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.

https://lu.ma/toolsforthought

Software and applications for creating visualizations of zettelkasten contents: - Tinderbox (Mac) - Apple's Freeform (app) - Obsidian Canvas - Excalidraw (plugin for Obsidian) - Scrintal - Heptabase - Card Buddy (Mac) - AFFiNE (https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE)

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2797/an-app-to-represent-a-zettelkasten-or-parts-of-it-visually

https://blogarchive.org/

Reply to @Denny @richnewman @patrickrhone at https://beardystarstuff.net/2024/01/16/i-finished-reading.html

I started reading Parable of the Sower exactly one year to the date mentioned at the start of the book at the public library in Pasadena where she grew up. As a 49 year old father of a 12 year old daughter, it was a much more visceral and eerie experience than I could ever have expected. She has forever changed the perspective I have driving down the streets of our shared neighborhood.

I'm not sure if they'll have open remote registrations for it or if it will only be broadcast locally, but the local Octavia Butler Book Club has an upcoming zoom session on Feb 24 which can be found in the Pasadena Public Library's newsletter (.pdf). It will feature Dr. Kendra Parker via Zoom from Georgia to present her lecture: "Walking a Mile in Her Shoes: Exploring Octavia Butler's Archives."

The nearby Huntington Library houses her papers and some of her materials there may be accessible online.

read [[Dan Allosso]] in Peer to Peer?

Not sure if you've seen/found it before, but as academia has been having bigger problems with granting tenure over the past 20 years, there's been a rise of discussion of alternate academia pathways, often under the term #AltAc in social media and other locations. Careers in writing in other spaces have certainly abounded here.

https://www.derrekchow.com/

Collaborating with Andy Matuschak on future of book/reading project BookBridge

2023-12-21 BookBridge Talk, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M-nfWI93nY. Andy Matuschak and Derrek Chow

The linking between physical book and digital book is somewhat reminiscent to me to Livescribe.com's use of Anoto digital paper and direct linking of handwriting on the page with recorded audio. Perhaps the physical book and digital book could use such a substrate to effectuate some of the work seen here, but also do it in a way that is easily (digitally) recordable as well as replayable. They've also done some of the handwriting to text work one might want in this space.

[[Dan Allosso]] in How to Read, part 2

Dan Allosso uses the abbreviation KW (key word) after which he ascribes categories or tags to his notes.

Nice start on a list of goals for reading

others?

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

original source?

it's Benjamin Franklin letter to Miss Stevenson, Wanstead. Craven-street, May 16, 1760.<br /> see: https://hyp.is/HZeDKI3YEeyj9GcNWKX4iA/www.gutenberg.org/files/40236/40236-h/40236-h.htm

read [[Dan Allosso]] in Weekly Review, 1-15

https://www.ebay.com/itm/404745139607

2024-01-16 60 drawer card catalog offered for bid at $2100 and buy it now at $4,400. Solid cabinet in good shape, missing one rod. All wood. Has three writing drawers. Shippable from Huffman, TX for $92.83.

Cost per drawer: - bid offer: $35.00 - buy now: 73.33

Not the best source here, but...

https://www.tastingtable.com/1490534/rusty-nail-two-ingredient-cocktail-frank-sinatra/

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227134526/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/12/22/writing-format-of-fieldnote/

Hawk Sugano uses a wastebook-like process to take contemporaneous notes in a pocket notebook and later transfers the ideas to index cards for follow up and filing.

Hawk Sugano was introduced to index cards circa 2001 by means of Watanabe Shoichi's book “知的生活の方法” (A Method of Intellectual Life".

https://web.archive.org/web/20170530033313/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/08/20/me-and-indexcard/

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227134635/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2007/01/27/pile-of-fieldnotes/

I certainly didn't see this coming as part of the Pile of Index Cards... pocketnotebooks! Ostensibly for quick note (idea) capture on the move with transfer later.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180227130424/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/12/25/start-indexcard-provider-service/

Hawk Sugano apparently offered the Pile of Index Cards as a physical product offering by combining Correct's index card dock and Kokuyo's fieldnotes in late December 2006.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170321222822/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/cluster/

Hawk Sugano's archived Pile of Index Cards website for exploration.

https://forum.obsidian.md/t/zotero-integration-import-templates/36310/2

[[Devon Price]] in Laziness Does Not Exist - Human Parts

Archive copy without paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20191231131144/https://humanparts.medium.com/laziness-does-not-exist-3af27e312d01?gi=e119027675fe

Deleuze, Gilles. L’Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze, avec Claire Parnet - Lecture Recording 1 - A to F, 15 December 1988. Interview by Claire Parnet. Transcript, December 15, 1988. https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/lecture/lecture-recording-1-f/.

https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/lecture/lecture-recording-1-f/

Gilles Deleuze: The ABC Primer / Recording 1 - A to F<br /> DECEMBER 15, 1988

https://www.artisanalsoftwarefestival.com/

Winterfest2023

https://web.archive.org/web/sitemap/https://machines.kfitz.info/ss22/

Archives of Kathleen Fitzpatrick's machines.kfitz.info sites for teaching/past courses.

read [[Stephen Robertson]] in A New Graduate Course for 2022: Digital Scholarship

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/1120/a-notebook-zettelkasten/p1

https://www.modernbluesharmonica.com/home.html

found via Andy Sylvester bookmark

I could totally see this UI with a video generated version of Niklas Luhmann answering questions using the training set of notes in his online zettelkasten at https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial

syndication link: https://bavatuesdays.com/ai106-long-live-the-new-flesh/comment-page-1/#comment-388943

read [[Jim Groom]] in [AI106: Long Live the New Flesh](https://bavatuesdays.com/ai106-long-live-the-new-flesh/comment-page-1/0

https://oblivion.university/

ᔥ[[Jim Groom]] in AI106: Long Live the New Flesh

Read [[Doug Belshaw]] in I am so tired of moving platforms on 2023-12-27 (accessed:: 2024-01-05 09:58:46)

https://web.archive.org/web/20240000000000*/next-action.net

Archive pages for Aki Oda's website next-action.net

https://flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/275215540/

Fascinating commentary here

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aki_oda/albums/72157606070587225/

Another writer in Japan using the Pile of Index Cards method with visualizations in Flickr.

read [[Edward Vielmetti]] in Index Cards, Anne Lamott, from Bird By Bird

https://web.archive.org/web/20070121034201/http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/filing.001.html

Read [[Edward Vielmetti]] in Noguchi Filing System (Chou Seiri Hou) – abandon all classification except chronological

Read [[Edward Vielmetti]] in Noguchi filing system on index cards from hawkexpress

https://www.noguchi.co.jp/

https://communicationnation.blogspot.com/2005/12/noguchi-filing-system.html

https://communicationnation.blogspot.com/2009/09/designing-narrative-with-index-cards.html

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166548034302

January 2024 15 drawer Gaylord Bros. card catalog in maple offered for $949.95 as local pick up only from Charlotte, NC. Missing two rods, very dodgy finish. Modular three piece: top, 5x3 and table base.

cost per drawer: $63.33

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156005054108

January 2024: offering two separate 60 drawer card catalogs for sale OBO at $3,500.. Semi-modular with separate leg bases. Each has 3 writing drawers. Finish in rough shape, missing some rods.

Cost per drawer: $29.16 (Presuming both for the $3,500)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166548086801

Brodart 9 drawer card catalog. Generally good shape, some issue with finish, no rods. Offered for $250 in January 2024. Pick up or shipping from Garden Grove, CA

Cost per drawer: $27.77

https://hcommons.org/groups/academic-job-market-support-network/docs/

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/job_search_writing/preparing_an_application/writing_the_personal_statement/index.html

(1977) The Combahee River Collective Statement

ᔥ[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in [Schedule – Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing]

[[Tressie McMillan Cottom]] in The Dolly Moment

ᔥ[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Schedule – Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

[[Mark Greif]] in What’s Wrong With Public Intellectuals?

ᔥ[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Schedule – Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

[[Corey Robin]] in How Intellectuals Create a Public

ᔥ[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Schedule – Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

https://peculiargenres.commons.msu.edu/schedule/

overflow of writing advice!

[[Kathleen Fitzpatrick]] in Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing

https://www.goodreads.com/notes/23814811-debt/3524158-markgrabe-grabe

Mark Grabe's highlights and annotations on David Graeber's Debt: The First 5,000 Years.

https://streetpass.social/

StreetPass, a browser extension that leverages rel="me" for compiling a list of potential mastodon accounts to follow as you visit websites.

https://colourblind-palette-maker.glitch.me/

https://mastodon.social/@christianp@mathstodon.xyz/111759984202211741

Is there a way to mathematically encode colors, similar to RGB perhaps, such that the colors in nearby neighborhoods all have values close to each other?

https://enchroma.co.uk/collections/colour-blind-glasses

Read [[John Halbrooks]] in Respect for Working Writers

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicrosoftWord/comments/psrqdc/can_someone_send_me_a_free_microsoft_word/

https://www.avery.com/blog/turn-your-address-list-into-labels/

At least Scott Scheper is advising people to ignore the advice in his own book about numbering systems. (Too bad he didn't write that advice in his own book...)

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/193c6bu/comment/khcbe5n/

Read [Zeb Larson]] in The Second Ku Klux Klan: How It Gained Social and Political Power Among White Protestants

https://backlinks-checker.com/

https://trunks.social/login

https://pantryandlarder.com/mccheapest

Syllabus: Peculiar Genres of Academic Writing<br /> https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:44397/ by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

The first part of "sociological imagination" for Mills is what I term combinatorial creativity. In his instance, at varying intervals he dumps out disconnected ideas, files and resorts them to find interesting potential solutions.

"unfiled notes" as "fleeting notes" which aren't expanded upon and turned into "permanent notes"

how are these related to his "fringe thoughts"

C. Wright Mills' idea of "fringe-thoughts" is similar to Ahrens framing of "fleeting notes".

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

read [[John Halbrooks]] in Hwæt!

original source?

Robert Cotton's library had busts of Roman emperors atop his shelves, and he used their names as part of his indexing system to be able to associate books' locations to make them findable.

https://johnhalbrooks.substack.com/p/the-ruin-76

Read [[Dan Allosso]] in Reading Beowulf, part 1

Read [[John Halbrooks]] in Canonical Resolutions

h/t Dan Allosso

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

reply to JasperMcFly at https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19282/#Comment_19282

I've been working towards this goal for some time. The idea isn't simply delineating the characteristics of Luhmann's system and its comparison to others, but to discern what the broadest characteristics of all of these systems are and what sorts of affordances those pieces and forms provide as tools for organizing and thinking. This will allow a broader range of people with different needs and different abilities to pick and choose which characteristics and methods might work best for them to reach those particular goals. Too many are approaching zettelkasten with a surface level understanding and somehow hoping that it will magically solve all their problems. When it doesn't, "consequently," as Luhmann would say, "just like in porn movies, they leave disappointed." [ZK II note 9/8.3]

reply to https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19278/#Comment_19278

@JasperMcFly I'll presume that given the time differential, you may have missed my post just before yours which touches on the frivolity of the proposition of creating a single definition?

Most on this forum are going to presume that zettelkasten is precisely a slipbox in a similar form to that of Luhmann, but in practice some here and many elsewhere aren't going to see the distinction (or care). Some will unpopularly insist that a zettelkasten cannot be digital in form, but they'll also do so while simultaneously (heterodoxically and confusingly?) suggesting that one should use Wikipedia's Academic Outline of Disciplines, an idea which didn't exist during Luhmann's life.

You can make an attempt to force a definition, but I guarantee that it's a losing proposition as in practice people are going to use the word in almost any way they want—whatever you do, don't trust Humpty Dumpty's definition. It's the difference between prescriptive and proscriptive definitions. It can be seen in your very question if you look closely at your own phrase "beg the question", which in classic rhetoric means something very specific going back centuries, but in common use it has a dramatically different meaning. As ever, context will always be the king on these questions of definition, though some of us are still converging on a happy commonality.

For a bit more history here, try The Two Definitions of Zettelkasten.

https://app.thebrain.com/brain/3d80058c-14d8-5361-0b61-a061f89baf87/d12b175b-7139-40f7-a80a-d196390cfe67

https://www.etsy.com/shop/RelicWoodGifts

Etsy shop that does custom wooden boxes: Relic Wood Gifts<br /> Could be commissioned to do custom zettelkasten boxes.

I've seen an example of their work and it is stunningly nice.

via Librarian at Jefferson Branch of Pasadena Public library

https://saltoptics.com/products/colorado-55-rx-agib

Ordered pair on 2023-12-29 Picked up on 2024-01-10

Read Minority Rules: Scientists Discover Tipping Point for the Spread of Ideas by Gabrielle DeMarco

found via: https://hypothes.is/a/kMVt4rC4Ee6E5bdC29_e_g

Yong, Ed. “The Tipping Point When Minority Views Take Over.” The Atlantic (blog), June 7, 2018. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/the-tipping-point-when-minority-views-take-over/562307/.

Centola's Experiments Suggest 25% Activists Will Tip a Population

Relationship with @Schelling1971 work?

Schelling, Thomas C. “Dynamic Models of Segregation.” The Journal of Mathematical Sociology 1, no. 2 (July 1, 1971): 143–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022250X.1971.9989794.

The key here seems to be the noncommitted actors. Who are they? Why are they noncommitted? Are there areas where noncommittment doesn't occur?

https://app.thebrain.com/brain/3d80058c-14d8-5361-0b61-a061f89baf87/d06bd27d-2452-cae5-f99d-622f9311051b

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSuz01zvOjE Jerry Michalski's review of The Great Transformation (1944) by Karl Polanyi

https://app.thebrain.com/brain/3d80058c-14d8-5361-0b61-a061f89baf87/564624c8-7e1b-458b-a59e-6065c37b821e

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

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

CrossLine<br /> https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine

ᔥSukhovskii in CrossLine who asks if anyone has used it for a ZK before

some may hear the mondegreen T-C-P which confusingly leaves R-E-S-E meaning nothing.

The initials T-C-B most likely mean "Take Care of Business", which fits in with some of the other variations of Franklin's version including:

"Ooh, your kisses, sweeter than honey<br /> And guess what? So is my money"

which equates kisses as being on par with her earnings, for which she expects "propers" (aka props, or proper respect).

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

Futures of Democracies Conference – Reykjavík - 2024

https://www.amazon.com/Great-Transformation-Political-Economic-Origins/dp/080705643X

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 2nd ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001.

I'm definitely not like this and suspect that most people are not either.

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

https://collect.readwriterespond.com/%f0%9f%93%ba-videodrome/

reply to oxytonic on 2023-01-08 at https://hypothes.is/a/8QdgetQOEe2XG6u5i9iAHQ

In my experience, alternating alphanumeric codes give you the "gist" of the original context. Purely with reference to my rough outline, my notecard "3516/b" implies psychology (3XXX), cognition (35XX), and memory (351X). Even the single slash implies a level of abstraction and/or specificity.

But it's not enough because it runs the risk of locking you in. Forward links on the card (or forward links to the card!) offer comparable if not competitive recontextualization, which is most likely what Luhmann means by "multiple storage".

Caution: My note here has some significant missing context which results from significant additional research.

The primary issue with analog slip boxes, particularly in academic research of Luhmann's day, was one of multiple storage. No one else I'm aware of prior to his time used Luhmann's filing scheme (and very few after until about 2013). Instead most filed multiple copies of their notes under category headings like "psychology", "cognition", and "memory" (to use your example) so that those ideas would be readily available when they came to work on their ideas relating to cognition, for example. This involved a tremendous amount of copying work. (For reference, see Heyde, Johannes Erich. Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens: zeitgemässe Mittel und Verfahrungsweisen. Junker und Dünnhaupt, 1931. which is the handbook which Luhmann used to scaffold his method.) It was this copying and filing under multiple categories which was commonly referred to as multiple storage. Many academics got around it by hiring assistants or secretaries who would do this duplicative work and filing on their behalf; Luhmann didn't have this additional help and it may have been a portion of the pressure for the evolution of his method.

Instead Luhmann used branching and cross-indexing his ideas along with regular use and familiarity of the space within his boxes. While his zettelkasten may seem on the surface to be done by category, the way you suggest, it definitely is not. Some of this appearance is suggested by editorial decisions made by the curators of his digital archive and, in larger part, by Scott Scheper who (sadly in my opinion) recommends using the Academic Outline of Disciplines as top level categories a practice which heavily belies some of what Luhmann was doing. While Luhmann was inspired by the Dewey Decimal System, he wasn't using the parts of it that equated numbers with topics, in part because he didn't need to and it would have been counterproductive to his ultimate method—specifically causing him to deal with multiple storage. Modern (digital) database theory and practice allows some note takers an easier way around this problem.

For more on this see: - https://boffosocko.com/2022/10/27/thoughts-on-zettelkasten-numbering-systems/ - https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/19/on-the-interdisciplinarity-of-zettelkasten-card-numbering-topical-headings-and-indices/

each sub-portion has its own topology. The index is decentralized in nature, while the bibliographical section/notes are all somewhat centralized in form.

I imagine this diversity of structure is what made Luhmann's slipbox so potent. In an ecosystem, neither an arboreal root system nor a mycorrhizal network are enough to stage nutrient flow; they must intertwine with each other.—oxytonic on 2024-01-08

Luhmann's system wasn't very unique (really only in his filing system) compared with the thousands of others in use at the time or for centuries prior. The more interesting space of intertwining is between the ideas in the box and those held in memory and worked on in coordination with the brain. Too many get wrapped up in his physically visible box and forget the work done by the by the "invisible" brain.

: blandishments ; a flattering or pleasing statement or action used to persuade someone gently to do something.

Mordell's theorem indicates that the group of rational points on an elliptic curve is finitely generated.

The Nagell-Lutz theorem provides a constructive algorithm on elliptic curves for finding all of the ration points of finite order.

The approach of the book is underpinned more by number theory rather than geometry, though the geometry is used for some basic motivations.