Gerrit Scholle

The book as well as the Zettelkasten method in itself doesn't directly solve the problems you stated in your article. It isn't a system that tells you what to extract out of the books you read. There's a lot of discussion of what to extract and how deep to extract in forums, and the tequnique itself doesn't prescribe anything.

The main problem the ZK tries to solve isn't curation of what to extract from your sources. Instead, it tries to solve the problem of information siloing that happens when you take classic notes about books that are separate from each other. Later, the ZK becomes an Ideation tool - with enough notes in... (read more)

My approach to the margin note/marking conundrum:

• I primarily use digital sources. Most e-book software has an option to just look up your mark ups, and to extract them. This makes things easier. What I'm describing here works with physical books as well, so I will describe different processes for physical and e-books as necessary.
• I use mark-ups as a 'look at this passage a second time' marker. I use two markers (Marker colors or marks like a cross and circle on margin). One is for 'moderately interesting', another is for 'resonated strongly. For the first category, use a marker color that can be overwritten by the second (like yellow, and dark red

I have read How to take smart notes by Söhnke Ahrens, in its German original language. A few observations I've made:

• The book, despite its English title, isn't really about note taking in general. It describes how to implement one specific note-taking technique, the Zettelkasten (ZK), or slip box, method. The premise is that you need to do knowledge work in order to write something like a master thesis or scientific paper.
• The strength of this method is to avoid putting knowledge you extracted from books into information silos. Instead, extracted notes are free-flowing and interconnected.
• This doesn't really solve the problems you mentioned on their own, especially the one about not knowing what

I believe what you describe is something that arises from internet dialogues and how generations that grew up 'digitally native' use culture techniques learned on the internet to shape dialogue.

The internet and social media also makes dialogue and monologue that would've been fringe positions more visible, and lead to electronic screaming matches between bipartisan opinions. In the real world, positions and party lines are drawn in part by physical separation - bars that are frequented by a certain clientele, neighborhoods that draw specific types and occupations, and so on. Those are the Facebook groups and sub-reddits of today. Banning and not allowing counter-arguments are the internet equivalent of not beeing welcome and... (read more)