My world on the web
Asking my own zettelkasten this question: (responses in no particular order as individual affordances are sure to vary in usefulness by user; some framed as problems while others are framed as affordances, the difference should hopefully be clear to most)
Source: Annotation by [email protected] on Zettelkasten is the Solution by Chris Aldrich
ᔥ in Jacob Sam-La Rose: “”If Zettelkasten is the soluti…” – Tools For Thought Rocks! ()
Chris Aldrich has the most multi-disciplinary resume I’ve ever seen, with a background that includes biomedics, electrical engineering, entertainment, genetics, theoretical mathematics, and more. Chris describes himself as a modern-day cybernetician, and in this conversation we discuss cybernetics and communications, differences between oral and literary cultures, and indigenous traditions and mnemonics, among many other things.
The Informed Life Chris Aldrich on Cybernetic Communications
This is a fascinating conversation about memory, history and the changing of practices over time. I am intrigued by the discussion of ‘memory palaces’. I often find myself remembering where I was when I was listening to a book or a podcast, I am assuming that the memory palace is this in reverse. I also feel that Aldrich is someone who could easily speak for hours on these matters, unpacking each thread. As he says in closing:
Always leave ‘em wanting more.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)As part of my reading process, particularly for book club related reading, I’ve lately settled on what seems to be a particularly productive method of reading for my needs.
Your first step of flicking through some reviews and the contents reminded me of a piece from The Marginalian about Bill Cosby’s strategies for reading faster, in which he talks about previewing first:
Previewing is especially useful for getting a general idea of heavy reading like long magazine or newspaper articles, business reports, and nonfiction books.
Source: How to Read Faster: Bill Cosby’s Three Proven Strategies by Maria Popova
I am interested in your us of audiobooks. I must admit, I have really turned to audiobooks as I felt I was never going to get quality reading time to sit quietly with a book. Just wondering, when listening, do you have to be giving your whole attention, or do you listen while doing other things? For example, I have heard Cory Doctorow explain how he ‘reads’ while swimming. Personally, I like listening in my lunch breaks while pounding the city streets, but I often wonder if there is something lost in doing two things at once, especially if I have a thought and want to make a note. Really, that is my biggest challenge, actually doing something with what I read.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Below I’ve aggregated a list of some of the longer articles and material I’ve written about these topics. The completist can find and search my site for even more specific material with these tags: zettelkasten, commonplace books, and note taking. I’ve also contributed a fair amount to the Wikipedia pages for zettelkasten and commonplace books.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)In the recent Twitter Migration, in addition to trying out Mastodon, I’ve been seeing some people go back to blogs or platforms like Micro.blog, WordPress, Tumblr, WriteFreely (like Mastodon it’s a part of the Fediverse, but built for blogging instead of short posts) and variety of others. They?…
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)What do we mean when we say Zettelkasten? There’s a specific set of objects (cards and boxes or their digital equivalents), but there’s also a spectrum of methods or practices which can be split into two broad categories.
Our definition of digital literacies is something created by a community and continually negotiated. More often than not, this definition is taken for granted, rarely given air. Belshaw does not identify the eight different elements as an answer, but as a point of discussion. The definition is start of this discussion.
Venture capital backed corporate social media has cleverly inserted themselves between us and our interactions with each other. They privilege some voices not only over others, but often at the expense of others and only to their benefit. We have been developing a new vocabulary for these actions with phrases like “surveillance capitalism”, “data mining”, and analogizing human data as the new “oil” of the 21st century. The IndieWeb is attempting to remove these barriers, many of them complicated, but not insurmountable, technical ones, so that we can have a healthier set of direct interactions with one another that more closely mirrors our in person interactions. By having choice and the ability to move between a larger number of service providers there is an increasing pressure to provide service rather than the growing levels of continued abuse and monopoly we’ve become accustomed to.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Posting to my website with POSSE to Twitter using a fountain pen on paper to photo with OCR to webhook with Micropub. #IndieWeb #Micropub #FTW
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)In reading about the history of commonplace books, I figured it’d be nice to have a full listing of all the categories and tags on my website for public reference. So I’ve now added an Index page.
Side note, through the process I discovered I have 147 posts tagged ‘Chris Aldrich’.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Who else keeps a waste book?
I carry around a small notebook (usually a 48 page Field Notes) for short fleeting notes. Later I copy them into my commonplace book/zettelkasten/digital garden and expand upon them.
Waste books were used in the tradition of the commonplace book. A well known example…
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Many of these products are selling themselves based on ideas or philosophies which sound and even feel solid, but they’re completely ignoring their predecessors to the tune of feeling like they’re trying to reinvent the wheel. As a result, some of the pitches for these products sound like they’re selling snake oil rather than tried and true methods that go back over 2,000 years of intellectual history.
It is also interesting to think about this alongside Clive Thompson’s exploration of to-do applications. I am intrigued to how they sometimes crossover.
Most significant thinkers, writers, and creators throughout history have kept something resembling a commonplace book. While many may want to attribute the output of historical figures like Erasmus, Newton, Darwin, Leibnitz, Locke, or Emerson to sheer genius (and many often do), I might suggest that their works were the result of sustained work of creating personal commonplace books—somewhat like a portable Google search engine for their day, but honed to their particular interests. (One naturally can’t ignore their other many privileges like wealth, education, and time to do this work, which were also certainly a significant factor in their success.)
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)These days the idea of bestseller means selling in the range of 10,000 books. The average book released these days sells only 250 copies, so if you’re over that, you’re doing well.
Create two bookmarks in your browser’s bookmark bar. Give them convenient names like “via” and “hat tip” and add the snippets of code respectively into the URL fields. On a site you want to give credit to, highlight the name of the author of the post and click the bookmarklet. You’ll see a pop up for some text which you can then cut and paste into your post to give the credit. You can obviously edit the text if necessary.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Anyone want to collaborate on a slate of IndieWeb-related topics to submit for this? Proposals are due in late January and it would be interesting to have a handful of IndieWeb tech and some of our experiments discussed at this conference.
To be honest, although I am in education and work with technology, my current role involves supporting schools with reporting and attendance. A far cry from Higher Education and being technology integrator. My involvement is something of a passion project. I like Brian Lamb and D’arcy Norman discussion of the ‘edtech refugee’ on the 25 Years of Ed Tech podcast, maybe I am a IndieWeb refugee?
In addition to this, the longer I spend hanging around the IndieWeb, the less technical I feel. Although I know more now, I think I know a lot more about what I do not know. Still need to finish reading Smashing WordPress Beyond the Blog that you recommended.
If you (or anyone else) think there is something I can help with, feel free to let me know. Just wanted it known that I am still driving my low down model, used by a little old lady just once a week to blog.
Step by step guide that explains what is a site specific WordPress plugin, why you need it, and how you can create a site-specific WordPress plugin.
I am sure I just need to spend some more time down this rabbit hole, but right now I have hit the limit to my knowledge.
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)I wasn’t seeing it before, but after upgrading to All in One SEO to 4.0.9 from 3.7ish, the Twitter plugin was throwing in some Twitter card metacrap that was causing a conflict. I’ve turned off the Twitter plugin which shouldn’t affect much since I wasn’t really using much of it’s addition…
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)I’ve been tinkering around with methods to automatically syndicate (POSSE) content from my personal website to Mastodon. I’ve been working at making a custom plugin which is far from finished. But a test post I made the other day, caught a few people’s attention[1][2].
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)Zuckerman and Rajendra-Nicolucci have an interesting looking research project here that aims to look at means of potentially providing more civic-minded social media.
I thought I’d take a short stab at beginning a conversation on this front as it’s an important topic that is near and dear to m…
Chris Aldrich (boffosocko.com)One thing I find myself wanting is a discovery-based follow button for Microsub that would allow me to input either my own following list or even my Twitter account which would then parse through my Twitter follows to allow me to quickly follow the personal websites that appear in people’s Twitter website and bio fields.