User input in OED entries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UD7grPoShzA

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/126p7tk/what_its_like_to_have_a_conversation_with_your/

McCullough, David. “David McCullough Interview with NEH Chairman Bruce Cole.” Humanities 23, no. 4 (August 2002). https://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/david-mccullough-biography.

Compare with: https://hypothes.is/a/yEFMHoCkEeyl34fItJe__w (Luhmann on thinking/writing in Sonke Ahrens)

Your zettelkasten, having a perfect memory of your "past self" acts as a ratchet so that when you have a new conversation on a particular topic, your "present self" can quickly remember where you left off and not only advance the arguments but leave an associative trail for your "future self" to continue on again later.

Many thoughts and associations occur when you're having conversations with any text, whether it's with something you're reading by another author or your own notes in your zettelkasten or commonplace book. For more conversations on this topic, perhaps thumb through: https://hypothes.is/users/chrisaldrich?q=tag%3A%27conversations+with+the+text%27

If you view conversations broadly as means of finding and collecting information from external sources and naturally associating them together, perhaps you'll appreciate this quote:

No piece of information is superior to any other. Power lies in having them all on file and then finding the connections. There are always connections; you have only to want to find them.—Umberto Eco in Foucault's Pendulum (Secker & Warburg)

(Reply to u/u/Plastic-Lettuce-7150 at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ae2qf4/communicating_with_a_zettelkasten/)

While Adler may say that a text could be cleverer than you are (is this a direct quote? reference if so), there is an associative nature to our thinking by which one can read further into a text than anything which is actually present. Did the author really mean to "say" the additional associative material? Was it in their lived experience to make such tangential references which associate things in your mind as well?

One ought to be careful that an author can only mean something so far, unless one has much more experience with their additional works and context. If it's not there, does it really exist? Did they mean it?

These associative tricks are what can make texts much richer and deeper than they may have claim to be. Though this doesn't mean that they aren't good "conversation partners."

compare this with doubletalk and https://boffosocko.com/2016/09/30/complexity-isnt-a-vice-10-word-answers-and-doubletalk-in-election-2016/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1ad72nw/soul_cards_by_hailey_ren%C3%A9/

Hailey Rene seems to have opened the breach of the space of self-help zettelkasten.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/1aglte6/eink_tablets/

I've yet to run across anyone excited about zettelkasten on their e-ink device. The note taking experience for writing/capturing seems to be there, but a user interface for sorting, searching, and interlinking seems to be wholly missing.

another variation of Thoreau on tools... source?

It's Walden. (see: https://hypothes.is/a/b10mJsGoEe6rgteMdxbwKQ)

Joy may have more profitably quoted the earlier Walden piece from p.41: "But lo! men have become the tools of their tools."

There also seems to be the idea of our slow evolution into cybernetic or Borg-like beings hiding not only in Joy's argument, but in Thoreau's. If we integrate so closely with our tools, where do they stop and we end and vice versa?

Compare this with the infamous problem of the ship of Theseus.

the collective "we" here must broadly be the West, but even there our values, ethics, and morals aren't all the same. Things devolve further and more quickly beyond the cis-gendered white male perspective which Joy represents here.

Joy quoting Nietzsche

Some do, yes, but it's interesting to note that when Bill Joy was writing this a strong anti-science movement was afoot in the United States of America.

Many academics and modern people may think this way, but it is far from a "bedrock value".

In many indigenous cultures knowledge was carefully sectioned and cordoned off.

And as we know that knowledge itself is power (ipsa scientia potestas est - Francis Bacon) many people have frequently cordoned off access to information.

Bill Joy quoting Aristotle.

see original: https://hypothes.is/a/2LPjSMGkEe6K-4Oi8iIRmg

quote in Bill Joy originally from the book Engines of Creation.

Here's an example of Bill Joy reading about nanotechnology and having positive feelings.

Why are people so pro-technology? Have we evolved this way over 10,000 years? Are there too many technologies with bad effects?

I find it hard to believe that equality is "the very cornerstone of our democracy".

p100

This fits into the same sort of framing as Thoreau's earlier quote "men have become the tools of their tools." (p41)

see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw

p41

This quote is fascinating when one realizes that the Thoreau family business was manufacturing pencils at John Thoreau & Co., one of the first major pencil companies in the United States. Thoreau's father was the titular John and Henry David worked in the factory and improved upon the hardness of their graphite. https://hypothes.is/a/sm7LUpazEe2tTq_GhGiVIg

One might also then say that the man who manufactured pencils naturally should become a writer!

This quote also bears some interesting resemblance to quotes about tools which shape us by Winston Churchill and John M. Culkin see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw

The famous, and oft-quoted first line of Aristotle's Metaphysics.

Aristotle. Hutchins, Robert M., and Mortimer J. Adler, eds. “Metaphysics (Metaphysica).” In The Works of Aristotle, Volume I, 1st ed., 8:495–626. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle, Volume I. Edited by Robert M. Hutchins and Mortimer J. Adler. 1st ed. Vol. 8. 54 vols. Great Books of the Western World. Chicago, IL: Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 1952.

(Annotations in 1984, 27th Printing, though notes made on 1952 first edition)

https://shop.neosmartpen.com/collections/neo-smartpens/products/neo-smartpen-m1-new-product-launch?variant=40096809189485

I think I like this better than the other current models in 2024.

https://quantumgardener.blog/notes/replacing-goodreads-with-obsidian

https://www.ebay.com/itm/395165358885

2024-01-30 3 Library card charging trays offered for $100 from Hondo, TX.

Cost per drawer: 33.33

This seems to be the duality of Millard Kaufman (and certainly other writers'?) advice that to be a good writer, one must first be well read.

Of course, perhaps the two really are meant to be a hand in a glove and the reader should actively write as they read thereby doing both practices at once.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1511212389452724/

60 drawer wooden card catalog in a very long 12x5 configuration offered for sale at $800 on Facebook marketplace in September 2023. Sold in the fall for unknown price, though likely close to 800.

Cost per drawer: $13.33

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/7016702761714807/

2023-09 36 drawer wooden card catalog (no manufacturer; looks custom) offered for $850 and sold sometime in the fall 2023. Rough, but rustic shape. Possibly a modular unit of two 6x3 sections with a custom top attached.

Cost per drawer: $23.60

https://myeatoncanyon.com/

See also Friends of Eaton Canyon Facebook group<br /> https://www.facebook.com/groups/76938058649/

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/2356693964529700/

2024-01 Offering three Cole Steel card filing cabinets for $165 each. Industrial beige 20 gauge steel in good condition with locks.

Size: 52 h x 19 w x 29 d

10 sections of 2 drawers for 20 actual drawers.

Based on communication with the seller their internal space is 4" high by 7.5" so they were likely designed for punch cards (7 3/8 by 3 1/4").

Cost per drawer: $8.25.

https://azorion.tripod.com/whorf.htm<br /> The (Hopi) World According to Whorf -- a Brief Note<br /> by Gary A. David, 2004

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

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

eggcorn: ambergrease

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156034110049

Purchased for $106.00 + shipping

https://www.hellingerinstitute.com/what-is-family-constellations/

https://anagora.org/nuggets

To what extent in this process is the client reconfiguring and refocusing on their relationship with those around them? Does the past have absolute process (in the Zulu incarnation)? It obviously may not in the Western practice, but perhaps the client may more easily come to terms with those around them as a result, and this is more beneficial than a "truer" outcome?

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

The focus of family constellations seems to be placing people with respect to not only their surroundings, but their family, ancestors, and those who create the web of the world around them.

Relationship of stars to stories and people to each other (ancestors).

As above, so below...

Reflection of the skys to the earth and to its peoples

direct attribution?<br /> likely in <br /> Hellinger, B., Weber, G., & Beaumont, H. (1998). Love's hidden symmetry: What makes love work in relationships. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen. p. 328

Ben started at ProPublica on 2024-01-24<br /> https://www.propublica.org/atpropublica/propublica-hires-first-senior-director-for-technology'

See also: https://www.propublica.org/people/ben-werdmuller

u/tylermangelson named his zettelkasten J.A.K.O.B.

https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/comments/1aecx27/naming_my_baby_antinet/

reply to u/modspyder at https://www.reddit.com/r/commonplacebook/comments/18fbwqx/comment/ko8bksm/

The small plastic binder I use comfortably holds 50 pages, but has room for maybe 25 more (though not 50). You could use several of them for binding together groups of pages like that. Searching around might reveal larger ring binders here if you want larger books.

For larger quantities:

You can use book rings (sold in various sizes) or even binder clips to hold these sheets together in batches, but with the ability to remove them or add sheets later.

File folders might be a useful option too for holding things together in categories.

With some inexpensive book binder's glue and cardboard you could bind together much larger numbers of sheets into custom books for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nivNPCoAHcM is a good basic primer, but you could also do more complicated bindings and covers or have pages bound at FedEx/Kinkos or other higher end professional binders depending on your need and ultimate budget. For this the sky may be the limit, though anything over 1000 pages may be getting awfully bulky.

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/SpecialSubjects/Zlotnian_Calculator/zlotnian.htm

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/SpecialSubjects/Fingers_Calculator/fingers_calculator.htm

Presuming my 1956 dating for my 4181-3 (SN 004365) slide rule is correct, the 1956 price list has the 10 inch ivorite 4181-3 model for $15.00.

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KECatalogs/1954/1956Price/1956kecatprice43.htm

see: https://hypothes.is/a/SmzszMBcEe6Ug29KK3b93A

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KEManuals/manuals.htm

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/SLCleaning/SLcleaning.htm

My 4181-3 slide rule was likely manufactured in 1956 as it has the SRT scale initiated in 1955 and has a serial number 004365 which is in the series 3 segment which reset in 1956 and ran from 0 to 88,500 that year.

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/keserialnumbers/Dating-2.htm

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/index.htm

https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KECollection/4081-3/ke4181-3_s5.htm

My 4181-3 was likely made in 1955 or after as it has the SRT and not the ST scale. (It has a 1947 copyright mark on it.)

These are the scale sets on my K+E 4181-3 slide Rule

The Keuffel & Esser 4181-3 was part of the 4081-3 family and was described in their catalogs as a 10 inch Log Log Duplex Decitrig Plastic slide rule.

via https://www.mccoys-kecatalogs.com/KEModels/kexrefmain.htm

https://www.ebay.com/itm/126307745144

78 drawer library card catalog cabinet offered for sale for $850 with local pick up only from Bennington, VT on 2024-01-31.

Solid single cabinet likely in maple. Missing all rods, water spots, stain missing, lots of scratches and scrapes. Not in great condition. No manufacturer listed.

Cost per drawer: $10.90

(one of the lowest per drawer, but also in bad shape.)

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325982555744

15 drawer card catalog offered 2024-01-31 for $2995.00 with freight shipping (extra) from South Bend, IN. Looks to be in walnut and chrome.

Unknown manufacturer and doesn't look familiar. Odd drawer pulls, but looks in good shape and has all rods. Bottom base in chrome.

Cost per drawer: 200.00

https://www.ebay.com/itm/325982715454

35 drawer modular card catalog in light mid century modern design. Table with stick legs a 5x6 section including two pull out writing drawers, a 5x1 section and a top. Likely maple, in great shape. All wood and metal, includes all rods.

Listed in 2024-01-29 for $3995.00 with freight shipping extra from South Bend, IN

Labeled as a Centura 400 (model?)

Cost per drawer: $114.00

This is the first time I've seen a catalog from Sjöström on the market though on searching there are a handful floating around.

re: open question about Luhmann's index at https://hypothes.is/a/NSo4ArxzEe6ElC-Cg7ex8g

Per personal communication with Bob Doto, the reference here about 4 references at most comes from:

Schmidt "serendipity":

"the file’s keyword index makes no claim to providing a complete list of all cards in the collection that refer to a specific term. Rather, Luhmann typically listed only one to four places where the term could be found in the file, the idea being that all other relevant entries in the collection could be quickly identified via the internal system of references described above."

Doto, Bob. “What Do We Mean When We Say ‘Bottom-Up?’” Writing by Bob Doto (blog), January 25, 2024. https://writing.bobdoto.computer/what-do-we-mean-when-we-say-bottom-up/.

Source for the claim of "at most four references"?

I could believe this on first blush, but has his archive done this work?

Not mentioned here is that with a top-down approach, if a card had related topics on it, then it would have to either be copied to those areas separately, or would need to be carefully cross-indexed to those areas to be able to be found again when needed.

When the number of topics, n, begins to exceed 2 the amount of additional work and cards can grow quite a bit, though generally only linearly with respect to n. (Don't discount the work on the back side of searching for and finding these easily at later dates.)

One of the more notable adopters of this approach to design and architecture was the Bauhaus in the early 20th century. See: Owen, C. (2009). "Bottom-up, Top-down." https://id.iit.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Bottom-up-top-down-updown09.pdf↩

It's a question of teleology. Is there a goal or a purpose in mind? (teleology: the explanation of phenomena in terms of the purpose they serve rather than of the cause by which they arise.)

According to Schmidt, Luhmann's index typically had "only one to four places where [a] term could be found in the file" indicating among a total of 3,450 indexed topics just how sparse his index was for 90,000 cards.

Niklas Luhmann's ZKI had 1,250 entries in the index and ZKII had 3,200 entries.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/176211857378

All wood and metal 12 drawer Brodart card index offered for auction on 2024-01-28 for $500.00 or best offer. Good condition despite missing a rod and having mixed silver and brass fittings on the unit. (3 silver drawer pulls/plackards and 5 silver rods with the remainder in brass.)

Local pick up only from Lock Haven, PA.

Cost per drawer: 41.66

https://www.ebay.com/itm/305374515970

12 drawer (3 x 4) card index from Library Bureau in generally good looking shape from January 2024-01-28 listed for $385.00 (+ a ridiculous $203.77 shipping fee from North Canton, OH to Los Angeles).

Looks to be ex-library from Colgate University, in all wood and metal and in excellent shape. Missing all the catalog rods however.

I'm doing the cost per drawer based only on the opening bid price despite the gouging of the shipping price. Many sellers seem to be tacking on an above average shipping charge to pad their sale prices and potentially shift commissions from ebay.

Cost per drawer: $32.00

https://www.ebay.com/itm/335219376880

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwichary/shift-happens/posts/4015386

Last Bookstore sold set of 11 + extras of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant for $227.50 on 2024-01-31. Stunning condition, clean jackets including plastic protectors.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/335219387276

If the numbers to be multiplied result in the hairline not being able to be used because the reading is off one side of the slide rule, then use the second index (the number 1) on the D scale.

Kells, Lyman M., Willis F. Kern, and James R. Bland. K+E Slide Rules: A Self Instruction Manual. New York: Keuffel & Esser Co., 1955.

The accuracy of most 10 inch slide rules is approximately 1 in 1000 or one tenth of one percent.

Because the error in approximating distance is inversely proportion to the length of a slide rule, longer slide rules will have proportionally smaller errors, so while a 10 inch slide rule has an error of 1 in 1000, a 20 inch will have an error of 1 in 2000 and larger rules can be accurate to within 1 in 10,000 or better.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/276296844684

https://lionsberg.wiki/lionsberg_wiki_books/lionsberg_wiki_books

Jordan Nicholas Sukut's Lionsberg Wiki has approximately 1.3M words which could be turned into a NeoBook. He calls it a "wiki book".

https://lionsberg.wiki/

https://wiki.openglobalmind.com/projects/jerry's_nuggets/neobooks_introduction

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

Could be used as the germ in the production of a fictional neobook...

quote from Martin <br /> https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/comment/19435#Comment_19435 on 2024-01-28

Lima, Manuel. The Power of Networks. RSA ANIMATE, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJmGrNdJ5Gw.

10:57 reference to Weaver, Warren. “Science and Complexity.” American Scientist 36, no. 4 (1948): 536–44. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27826254

https://lifelonglearn.substack.com/p/my-student-kates-obsidian-demo

Though referring to catalogs and office literature, in 1908 it was known that using decimals would allow one to distinguish between slightly different versions of indexable items without running out of "space" for new additions.

differentiation in terminology here between Britain and the US: future reminders vs. ticklers

Interesting to see a mix of numbers and letters in the indexing system here from 1908.

Numbers for companies and dates and letters as tags for a variety of business purposes as well as for month indicators.

While slightly different in its physical configuration, the office charging cabinet (with a bleacher-like set up) is very similar to the similarly named library card charging tray.

Which came first?

I've sketched it out elsewhere but let's memorialize the broad strokes here because we're inspired at the moment... come back later and add in quotes from Luhmann and other sources (@Heyde1931).

Luhmann was balancing the differences between topically arranged commonplaces and the topical nature of the Dewey Decimal System (a standardized version across thousands of collections) and building neighborhoods of related ideas.

One of the issues with commonplace books, is planning them out in advance. How might you split up a notebook for long term use to create easy categories when you don't know how much room to give each in advance? (If you don't believe me, stop by r/commonplacebooks where you're likely to see this question pop up several times this year.) This issue is remedied when John Locke suggests keeping commonplaces in chronological order of their appearance and cross-indexing them.

This creates a new problem of a lot of indexing and increased searching over time as the commonplace book scales. Translating to index cards complicates things because they're unattached and can potentially move about, so they don't have the anchor effectuated by their being bound up in a notebook. But being on slips allows them to be more easily shuffled, rearranged, and even put into outlines, which are all fantastic affordances when looking for creativity or scaffolding things out into an article or book for creation.

As a result, numbering slips creates a solid anchor by which the cards can be placed and always returned for later finding and use. But how should we number them? Should it be with integers and done chronologically? (1, 2, 3, ..., n) This is nice, but makes a mish-mash of things and doesn't assist much in indexing or finding.

Why not go back to Dewey, which has been so popular? But not Dewey in the broadest sense of using numbers to tie ideas to concrete categories. An individual's notes are idiosyncratic and it would be increasingly rare for people to have the same note, much less need a standardized number for it (and if they were standardized, who does that work and how is it distributed so everyone could use it?) No, instead, let's just borrow the decimal structure of Dewey's system. One of the benefits of his decimal structure is that an infinity of new books can be placed on ever-expanding bookshelves without needing to restructure the numbering system. Just keep adding decimal places onto the end when necessary. This allows for immense density when necessary. But, importantly, it also provides some fantastic level of serendipity.

Let's say you go to learn about geometry, so you look up the topic in your trusty library card catalog. Do you really need to look at the hundreds of records returned? Probably not. You only need the the Dewey Decimal Number 516. Once you're at the shelves, you can browse through that section to see what's there and interesting in the space. You might also find things on the shelves above or below 516 and find the delights of topology and number theory or abstract algebra and real analysis. Subjects you might not necessarily have had in mind will suddenly present themselves for your consideration. Even if your initial interest may have been in Zhongmin Shen's Lectures on Finsler geometry (516.375), you might also profitably walk away with James E. Humphreys' Introduction to Lie Algebras and Representation Theory (512.55).

So what happens if we use these decimal numbers for our notes? First we will have the ability to file things between and amongst each other to infinity. By filing things closest to things which seem related to each other, we'll create neighborhoods of ideas which can easily grow over time. Related ideas will stay together while seemingly related ideas on first blush may slowly grow away from each other over time as even more closely related ideas move into the neighborhood between them. With time and careful work, you'll have not only a breadth of ideas, but a massive depth of them too.

The use of decimal numbering provides us with a few additional affordances:

1 (Neighborhoods of ideas) 1.1 combinatorial creativity Neighborhoods of ideas can help to fuel combinatorial creativity and forge new connections as well as insight over time. 1.2 writing One might take advantage of these growing neighborhoods to create new things. Perhaps you've been working for a while and you see you have a large number of cards in a particular area. You can, to some extent, put your hand into your box and grab a tranche of notes. By force of filing, these notes are going to be reasonably related, which means you should be able to use them to write a blog post, an article, a magazine piece, a chapter, or even an entire book (which may require a few fistfuls, as necessary.)

2 (Sparse indexing) We don't need to index each and every single topic or concept into our index. Because we've filed things nearby, if a new card about Finsler geometry relates to another and we've already indexed the first under that topic, then we don't need to index the second, because our future selves can easily rely on the fact that if we're interested in Finsler geometry in the future, we can look that up in the index, and go to that number where we're likely to see other cards related to the topic as well as additional serendipitous ideas related to them in that same neighborhood.

You may have heard that as Luhmann progressed on his decades long project, broadly on society and within the area of sociology, he managed to amass 90,000 index cards. How many do you suppose he indexed under the topic of sociology? Certainly he had 10s of thousands relating to his favorite subject, no? Of course he did, but what would happen over time as a collection grows? Having 20,000 indexed entries about sociology doesn't scale well for your search needs. Even 10 indexed entries may be a bit overwhelming as once you find a top level card, hundreds to thousands around it are going to be related. 10 x 100 = 1,000 cards to flip through. So if you're indexing, be conservative. In the roughly 45 years of creating 90,000 slips, Luhmann only indexed two cards with the topic of "sociology". If you look through his index, you'll find that most of his topical entries only have pointers to one or two cards, which provide an entryway into those topics which are backed up with dozens to hundreds of cards on related topics. In rarer, instances you might find three or four, but it's incredibly rare to find more than that.

Over time, one will find that, for the topics one is most interested in, the number of ideas and cards will grown without bound. Here it makes sense to use more and more specific topics (tags, categories, taxonomies) all of which are each also sparsely indexed. Ultimately one finds that in the limit, the categories get so fractionalized that the closest category one idea has with another is the fact that they're juxtaposed closely by number. The of the decimal expansion might say something about the depth or breadth of the relationship between ideas.

Something else arises here. At first one may have the tendency to associate their numbers with topical categories. This is only natural as it's a function at which humans all excel. But are those numbers really categories after a few weeks? Probably not. Treat them only as address numbers or GPS coordinates to be able to find your way. Your sociology section may quickly find itself with invasive species of ideas from anthropology and archaeology as well as history. If you treat all your ideas only at the topical level, they'll be miles away from where you need them to be as the smallest level atomic ideas collide with each other to generate new ideas for you. Naturally you can place them further away if you wish and attempt to bridge the distance with links to numbers in other locations, but I suspect you'll find this becomes pretty tedious over time and antithetical when it comes time to pull out a handful and write something. It's fantastically easier to pull out a several dozen and begin than it is to go through and need to pull out linked cards in a onesy-twosies manner or double check with your index to make sure you've gotten the most interesting bits. This becomes even more important as your collection scales.

Richard @ Writing Slowly. “Even the Index Is Just Another Note.” Personal website. Writing Slowly (blog), January 26, 2024. https://writingslowly.com/2024/01/26/even-the-index.html.

or as Vannevar Bush might have said, everyone will have their own idiosyncratic associative trails...

This analogy is kind of hilarious from the perspective of Luhmann's Zettelkasten.

Curious that he quotes Luhmann from Manfred Kuehn's translation, but links to a separate translation

https://www.ebay.com/itm/166557166547

https://zettelkasten.de/posts/use-real-notebook/

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2809/brainstorming-the-benefits-of-the-zettelkasten-and-the-zettelkasten-method#latest

Watching this thread for ideas.

https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2804/journal-q-a-ama-writing-a-book-with-my-zettelkasten#latest

Sounds like Sascha Fast is doing a syntopical piece on the topic of Habit.

https://quantumgardener.blog/notes/quartz-4

customizations for Quartz 4

The goal of Quartz is to make hosting your own public digital garden free and simple. You don’t even need your own website. Quartz does all of that for you and gives your own little corner of the internet. https://github.com/jackyzha0/quartz

Quartz runs on top of Hugo so all notes are written in Markdown .

https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-smart-notebooks-and-smart-pens/

This underlies the ideas of songlines and oral mnemonic practices and is related to Vannevar Bush's "associative trails" in As We May Think.

Luhmann, Niklas. “ZK II Zettel 9/8b.” Niklas Luhmann-Archiv, undated. https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/106e5v1/eli5_what_is_topdown_and_bottomup_thinking/

In this example both versions have a specific goal in mind: "to diminish hunger". What does this look like when we have no specific goal in mind, but are exploring a space without purpose, but only for cause?

exploring with relationship to: ᔥ[[Bob Doto]] in What Do We Mean When We Say "Bottom-Up?"

https://www.vulture.com/2024/01/in-the-know-animation-zach-woods-mike-judge-stop-motion.html

reply to u/chasemac_ at https://www.reddit.com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/19ep9rc/comment/kjempeu/

I'm curious from where you draw your "original purpose" claim? This presupposes having identified a zettelkasten progenitor who has clearly made such a statement. (If you're thinking Luhmann, you're missing the mark by centuries. And even if you're thinking Luhmann, where did he say this specifically?) While Konrad Gessner seems to have been an early progenitor in 1548, the broader idea goes much further back. Even in the early days of the commonplace book, the primary analogy was using them as "storehouses" for collecting treasure (thesaurus) aka knowledge or wisdom.

Even Luhmann's framing of his zettelkasten as his "second memory" was old by the time he wrote it:

In a short academic dissertation on the art of excerpts, Andreas Stübel described the card index as a ‘secondary and subsidiary memory’ (‘memoria secundaria and subsidiaria’), summing up in just three words the dilemma scholars had been struggling with for two centuries with respect to the use of commonplace books. As far as I know, Stübel was the first among contemporaries to speak of secondary memory. —Alberto Cevolini in “Where Does Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index Come From?” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3, no. 4 (October 24, 2018): 390–420. https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-00304002.

If we look even further back we read Seneca the Younger in Epistulae morales, writing positively about collecting with respect to classic rhetoric:

"We should follow, men say, the example of the bees, who flit about and cull the flowers that are suitable for producing honey, and then arrange and assort in their cells all that they have brought in;

Without a clear originator, I might suggest that historically the first purpose was for memory followed closely by learning and then accumulating wisdom and knowledge (sententiae). Using them for output only came much later.

Why is there so much bad ink in the zettelkasten space about about "collecting"? (a la the "collector's fallacy") If you collect nothing, you'll have nothing. You have to start somewhere. Collecting happens first before anything useful comes out of the enterprise. Where are all these "people [who] do nothing but boast about the amount of cards in their box"? I'm not seeing lots of evidence of them in fora or online certainly. Show us your collection of examples of those to back up the claim. Are there index card hoarders out there who honestly have tens of thousands of notes with absolutely no purpose? I suspect it's rare.

If you're a collector, collect away! Take solace in the words of historian Keith Thomas:

Unfortunately, such diverse topics as literacy, numeracy, gestures, jokes, sexual morality, personal cleanliness or the treatment of animals, though central to my concerns, are hard to pursue systematically. They can’t be investigated in a single archive or repository of information. Progress depends on building up a picture from a mass of casual and unpredictable references accumulated over a long period. That makes them unsuitable subjects for a doctoral thesis, which has to be completed in a few years. But they are just the thing for a lifetime’s reading. So when I read, I am looking out for material relating to several hundred different topics.

reply to Karen Hume at https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational/comment/47959537

It is incredibly unlikely that King was aware of Luhmann's organizational structure as their practices were contemporaneous right down to their starting years. Luhmann's ZK1 comprises 7 sections with about 23,000 notes written from about 1952 to 1961 while the Morehouse Collection indicates that concerning King's research notes archive "The bulk of the notes were taken as reference material for King’s coursework while a doctoral student at Boston University (1952-1955), including notes taken specifically as reference material for King’s dissertation..." I've been actively searching for several years now, and have yet to find anyone following Luhmann's structure until after the Marbach Exhibition "Zettelkästen. Machines of Fantasy" in 2013. Broadly most have historically followed a variation of a subject heading organization, with or without indexing, similar to that found in the commonplace book tradition and described in Johannes Erich Heyde's book Technik des wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens; eine Anleitung, besonders für Studierende (multiple editions including 1931 & 1951), which was a work Luhmann read when devising his own system.

Incidentally it looks like MLK was using Weis No. 35 boxes, a version of which is still available, now from Globe-Weis: https://amzn.to/3vVcO3c. Perhaps some enterprising teachers will help students create their own versions now?

https://cultpens.com/products/exacompta-white-5-x-3-125-x-75-record-cards-pack-of-100

These are surprisingly inexpensive here at CultPens.com! They don't seem to have the larger 100x150s though.

https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/159/collection_organization

Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes<br /> Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i

This seems to be the bulk of where MLK's zettelkasten is maintained, in particular: - The General Subject file: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176973 - The Theologian's Debate Box https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176974 - The Subject Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176975 - The Author Index File: https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/176976

https://morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/overview/

Pictured here are three card index files, one specifically labeled as "Subject Index File" and visibly labeled on the back wall as a "Weiss No. 35". One of the individual tabs in the rear of the subject index file behind the A-Z tabs is labeled "Salvation".

Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection: Series 4: Research Notes Collection Identifier: 0000-0000-0000-0131i

https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/159

https://findingaids.auctr.edu/repositories/2/resources/125

https://morehouse.edu/life/campus/martin-luther-king-jr-collection/reference-and-contact/

Hess, Jillian. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s Organizational Systems.” Substack newsletter. Noted (blog), January 22, 2024. https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/martin-luther-king-jrs-organizational.

In addition to his card index, Martin Luther King, Jr. compiled a collection of 166 folders organized around various topics which he used to organize outlines, clippings, pages from books, and other source materials as well as drafts of sermons or speeches on those topics.

To some extent these folders are just larger format repositories mirroring the topical arrangements of his card index.

Jillian Hess' guess for the origin of King's plagiarism.

It's also possible that he came from a much more oral facing cultural upbringing rather than a dyed-in-the-wool academic one which focused on attribution.

example of a note from King's zettelkasten

Some of King's note cards later figured in his speeches including his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Martin Luther King, Jr. maintained a card index during his Ph.D. studies while he was at Boston University working in the area of systematic theology.

He created over a thousand notecards with respect to the Old Testament, many containing a mixture of biblical quotations as well as his own thoughts.

Here would be a good place to give a solid definition of humanity? What makes it special beyond the "self"?

We are genetically very closely related to great apes and chimpanzees and less closely to dogs, cats, and even rats. Do we miss our dogicity? Or ratanity?

What if the robot/human mix is somehow even more interesting and transcendent than humanity? His negativity doesn't leave any space for this possible eventuality.

reminiscent of the quote:

Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us.<br /> —John M. Culkin, “A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan” (The Saturday Review, March 1967) (Culkin was a friend and colleague of Marshall McLuhan)<br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/6Znx6MiMEeu3ljcVBsKNOw)

or the earlier version:

But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper.<br /> —Henry David Thoreau, Walden, p41 <br /> (see: https://hypothes.is/a/vooPrPkwEe2r_4MIb6tlFw)

In 2000, Bill Joy predicted that advances in computing would allow an intelligent robot to be built by 2030.

some of Bill Joy's intellectual history here mirrors much of my own...

A second remove perhaps, but nominative determinism at play here?

coinage of the phrase knowledge-enabled mass destruction here?

As a case in point, the self-replication of misinformation on social media networks has become a substantial physical risk in the early 21st century causing not only swings in elections, but riots, take overs, swings in the stock market (GameStop short squeeze January 2021), and mob killings. It is incredibly difficult to create risk assessments for these sorts of future harms.

In biology, we see major damage to a wide variety of species as the result of uncontrolled self-replication. We call it cancer.

We also see programmed processes in biological settings including apoptosis and necrosis as means of avoiding major harms. What might these look like with respect to artificial intelligence?

gradual change is always the way with evolution...

I always recommend people to read: Hillis, W. Daniel. The Pattern on the Stone. Revised edition. Science Masters. 1998. Reprint, Basic Books, 2015.

Joy contends that one of Hans Moravec's views in his book Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind is that robots will push the human species into extinction in much the same way that early North American placental species eliminated the South American marsupials.

Perhaps the evolution to solve AI-resistance (mentioned in https://hypothes.is/a/-JjZurr3Ee6EtG8G_Sbt8Q) won't be done at the level of the individual human genome, but will be done at the human society level genome.

Political groups of people have an internal memetic genome which can evolve and change over time much more quickly than the individual human's genes would work.

Just as mosquitoes can "acquire" (evolve) DDT resistance or bacteria might evolve antiobiotic-resistance, might not humans evolve AI resistance? How fast might we do this? On what timeline? Will the pressure be slowly built up over time, or will the onset be so quick that extinction is the only outcome?

I didn't see this coming! I thought it was Kurzweil...

https://vimeo.com/905326134/0a2a7388eb

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

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