As a graduate student, hemaintained a card index of his own. When Marcus’s friends wrote of his travels abroad,they declared that ‘When we think of that card index by now we shudder. What propor-tions it must have assumed’. 18
Example of a student who saw/learned/new a zettelkasten note taking method from a teacher.
Shortly after Deutsch’s death thealumni of the Hebrew Union College purchased his index for the seminary’s library.15
It is reminiscent ofPierre Nora’s suggestion that physical objects and especially the written word constitute‘archival memory,’ a secondary or ‘prosthesis’ memory (Nora, 1989: 14).
Simultaneously, it showcases how little actually has changed with therise of digital platforms, where some scholars have sought to build software edifices toemulate card index systems or speak of ‘paper-based tangible interfaces’ for research(Do ̈ring and Beckhaus, 2007; Lu ̈decke, 2015).
Döring, T. and Beckhaus, S. (2007) ‘The Card Box at Hand: Exploring the Potentials of a Paper-Based Tangible Interface for Education and Research in Art History’. Proceedings of the First International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, February 15-17, 2007. New York, ACM, pp. 87–90.
Did they have a working system the way Ludeke did?
Certainly, computerizationmight seem to resolve some of the limitations of systems like Deutsch’s, allowing forfull-text search or multiple tagging of individual data points, but an exchange of cardsfor bits only changes the method of recording, leaving behind the reality that one muststill determine what to catalogue, how to relate it to the whole, and the overarchingsystem.
Despite the affordances of recording, searching, tagging made by computerized note taking systems, the problem still remains what to search for or collect and how to relate the smaller parts to the whole.
customer relationship management vs. personal knowledge management (or perhaps more important knowledge relationship management, the relationship between individual facts to the overall whole) suggested by autocomplete on "knowl..."
In 1905 – just as Deutsch began his index inearnest – the Gesamtarchiv der deutschen Juden (General or Total Archive of the Ger-man Jews) was established under the leadership of Eugen Ta ̈ubler, who developed aprogram to collect all the files of German Jewry. This dream of archival totality was lateradopted explicitly and implicitly by a number of Jewish archival efforts in Austria, theUSA, and the state of Israel, where the Jewish Historical General Archives (since 1969the Central Archives of the History of the Jewish People) tried to create what its formerdirector Hadassah Assouline termed a ‘central repository of Jewish historical material inthe world’ (Lustig, 2017: 110-25). 14
As a result, hisindex is simultaneously a relic of research and a reminder of the pitfalls of all such effortsto create systematic knowledge, regardless of the underlying technology – paper, digitalor otherwise.
One might then say that Deutsch’s index devel-oped at the height of the pursuit of historical objectivity and constituted a tool ofhistorical research not particularly innovative or limited to him alone, given that the useof notecards was encouraged by so many figures, and it crystallized a positivistic meth-odology on its way out.
Can zettelkasten be used for other than positivitistic methodologies?
R. G. Collingwood’s critique of what hecalled ‘scissors and paste’ history – meaning both those who uncritically cited earlierworks, and the use of scissors and paste to cut apart sources on index cards
Just as with hisinterleaved volumes of Graetz’s Geschichte der Juden,
Card indexes were a tool to manage information overloadand enabled one to move and recombine letters, words and ideas – which led WalterBenjamin to describe the explosion of the book into its fundamental components,recorded on cards, so that they could be recombined (Benjamin, 2016[1986]: 43).
Beyond the realm of historians, advocates called card indexes ‘the only portable,elastic, simple, orderly and self-indexing way of keeping records’, and the practice wascommon enough that Gustave Flaubert parodied the unending and ultimately futilepursuit of all knowledge in his 1881 satire Bouvard et Pe ́cuchet (Dickinson, 1894).
Fred Morrow Flingwrote effusively of the ‘manifest advantages’ of the ‘card system of note taking’
from<br /> Fling, F. M. (1920) The Writing of History: An Introduction to Historical Method. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Herbert Baxton Adams’ model of ahistorical seminar room suggested it have a dedicated catalogue;
(Boyd, 2013; Burke, 2014; Krajewski, 2011: 9-20, 57; Zedel-maier, 2002)
Most of these are on my list, but doublecheck them...
20th-century enterprises like Herbert Field’s‘Concilium Bibliographicum’, a system of zoological research
And it constitutes an important but overlooked signpost in the 20th-centuryhistory of information, as ‘facts’ fell out of fashion but big data became big business.
Of course the hardest problem in big data has come to be realized as the issue of cleaning up messing and misleading data!
in 1917 he celebrated his fifty-thousandth card with an article titled ‘Siyum’, referencing the celebration upon conclud-ing study of a tractate of Talmud (Deutsch, 1917b).
Did he write about his zettelkasten in this article?! Deutsch, G. (1917b) ‘Siyum’, American Israelite, 8 March, 15 March.
Gotthard Deutsch celebrated his fifty thousandth card in 1917. ᔥ
The fact that Deutsch’s students saw their teacher’sindex as a monument to his historical genius
At once intended as a foundationfor a systematic history of the Jews, it was deeply unsystematic; meant to be a means ofproductivity, in the end Deutsch was essentially unproductive.
An example of a zettelkasten, meant for productivity in most settings, being called unproductive in Gotthard Deutsch's case.
Of course this calls to mind the definition of productivity and from who's perspective. From Deutsch's written output perspective it may have been exceptionally low in comparison to the outputs of others like Niklas Luhmann, S.D. Goitein, or Roland Barthes. But when viewed from the perspective of a teaching instrument and influence on his students, perhaps it was monumentally productive?
Deutsch’s index and his ‘facts’, then, seemedto his students to embody a moral value in addition to epistemological utility.
Beyond their epistemological utility do zettelkasten also "embody a moral value"? Jason Lustig argues that they may have in the teaching context of Gotthard Deutsch where the reliance on facts was of extreme importance for historical research.
Some of this is also seen in Scott Scheper's religious framing of zettelkasten method though here the aim has a different focus.
Deutsch’s close friendJoseph Stolz, writing of the Chicago rabbi Bernard Felsenthal (1822–1908) who hadpenned a history of that city’s Jews and was instrumental in the 1892 formation of theAmerican Jewish Historical Society, noted that Felsenthal ‘was not the systematic orga-nizer who worked with a stenographer and card-index’ (Stolz, 1922: 259).
Great example of a historian implying the benefit of not only a card index, but of potentially how commonplace it was to not only have one, but to have stenographers or secretaries to help manage them.
Link this to the reference in Heyde about historians and others who were pushed to employ stenographers or copyists to keep their card indexes in order.
Given the cost of employing secretaries to manage our information, one of the affordances that computers might focus on as tools for thought is lowering the barrier for management and maintenance. If they can't make this easier/simpler, then what are they really doing beyond their shininess? Search is obviously important in this context.
What was the reference to employing one person full time to manage every 11 or 12 filing cabinets' worth of documents? Perhaps Duguid in the paper piece?
One student’s rabbinical thesis, also completed that year,opened with the declaration: ‘We must not forget that History is a Science. Its facts cannever be doubted. One may indeed, differ as to the interpretation of facts but neverdispute the fact per se!’ (orig. emph., Holtzberg, 1916: Introduction).
Interesting to see this quote in light of the work of Ernst Bernheim and historical method.
At what point did history begin to be viewed as a science this way? (Did it predate Berheim?) Is it still?
He tried to show that this‘favorite topic’ of his, ‘insistence on exactness in chronological dates’, amounted tomore than a trifling (Deutsch, 1915, 1905a). Deutsch compared such historical accuracyto that of a bookkeeper who might recall his ledger by memory. ‘People would look uponsuch an achievement’, he reflected, ‘as a freak, harmless, but of no particular value, infact rather a waste of mental energy’ (Deutsch, 1916). However, he sought to show thatthese details mattered, no different from how ‘a difference in a ledger of one centremains just as grievous as if it were a matter of $100,000’ (Deutsch, 1904a: 3).
Interesting statement about how much memory matters, though it's missing some gravitas somehow.
Is there more in the original source?
Anecdotes’, he concluded, ‘havetheir historic value, if properly tested’ – reflecting both his interest in details and also theneed to ascertain whether they were true (Deutsch, 1905b).
Bruno Latour has reflected, information is more malleable when it is not too large(Daston, 2002; Latour, 1986: 19).
Deutsch’s index was created out of an almost algorith-mic processing of historical sources in the pursuit of a totalized and perfect history of theJews; it presented, on one hand, the individualized facts, but together also constitutedwhat we might term a ‘history without presentation’, which merely held the ‘facts’themselves without any attempt to synthesize them (cf. Saxer, 2014: 225-32).
Not sure that I agree with the framing of "algorithmic processing" here as it was done manually by a person pulling out facts. But it does bring out the idea of where collecting ends and synthesis of a broader thesis out of one's collection begins. Where does historical method end? What was the purpose of the collection? Teaching, writing, learning, all, none?
one finds in Deutsch’s catalogue one implementation of what LorraineDaston would later term ‘mechanical objectivity’, an ideal of removing the scholar’s selffrom the process of research and especially historical and scientific representation (Das-ton and Galison, 2007: 115-90).
In contrast to the sort of mixing of personal life and professional life suggested by C. Wright Mills' On Intellectual Craftsmanship (1952), a half century earlier Gotthard Deutsch's zettelkasten method showed what Lorraine Datson would term 'mechanical objectivity'. This is an interesting shift in philosophical perspective of note taking practice. It can also be compared and contrasted with a 21st century perspective of "personal" knowledge management.
reply to michaljjwilk (edited) Feb 18
Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. […] The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. —via chrisaldrich
Nadrzędny cel robienia notatek metodą Zettelkasten jest organizacja wiedzy, a nie organizacja notatek, stąd potrzeba odpowiedniego systemu łączenia informacji, a nie poszczególnych notatek.
(eng, for reply purpose only) btw, i do not see any way to annotate the annotation in hipothesis or any way to save someone's highlight or note.
(edit) It is so annoying and tedious i can not view this comment in my profile. I understand social aspect of Hypothes.is (and needs for that), but it is hard to track your activity this way. And it is not intuitive to annotate someone's annotation. So i assume - Hypothes.is masters can correct me if i am wrong - the better way is copy someone's quote with a link to Hypothes.is and put it in the page note, but the problem is i view this annotation in separation of the source material, so i have to go to source (context) and there find what interests me and do my work. Some time to time maybe it is no problem, but i do not want to imagine how it feels in bigger scale. And i do not get why there is tagging option for replies if you can not search them in the main page…
You've definitely come across a well known issue with respect to Hypothes.is: https://github.com/hypothesis/h/issues/7317 Feel free to comment on it to help it get some attention from developers.
I pull most of my content into an Obsidian notebook, so I always include the URL for any individual page into at least one of my annotations. Then I can use the API to pull in all of my own annotations (including replies) using that.
Alternately you might reply to someone's annotation and then cut/paste a version as a page note so that it's more easily searchable.
Surely there are other potential workarounds, but it depends on what you need out of your practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX2p-1afdRA
wrt: https://hypothes.is/a/uDIE9q70Ee2xxiszhAZGOQ<br /> I'll give him a little credit that he's at least aliasing his notes as he "files" them, but I suspect that over time he's making more work for himself than not. This seems unsustainable over time.
It also seems like he's doing a lot more make-work here than he otherwise ought to?
Notice that he's making this to sell a course: https://joshduffney.gumroad.com/l/take-smart-notes-obsidian
He doesn't directly link the GitHub repo as he indicated, but it can be found here: https://github.com/Duffney/smart-notes. In looking at it, the timestamped notes will become problematic.
This was from 2021-10-17. I'm curious what his "system" looks like today? Has it changed through time and experience?
Stephen Johnson's "slow hunch" is built up of information acquisition over time and mixed with diffuse thinking.
vs intuition?
Some systems require a unique identifier, but the people who are using a datetime stamp or random number anywhere in their (Luhmann-esque) zettelkasten title (here's a good example) are leading you astray. Doubly so if it occurs at the beginning of the title. There are no affordances in this practice and it's more likely to cause problems at scale. Just say no! (Note this is not the same as using a Luhmann-esque identifier at the start of a title as a means of providing a sort order of one's notes held in an individual folder.)
Are there any reasons for someone to do this?! - perhaps for file name conflicts when digitally inserting notes into a system using third party clients with titles which may cause conflicts (though these could/should be removed later for easier reading); - counterexample: https://hypothes.is/a/Jux0pq7yEe2Uqj9mFXS3nQ - Another potential issue is in shared or collaborative note taking spaces where collision is more likely because others don't have the shared context. - perhaps for forcing sort orders on daily notes or recurring meetings MeetingA YYYY-MM-DD, etc., though these are probably in a separate area of one's box and not in their zettelkasten section.
The point of a zettelkasten is to provide one help in ordering and building their knowledge, not in ordering their notes by time created. This will rarely (sans database-related use cases perhaps) provide any insight and digital systems have other easier and better ways of doing this if you need it.
Worse, some systems may not do autocompletion on words in the middle of titles, so starting a card with a datetime can hamper this functionality. One should check this against their particular system.
https://www.amazon.com/Container-OakRidge-Products-Mailbox-style-Certified/dp/B00X6L1HFW/
Finally a physical zettelkasten box for your sharpest and most dangerous ideas!
This volume is filled with finely-written, accessible and engaging pieces on such topics as Gibbon’s style, his library and note-taking practices, and his knowledge of the city of Rome.
The Cambridge Companion To Edward Gibbon by Karen O’Brien and Brian Young, eds.<br /> by Mark Bernstein
Oh, do tell!
They’re entirely convincing until they speak about the political and economic ideas at the heart of the story. When they do, they suddenly sound like contemporary undergraduates at top schools who have learned to problematize and interrogate from a tender age.
An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang<br /> Mark Bernstein
https://joshduffney.gumroad.com/l/take-smart-notes-obsidian
$2.99 for "How to Take Smart Notes in Obsidian"
(not a recommendation)
I’ve also begun adopting a style loosely based on the approach to introductory signals used in legal writing, where things like See: [[something]] and See also: [[something]] and But see: [[something]] each have slightly different meanings. This gives me a set of supporting, comparison, and contradictory signals I can use when placing links as well.
Shorthand notations or symbols in one's notes can be used to provide help in structuring arguments. Small indicators like "see: x", "see also: y", or "but see: z" can be used for adding supporting, comparison, or contradictory material respectively.
The ID suffix was added because I use external tools to add notes to my vault so I needed a means to ensure there would never be a collision. For example, Alfred. If I accidentally typed the name of a note that already exists into it I didn’t want it to accidentally overwrite an existing note,
Example of someone ("davecan") with a specific reason for using unique identifiers in the titles for their digital note taking.
I also use: qrun (for running notes, Standard Operating Procedures), qlog (for logs of activities on projects, journal entries), qtalk (for lectures), qbug (for bugs, things to fix or tweak, etc.),… You get the idea. Adapted this from Merlin Mann’s “runx” convention, but moved the odd character to the front to take advantage of autocompletion.)
Open the iPad. I create a vault in Obsidian but uncheck `iCloud`. Then I go into `Working Copy` to clone the repository into the same location. You might have to enable the "Local File" in the `File` app. The repository will be external to `Working Copy`.Obsidian needs to see the folder before you put the Git clone there.If this isn't absolutely clear, I'll get some screen shots on the iPad. The key is checking out of each location use Obsidian, then Git push. Obsidian will modify enough files that you don't want to hand merge conflicts.I was using GitHub for other projects. Any Git repository works, but treat it like source code. Fetch your work before each session. Then check your work in before ending. While you can work from two locations, don't work in the same area of your vault.
Outline for using Obsidian on iPad with Github repository.
To cover my knowledge management process would distract you from what works for you. Your question needs more context to be actionable.TL;DR; Whichever knowledge management system gets you paid.I've got 13 notes with the term "knowledge management," 15 with "information gathering," and 7 with "strategic intelligence." Without finishing a MOC, here's off the top of my head:Have a purpose or reason for learning.Ask helpful questions that solve problems.Answer questions as stand-alone notes.Learn from primary sources. Even boring ones.Take notes for your intended audience.Serve a specific audience (get paid.)Write about what people care about.Become a subject matter expert in target areas.Deliver what you know as a service first.Build on your strengths. Knowledge is cheap.It's not a process. More like tips. If demand exists, I'll write a book on the topic in a few years. Might be a good podcast topic.“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” -- Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel JohnsonRemember, there is no shortage of knowledge. Managing information is like masturbation; it feels good but doesn't do much. Focus on making information drive goal achievement.
Some useful and solid advice here.
I have worked in paper format, hundreds of reference books, and a massive marketing swipe file. A recovering r/DataHoarder who realized piles were causing stress.
Example of an inveterate note taker who indicates they've got a "massive marketing swipe file".
I used SjoerdV / ConvertOneNote2MarkDown PowerShell script. The key is running PowerShell and OneNote as Administrator.It will crash a bunch of times depending on the size of your OneNote repository. However, if you keep restarting the program as administrator it seems to start back were it left off.Here are my notes: https://www.dropbox.com/s/au66hamcv71sggk/202211151246%20OneNote%20to%20Markdown%20Procedure.pdf?dl=0
Details for converting OneNote to Obsidian using Markdown
u/jwhco has ~5,000 index cards and 18,237 files (presumably mostly note-based text files, though some mentioned are papers, articles, etc.) over the span of 22 years.
Nothing remarkable here other than a reference for someone who uses Zettlr for writing
Nothing really useful here.
Hesiod’s depictionof humans in the myth of Prometheus and Pandora. We consider theimplications of this myth for the Greek view of society and particularly of
women and gender roles.
If my perception of mythology and orality is correct, can we look at Indigenous stories, myth, and knowledge and draw parallels from their knowledge about women and gender to similar stories in the Western canon which have lost linkage to their narratives? What would this show us potentially about Western mythology and gender studies?
the birth of Athena from his head and suggests possibleinterpretations of these episodes
I'll bet there's no mention that this is useful because it's an incredibly memorable image!
On first blush, disappointed not to see any mentions of orality. There's a reference to Parry, but it's his son Adam instead of him.
Looks like there's some interesting material here with respect to anthropology, cultural anthropology, and myth theory early on.
Vandiver, Elizabeth. Classical Mythology. Audible (streaming audio). Vol. 243. The Great Courses: Western Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company, 2013.
Vandiver, Elizabeth. “Classical Mythology: Course Guidebook.” The Teaching Company, 2013. https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/classical-mythology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47p2TfnEewc
academics: Joshua Fishman and Bernard Spolsky
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyBIT0Q7fOc
Dealing with someone who is passive aggressive:
https://www.youtube.com/@LwpS4C
Welsh contemporary music
Typing the to bach and other accented characters in Windows 7, Vista and XP by Meurig Williams
I know I had it in there somewhere, but can't find it this morning.
To bach or circumflex on Welsh keyboard is:<br /> ctrl-alt ^ + letter
https://www.s4c.cymru/en/international/
https://www.s4c.cymru/clic/
Hello from S4C - Welsh - SSi Forum<br /> by sara-peacock-1
I’m feeling anti-social today so I had a chat with ChatGPT about this by Paul Jacobson
I wonder what this sort of therapy looks like at scale?
Digital Smart Notes Part 4: Creating Permanent Notes In Roam Research<br /> by Harley Stanger
Part 1: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-1-the-capture-toolkit/ - Part 2: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-2-exporting-highlights-to-roam-research-with-readwise/ - Part 3: https://harleystagner.com/digital-smart-notes-part-3-creating-literature-notes-in-roam-research/ - Part 4: Digital Smart Notes Part 4: Creating Permanent Notes In Roam Research
synopsis of Ahrens
How long do you spend in a single note-taking session? .t3_112k929._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } questionBasically, just curious how much time people spend writing down notes in a typical session, as well as how many notecards you usually finish. If you can give me an idea of how long a single lit/permanent note takes you to write, even better
reply to u/m_t_rv_s__n at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/112k929/how_long_do_you_spend_in_a_single_notetaking/
Quite often my sessions can be in small 5-10 minute blocks doing one or more individual tasks that compose reading, writing, or filing/linking things together. Usually I don't go over a couple of hours without at least a small break or two.
Like Luhmann “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.” Incidentally by "easy" here, I think Luhmann also includes the ideas of fun, interesting, pleasurable, and (Csikszentmihalyi's) flow.
For my lowest level reading I'll only quickly log what I've read along with a few index terms and a short note or two, if at all. For deeper analytical reading (as defined by Adler & van Doren) those sessions are more intense and I aim to have a direct "conversation with the text". Notes made there can sometimes be 2 - 10 minutes in length. I can often average about 50 annotations in a given day of which maybe 2 or 3 will be longer, fileable zettels. Most of my notes start as digital public annotations which one can view at https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich if they like. On the topic of notes per day, I have a collection for that, some of which is given as a synopsis with some caveats here: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/14/s-d-goiteins-card-index-or-zettelkasten/#Notes%20per%20day%20comparison.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Fag8ZQcz4
Pretty powerful video here.
Reminiscent of Michael Sheen's World Cup inspiration speech: <br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fpV0OFC0vc
Yma o Hyd Course - SaySomethingin
Can't wait for the audio files for this to pop up!
Until then: YouTube video with consecutive Welsh/English subtitles<br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkBQAvAFjus
YouTube video from FA Wales with Dafydd Iwan and the Red Wall<br /> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43Fag8ZQcz4
‘Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg’, we say in Welsh – ‘persistent knocking will break the stone’. In other words, perseverance pays in the end.
Markdown editor and organizer for Windows, Mac and Linux
Thoughts on Vulcan (Philosophy and Commentary) by Harlan (developer)
Mentioned by Jerry Michalski
Your Antinet Walkthrough
reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1132e2r/your_antinet_walkthrough/
Examples like this would certainly be useful/helpful, but you may be waiting a while. Until then some extant (if possibly longer or even written) examples are always helpful. Some may be a bit less Antinet in shape, but the examples are useful none-the-less: - See comment thread here: https://boffosocko.com/2022/07/12/call-for-model-examples-of-zettelkasten-output-processes/ - https://boffosocko.com/research/zettelkasten-commonplace-books-and-note-taking-collection/#historical-examples - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGcs4tyey18 with notes at https://notes.andymatuschak.org/ (though perhaps a deeper view into them is more illustrative: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z4AX7pHAu5uUfmrq4K4zig9x8jmmF62XgaMXm?stackedNotes=z4KZ9973AoHhvM9Pj5Qrds48JXNbMEwVJmVRw&stackedNotes=z8RTzukqNLKFXzqLwx25HrUrg5E5jiziGznWB&stackedNotes=z6UDDkom8Aifg6mLdjT1sPtbMBweCmpyTwmJT - Scott Scheper has a LOT here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSofW8L-FnU-Z8BFXqv8JZt5Cp0mj2_Eb - Ryan Holiday https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU7efgGEOgk - Robert Greene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHkGljK0
Beginner question .t3_112wup1._2FCtq-QzlfuN-SwVMUZMM3 { --postTitle-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postTitleLink-VisitedLinkColor: #9b9b9b; --postBodyLink-VisitedLinkColor: #989898; } I see that a lot of people have the main categories as natural sciences. Social sciences etcCan I switch it toReligionActivitiesFoodOrganizationMad weird thoughtsCommunication
reply to u/Turbulent-Focus-1389 at https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/112wup1/beginner_question/
I'd recommend you do your best to stay away from rigid category-like classifications and see what develops. For specifics see: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/
If it's easier to conceptualize, think of it all like a map which may have place names, but also has numerical coordinates. Sometimes a specific name like Richard Macksey's house is useful, but other times thinking about a specific coordinate and the general neighborhoods around them will be far more useful in your community development plan. A religion-only neighborhood without religious activities, religious food, religious organization or communication will be a a sad one indeed. If you segregate your communities, they're likely not to be very happy places for co-mingling of ideas and the potential resultant creativity you'll get out of them.
Bob Doto also suggests a similar philosophy in some of his work, particularly with respect to folgezettel: https://writing.bobdoto.computer/zettelkasten/
I'll note that this is an incredibly hard thing to do at the start, but it's one which you may very well wish you had done from the beginning.
“I only dowhat is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If Ifalter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.”(Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)[4]
https://youtu.be/qRSCKSPMuDc?t=37m30s (all links are on takesmartnotes.com)<br /> Luhmann, Niklas, Dirk Baecker, and Georg Stanitzek. 1987. Archimedes und wir: Interviews. Berlin: Merve.
“I only dowhat is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If Ifalter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else.”(Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f.)[4]
By "easy" here, I think he also includes the ideas of fun, interesting, pleasurable, and (Csikszentmihalyi's) flow.
we have preserved Eco’s handwritten index cardresearch system in all its detail, precisely because it is the soulof How to Write a Thesis.
!!!
Today’s students carry access to boundlessinformation that Eco’s students could not have begun tofathom, but Eco’s students owned every word they carried.
This is a key difference in knowledge mastery...
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.
Francesco Erspamer
Interestingly Erspamer doesn't mention any prior history or traditions of this sort of practice, just that it works for creating theses within the humanities very well. How does he miss this as motivation?
Presumably for him it's a "cultural practice" and Eco delineates it well. Erspamer learned from Eco and it's just what he does... The only questioning done is how 90s technology fit into the picture and that was only surface level questioning...
There's definitely something off about this as a recommendation for the overall system.
“Writing a thesis,”Eco wrote, “requires a student to organize ideas and data, towork methodically, and to build an ‘object’ that in principlewill serve others. In reality, the research experience mattersmore than the topic.”
Where does the learning portion of education morph into research? Where is the dividing line?
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.
Things were changing quickly.Eco’s methods of organizing and filing information werestill effective, but word processors and the Internet werebeginning to offer exciting alternatives to long-establishedresearch and writing techniques.
Esparmer is correct that research and writing did change with the advent of word processors and the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s (p xi), but these were primarily changes to the front and the back of the process. Esparmer and far too many others seem to miss the difference in which affordances were shifting here. The note taking and organization portions still remained the same, so Eco's advice is still tremendously important. Even if one were to do long form notes in notebook format or in digital documents, they would profitably advised to still properly cross-index their notes or have them in a form that allows them to rearrange them most simply with respect to the structuring and creative processes.
Losing the ability to move ideas around easily, restructure them, link them together and outline them was a tremendous blow in going from the old methods to the new digital ones.
Did we accidentally become enamored of the new technologies and forget that their affordances didn't completely replace those of the old methods?
The humanities are the process of pres-ervation and appropriation of that pastness, a process thatrequires specific skills acquired through practice, as all skillsare.
Nid wy'n gofyn bywyd moethus,<br /> Aur y byd na'i berlau mân:<br /> Gofyn wyf am galon hapus,<br /> Calon onest, calon lân.
Calon lân yn llawn daioni,<br /> Tecach yw na'r lili dlos:<br /> Dim ond calon lân all ganu,<br /> Canu'r dydd a chanu'r nos.
Pe dymunwn olud bydol,<br /> Hedyn buan ganddo sydd;<br /> Golud calon lân, rinweddol,<br /> Yn dwyn bythol elw fydd.
Hwyr a bore fy nymuniad<br /> Gwyd i'r nef ar adain cân<br /> Ar i Dduw, er mwyn fy Ngheidwad,<br /> Roddi i mi galon lân.
Alternative words in the Welsh version:
Verse 1, line 3: Gofyn wyf am fywyd hapus<br /> Verse 2, line 2: Chwim adenydd iddo sydd<br /> Verse 3, line 2: Esgyn ar adenydd cân<br /> Chorus, line 3: Does ond calon lân all ganu
I don't ask for a luxurious life,<br /> the world's gold or its fine pearls,<br /> I ask for a happy heart,<br /> an honest heart, a pure heart.
A pure heart full of goodness<br /> Is fairer than the pretty lily,<br /> None but a pure heart can sing,<br /> Sing in the day and sing in the night.
If I wished for worldly wealth,<br /> It would swiftly go to seed;<br /> The riches of a virtuous, pure heart<br /> Will bear eternal profit.
Evening and morning, my wish<br /> Rising to heaven on the wing of song<br /> For God, for the sake of my Saviour,<br /> To give me a pure heart.
Calon Lân Course<br /> by SaySomethingin
Lesson 1: https://www.saysomethingin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Calon-Lan-Lesson1.mp3
Lesson 2: https://www.saysomethingin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Calon-Lan-Lesson2.mp3
Methu â gweld y coed gan brennau
Failing to see the forest for the trees (or the wood for trees).
Wood = Pren<br /> Trees = Coed<br /> Forest = Coedwig
R.E Jones in his book Idiomau Cymraeg
Aesopian language is a means of communication with the intent to convey a concealed meaning to informed members of a conspiracy or underground movement, whilst simultaneously maintaining the guise of an innocent meaning to outsiders.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesopian_language
Parents often use variations of double entendre to communicate between each other with out children understanding while present.
It's also likely that Indigenous elders may use this sort of communication with uninitiated members nearby.
Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by [[Taylor Lorenz]]
shifts in language and meaning of words and symbols as the result of algorithmic content moderation
instead of slow semantic shifts, content moderation is actively pushing shifts of words and their meanings
article suggested by this week's Dan Allosso Book club on Pirate Enlightenment
“you’ll never be able to sanitize the Internet.”
TikTok offers an online resource center for creators seeking to learn more about its recommendation systems, and has opened multiple transparency and accountability centers where guests can learn how the app’s algorithm operates.
There seems to be a number of issues with the positive and negative feedback systems these social media companies are trying to create. What are they really measuring? The either aren't measuring well or aren't designing well (or both?)...
Could it be the sift from person to person (known in both directions) to massive broadcast that is driving issues with content moderation. When it's person to person, one can simply choose not to interact and put the person beyond their individual pale. This sort of shunning is much harder to do with larger mass publics at scale in broadcast mode.
How can bringing content moderation back down to the neighborhood scale help in the broadcast model?
“Zuck Got Me For,” a site created by a meme account administrator who goes by Ana, is a place where creators can upload nonsensical content that was banned by Instagram’s moderation algorithms.
In January, Kendra Calhoun, a postdoctoral researcher in linguistic anthropology at UCLA, and Alexia Fawcett, a doctoral student in linguistics at UC Santa Barbara, gave a presentation about language on TikTok. They outlined how, by self-censoring words in the captions of TikToks, new algospeak code words emerged.
follow up on this for the relevant forthcoming paper....
“The reality is that tech companies have been using automated tools to moderate content for a really long time and while it’s touted as this sophisticated machine learning, it’s often just a list of words they think are problematic,” said Ángel Díaz, a lecturer at the UCLA School of Law who studies technology and racial discrimination.
Black and trans users, and those from other marginalized communities, often use algospeak to discuss the oppression they face, swapping out words for “white” or “racist.” Some are too nervous to utter the word “white” at all and simply hold their palm toward the camera to signify White people.
Is algorithmic content moderation creating a new sort of cancel culture online?
“It makes me feel like I need a disclaimer because I feel like it makes you seem unprofessional to have these weirdly spelled words in your captions,” she said, “especially for content that's supposed to be serious and medically inclined.”
Where's the balance for professionalism with respect to dodging the algorithmic filters for serious health-related conversations online?
Where does the line exist for moving from coded language into the space of dog whistles and a "wink and a nod"?
Do these exist in all cultures?
What level is contextual?
But algorithmic content moderation systems are more pervasive on the modern Internet, and often end up silencing marginalized communities and important discussions.
What about non-marginalized toxic communities like Neo-Nazis?
Unlike other mainstream social platforms, the primary way content is distributed on TikTok is through an algorithmically curated “For You” page; having followers doesn’t guarantee people will see your content. This shift has led average users to tailor their videos primarily toward the algorithm, rather than a following, which means abiding by content moderation rules is more crucial than ever.
Social media has slowly moved away from communication between people who know each other to people who are farther apart in social spaces. Increasingly in 2021 onward, some platforms like TikTok have acted as a distribution platform and ignored explicit social connections like follower/followee in lieu of algorithmic-only feeds to distribute content to people based on a variety of criteria including popularity of content and the readers' interests.
Internet ‘algospeak’ is changing our language in real time, from ‘nip nops’ to ‘le dollar bean’ by Taylor Lorenz
https://bombas.com/products/mens-gripper-slipper-sherpa-lined?variant=charcoal
An early Valentines Day gift
https://www.cyberneticforests.com/ai-images
Critical Topics: AI Images is an undergraduate class delivered for Bradley University in Spring 2023. It is meant to provide an overview of the context of AI art making tools and connects media studies, new media art, and data ethics with current events and debates in AI and generative art. Students will learn to think critically about these tools by using them: understand what they are by making work that reflects the context and histories of the tools.
Diolch'n fawr!
Happy to see that @hirnbloggade@bildung.social has got some Welsh and somehow knows I do too.
https://mastodon.social/@hirnbloggade@bildung.social/109835728484596323
Sloan, Robin. “Author’s Note.” Experimental fiction. Wordcraft Writers Workshop, November 2022. https://wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com/stories/robin-sloan.
brilliant!
"I have affirmed the premise that the enemy can be so simple as a bundle of hate," said he. "What else? I have extinguished the light of a story utterly.
How fitting that the amanuensis in a short story written with the help of artificial intelligence has done the opposite of what the author intended!
Zur Ausstellung ist ein Katalog im snoeck Verlag erschienen (29,80 Euro).
There's a catalog for this exhibition available:
Meschede, Friedrich, ed. Serendipity. Vom Glück des Findens. Snoeck Verlagsges, 2015. https://www.buecher.de/shop/buecher/serendipity-vom-glueck-des-findens/broschiertes-buch/products_products/detail/prod_id/43762021/.
ᔥ[[Andreas Fasel]] in Niklas Luhmann: Ein Zettelkasten als zweites Gehirn at 2015-06-28<br /> (accessed:: 2023-02-13 11:45:39)
Fasel, Andreas. “Niklas Luhmann: Ein Zettelkasten als zweites Gehirn.” Die Welt, June 28, 2015, web edition, sec. North Rhine-Westphalia. (https://www.welt.de/regionales/nrw/article143147819/Ein-Zettelkasten-war-Luhmanns-zweites-Gehirn.html.
Der Zettelkasten wird in der Ausstellung „Serendipity – Vom Glück des Findens“ in der Kunsthalle Bielefeld gezeigt, 11. Juli bis 11. Oktober
google translate:
The Zettelkasten will be shown in the exhibition “ Serendipity – From the Luck of Finding ” at the Kunsthalle Bielefeld, July 11 to October 11
In addition to having appeared in the Marbach zettelkasten exhibition in 2013, Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten also appeared in the exhibition "Serendipity: From the Luck of Finding" at Kunsthalle Bielefeld from July 11 - October 11, 2015.
„Und?“, fragt Schmidt und macht eine Kunstpause, „enttäuscht?“
Coincidence that Schmidt shows a journalist Luhmann's zettelkasten in 2015 and asks if they're disappointed?
It's reasonably likely that he'd already read ZKII 9/8,3.
see: https://hypothes.is/a/GFj15IcbEe21OIMwT2TOJA
in the article which follows below, there's an explicit mention of this specific zettel, so the question on priority here is closed.
Schade eigentlich, dass sich Schmidt für solche Privatheiten gar nicht interessieren soll. Denn das Ziel seines Forschungsprojekts, das von der NRW-Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste finanziert wird, ist es, den wissenschaftlichen Nachlass des Niklas Luhmann für dessen wissenschaftliche Nachfahren aufzubereiten. Wenn alles gescannt ist, muss Zettel für Zettel von der Handschrift in Maschinenschrift übertragen werden. Dann sollen sämtliche Querverweise, mit denen Luhmann seine Zettel untereinander vernetzt hat, auch digital verlinkt werden. „Und am Ende könnten vielleicht einzelne Abteilungen des Kastens auch in Buchform veröffentlicht werden“, erklärt Schmidt. Laufzeit des Projekts: 16 Jahre.
google translate:
It's a pity that Schmidt shouldn't be interested in such private matters. Because the aim of his research project, which is funded by the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts, is to prepare Niklas Luhmann's scientific estate for his scientific descendants.
When everything is scanned, note by note must be transferred from handwriting to typescript. Then all cross-references with which Luhmann has networked his slips of paper should also be linked digitally. "And in the end, individual sections of the box could perhaps also be published in book form," explains Schmidt. Duration of the project: 16 years.
Schmidt's work on Niklas Luhmann's scientific estate is funded by the NRW Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the project is expected to last 16 years. The careful observer will notice that this duration is over half of Luhmann's own expected project length of 30 years. The cost of which is also significantly more than the "cost: none" that Luhmann projected at the time.
link to https://hypothes.is/a/zUjEIvfWEeykOiO1E8YAYw
Researchers ought to account for the non-insignificant archival cost of their work once it's done.
Die Lebenswelt des Niklas Luhmann – die findet Schmidt jetzt manchmal auf den Rückseiten der Zettel. Denn Luhmann recycelte für seinen Kasten offenbar jeden Fetzen Papier, den er finden konnte. So kann es vorkommen, dass auf der Zettel-Vorderseite komprimierte Überlegungen zum Autopoiesis-Begriff stehen oder Zusammenfassungen unbekannter Traktate aus früheren Jahrhunderten, während auf der Rückseite erste Rechenübungen von Luhmanns Kindern zu finden sind. Oder Scheckabrechnungen. Oder Anweisungen an die Haushaltshilfe: „Kellertreppe gründlich fegen und wischen“, steht da zum Beispiel.
google translate:
The world of Niklas Luhmann – Schmidt now sometimes finds it on the back of the slip. Because Luhmann apparently recycled every scrap of paper he could find for his box. So it can happen that on the front of the note there are condensed reflections on the concept of autopoiesis or summaries of unknown treatises from earlier centuries, while on the back you can find the first arithmetic exercises by Luhmann's children. Or check statements. Or instructions to the household help: “Sweep and wipe the basement stairs thoroughly”, for example.
Luhmann adhered to the standard advice to write only on one side of his cards, though perhaps not just for the usual reasons, but in part because he recycled the papers he had at hand to make his slips. On the backs of his notes one can find instructions he'd made to his household help, his children's homework papers, bank statements, and other papers he happened to have at hand.
Man kann zwar 50 Zettel auf einmal in den Scanner legen, doch für jeden einzelnen muss eine eigene Datei angelegt werden. Schmidt rechnet, dass es ein Jahr dauern wird, bis der ganze Kasten digital erfasst ist.
Schmidt estimated in 2015 that it would take at least a year to scan in the entire corpus of Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten, imaging 50 cards at a time.
Doch als er richtig zu zählen begann, wurde ihm klar, dass es wohl weit mehr sind. Luhmann hatte für die Niederschrift seiner Gedanken keine festen Karteikarten benutzt, sondern normales Papier, das er in Din-A6-Stücke schnitt und dicht an dicht in die Kästen quetschte.
Instead of using pre-made stiff index cards, Luhmann used standard paper which he cut up into DIN A6 sized slips which he packed into his drawers. Schmidt had trouble removing slips from some of the boxes because they were packed so tightly.
Exactly how much space would be saved writing on standard paper versus index cards in a collection as large as Luhmann's?
Und doch fand er darin nie das, was er eigentlich suchte, sondern etwas Neues, Überraschendes.
google translate:
And yet he never found what he was actually looking for, but something new and surprising.
While you'll only find in your zettelkasten exactly what you placed there, you may be surprised to find more than you expected.
Entsprechend groß war die Neugier seiner Schüler und Kollegen, die den Kasten analysieren wollten. Doch jahrelang stritten Luhmanns Kinder vor Gericht um den wissenschaftlichen Nachlass, an eine Aufarbeitung war lange nicht zu denken. Erst 2011 konnte die Universität Bielefeld Luhmanns geistige Hinterlassenschaften kaufen. Und nun, seit Anfang des Jahres, wird tatsächlich erforscht, was es auf sich hat mit diesem Kasten, der in Soziologenkreisen schon mal als Heiliger Gral bezeichnet wird.
google translate:
The curiosity of his students and colleagues, who wanted to analyze the box, was correspondingly high. For years, however, Luhmann's children fought in court about the scientific legacy, and for a long time there was no question of a reappraisal. It was not until 2011 that the University of Bielefeld was able to buy Luhmann's intellectual legacies. And now, since the beginning of the year, research has actually been going on into what this box, which sociologists have sometimes referred to as the Holy Grail, is all about.
Bielefeld University sued Luhmann's estate (his children) over his intellectual legacy. In 2011 they were finally able to purchase his papers, but research on his papers and zettelkasten didn't begin until early 2015.
Als der so liebenswerte wie kauzige Universalgelehrte 1998 starb, hinterließ er nicht nur ein Werk von Weltrang, sondern eben auch jenen Zettelkasten, um den schon zu seinen Lebzeiten Legenden rankten.
google translate:
When the universal scholar, who was as lovable as he was odd, died in 1998, he not only left behind a work of world renown, but also that box of papers that was already the subject of legends during his lifetime.
This article indicates that Luhmann's zettelkasten was legendary during his lifetime, but was this really the case? Luhmann indicated people's disappointment in his own writing (ZKII 9/8,3), but is there other anecdotal evidence that this wasn't the case?
What does the lawsuit between the family and the Bielefeld over his papers indicate?
Hennemann, Alexa. “Ausstellungseröffnung am 4. März: »Zettelkästen. Maschinen der Phantasie« Mit Navid Kermani, Norbert Miller und Meike Werner. Zum 250. Geburtstag von Jean Paul.” Deutches Literatur Archiv Marbach, February 13, 2013. https://www.dla-marbach.de/presse/presse-details/news/pm-11-2013/.
https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/riverside-ca/fred-aldrich-6032921
Fred Waldo Aldrich, Jr. (1927-12-10 - 2014-06-29) engineer of Marlborough, MA.
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0017674/?ref_=tt_cl_t_12
book idea w/ title:
Uncredited: The Life of Fred Aldrich
was he related to Robert Aldrich?
http://www.pearltrees.com/barockschloss/knowledge-management-germany/id12863560
Knowledge Management in Germany by Barockschloss
Example of someone using the social bookmarking application Pearltrees as a form of digital zettelkasten. They've created a collection of cards about zettelkasten.
A Guide to Thesis Writing and a Guide to Life<br /> by Hua Hsu
“How to Write a Thesis,” then, isn’t just about fulfilling a degree requirement. It’s also about engaging difference and attempting a project that is seemingly impossible, humbly reckoning with “the knowledge that anyone can teach us something.” It models a kind of self-actualization, a belief in the integrity of one’s own voice.
at a time when anything that takes more than a few minutes to skim is called a “longread”—it’s understandable that devoting a small chunk of one’s frisky twenties to writing a thesis can seem a waste of time, outlandishly quaint, maybe even selfish. And, as higher education continues to bend to the logic of consumption and marketable skills, platitudes about pursuing knowledge for its own sake can seem certifiably bananas.
Consider Eco’s caution against “the alibi of photocopies”: “A student makes hundreds of pages of photocopies and takes them home, and the manual labor he exercises in doing so gives him the impression that he possesses the work. Owning the photocopies exempts the student from actually reading them. This sort of vertigo of accumulation, a neocapitalism of information, happens to many.” Many of us suffer from an accelerated version of this nowadays, as we effortlessly bookmark links or save articles to Instapaper, satisfied with our aspiration to hoard all this new information, unsure if we will ever get around to actually dealing with it.
neocapitalism of information!!
Is information overload compounded by our information hoarding tendencies?
But the book’s enduring appeal—the reason it might interest someone whose life no longer demands the writing of anything longer than an e-mail—has little to do with the rigors of undergraduate honors requirements. Instead, it’s about what, in Eco’s rhapsodic and often funny book, the thesis represents: a magical process of self-realization, a kind of careful, curious engagement with the world that need not end in one’s early twenties.
An Introduction to Proofs and the Mathematical Vernacular<br /> by Martin Day
My experience is that whatever students learn from that formalism is left by the wayside as soon as they move into a mathematical context of any substance.
I've experienced and seen this myself.
Lesen lernen<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke
Wolff, Tobias. “Bullet in the Brain.” The New Yorker, September 17, 1995. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/09/25/bullet-in-the-brain.
The bullet is already in the brain; it won’t be outrun forever, or charmed to a halt. In the end it willdo its work and leave the troubled skull behind, dragging its comet’s tail of memory and hope andtalent and love into the marble hall of commerce.
fight back the titters.
a perfect phrase here
“Oh, bravo, “Anders said. “Dead meat.” He turned to the woman in front of him. “Great script, eh?The stern, brass-knuckled poetry of the dangerous classes.”
Wordcraft Writers Workshop by Andy Coenen - PAIR, Daphne Ippolito - Brain Research Ann Yuan - PAIR, Sehmon Burnam - Magenta
cross reference: ChatGPT
LaMDA was not designed as a writing tool. LaMDA was explicitly trained to respond safely and sensibly to whomever it’s engaging with.
Only through open and ongoing dialog between technologists and artists can we build tools that have a positive impact on the world.
We definitely need more focus on digital humanism.
The novel workflows that a technology enables are fundamental to how the technology is used, but these workflows need to be discovered and refined before the underlying technology can be truly useful.
This is, in part, why the tools for thought space should be looking at intellectual history to see how people have worked in the past.
Rather than looking at how writers have previously worked and building something specific that supports those methods, they've taken a tool designed for something else and just thrown it into the mix. Perhaps useful creativity stems from it in a new and unique way, but most likely writers are going to continue their old methods.
Can a language model be transgressive without intentionality?
More provocatively, great writing is transgressive — it subverts expectations and challenges the reader.
LaMDA's safety features could also be limiting: Michelle Taransky found that "the software seemed very reluctant to generate people doing mean things". Models that generate toxic content are highly undesirable, but a literary world where no character is ever mean is unlikely to be interesting.
A recurring theme in the authors’ feedback was that Wordcraft could not stick to a single narrative arc or writing direction.
When does using an artificial intelligence-based writing tool make the writer an editor of the computer's output rather than the writer themself?
A recurring theme in the authors’ feedback was that Wordcraft could not stick to a single narrative arc or writing direction.
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.
How much of our creativity and authorial voice is based on our own experiences and material we've read, watched, listened to?
Several participants noted the occasionally surreal quality of Wordcraft's suggestions.
Wordcraft's hallucinations can create interesting and creatively surreal suggestions.
How might one dial up or down the ability to hallucinate or create surrealism within an artificial intelligence used for thinking, writing, etc.?
One of the most well-documented shortcomings of large language models is that they can hallucinate. Because these models have no direct knowledge of the physical world, they're prone to conjuring up facts out of thin air. They often completely invent details about a subject, even when provided a great deal of context.
Writers struggled with the fickle nature of the system. They often spent a great deal of time wading through Wordcraft's suggestions before finding anything interesting enough to be useful. Even when writers struck gold, it proved challenging to consistently reproduce the behavior. Not surprisingly, writers who had spent time studying the technical underpinnings of large language models or who had worked with them before were better able to get the tool to do what they wanted.
Because one may need to spend an inordinate amount of time filtering through potentially bad suggestions of artificial intelligence, the time and energy spent keeping a commonplace book or zettelkasten may pay off magnificently in the long run.
Many authors noted that generations tended to fall into clichés, especially when the system was confronted with scenarios less likely to be found in the model's training data. For example, Nelly Garcia noted the difficulty in writing about a lesbian romance — the model kept suggesting that she insert a male character or that she have the female protagonists talk about friendship. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne attempted to deviate from standard fantasy tropes (e.g. heroes as cartographers and builders, not warriors), but Wordcraft insisted on pushing the story toward the well-worn trope of a warrior hero fighting back enemy invaders.
Examples of artificial intelligence pushing toward pre-existing biases based on training data sets.
novel is not the same as interesting
Wordcraft tended to produce only average writing.
How to improve on this state of the art?
“[It's] an amazing tool for brainstorming or rubber-ducking. Its conversational quality is perfect to talk about plot, characters and worldbuilding.”- Nelly Garcia
Presumably the use of rubber-ducking here is an indicator of Nelly Garcia's background with programming and prior AI tool use?
The rubber duck as a writing partner?
We've also integrated a chatbot feature into the app to enable unstructured conversation about the story being written.
Presumably being used for rubber ducking?
Was it also used as research feedback for the program itself?
“...it can be very useful for coming up with ideas out of thin air, essentially. All you need is a little bit of seed text, maybe some notes on a story you've been thinking about or random bits of inspiration and you can hit a button that gives you nearly infinite story ideas.”- Eugenia Triantafyllou
Eugenia Triantafyllou is talking about crutches for creativity and inspiration, but seems to miss the value of collecting interesting tidbits along the road of life that one can use later. Instead, the emphasis here becomes one of relying on an artificial intelligence doing it for you at the "hit of a button". If this is the case, then why not just let the artificial intelligence do all the work for you?
This is the area where the cultural loss of mnemonics used in orality or even the simple commonplace book will make us easier prey for (over-)reliance on technology.
Is serendipity really serendipity if it's programmed for you?
The authors agreed that the ability to conjure ideas "out of thin air" was one of the most compelling parts of co-writing with an AI model.
Again note the reference to magic with respect to the artificial intelligence: "the ability to conjure ideas 'out of thin air'".
language models are incredible "yes, and" machines, allowing writers to quickly explore seemingly unlimited variations on their ideas.
Wordcraft shined the most as a brainstorming partner and source of inspiration. Writers found it particularly useful for coming up with novel ideas and elaborating on them. AI-powered creative tools seem particularly well suited to sparking creativity and addressing the dreaded writer's block.
Just as using a text for writing generative annotations (having a conversation with a text) is a useful exercise for writers and thinkers, creative writers can stand to have similar textual creativity prompts.
Compare Wordcraft affordances with tools like Nabokov's card index (zettelkasten) method, Twyla Tharp's boxes, MadLibs, cadavre exquis, et al.
The key is to have some sort of creativity catalyst so that one isn't working in a vacuum or facing the dreaded blank page.
The workshop cohort consisted of 13 professional writers, who were given 8 weeks to use Wordcraft. Unlike more constrained user studies run in the past, we gave writers freedom to write anything they wanted using any workflow they could devise. We share below some of the insights we learned through this process.
How much training did they get with the tool prior to use, particularly those without any experience?
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
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.
For instance, if the user selects a phrase, a button to "Rewrite this phrase" is revealed along with a text input in which the user can describe how they would like the phrase to be rewritten. The user might type "to be funnier" or "to be more melancholy", and the Wordcraft application uses LaMDA and in-context learning to perform the task.
We like to describe Wordcraft as a "magic text editor". It's a familiar web-based word processor, but under the hood it has a number of LaMDA-powered writing features that reveal themselves depending on the user's activity.
The engineers behind Wordcraft refer to it "as a 'magic text editor'". This is a cop-out for many versus a more concrete description of what is actually happening under the hood of the machine.
It's also similar, thought subtly different to the idea of the "magic of note taking" by which writers are taking about ideas of emergent creativity and combinatorial creativity which occur in that space.
The application is powered by LaMDA, one of the latest generation of large language models. At its core, LaMDA is a simple machine — it's trained to predict the most likely next word given a textual prompt. But because the model is so large and has been trained on a massive amount of text, it's able to learn higher-level concepts.
Is LaMDA really able to "learn higher-level concepts" or is it just a large, straight-forward information theoretic-based prediction engine?
Our team at Google Research built Wordcraft, an AI-powered text editor centered on story writing, to see how far we could push the limits of this technology.
People + AI Research (PAIR) is a multidisciplinary team at Google that explores the human side of AI by doing fundamental research, building tools, creating design frameworks, and working with diverse communities.
Ippolito, Daphne, Ann Yuan, Andy Coenen, and Sehmon Burnam. “Creative Writing with an AI-Powered Writing Assistant: Perspectives from Professional Writers.” arXiv, November 9, 2022. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2211.05030.
See also: https://wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com/learn
A Google project entering the public as ChatGPT was released and becoming popular.
For additional experiences, see: https://www.robinsloan.com/newsletters/authors-note/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMiCg48VN5JcFvSl4D20w6b16UgMtDCep
One or two interesting tidbits in this playlist. Many I've already trolled through.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZgMpjjgCRA
Combining sketchnotes with Cornell Notes in a fairly straightforward manner.
He mentions anecdotally that teachers who have used custom icons for their subjects see students drawing some of them on their exam papers as mental associative tags. This is the same sort of use that drolleries had in medieval manuscripts.
Author's note by Robin Sloan<br /> November 2022
But a good short story is always basically a memento mori.
An interesting theory...
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce comes to mind as an excellent example.
I have to report that the AI did not make a useful or pleasant writing partner. Even a state-of-the-art language model cannot presently “understand” what a fiction writer is trying to accomplish in an evolving draft. That’s not unreasonable; often, the writer doesn’t know exactly what they’re trying to accomplish! Often, they are writing to find out.
First, I’m impressed as hell by the Wordcraft team. Daphne Ippolito, Ann Yuan, Andy Coenen, Sehmon Burnam, and their colleagues engineered an impressive, provocative writing tool, but/and, more importantly, they investigated its use with sensitivity and courage.
Approaching this project, I felt committed to writing a story that could stand on its own; a story that achieved the same things I want ANY of my stories to achieve; a story to which the response might be not, “I see what you did there”, but: “I loved this!”
"I see what you did there" as a genre of writing is interesting for its cleverness, but many authors will prefer readers to love their work instead of admiring their cleverness in one part.
PolitiFact - People are using coded language to avoid social media moderation. Is it working?<br /> by Kayla Steinberg<br /> November 4, 2021
Moran said the codes themselves may end up limiting the reach of misinformation. As they get more cryptic, they become harder to understand. If people are baffled by a unicorn emoji in a post about COVID-19, they might miss or dismiss the misinformation.
"The coded language is effective in that it creates this sense of community," said Rachel Moran, a researcher who studies COVID-19 misinformation at the University of Washington. People who grasp that a unicorn emoji means "vaccination" and that "swimmers" are vaccinated people are part of an "in" group. They might identify with or trust misinformation more, said Moran, because it’s coming from someone who is also in that "in" group.
A shared language and even more specifically a coded shared language can be used to create a sense of community or define an in group identity.
Zettelkasten workflow<br /> by pqnelson
r/Zettelkasten - Workflow of a Mathematical Zettelkasten<br /> by u/thmprover
a permanent note (according to Ahrens) is actually the name for both "zettels" (what Ahrens calls "the main notes in the slip box," or what many are now calling "zettels") and literature notes.
a subtle catch about Ahrens' terminology
Eight of the 57 letters found by the codebreakers were already in Britain's archives because Walsingham had a spy in the French embassy from mid-1583, Lasry said.
DECRYPT project, an international, cross-disciplinary team scouring the world's archives to find coded historical documents to decipher.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLV4EDBtuas
Quotes I've made that I never expected to be excerpted... 🤣
Perry analogizes many people's experience of writing to passing a kidney stone and then contrasts it with me talking about the Mozart composing/cow peeing analogy.
http://www.wisdomofchopra.com/...
A random generator using Deepak Chopra tweets.
Reminiscent of https://hypothes.is/a/bzlr9l06Ee23w7voPzbY5g
Arbeiten mit Zettelkästen<br /> by Daniel Lüdecke
at this time in 2013-08-29, Christian Tietze was hosting zettelkasten.de on his personal domain before it moved later that year to its ultimate site, thus the reason that the Twitter link here resolves to Christian's site https://christiantietze.de/ now.
At the time, Daniel was obviously aware of both Christian and Manfred Kuehn's Taking Note blog.
He was also aware of Kuehn's original translation of Luhmann's essay in it's original location at http://scriptogr.am/kuehnm/post/2012-12-22-111621 before it moved. (I remember spending ages puzzling out the original location via the Internet Archive).