Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten system doesn't impose a heirarchy upon it's contents and in some ways its structure anticipates the ideas of hypertext and the internet's structure.

Also similar to the idea from Umberto Eco: https://hypothes.is/a/jqug2tNlEeyg2JfEczmepw

Zweitgedächtnis, the German Word for secondary memory, might also have been translated as "second brain" and thus the root of this word in the note taking space.

ref: https://hyp.is/hV9LKm71Eeq9s_f_oWRkEg/takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html

Originally 2021-12-31 at https://hypothes.is/a/3tjzWGqjEeyDSae3OLOEWw

It would seem that the version of the translation of Luhmann's Communication with Zettelkasten at http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes is more up to date than the older archived version at https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm because it takes into consideration smaller updates like this.

See: - https://github.com/Zettelkasten-Method/luhmann.surge.sh/commits/master/communicating-with-slip-boxes.html

Not sure why Manfred Kuehn removed this website from Blogger, but it's sure to be chock full of interesting discussions and details on his note taking process and practice. Definitely worth delving back several years and mining his repository of articles here.

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/<br /> archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/

Manfred Kuehn in Ronald Reagan's Notecards at 2015-01-25<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:34:10)

Kuehn felt that Ronald Regan's note taking "does not seem like a good system. In fact, it's hardly any system at all..."

What makes note taking exciting?

• serendipity
• surprise
• creativity

Manfred Kuehn in Umberto Eco on How to Write a Thesis at 2015-01-30<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-23 11:29:34)

Kuehn felt Luhmann's writing on note taking was more exciting that Umberto Eco's.

http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2017/12/tuchman-on-mechanics-of-research.html

archive copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20180201144612/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2017/12/tuchman-on-mechanics-of-research.html

How is one to have an intimate conversation with a text if their annotations are not written in the margins? Placing your initial notes somewhere else is like having sex with your clothes on.

syndication link

Highlighted portion is a quote from Kuehn sub-quoting David Lodge, Deaf Sentence (New York: Viking 2008)

Ownership is certainly a factor here, but given how inexpensive many books are now, if you own it, why not mark it up? See also: Mortimer J. Adler's position on this.

Marking up library books is a barbarism; not marking up your own books is a worse sin.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170429050031/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2013/08/underlining-in-library-books.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20180217082313/http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2018/02/an-ordinary-zettlkasten.html

Niklas Luhmann analogized his zettelkasten to a septic tank. You put in a lot of material, a lot of seemingly waste, and it allows a process of settling and filtering to allow the waste to be separated and distill into something useful.

interesting they are essentially saying the point of a wikilink is to bookmark something you want to write later, it's essentially entity based annotations. very much in the same vein as [[wikidata]]

the [[agora]] is making [[ wikilinks]] not so internal

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/critique-of-zettelksten.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021193157/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/critique-of-zettelksten.html

Manfred Kuehn looks at Karl Kraus' criticism of the idea of a zettelkasten as a tool which can be misused.

Of course this begs the question of what one is using their index card catalog for? Are you using it as a rhetorical thinking and creation device or simply a second memory?

Compare and contrast this admonition and extension with

Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. — John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan” (The Saturday Review, March 1967) (Culkin was a friend and colleague of Marshall McLuhan)

Some of this critique relates to my classification about the sorts of notes that one takes. Some are more important or valuable than others.

Some are for recall and later memory, some may be collection of ideas, but the highest seems to be linking different ideas and contexts together to create completely new and innovative ideas. If one is simply collecting sententiae and spewing them back out in reasonable contexts, this isn't as powerful as nurturing one's ideas to have sex.

Seneca on Gathering Ideas by Manfred Kuehn on Monday, December 24, 2007 https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/seneca-on-gathering-ideas.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021191724/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/seneca-on-gathering-ideas.html

A quick look at how some of the ancient ideas of rhetoric may affect one's note taking and thinking. I love that this is one of his first posts on a blog on note taking. Too many miss this history.r

Almost like saying that "man cannot live by bread alone"...

An interesting classification of books which fits a fair amount of my own views, particularly looking at the difference between fiction, poetry, and non-fiction.

Source?

Cross reference origin in

Seneca (2006) Epistles 66-92. With an English translation by Richard G. Gummere. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Loeb Classical Library), 277-285.

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmann-on-learning-how-to-read.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021193426/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmann-on-learning-how-to-read.html

Nothing notable here...

Another indication that Manfred Kuehn is the author of this blog.

Original link here went to https://web.archive.org/web/20150825031821/http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm which includes more context about the author of the blog.

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/grafton-on-future-of-reading.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20200925225654/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/grafton-on-future-of-reading.html

Reading is hard to disrupt.

Speeding up and dramatically improving the reading process is incredibly difficult. No one has yet made really huge strides in this space. Google has made it imminently more accessible to the masses, but it still requires a lot of physical work and processing on our part.

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/planning-for-unexpected-discoveries.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021185408/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/planning-for-unexpected-discoveries.html

Manfred Keuhn reflects on serendipity in note taking and how Niklas Luhmann's system helped to produce it.

This general thesis is similar to that of Raymond Llull's combinatorial thought which forces the juxtaposition of disparate ideas to shake out new ones.

Merton, Robert King and Barber, Elinor (2004) The Travels And Adventures Of Serendipity : A Study In Sociological Semantics And The Sociology Of Science Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2004

Merton, Robert King and Barber, Elinor (2004) The Travels And Adventures Of Serendipity : A Study In Sociological Semantics And The Sociology Of Science Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2004

Neo Alphasmart by Manfred Keuhn https://web.archive.org/web/20201021190716/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/neo-alphasmart.html

St. Bonaventura on "Making Books"

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/st-bonaventura-on-making-books.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021200415/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/st-bonaventura-on-making-books.html

The digital era has made copying (scriptor) completely redundant. The click of a button allows the infinite copying of content.

Real compilators are few and far between, but exist in niches. Within social media many are compiling and tagging content within their accounts.

Commentators are a dime a dozen and have been made ubiquitous courtesy of social media.

Content creators or auctors still exist, but are rarer in the broader field of writing or other contexts.

https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/faithful-electronic-version-of-luhmanns.html

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021194758/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/faithful-electronic-version-of-luhmanns.html

In this comment, Manfred Kuehn outs himself as the author of this blog.

Most digital note taking systems have two major advantages of paper versions:

• It's harder to misplace material unless one's system has major flaws or one accidentally deletes content
• Digital search is far more powerful and efficient than manual search

Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten had three different forms of links.

• The traditional keyword index/link from the commonplace book tradition
• A parent/child link upon first placing the idea into the system (except when starting a new top level parent)
• A direct link (Verweisungen) to one or more ideas already in the index card catalog.

Many note taking systems are relying on the older commonplace book taxonomies and neglect or forego both of the other two sorts of links. While the second can be safely subsumed as a custom, one-time version of the third, the third version is the sort of link which helps to create a lot of direct value within a note taking system as the generic links between broader topic heading names can be washed out over time as the system grows.

Was this last link type included in Konrad Gessner's version? If not, at what point in time did this more specific direct link evolve?

What we Remember by Manfred Kuehn https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/

archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20201021192005/https://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/

Dutch psychologist Wilem Wagenaar conducted memory related experiments on recollecting what, where, who, and when for the most interesting experiences of his days. It turned out that the "What?" was most useful followed by where? and who?, but that "when?" was "useless in every instance".

p.116 of Stefan Klein, The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity, Marlowe & Company, 2007, New York.

Despite this, timestamps might serve other functions within a note taking system. The might include conceiving of ideas, temporal order of ideas presented, etc.

This blogpost by Manfred Kuehn is one of the earliest posts about Zettelkasten I've seen referenced on the early web. It dates from 2007-12-16.

Somewhat fascinating to see Christian Tietze, the creator of zettelkasten.de, pop up in the comments of this blogpost from 2007-12-16, though it wasn't until almost six years later.

Stumbled back upon this article almost a year and change later. Great to see that I'm at least consistent in what I would highlight. ;)

Some interesting words in German for secondary memory and reading memory.

this is a test

test

My requirements for note-taking software are pretty similar: it needs to run on all the platforms I use, it needs to be simple, search should be quick, synching should be simple and stable, and it should store notes in a straightforward, portable format (preferably plain-text). If it doesn't meet all of those requirements, it is not worth trying because I know I am not going to be able to rely upon it.