19,850 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2023
    1. 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?

    2. 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!

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyBIT0Q7fOc

      Dealing with someone who is passive aggressive:

      • Hold eye contact
      • maintain the benefit of the doubt
      • give a warning shot: "I don't know why we're talking about this"
      • call it out: "What are we doing here? What are you trying to do?"
      • if it continues, remove yourself from the situation
    1. 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.

    1. 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

    2. ‘Dyfal donc a dyr y garreg’, we say in Welsh – ‘persistent knocking will break the stone’. In other words, perseverance pays in the end.
    1. 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.

    1. “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.

    2. “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.

    1. we have preserved Eco’s handwritten index cardresearch system in all its detail, precisely because it is the soulof How to Write a Thesis.
    2. 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...

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. “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?

    6. 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.

    7. 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?

    8. The humanities are the process of pres-ervation and appropriation of that pastness, a process thatrequires specific skills acquired through practice, as all skillsare.
    1. 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.

    1. 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

    2. R.E Jones in his book Idiomau Cymraeg
    1. 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.

    1. 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

    2. “you’ll never be able to sanitize the Internet.”
    3. 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?)...

    4. 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?

    5. “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.
    6. 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....

    7. “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.
    8. 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.
    9. Is algorithmic content moderation creating a new sort of cancel culture online?

    10. “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?

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/uBq9HKqWEe22Jp_rjJ5tjQ

    11. 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?

    12. 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?

    13. 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.

    1. 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.

    1. 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

    1. Sloan, Robin. “Author’s Note.” Experimental fiction. Wordcraft Writers Workshop, November 2022. https://wordcraft-writers-workshop.appspot.com/stories/robin-sloan.

      brilliant!

    2. "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!

    1. 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.

    2. 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.

      link to: https://hypothes.is/a/lNF9RKvTEe28Rqcr9qzi8w

    3. „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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

    6. 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.

    7. 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.

    8. Exactly how much space would be saved writing on standard paper versus index cards in a collection as large as Luhmann's?

    9. 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.

    10. 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.

    11. 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?

    1. 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/.

    1. “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.
    2. 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.
    3. 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?

    4. 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.
    1. Wolff, Tobias. “Bullet in the Brain.” The New Yorker, September 17, 1995. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/09/25/bullet-in-the-brain.

    2. 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.
    3. fight back the titters.

      a perfect phrase here

    4. “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.”
    1. Wordcraft Writers Workshop by Andy Coenen - PAIR, Daphne Ippolito - Brain Research Ann Yuan - PAIR, Sehmon Burnam - Magenta

      cross reference: ChatGPT

    2. LaMDA was not designed as a writing tool. LaMDA was explicitly trained to respond safely and sensibly to whomever it’s engaging with.
    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. Can a language model be transgressive without intentionality?
    6. More provocatively, great writing is transgressive — it subverts expectations and challenges the reader.
    7. 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.
    8. 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?

    9. A recurring theme in the authors’ feedback was that Wordcraft could not stick to a single narrative arc or writing direction.
    10. 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.

    11. How much of our creativity and authorial voice is based on our own experiences and material we've read, watched, listened to?

    12. 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.?

    13. 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.
    14. 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.

    15. 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.

    16. novel is not the same as interesting
    17. Wordcraft tended to produce only average writing.

      How to improve on this state of the art?

    18. “[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?

    19. 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?

    20. “...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?

    21. 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'".

    22. language models are incredible "yes, and" machines, allowing writers to quickly explore seemingly unlimited variations on their ideas.
    23. 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.

    24. 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?

    25. 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

    26. 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.

    27. 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.
    28. 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.

    29. 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?

    30. 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.

    Tags

    Annotators

    URL

    1. https://pair.withgoogle.com/

      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.

    1. 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.

    1. Author's note by Robin Sloan<br /> November 2022

    2. 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.

    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    5. 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.

    1. 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.
    2. "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.

    1. 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).

    1. A Luhmann web article from 2001-06-30!

      Berzbach, Frank. “Künstliche Intelligenz aus Holz.” Online magazine. Magazin für junge Forschung, June 30, 2001. https://sciencegarden.net/kunstliche-intelligenz-aus-holz/.


      Interesting to see the stark contrast in zettelkasten method here in an article about Luhmann versus the discussions within the blogosphere, social media, and other online spaces circa 2018-2022.


      ᔥ[[Daniel Lüdecke]] in Arbeiten mit (elektronischen) Zettelkästen at 2013-08-30 (accessed:: 2023-02-10 06:15:58)

    2. Wer sich also solch einen hölzernen Lebenspartner aufzieht, wird nach einigen Jahren immer interessantere Antworten auf seine Fragen bekommen …

      google translate:

      So if you raise such a wooden life partner, you will get more and more interesting answers to your questions after a few years...

      I love the idea of rearing a zettelkasten as a "wooden life partner".

    3. Der Zettelkasten weiß tendenziell immer weniger als man selbst, aber immer soviel, wie wir auf Karten geschrieben haben.

      google translate:

      The Zettelkasten always tends to know less than you do, but always as much as we have written on cards.

    4. Neben den Methoden herkömmlicher Recherche werden daher normalerweise Zettelkästen angelegt, in denen auf Karteikarten notiert ist, was ständig zitiert werden muss. Studenten erproben dies oft zum ersten mal intensiv für ihre Diplomarbeit. Nach Schlagworten und Autoren werden Notizen alphabetisch geordnet und was in den Kasten einsortiert wurde, kann man auch wieder herausholen.

      Google translate:

      In addition to the methods of conventional research, card boxes are usually created in which index cards are used to record what needs to be constantly quoted. Students often try this out intensively for their diploma thesis for the first time. Notes are sorted alphabetically according to keywords and authors, and what has been sorted into the box can also be taken out again.

      An indication from 2001 of the state of the art of zettelkasten written in German. Note that the description is focused more on the index card or slip-based version of a commonplace book sorted alphabetically by keywords and authors primarily for quoting. Most students trying the method for the first time are those working on graduate level theses.

    1. Lüdecke, Daniel. “Introduction to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten - Thinking and Its Technical Implementation.” Presented at the Trier Digital Humanities Autumn School 2015, Trier University, October 1, 2015. https://strengejacke.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/introduction-into-luhmanns-zettelkasten-thinking.pdf..

    2. “The Zettelkastenis much more effortand time consumingthan writing books.”Niklas Luhmann, Shortcuts, p.26
    3. Branching and note sequences allow “story telling”
    4. In electronic Zettelkasten, no text limits for notes, however itis also recommended to keep notes short

      Note the recommendation to keep notes short without any stated reason why this should/ought to be done.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    6. “multiple storage”

      Within the history of personal knowledge management, one was often faced with where to store their notes so that it would be easy to find and use them again. Often this was done using slip methods by means of "multiple storage" by making multiple copies and filing them under various headings. This copying process was onerous and breaks the modern database principle "don't repeat yourself" (DRY).

      Alternate means of doing this include storing it in one place and then linking that location to multiple subject headings in an index, though this may cause issues of remembering which subject heading when there are many appropriate potential synonyms.

      Modern digital methods allow one to store a note in one location and refer to it in multiple ways electronically as well as with aliases.

    1. Niklas Luhmann's Zettelkasten<br /> http://fremdlesen.de/?p=297

      cartoon of Luhmann's zettelkasten asking him for a beer

      Zettelkasten: Niklas hol' mir 'n Bier!<br /> Niklas Luhmann: Hatte ich doch bloss nie diessen ver-fluchten zettelkasten erfunden!

      translation:

      Niklas get me a beer!<br /> If only I had never invented that damn note box!

      Link to: Effort of maintaining a zettelkasten: https://hypothes.is/a/ahU8YqmoEe2tL79vZF9PvQ

    1. https://danallosso.substack.com/p/new-york-in-1687

      Source: "Condition of New York in 1687", by Thomas Dongan, in E. B. O’Callaghan, The Documentary History of the State of New-York (Albany, 1850), I, 101-117. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.45493/page/n561/mode/2up

    2. I observe that they take no care of the conversion of their Slaves.

      In New York in 1687, Thomas Dongan reports that people didn't convert their slaves to their own religions.

    1. Marcel Proust on What Writing Is<br /> by William Benton

    2. Proust writes, with only the faintest irony, “Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.”

      source? Swann's Way?

      Definitely from a literacy forward perspective!

    3. stayed with me

      "stayed with me" as a phrase to mean an idea so powerful and compelling that one regularly revisits it in their mind at various intervals without spending time on memorizing or actively trying to remember it.

    1. CAA Raises Eight to Agent by Mia Galuppo

      Kate Arenson, Jessica Brown, Sydney Chance, Emmett Gordon, Ron Jordan, Sydney Lipsitz, Peter Morton and Andi Wong have been upped.

      read on Fri 2022-12-09 7:10 AM