@Sukhovskii said:
I think the attachment with an analog zettelkasten is stronger than with the digital version. Interacting with it is simply more sensory-rich. The computer interface depersonalizes texts. The same phenomenon occurs when reading a book from a screen instead of a paper edition.
My experience is just the opposite - I have a much stronger emotional connection with what I write on my computer than what I write on paper. So, this will be different for each person.
@ZettelDistraction
I am among these people!
But machines are physical objects. My premise, and I could be mistaken, is that our brains have an easier time forming attachments to physical objects rather than computer programs, which are more abstract entities.
@GeoEng51
Can you please elaborate on how your emotional connection manifests itself?
I personally use a digital zettelkasten and feel a certain fondness for the program where my notes are stored. After all, I even wrote a book on how to use this application.
However, handwritten notes on paper cards contain additional "metadata" that relates to emotions. Perhaps this example will make it clearer: a handwritten paper letter holds more emotional significance compared to receiving the same text electronically via email.
@Sukhovskii said: @GeoEng51
Can you please elaborate on how your emotional connection manifests itself?
...handwritten notes on paper cards contain additional "metadata" that relates to emotions. Perhaps this example will make it clearer: a handwritten paper letter holds more emotional significance compared to receiving the same text electronically via email.
Our response to handwritten or electronic letters or other notes partly depends on our history with using different media. When young, I wrote by hand on paper; in my teens, I switched to a manual typewriter and paper; as an adult, I quickly moved on to various types of computers. I was an early adopter of technology. My thinking and feelings are not dictated by media type.
For example, as a child (in the 1950s), I wrote letters to my mother's father. These are invaluable because my mother died when I was 4 years old and my grandfather lived in England (I grew up in western Canada). There was no thought of visiting him in person or even phoning him and this was decades before email and videoconferencing. The handwritten letter was our only option for communicating. Clearly, when I pick up those letters and read them, they bring back powerful memories and emotions.
However, it is not the physical letters themselves that have this effect, but their content. I have transcribed some of those letters into text files. I have the same feelings when I read them on my computer as I do when reading the paper letters. The medium has no impact on my feelings; it is the words, thoughts and memories, and they carry the same weight, no matter the media.
When writing new zettels and reading, reviewing and updating old zettels, I carry on an internal discussion about the ideas, which can produce different emotions. There are times of nostalgia, happiness, sorrow, regret, excitement, and a most interesting one - inspiration! I do this work entirely on my computer, but it could just as easily happen with a paper ZK.
So, you might say I am "medium agnostic"
Note that I also have similar discussions with my wife and some friends, but the majority of my ZK discussions are with myself. Perhaps part of the idea of our ZK being a communications partner is that it helps us to communicate with ourselves (in the present; very important) and also with our past and possibly future selves. @Sascha has mentioned this in past posts.
Our ZK, with current technology and irrespective of media, is not intelligent or aware. However, it contains information organized in such a way as to facilitate our internal and external communications.
We need to protect this function. As we build AI into our Zettelkasten software, we will be at risk of losing our ability to carry on these internal communications or seriously compromise their integrity if we are not aware of the process.
As an example, I subscribe to "Readwise", which is an enhanced "read it later" app. You can highlight portions of what you read (and import all the highlights you have previously made in other apps, such as Kindle). Readwise then presents to you each day five highlights, as a reminder of what you found noteworthy in the past. Over time, I have accumulated a lot of highlights.
Now they have just introduced an AI-assisted "chat" with your past highlights. You can ask the AI to answer a random question using your highlights as its main database. And if you are reading one highlight, the AI assistant can search for other highlights that are connected in several intelligent ways.
This last process is eerily like writing zettels and then looking for connections. What is scary is that it is entirely devoid of your thoughts, your internal communications, and your effort to connect the zettels.
I'm not saying the service is "bad" - on the contrary, I find it very useful. However, I am pointing out that it has the potential to compromise the way we normally create and interact with our ZK, if we are not aware and consciously act to avoid that.
But machines are physical objects. My premise, and I could be mistaken, is that our brains have an easier time forming attachments to physical objects rather than computer programs, which are more abstract entities.
My brain cannot tell the difference. It thinks that most of the AI's it has worked with (with one or two exceptions) are Asshole Intelligences. It doesn't recognize an abstract—well; you get the idea.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I think there is a narrowed corridor of thinking by conceptualising the emotionality as a connection to a thing.
The process of uncovering hidden insights can be emotionally loaded, too.
To me, there is no emotional difference, as far as I can make this judgement, between the insight I had on this walk (there might be actually merit in counting the "repetitions" in endurance training) and the insight I had when I integrated this metric into my table in my ZK.
I am very conditioned to crave knowledge work. But it is not my Zettelkasten that I crave, but rather a specific situation (at my desk, surrounded by books, a cup of coffee, easy morning workout opposed to a strenuous one, etc.).
And there should be more detail in the kind of emotion that is at play. Is it liking or wanting?
@Sascha I didn’t imply that emotions are solely connected to objects.
@GeoEng51 Thank you for such a detailed answer! I think you would have very interesting conversation with Marshall McLuhan about "medium agnosticism."
What are your thoughts on art? Do you have the same feelings towards replicas as you do towards originals?
@Sukhovskii said: @GeoEng51 Thank you for such a detailed answer! I think you would have very interesting conversation with Marshall McLuhan about "medium agnosticism."
What are your thoughts on art? Do you have the same feelings towards replicas as you do towards originals?
Hmm..it depends. Regarding paintings, I enjoy both although I admit in some cases there is a special feeling from seeing an original in its actual size and colour (although the Mona Lisa is its actual size is underwhelming). For music, I can equally enjoy a live or recorded performance.
Recently, an article of mine was published in a monograph. The article explores the role of the card index in philosophical studies and is titled: Ex Machina: Card Index Machinery in the Play of Ideas
One of the sections is dedicated to the phenomenon of the interlocutor. I do not claim to have fully understood Luhmann, but I attempt a phenomenological play with the theme.
I used the metaphor of the homunculus and referred to Luhmann’s case as the "homunculus effect."
In short, I arrived at several possible interpretations, which do not necessarily exclude one another:
The card index can serve as a medium in a dialogue between different subpersonalities. It becomes a projection of our psychic life—not just different versions of our "self" separated by time, but also a space where the unconscious speaks through texts. The card index allows for the recording of ideas that would be dismissed in the linear discourse of a book as inconsistent or contradictory. In other words, the card index enables a polyphony of voices.
The card index as an interlocutor can also be understood through Ukhtomsky’s concept of a "functional organ."
In the book "Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want" Nicholas Epley notes that people tend to animate objects that behave in unpredictable ways. Similarly, Luhmann suggested that for a communicative partner to emerge, an element of randomness, disorder, and the capacity to surprise is essential.
The article is in Russian, but if anyone is interested, I can provide a link.
Link it. AI will help us and if something is not clear we can ask you here.
Side quest: How would you compare the Russian discourse and the one in English? Are there other aspects that seem to become the center of attention? Is there another approach to get to the gist of note-taking?
@Sascha said:
Link it. AI will help us and if something is not clear we can ask you here.
Alright, I will publish the article in my journal in the next few days and provide the link.
How would you compare the Russian discourse and the one in English?
In academic circles, the topic of note-taking has received little attention. The predominant interest in this subject comes from people working in creative industries.
During the Soviet era, many outstanding scholars used card indexes, but the method itself was rarely reflected upon. Most likely, much of it seemed self-evident to them. Card indexes became an integral part of literary and scientific life in Russia in the 19th century.
Interesting conceptual aspects of understanding card indexes are linked to cybernetics and self-organizing systems, which is close to what Luhmann wrote about. There are several articles on the productive role of "Constrained Chaos" and serendipity in note-taking.
The topic of card indexes is also popular among supporters of TRIZ
Here are the links to part one and part two of the article. I apologize for the lengthy text. The topic of the interlocutor is covered in the second part. I hope AI will assist those who (for whatever reason) wish to read this article.
@Sukhovskii said:
Here are the links to part one and part two of the article. I apologize for the lengthy text. The topic of the interlocutor is covered in the second part. I hope AI will assist those who (for whatever reason) wish to read this article.
Thanks, I've read your article, I've found the references to the various dynamics which can be brought back to what I understood regarding the Kommunikationspartner model very significant.
I had already identified in some way the role of chaos into the Luhman paper, and what you called "polyphony" due to the different personalities we develop over time was the dynamic I thought it happens before reading Luhman paper.
I found Epley's idea very interesting. I dont't quite understand the idea of functional organ, I'll look into this.
My final idea is that all of these dynamics apply together in some way, there isn't only one of them that drives the effect.
I've experienced on my daily practice of Zettelkasten that the magic happens thanks to both of the categories of effects: because my internal state change over time, and because slip box revisiting is a totally new experience every time, due to the fact that, as a chaotic system, the network of zettel doesn't behave in the same way even if it doesn't change at all, and the interaction author-zettels is chaotic on its own.
@Sukhovskiiasked:
(…) Zettelkasten as a communicative partner. (…) phenomenon of animation (…) Has anyone ever felt like the slip box becomes a thinking being? How would you describe the feeling?
No. For me it doesn't feel as if the Zettelkasten was a "thinking being". It doesn't feel animated. But it does feel like I'm communicating with it.
My relationship with my digital Zettelkasten is complex.
It doesn't feel like an extended memory, because the interaction is not seamless enough. It feels like a separate entity. It is close to me, but separate.
Writing. I'm writing to think. There's something about the writing process itself, that helps with thinking. There's something about writing prose, that makes it easier to notice relevant details and contexts, that get lost in bullet lists, structure notes and concept maps. (On the other hand I use those techniques, when I'm trying to map a complex text.)
The written word. There's something about having thoughts in written form, that makes it easier to examine these thoughts from different angles.
Context. I care a lot about where I put stuff. It feels somewhat similar to working with an architectural model. I use many structuring tools in my digital notes, like folders and semantic links and different note types and long notes. It feels like I'm building something, that's more than the sum of its parts.
Communication. It's hard to tell, with whom or what I'm communicating when writing in the Zettelkasten. It doesn't feel like communicating with a sentient or thinking being. It doesn't feel like talking with myself either. Zettelkasten sometimes feels similar to journaling, when it facilitates communication between past me, current me and future me, or with different parts of me. It sometimes feels similar to writing for an audience. There's a distinct quality to writing personal notes with a longterm perspective.
Collecting. At a very basic level, I'm collecting material for future reference. This part feels mostly like administrative work. What keeps me motivated, is that I don't like to look up the same stuff twice. So I keep a record, when I encountered something interesting. Just knowing that someone or something exists, is valuable information. Once I have a note about a thing or a person, I can connect it to other notes. These notes can be empty. A bibliographical note might contain just enough information to prompt an internet search. A person note might just contain a name. Note context can matter more than note content.
These basic notes create the most surprises. For example, recently the name Martin Heidegger keeps coming up. I know the name, but I never looked it up. I have had a person note about Heidegger for a while. I have linked that person note occasionally. It's only now that I notice, in how many different interesting contexts this person has been mentioned. The person note is still empty, but the connections put the name in contexts, that make me really curious about Heidegger. When I'll eventually look up the name, I'll approach the reading with questions, that are informed by those connections in the Zettelkasten.
This kind of serendipidity is a numbers game. The Zettelkasten isn't thinking, I'm being diligent. My personal hidden and unconscious interests become visible and conscious over time, when I'm following those interests and doing simple mechanical tasks over and over again.
Maybe an important part of the magic is not in the writing, but the asking and reading?
Effective communication with the Zettelkasten often feels like communication with other forms of written text. If I want useful answers, I need to ask the right questions.
Effective communication with the Zettelkasten also feels like running queries against a database. A hundred years ago they used a different language. For example Beatrice Webb's famous text about "The Art of Note-Taking" (1926) emphasizes the importance of "the shuffling of sheets of notes" for discoveries.
Data collection and data analysis have been an important feature of card indexes for centuries! At some level personal notes are just data, no matter how much thinking went into writing them. Capturing useful data is one challenge. Querying that data creatively is another.
So, no, the Zettelkasten doesn't feel like a thinking being. But it feels like something more than just a database or a journal or a collection. It enables a kind of thinking, that wouldn't be possible without this tool.
For me the digital Zettelkasten has an almost tangible quality, as if I were working with my thoughts like a sculptor with clay. I have the strongest connection to the written thought, when I'm touch-typing on a computer keyboard. Dictation or handwriting on paper feel more disconnected.
@harr Thank you for sharing these reflections — I think they are genuinely among the most precise and honest phenomenological accounts of working with a Zettelkasten that I have come across. What strikes me most is how you navigate between two tempting but ultimately misguiding framings: the romantic notion of the Zettelkasten as a "thinking partner" on one side, and the reductive view of it as a mere archive on the other. What you describe instead - an enabling space for a kind of thinking that wouldn't otherwise be possible - seems to me both conceptually cleaner and truer to the actual experience.
Your observation about context mattering more than content is particularly apt. The architectural model metaphor captures something that the standard Zettelkasten discourse, with its emphasis on atomic notes and links, often misses entirely: that the spatial arrangement and relational embedding of a note can carry a deaper meaning than its text alone. I find myself becoming more aware of this when writing on handwritten notecards (Zettel) than on neatly typed digital ones.
Your Heidegger example is, I guess, the most methodologically revealing passage. You describe something that quietly inverts the usual logic - instead of understanding first and connecting later, you connect first and let the network of links generate the questions that then guide your reading; that seems to be zettelkasting at its best. That is an elegantly incremental approach, and the fact that you attribute the resulting serendipity not to the system's intelligence but to your own diligence is a distinction worth holding onto. Steadfast work is a clue to success.
Your closing question - whether the magic lies less in the writing than in the asking and reading - also resonates strongly. It points to something many Zettelkasten practitioners discover gradually: that the quality of what you get out depends surely on how carefully you put things in but what matters even more is how creatively and persistently you question what you already have. (The Zettelkasten needs us as a partner )
And finally, the embodied dimension you describe in the last paragraph - the specific cognitive connection to touch-typing, as opposed to dictation or handwriting - is a detail I find genuinely fascinating (I am used to handwriting any typing). It suggests that your relationship with the Zettelkasten is not purely informational, but could be grounded in a bodily routine. This seems worth noting, as body memory appears to be an important part of how we process information.
Thank you again for thinking this through so carefully and sharing it so openly.
I really appreciate the work @harr has been doing in articulating the utility of folgezettel. And I really appreciate how @Martin responded and summarized above because it made something finally click for me in why I have been drawn to keep using folgezettel even though I have not yet been able to articulate it in this way yet... and that's just it: not being able to articulate a latent connection yet. I want to use my zettelkasten as an apparatus to help me better understand what I read and encounter. I know that this understanding cannot happen immediately and all at once. Like a spiral staircase I often will return to an idea that I first encountered in undergrad or in masters with a completely new and different insight (from a completely different height or depth). Folgezettel preserves a latent structure for what I am on the way to articulating but cannot fully articulate yet. Structure notes can serve this purpose too of course, but I personally like the zoomed out topography that I get from looking at a long line of folgezettel. My brain too quickly associates structure notes with outlines (committed to specific drafts etc) whereas when I look at folgezettel I see a sequence of phase shifts that externalize my thinking into manipulatable threads. With folgezettel I don't risk getting visually lost at different layers of structure notes and structures of structure notes. I can simply observe all structures available from the list of file names, globally. This process is messy and can lead to a kind of collector's fallacy, but it more legibly externalizes the process of understanding into the zettelkasten rather than it being a more mysterious process that happens outside the zettelkasten. I think this is important and is not inconsistent with what others on here are trying to do when it comes to articulating the zettelkasten as a thinking tool as opposed to an overly-hyped (direct to) writing tool.
What I'm trying to say: we each need to find a common language to communicate with our "communication partner."
I have said elsewhere on here that it can be tricky. I do think folgezettel can be difficult and misleading or distracting for many users, especially early on. But I do think that they are a worthwhile concept that still can have a role in digital implementations. It depends not only on what your goals are with the zettelkasten but on what mental preferences and hangups you are using the zettelkasten to help you address. Folgezettel are doing a lot in the way of addressing certain grooves in my brain and certain habits in my life.
And as always you can do both. Each of my zettel has a typical UUID in the yaml and will graduate to getting a Luhmann esque folgezettel ID in the actual file title as I process them more.
I have about 1876 folgezettel labelled with a mix of some other failed experiments, but that is only about 10% of my total zettelkasten.
@harr Do you want to expand your post and publish as a comment on the communication aspect of Communications with Zettelkastens? I'd like to give your post more visibility.
@Sukhovskii said:
Luhmann often described his Zettelkasten as a communicative partner. It seems that it was more than just a metaphor for him.
Let me comment on this as a German native.
So far, from all of Luhmann's writings, I have merely read the famous "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen" report. At least in that piece, Luhmann shows himself as a humorous, almost witty writer.
The central word "Kommunikationspartner" itself has such an almost humorous dimension to it.
Let me get into the weeds of this.
In German we find the word "Gesprächspartner" in common use, denoting another person we are speaking to. "Kommunikationspartner" is not really a German word. It's made up. Not by Luhmann as a new word that only he uses. But it is a word that stems from academic writing in the later 20th century and hasn't any origins in the vernacular. It has some artificial taste to it.
On this forum I learned that Luhmann used "Kommunikation" as a technical term of his own.
Bringing this together, I interpret his use of "Kommunikationspartner" as a direct negation of deeming his Zettelkasten a "Gesprächspartner." He implies, that he doesn't see his zettelkasten as another person he has a conversation with, but as a device, with which he can do Kommunikation.
Otherwise he would called it "Gespräche mit Zettelkasten" - and that title really sounds creepy in a way, btw.
And he seems to be a careful enough writer to make such a choice of vocabulary in a mindful way.
So, I would say, to call his zettelkasten a kommunikationspartner is more than a metaphor, it is a precise definition and a linguistic boundary against ascribing personhood to the zettelkasten.
@Sascha said:
Do you want to expand your post and publish as a comment on the communication aspect of Communications with Zettelkastens?
I don't think that the post would work outside the context of this thread here. It is not only a reply to @Sukhovskii's question, but also a response to other preceding posts. The diversity of views encouraged me to share my own. And I really enjoy how the thread continues in the same spirit.
@Martin said:
The Zettelkasten needs us as a partner
My intuitive brain loves that sentence. My analytical brain wants to add "yes, but… " :-)
@Martin said:
(…) the embodied dimension (…) your relationship with the Zettelkasten is not purely informational, but could be grounded in a bodily routine.
Yes, the relationship has as an embodied aspect. I find research about embodied cognition, situated cognition and the extended mind thesis very fascinating, because it explains so much of how I perceive the world. But that might be a topic for another thread.
Staying in the realm of phenomenology, I'm curious how others perceive their interactions with a Zettelkasten. How does it feel like? What senses are involved? What physical contact do you have?
One of the reasons, why I quoted Beatrice Webb, is that the word "shuffling" has a physicality to it. She wasn't just thinking deeply about stuff. She took the cards out of their boxes, selected them, rearranged them, "shuffled" them.
Communication with Zettelkasten is not only verbal, but also physical. The physicality is more obvious with a paper Zettelkasten. But I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the user interface in a digital Zettelkasten.
@pseudoevagrius said:
(…) why I have been drawn to keep using folgezettel even though I have not yet been able to articulate it in this way yet... and that's just it: not being able to articulate a latent connection yet.
I'm familiar with the situation of "not being able to articulate a latent connection yet". Your thought helps me better understand, what I'm doing. I also like to work with a process that "externalizes the process of understanding into the zettelkasten".
@Perikles said:
(…) I interpret his use of “Kommunikationspartner” as a direct negation of deeming his Zettelkasten a “Gesprächspartner.”
What an elegant idea. I reread Luhmann’s article with your idea in mind—it works!
On this reread I noticed that Luhmann does jokingly hint at personhood (partner, surprise, mental life), but does not claim to “speak” with his Zettelkasten as if it were a sentient being. Neither does he explicitly ascribe personhood or emotional inner life.
Luhmann describes the Zettelkasten with technical language like “system”. And he frames the analysis very technically as “communication theoretical approach”.
In English I'd translate "Gesprächspartner" as "interlocutor" or "conversational partner".
I found the idea of the Zettelkasten as "interlocutor" in Markus Krajewski's Paper Machines (2011). He draws a parallel to Heinrich Kleist's essay On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking. Krajewski writes:
For it is the light touch of index cards, the interplay with the silent interlocutor, that gives birth to a thought, prompting the interlocutor to actually speak and provide “witty responses” after all, to use Kleist’s phrase. The box of index cards offers an interface that is more than just a stimulating sight, as the apparatus, upon the lightest touch, delivers keywords that stimulate the protagonist to further production of thought. Thus, a silent counterpart can grow into an actual interlocutor.
For comparison the German edition (Zettelwirtschaft, 2017):
Denn es ist gerade das antippende Blättern der Zettel in ihren Laden, das im Wechselspiel mit diesem Interface das stumme Gegenüber – mehr noch als von Kleist gefordert – auch noch Sprechen macht. Der Zettelkasten bietet ein Interface an, das mehr ist als nur ein schöner stimulierender Anblick, indem die Apparatur auf ein bloßes Antippen hin jene Stichworte liefert, die den Protagonisten zur weiteren Gedankenproduktion anregen. Das vormals stumme Gegenüber gerät zum regelrechten Gesprächspartner.
Krajewski uses the word "Gesprächspartner", because he's comparing the interaction with a Zettelkasten to an interaction with an actual human being.
Why does Luhmann only use the word "Kommunikationspartner"? Maybe because he's drawing a clear boundary: all jokes aside, this is still a scientific paper.
Comments
My experience is just the opposite - I have a much stronger emotional connection with what I write on my computer than what I write on paper. So, this will be different for each person.
Some of us are emotionally sensitive to machines.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
@ZettelDistraction
I am among these people!
But machines are physical objects. My premise, and I could be mistaken, is that our brains have an easier time forming attachments to physical objects rather than computer programs, which are more abstract entities.
@GeoEng51
Can you please elaborate on how your emotional connection manifests itself?
I personally use a digital zettelkasten and feel a certain fondness for the program where my notes are stored. After all, I even wrote a book on how to use this application.
However, handwritten notes on paper cards contain additional "metadata" that relates to emotions. Perhaps this example will make it clearer: a handwritten paper letter holds more emotional significance compared to receiving the same text electronically via email.
🗄 My blog on substack
Our response to handwritten or electronic letters or other notes partly depends on our history with using different media. When young, I wrote by hand on paper; in my teens, I switched to a manual typewriter and paper; as an adult, I quickly moved on to various types of computers. I was an early adopter of technology. My thinking and feelings are not dictated by media type.
For example, as a child (in the 1950s), I wrote letters to my mother's father. These are invaluable because my mother died when I was 4 years old and my grandfather lived in England (I grew up in western Canada). There was no thought of visiting him in person or even phoning him and this was decades before email and videoconferencing. The handwritten letter was our only option for communicating. Clearly, when I pick up those letters and read them, they bring back powerful memories and emotions.
However, it is not the physical letters themselves that have this effect, but their content. I have transcribed some of those letters into text files. I have the same feelings when I read them on my computer as I do when reading the paper letters. The medium has no impact on my feelings; it is the words, thoughts and memories, and they carry the same weight, no matter the media.
When writing new zettels and reading, reviewing and updating old zettels, I carry on an internal discussion about the ideas, which can produce different emotions. There are times of nostalgia, happiness, sorrow, regret, excitement, and a most interesting one - inspiration! I do this work entirely on my computer, but it could just as easily happen with a paper ZK.
So, you might say I am "medium agnostic"
Note that I also have similar discussions with my wife and some friends, but the majority of my ZK discussions are with myself. Perhaps part of the idea of our ZK being a communications partner is that it helps us to communicate with ourselves (in the present; very important) and also with our past and possibly future selves. @Sascha has mentioned this in past posts.
Our ZK, with current technology and irrespective of media, is not intelligent or aware. However, it contains information organized in such a way as to facilitate our internal and external communications.
We need to protect this function. As we build AI into our Zettelkasten software, we will be at risk of losing our ability to carry on these internal communications or seriously compromise their integrity if we are not aware of the process.
As an example, I subscribe to "Readwise", which is an enhanced "read it later" app. You can highlight portions of what you read (and import all the highlights you have previously made in other apps, such as Kindle). Readwise then presents to you each day five highlights, as a reminder of what you found noteworthy in the past. Over time, I have accumulated a lot of highlights.
Now they have just introduced an AI-assisted "chat" with your past highlights. You can ask the AI to answer a random question using your highlights as its main database. And if you are reading one highlight, the AI assistant can search for other highlights that are connected in several intelligent ways.
This last process is eerily like writing zettels and then looking for connections. What is scary is that it is entirely devoid of your thoughts, your internal communications, and your effort to connect the zettels.
I'm not saying the service is "bad" - on the contrary, I find it very useful. However, I am pointing out that it has the potential to compromise the way we normally create and interact with our ZK, if we are not aware and consciously act to avoid that.
Then we are brothers.
My brain cannot tell the difference. It thinks that most of the AI's it has worked with (with one or two exceptions) are Asshole Intelligences. It doesn't recognize an abstract—well; you get the idea.
GitHub. Erdős #2. Problems worthy of attack / prove their worth by hitting back. -- Piet Hein. Alter ego: Erel Dogg (not the first). CC BY-SA 4.0.
I think there is a narrowed corridor of thinking by conceptualising the emotionality as a connection to a thing.
The process of uncovering hidden insights can be emotionally loaded, too.
To me, there is no emotional difference, as far as I can make this judgement, between the insight I had on this walk (there might be actually merit in counting the "repetitions" in endurance training) and the insight I had when I integrated this metric into my table in my ZK.
I am very conditioned to crave knowledge work. But it is not my Zettelkasten that I crave, but rather a specific situation (at my desk, surrounded by books, a cup of coffee, easy morning workout opposed to a strenuous one, etc.).
And there should be more detail in the kind of emotion that is at play. Is it liking or wanting?
I am a Zettler
@Sascha I didn’t imply that emotions are solely connected to objects.
@GeoEng51 Thank you for such a detailed answer! I think you would have very interesting conversation with Marshall McLuhan about "medium agnosticism."
What are your thoughts on art? Do you have the same feelings towards replicas as you do towards originals?
🗄 My blog on substack
Hmm..it depends. Regarding paintings, I enjoy both although I admit in some cases there is a special feeling from seeing an original in its actual size and colour (although the Mona Lisa is its actual size is underwhelming). For music, I can equally enjoy a live or recorded performance.
I didn't say that you had implied that. I just pointed to a narrowed corridor of thinking (collective thinking as in communication).
I am a Zettler
Or between your present and your future self:
PDF at GitHub: https://github.com/groepl/Take-Useful-Notes/blob/main/Assets/future_self_2025-02-02.pdf
More about the future self from @sascha : https://zettelkasten.de/posts/develop-empathy-future-self/
Edmund Gröpl — 100% organic thinking. Less than 5% AI-generated ideas.
Recently, an article of mine was published in a monograph. The article explores the role of the card index in philosophical studies and is titled:
Ex Machina: Card Index Machinery in the Play of Ideas
One of the sections is dedicated to the phenomenon of the interlocutor. I do not claim to have fully understood Luhmann, but I attempt a phenomenological play with the theme.
I used the metaphor of the homunculus and referred to Luhmann’s case as the "homunculus effect."
In short, I arrived at several possible interpretations, which do not necessarily exclude one another:
The article is in Russian, but if anyone is interested, I can provide a link.
🗄 My blog on substack
Link it. AI will help us and if something is not clear we can ask you here.
Side quest: How would you compare the Russian discourse and the one in English? Are there other aspects that seem to become the center of attention? Is there another approach to get to the gist of note-taking?
I am a Zettler
Alright, I will publish the article in my journal in the next few days and provide the link.
In academic circles, the topic of note-taking has received little attention. The predominant interest in this subject comes from people working in creative industries.
During the Soviet era, many outstanding scholars used card indexes, but the method itself was rarely reflected upon. Most likely, much of it seemed self-evident to them. Card indexes became an integral part of literary and scientific life in Russia in the 19th century.
Interesting conceptual aspects of understanding card indexes are linked to cybernetics and self-organizing systems, which is close to what Luhmann wrote about. There are several articles on the productive role of "Constrained Chaos" and serendipity in note-taking.
The topic of card indexes is also popular among supporters of TRIZ
🗄 My blog on substack
Here are the links to part one and part two of the article. I apologize for the lengthy text. The topic of the interlocutor is covered in the second part. I hope AI will assist those who (for whatever reason) wish to read this article.
🗄 My blog on substack
Thanks, I've read your article, I've found the references to the various dynamics which can be brought back to what I understood regarding the Kommunikationspartner model very significant.
I had already identified in some way the role of chaos into the Luhman paper, and what you called "polyphony" due to the different personalities we develop over time was the dynamic I thought it happens before reading Luhman paper.
I found Epley's idea very interesting. I dont't quite understand the idea of functional organ, I'll look into this.
My final idea is that all of these dynamics apply together in some way, there isn't only one of them that drives the effect.
I've experienced on my daily practice of Zettelkasten that the magic happens thanks to both of the categories of effects: because my internal state change over time, and because slip box revisiting is a totally new experience every time, due to the fact that, as a chaotic system, the network of zettel doesn't behave in the same way even if it doesn't change at all, and the interaction author-zettels is chaotic on its own.
@andang76 This book might be helpful:
Anticipation: Learning from the Past
The Russian/Soviet Contributions to the Science of Anticipation
🗄 My blog on substack
Thanks @Sukhovskii
No. For me it doesn't feel as if the Zettelkasten was a "thinking being". It doesn't feel animated. But it does feel like I'm communicating with it.
My relationship with my digital Zettelkasten is complex.
It doesn't feel like an extended memory, because the interaction is not seamless enough. It feels like a separate entity. It is close to me, but separate.
Writing. I'm writing to think. There's something about the writing process itself, that helps with thinking. There's something about writing prose, that makes it easier to notice relevant details and contexts, that get lost in bullet lists, structure notes and concept maps. (On the other hand I use those techniques, when I'm trying to map a complex text.)
The written word. There's something about having thoughts in written form, that makes it easier to examine these thoughts from different angles.
Context. I care a lot about where I put stuff. It feels somewhat similar to working with an architectural model. I use many structuring tools in my digital notes, like folders and semantic links and different note types and long notes. It feels like I'm building something, that's more than the sum of its parts.
Communication. It's hard to tell, with whom or what I'm communicating when writing in the Zettelkasten. It doesn't feel like communicating with a sentient or thinking being. It doesn't feel like talking with myself either. Zettelkasten sometimes feels similar to journaling, when it facilitates communication between past me, current me and future me, or with different parts of me. It sometimes feels similar to writing for an audience. There's a distinct quality to writing personal notes with a longterm perspective.
Collecting. At a very basic level, I'm collecting material for future reference. This part feels mostly like administrative work. What keeps me motivated, is that I don't like to look up the same stuff twice. So I keep a record, when I encountered something interesting. Just knowing that someone or something exists, is valuable information. Once I have a note about a thing or a person, I can connect it to other notes. These notes can be empty. A bibliographical note might contain just enough information to prompt an internet search. A person note might just contain a name. Note context can matter more than note content.
These basic notes create the most surprises. For example, recently the name Martin Heidegger keeps coming up. I know the name, but I never looked it up. I have had a person note about Heidegger for a while. I have linked that person note occasionally. It's only now that I notice, in how many different interesting contexts this person has been mentioned. The person note is still empty, but the connections put the name in contexts, that make me really curious about Heidegger. When I'll eventually look up the name, I'll approach the reading with questions, that are informed by those connections in the Zettelkasten.
This kind of serendipidity is a numbers game. The Zettelkasten isn't thinking, I'm being diligent. My personal hidden and unconscious interests become visible and conscious over time, when I'm following those interests and doing simple mechanical tasks over and over again.
Maybe an important part of the magic is not in the writing, but the asking and reading?
Effective communication with the Zettelkasten often feels like communication with other forms of written text. If I want useful answers, I need to ask the right questions.
Effective communication with the Zettelkasten also feels like running queries against a database. A hundred years ago they used a different language. For example Beatrice Webb's famous text about "The Art of Note-Taking" (1926) emphasizes the importance of "the shuffling of sheets of notes" for discoveries.
Data collection and data analysis have been an important feature of card indexes for centuries! At some level personal notes are just data, no matter how much thinking went into writing them. Capturing useful data is one challenge. Querying that data creatively is another.
So, no, the Zettelkasten doesn't feel like a thinking being. But it feels like something more than just a database or a journal or a collection. It enables a kind of thinking, that wouldn't be possible without this tool.
For me the digital Zettelkasten has an almost tangible quality, as if I were working with my thoughts like a sculptor with clay. I have the strongest connection to the written thought, when I'm touch-typing on a computer keyboard. Dictation or handwriting on paper feel more disconnected.
@harr Thank you for that thoughtful description / understanding of how you interact with your Zettelkasten.
@harr Thank you for sharing these reflections — I think they are genuinely among the most precise and honest phenomenological accounts of working with a Zettelkasten that I have come across. What strikes me most is how you navigate between two tempting but ultimately misguiding framings: the romantic notion of the Zettelkasten as a "thinking partner" on one side, and the reductive view of it as a mere archive on the other. What you describe instead - an enabling space for a kind of thinking that wouldn't otherwise be possible - seems to me both conceptually cleaner and truer to the actual experience.
Your observation about context mattering more than content is particularly apt. The architectural model metaphor captures something that the standard Zettelkasten discourse, with its emphasis on atomic notes and links, often misses entirely: that the spatial arrangement and relational embedding of a note can carry a deaper meaning than its text alone. I find myself becoming more aware of this when writing on handwritten notecards (Zettel) than on neatly typed digital ones.
Your Heidegger example is, I guess, the most methodologically revealing passage. You describe something that quietly inverts the usual logic - instead of understanding first and connecting later, you connect first and let the network of links generate the questions that then guide your reading; that seems to be zettelkasting at its best. That is an elegantly incremental approach, and the fact that you attribute the resulting serendipity not to the system's intelligence but to your own diligence is a distinction worth holding onto. Steadfast work is a clue to success.
Your closing question - whether the magic lies less in the writing than in the asking and reading - also resonates strongly. It points to something many Zettelkasten practitioners discover gradually: that the quality of what you get out depends surely on how carefully you put things in but what matters even more is how creatively and persistently you question what you already have. (The Zettelkasten needs us as a partner
)
And finally, the embodied dimension you describe in the last paragraph - the specific cognitive connection to touch-typing, as opposed to dictation or handwriting - is a detail I find genuinely fascinating (I am used to handwriting any typing). It suggests that your relationship with the Zettelkasten is not purely informational, but could be grounded in a bodily routine. This seems worth noting, as body memory appears to be an important part of how we process information.
Thank you again for thinking this through so carefully and sharing it so openly.
I really appreciate the work @harr has been doing in articulating the utility of folgezettel. And I really appreciate how @Martin responded and summarized above because it made something finally click for me in why I have been drawn to keep using folgezettel even though I have not yet been able to articulate it in this way yet... and that's just it: not being able to articulate a latent connection yet. I want to use my zettelkasten as an apparatus to help me better understand what I read and encounter. I know that this understanding cannot happen immediately and all at once. Like a spiral staircase I often will return to an idea that I first encountered in undergrad or in masters with a completely new and different insight (from a completely different height or depth). Folgezettel preserves a latent structure for what I am on the way to articulating but cannot fully articulate yet. Structure notes can serve this purpose too of course, but I personally like the zoomed out topography that I get from looking at a long line of folgezettel. My brain too quickly associates structure notes with outlines (committed to specific drafts etc) whereas when I look at folgezettel I see a sequence of phase shifts that externalize my thinking into manipulatable threads. With folgezettel I don't risk getting visually lost at different layers of structure notes and structures of structure notes. I can simply observe all structures available from the list of file names, globally. This process is messy and can lead to a kind of collector's fallacy, but it more legibly externalizes the process of understanding into the zettelkasten rather than it being a more mysterious process that happens outside the zettelkasten. I think this is important and is not inconsistent with what others on here are trying to do when it comes to articulating the zettelkasten as a thinking tool as opposed to an overly-hyped (direct to) writing tool.
What I'm trying to say: we each need to find a common language to communicate with our "communication partner."
I have said elsewhere on here that it can be tricky. I do think folgezettel can be difficult and misleading or distracting for many users, especially early on. But I do think that they are a worthwhile concept that still can have a role in digital implementations. It depends not only on what your goals are with the zettelkasten but on what mental preferences and hangups you are using the zettelkasten to help you address. Folgezettel are doing a lot in the way of addressing certain grooves in my brain and certain habits in my life.
And as always you can do both. Each of my zettel has a typical UUID in the yaml and will graduate to getting a Luhmann esque folgezettel ID in the actual file title as I process them more.
I have about 1876 folgezettel labelled with a mix of some other failed experiments, but that is only about 10% of my total zettelkasten.
@harr Do you want to expand your post and publish as a comment on the communication aspect of Communications with Zettelkastens? I'd like to give your post more visibility.
I am a Zettler
Let me comment on this as a German native.
So far, from all of Luhmann's writings, I have merely read the famous "Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen" report. At least in that piece, Luhmann shows himself as a humorous, almost witty writer.
The central word "Kommunikationspartner" itself has such an almost humorous dimension to it.
Let me get into the weeds of this.
In German we find the word "Gesprächspartner" in common use, denoting another person we are speaking to. "Kommunikationspartner" is not really a German word. It's made up. Not by Luhmann as a new word that only he uses. But it is a word that stems from academic writing in the later 20th century and hasn't any origins in the vernacular. It has some artificial taste to it.
On this forum I learned that Luhmann used "Kommunikation" as a technical term of his own.
Bringing this together, I interpret his use of "Kommunikationspartner" as a direct negation of deeming his Zettelkasten a "Gesprächspartner." He implies, that he doesn't see his zettelkasten as another person he has a conversation with, but as a device, with which he can do Kommunikation.
Otherwise he would called it "Gespräche mit Zettelkasten" - and that title really sounds creepy in a way, btw.
And he seems to be a careful enough writer to make such a choice of vocabulary in a mindful way.
So, I would say, to call his zettelkasten a kommunikationspartner is more than a metaphor, it is a precise definition and a linguistic boundary against ascribing personhood to the zettelkasten.
I don't think that the post would work outside the context of this thread here. It is not only a reply to @Sukhovskii's question, but also a response to other preceding posts. The diversity of views encouraged me to share my own. And I really enjoy how the thread continues in the same spirit.
My intuitive brain loves that sentence. My analytical brain wants to add "yes, but… " :-)
Yes, the relationship has as an embodied aspect. I find research about embodied cognition, situated cognition and the extended mind thesis very fascinating, because it explains so much of how I perceive the world. But that might be a topic for another thread.
Staying in the realm of phenomenology, I'm curious how others perceive their interactions with a Zettelkasten. How does it feel like? What senses are involved? What physical contact do you have?
One of the reasons, why I quoted Beatrice Webb, is that the word "shuffling" has a physicality to it. She wasn't just thinking deeply about stuff. She took the cards out of their boxes, selected them, rearranged them, "shuffled" them.
Communication with Zettelkasten is not only verbal, but also physical. The physicality is more obvious with a paper Zettelkasten. But I wouldn't underestimate the influence of the user interface in a digital Zettelkasten.
I'm familiar with the situation of "not being able to articulate a latent connection yet". Your thought helps me better understand, what I'm doing. I also like to work with a process that "externalizes the process of understanding into the zettelkasten".
What an elegant idea. I reread Luhmann’s article with your idea in mind—it works!
On this reread I noticed that Luhmann does jokingly hint at personhood (partner, surprise, mental life), but does not claim to “speak” with his Zettelkasten as if it were a sentient being. Neither does he explicitly ascribe personhood or emotional inner life.
Luhmann describes the Zettelkasten with technical language like “system”. And he frames the analysis very technically as “communication theoretical approach”.
In English I'd translate "Gesprächspartner" as "interlocutor" or "conversational partner".
I found the idea of the Zettelkasten as "interlocutor" in Markus Krajewski's Paper Machines (2011). He draws a parallel to Heinrich Kleist's essay On the Gradual Production of Thoughts Whilst Speaking. Krajewski writes:
For comparison the German edition (Zettelwirtschaft, 2017):
Krajewski uses the word "Gesprächspartner", because he's comparing the interaction with a Zettelkasten to an interaction with an actual human being.
Why does Luhmann only use the word "Kommunikationspartner"? Maybe because he's drawing a clear boundary: all jokes aside, this is still a scientific paper.