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Luhmann's Zettelkasten

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Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#61

Post by chrisweekly »

darkpicnic wrote: post #5

Zettelkasten has to be the least explained concept I've discovered online. Sure, they'll explain the _technique_ of it, but I've almost never seen any solid examples of it in _use_. I was so excited when I first heard of it, but I'm a person that learns by seeing examples and I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Does anyone have any good examples they've seen?

I've had precisely your reaction, and am stoked to share my enthusiasm for Roam (https://roamresearch.com) -- a graph-based system for codex / memex / personal knowledge-base / zettelkasten++

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#62

Post by chris_st »

chrisweekly wrote: post #61
darkpicnic wrote: post #5

Zettelkasten has to be the least explained concept I've discovered online. Sure, they'll explain the _technique_ of it, but I've almost never seen any solid examples of it in _use_. I was so excited when I first heard of it, but I'm a person that learns by seeing examples and I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Does anyone have any good examples they've seen?

I've had precisely your reaction, and am stoked to share my enthusiasm for Roam ( https://roamresearch.com ) -- a graph-based system for codex / memex / personal knowledge-base / zettelkasten++

I'm trying to like it, but I keep running into bugs... and I haven't been able to find a point of contact on their web page to describe them.

But, yeah, when it works it's very nice indeed.

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#63

Post by stewbrew »

Well, all these suggestions are nice and this also looks like a nice finger exercise but you really want to start something like this only with software that's still useable somehow in 50+ yrs. So just ignore this proprietary stuff and use plain text files + grep (or something similar).

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#64

Post by learningerrday »

darkpicnic wrote: post #5

Zettelkasten has to be the least explained concept I've discovered online. Sure, they'll explain the _technique_ of it, but I've almost never seen any solid examples of it in _use_. I was so excited when I first heard of it, but I'm a person that learns by seeing examples and I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Does anyone have any good examples they've seen?

Gordon Brander's pattern wiki is probably the best contemporary example I can think of that implements the Zettelkasten pattern: http://gordonbrander.com/pattern/

I think part of what can make the concept hard to see in practice, is that it's both the Zettelkasten artifact, and your methodology for adding and linking concepts when you're learning

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#65

Post by kungtotte »

stewbrew wrote: post #63

Well, all these suggestions are nice and this also looks like a nice finger exercise but you really want to start something like this only with software that's still useable somehow in 50+ yrs. So just ignore this proprietary stuff and use plain text files + grep (or something similar).

You can still use a nice frontend to the data. Vimwiki, tiddlywiki, zim wiki, etc. all store their data in plain text but let's you create these connections trivially that Zettelkasten is all about.

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#66

Post by mirimir »

Back in DOS, I used IZE and then Agenda. IZE was closer to Zettelkasten, I think. But Agenda was more flexible, albeit harder to learn.

I was rooting for Chandler, but so it goes.

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#67

Post by bloodm »

darkpicnic wrote: post #5

Zettelkasten has to be the least explained concept I've discovered online. Sure, they'll explain the _technique_ of it, but I've almost never seen any solid examples of it in _use_. I was so excited when I first heard of it, but I'm a person that learns by seeing examples and I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Does anyone have any good examples they've seen?

https://strengejacke.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/introductio...

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#68

Post by pzumk »

jaynetics wrote: post #17
pzumk wrote: post #12

I’m from Lüneburg, Germany and have never heard about Niklas Luhmann nor have I seen any Zettelkästen. I unfortunately have nothing else to add to the topic of Zettelkasten, but if anyone is in Hamburg or near Lüneburg and wants a little tour through our lovely town, let me know!

If you have any interest whatsoever in liberal arts ( Geisteswissenschaften), you should really have a look at Luhmann. Maybe peek into "Einführung in die Systemtheorie". I found him to be one of the most insightful sociologists of recent times.

Thanks!

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#69

Post by Philipp0205 »

darkpicnic wrote: post #5

Zettelkasten has to be the least explained concept I've discovered online. Sure, they'll explain the _technique_ of it, but I've almost never seen any solid examples of it in _use_. I was so excited when I first heard of it, but I'm a person that learns by seeing examples and I couldn't find any good ones anywhere. Does anyone have any good examples they've seen?

Exactly the same thing happened to me. I was reading hours into this topic and nobody was able to explain this topic in a convenient way. I even read the German sourced.

But there was one article standing out: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel...

It is a wall of text too but the best explanation I've found yet.

Re: Luhmann's Zettelkasten

#70

Post by stewbrew »

kungtotte wrote: post #65
stewbrew wrote: post #63

Well, all these suggestions are nice and this also looks like a nice finger exercise but you really want to start something like this only with software that's still useable somehow in 50+ yrs. So just ignore this proprietary stuff and use plain text files + grep (or something similar).

You can still use a nice frontend to the data. Vimwiki, tiddlywiki, zim wiki, etc. all store their data in plain text but let's you create these connections trivially that Zettelkasten is all about.

Yes but most web-based solutions and most other propositions in this thread are not. I don't think you can build a business around plain text.

Tiddlywiki isn't really plain text btw. You'd have to parse JavaScript in order to extract the data. Also, I once lost all my data in tiddlywiki.

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