A basic description of a Zettelkasten could be that it is just a hypertext of your notes. But this definition falls short of the intended goal to create a tool that assists your thinking. Technically, an interconnected quote collection could be a tool to assist your thinking and it would meet the above definition of a Zettelkasten: It is a hypertext of your notes (which consists of just quotes in this example). But it violates the spirit of what a Zettelkasten is. An interconnected quote collection does not express the full potential of the Zettelkasten Method since your past self could have created vastly more value for your current self. It is up to you how much you want to invest in your future self.
You can become brilliant. You just have to be smart and work hard. You asked me if an ordinary person by studying hard would get be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course! I was an ordinary person who studied hard. Source
This essay is an explorative one. I’ll invite you to tag along and nerd this stuff out with me. I translated the following note of Luhmann about Zettelkastens: “Ghost in the box? Spectators visit. They get to see everything, and nothing but that - like in a porn movie. And the disappointment is correspondingly high.”
The Archive is ready for Apple’s latest version of macOS, available since the start of this week. We recommend you wait with upgrading to macOS 13 Ventura until 13.1 comes out, if you haven’t already, because the initial .0 releases often ship with annoyances or bugs that get sorted out in minor updates a couple of weeks later.
