bit of software and tell people how they should use it and the next thing you know they're selling an online course via their budding YouTube channel.

      scathing, but broadly true...

    1. David Brooks talks about what he calls the “theory of maximum taste.” It’s similar to what Murphy is saying. “Exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness,” Brooks writes. “If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you [don’t].”
    2. This reminded me of Robert Greene’s definition of creativity, which is that creativity is a function of putting in lots of tedious work. “If you put a lot of hours into thinking and researching and reading,” Robert says, “hour after hour—a very tedious process—creativity will come to you.” 

      Robert Green's definition of creativity sounds like it's related to diffuse thinking processes. read: https://billyoppenheimer.com/august-14-2022/

      Often note taking, and reviewing over those notes is more explicit in form for creating new ideas.

      Come back to explore these.

    1. https://dainty-sable-264aa3.netlify.app/project/measuring_thinking_tools.html

      Openness should be broken out into smaller subsections to highlight the importance of supporting standards as a primary item by itself. Many of these axes are easier, low-hanging fruit that developers will iterate on anyway. Focusing on the harder and more subtle features like standards is a better way to go for the audience that can really use this now.

      Many of these axes are better for a commercial market.

    1. e. T. F. T.

      What is this editor's actual name?

      My first guess is "Tools for Thought", but that can't be right. 🤣

    Tags

    Annotators

    1. Zettelkasten with the complicated digestive system of a ruminant. All arbitrary ideas, all coincidences of readings, can be brought in. The internal connectivity then decides.

      another in a long line of using analogizing thinking to food digestion.... I saw another just earlier today.

    2. The Zettelkasten Method is based on this experience: One cannot think without writing - at least not in demanding contexts that anticipate selective access to memory. This also means: without notching differences one cannot think.

      Sönke Ahrens roughly quoted this passage or one like it (check the reference), but I criticized it for not being inclusive of indigenous people or oral methods. Luhmann, however, went further and was at least passively more inclusive by saying that one needs to be able to "notch differences" to be able to think, and this is a much better framing.

  18. Oct 2022
    1. November 7, 1916: "I expect to vote for Woodrow Wilson

      I wonder if others use the sense making features of a note card system to think through their voting decisions? This seems an interesting and useful exercise which Paxson has done.

    2. the author must not merely articulate his sources; he mustdigest them. A long passage quoted or closely followed "remainsan undigested bit of foreign matter." "Over quotation may meanunder thought."
  19. www.indxd.ink www.indxd.ink
    1. https://www.indxd.ink/

      A digital, web-based index tool for your analog notebooks. Ostensibly allows one to digitally index their paper notebooks (page numbers optional).

      It emails you weekly text updates, so you've got a back up of your data if the site/service disappears.

      This could potentially be used by those who have analog zettelkasten practices, but want the digital search and some back up of their system.


      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>sgtstretch </span> in @Gaby @pimoore so a good friend of mine makes [INDXD](https://www.indxd.ink/) which is for indexing analog notebooks and being able to find things. I don't personally use it, but I know @patrickrhone has written about it before. (<time class='dt-published'>10/27/2022 17:59:32</time>)</cite></small>

    1. https://www.explainpaper.com/

      Another in a growing line of research tools for processing and making sense of research literature including Research Rabbit, Connected Papers, Semantic Scholar, etc.

      Functionality includes the ability to highlight sections of research papers with natural language processing to explain what those sections mean. There's also a "chat" that allows you to ask questions about the paper which will attempt to return reasonable answers, which is an artificial intelligence sort of means of having an artificial "conversation with the text".

      cc: @dwhly @remikalir @jeremydean

  20. drive.google.com drive.google.com
    1. he was so bored out of his mind visiting temples

      Gregory is not interested in cultural activities.

    1. Anybody who writes knows you don’t simply write what you believe. You write to find out what you believe, or what you can afford to believe. So when I write something and it sounds good, I leave it in, usually, to see what it sounds like to someone else. To somebody else it might sound awful or brash, but I want to be able to have the courage of my brashness. I don’t leave things in that I know to be terrible, or that I don’t, as it were, find interesting—I don’t do that—but if there’s a doubt about it and it sounds interesting, I’ll leave it in. And I want to be free to do that, because that’s why I write. When I write, things occur to me. It’s a way of thinking. But you can perform your thinking instead of just thinking it.
    1. if you're thinking without 00:03:26 writing chances are you're fooling yourself we're only

      If you're thinking without writing, you only think you're thinking. —Leslie Lamport.“Thinking Above the Code.” Lecture presented at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Microsoft Research, July 15, 2014. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/video/leslie-lamport-thinking-code/. Timestamp: 03:26

      Link to:<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/rvisgFDXEe2s-SuJJGw3cA<br /> https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w

      Note that the spoken quote is different from the written quote.

    1. 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?

    1. For the sole true end of educationis simply this: to teach men how to learn for themselves; and whateverinstruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.
    2. For the tools of learning are the same, in any and everysubject; and the person who knows how to use them will, at any age, get themastery of a new subject in half the time and with a quarter of the effortexpended by the person who has not the tools at his command.
    3. Thewhole of the Trivium was in fact intended to teach the pupil the proper use ofthe tools of learning, before he began to apply them to “subjects” at all

      The point of putting the Trivium in front of the Quadrivium is that the student is first taught the use of the "tools of learning" before they are then taught how to apply them to broad subjects as a means of learning how to learn.

  21. app.sane.fyi app.sane.fyi
    1. Ida JosefiinaInfopunk. Into pdfs, information systems that support intentional thinking, cyborgs, and the future of humanity. This thought space is an introduction to me and my work.

      https://app.sane.fyi/space/ida-ida-josefiina-75044

    1. Doch ganz gleich, ob der Zettelkasten auf ein Buch, ein Werk oder auf eine Gedankenwolke mit wechselnder Niederschlagsneigung hinauslief - er ist stets mehr als das Ganze, dessen Teile er gesammelt hat. Denn es stecken stets noch andere Texte in ihm als diejenigen, die aus ihm hervorgegangen sind. Insofern wäre die Digitalisierung des einen oder anderen Zettelkastens ein Geschenk an die Wissenschaft.

      machine translation (Google):

      But regardless of whether the Zettelkasten resulted in a book, a work, or a thought cloud with varying degrees of precipitation - it is always more than the whole whose parts it has collected. Because there are always other texts in it than those that emerged from it.

      There's something romantic about the analogy of a zettelkasten with a thought cloud which may have varying degrees of precipitation.

      Link to other analogies: - ruminant machines - the disappointment of porn - others?

    1. Charlemagne, king of the Franks, issued his capitulary—sometimes called the Charter of Modern Thought—in which he ordered, ‘Letevery monastery and every abbey have its school, in which boys may be taughtthe Psalms, the system of musical notation, singing, arithmetic, and grammar.’
  22. cosma.graphlab.fr cosma.graphlab.fr
    1. https://cosma.graphlab.fr/<br /> https://cosma.graphlab.fr/en/

      When did this come out?

      Appears to be a visualization tool for knowledge work. They recommend it for use with Zettlr, but it looks like it would work with other text based tools. Point it at markdown files to create graphs apparently.

      This looks like the sort of standards based tool that would allow greater flexibility when using various data stores that we talk about in Friends of the Link.

      <small><cite class='h-cite via'> <span class='p-author h-card'>Arthur Perret </span> in And you, what are you doing? (<time class='dt-published'>08/31/2022 02:40:03</time>)</cite></small>

      @flancian

    1. In "On Intellectual Craftsmanship" (1952), C. Wright Mills talks about his methods for note taking, thinking, and analysis in what he calls "sociological imagination". This is a sociologists' framing of their own research and analysis practice and thus bears a sociological related name. While he talks more about the thinking, outlining, and writing process rather than the mechanical portion of how he takes notes or what he uses, he's extending significantly on the ideas and methods that Sönke Ahrens describes in How to Take Smart Notes (2017), though obviously he's doing it 65 years earlier. It would seem obvious that the specific methods (using either files, note cards, notebooks, etc.) were a bit more commonplace for his time and context, so he spent more of his time on the finer and tougher portions of the note making and thinking processes which are often the more difficult parts once one is past the "easy" mechanics.

      While Mills doesn't delineate the steps or materials of his method of note taking the way Beatrice Webb, Langlois & Seignobos, Johannes Erich Heyde, Antonin Sertillanges, or many others have done before or Umberto Eco, Robert Greene/Ryan Holiday, Sönke Ahrens, or Dan Allosso since, he does focus more on the softer portions of his thinking methods and their desired outcomes and provides personal examples of how it works and what his expected outcomes are. Much like Niklas Luhmann describes in Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen (VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981), Mills is focusing on the thinking processes and outcomes, but in a more accessible way and with some additional depth.

      Because the paper is rather short, but specific in its ideas and methods, those who finish the broad strokes of Ahrens' book and methods and find themselves somewhat confused will more than profit from the discussion here in Mills. Those looking for a stronger "crash course" might find that the first seven chapters of Allosso along with this discussion in Mills is a straighter and shorter path.

      While Mills doesn't delineate his specific method in terms of physical tools, he does broadly refer to "files" which can be thought of as a zettelkasten (slip box) or card index traditions. Scant evidence in the piece indicates that he's talking about physical file folders and sheets of paper rather than slips or index cards, but this is generally irrelevant to the broader process of thinking or writing. Once can easily replace the instances of the English word "file" with the German concept of zettelkasten and not be confused.

      One will note that this paper was written as a manuscript in April 1952 and was later distributed for classroom use in 1955, meaning that some of these methods were being distributed from professor to students. The piece was later revised and included as an appendix to Mill's text The Sociological Imagination which was first published in 1959.

      Because there aren't specifics about Mills' note structure indicated here, we can't determine if his system was like that of Niklas Luhmann, but given the historical record one could suppose that it was closer to the commonplace tradition using slips or sheets. One thing becomes more clear however that between the popularity of Webb's work and this (which was reprinted in 2000 with a 40th anniversary edition), these methods were widespread in the mid-twentieth century and specifically in the field of sociology.

      Above and beyond most of these sorts of treatises on note taking method, Mills does spend more time on the thinking portions of the practice and delineates eleven different practices that one can focus on as they actively read/think and take notes as well as afterwards for creating content or writing.


      My full notes on the article can be found at https://jonudell.info/h/facet/?user=chrisaldrich&max=100&exactTagSearch=true&expanded=true&addQuoteContext=true&url=urn%3Ax-pdf%3A0138200b4bfcde2757a137d61cd65cb8

    2. On this point, for instance, thebook on John Dewey's technique of thought by Bogos-lovsky, The Logic of Controversy, and C.E. Ayers' essayon the gospel of technology in Philosophy Today andTomorrow, edited by Hook and Kallen.

      The Technique of Controversy: Principles of Dynamic Logic by Boris B. Bogoslovsky https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Technique_of_Controversy/P-rgAwAAQBAJ?hl=en

      What was Dewey's contribution here?


      The Gospel of Technology by C. E. Ayers https://archive.org/details/americanphilosop00kall/page/24/mode/2up