Thread by @Jeanvaljean689

For those not yet part of the [[Zettel]] discussion, one thing I want to emphasize:

The low-floor, high-ceiling, agile, locally-emergent concepts that @beauhaan prototyped, mean you can start doing this on top of any existing note-stack, no matter how it was prev'ly organized.

2/ and furthermore, this leads me to ...

the PERFECT metaphor!!!

(cc @RoamBrain! ... here is another crucial appearance of [[Christopher Alexander]] in my "pantheon of Roaman influencers") -

so ...

What is a Zettel?

The Zettel is the "small green stone in the Alhambra"

3/ what is the small green stone?

to quote @beauhaan , "I'M GLAD YOU ASKED!"

I wrote about it back in June. Read this thread, for the context:

https://twitter.com/Jeanvaljean689/status/1275855300139114502?s=20

4/ In a nutshell, the small green stone within the mosaic of the Alhambra is the minimal design-element that nonetheless takes its eloquence from its precise position within the whole.

It is a hologram of care and meaning.

From it, everything else can be deduced.

5/ In a sense, what we are searching for, are exactly THESE entry points into the vast sea of what we, and other people, already know.

the local structure of a Zettel is precisely this.

Agile, small, but with a few well carved facets, it guides us into its web of connections.

6/ The key is that it is small, yet semantically connected, and furthermore it derives its value from what it is connected TO.

Which brings me to the importance of @DocAyomide and his adage, "Connection over Collection."

7/ This also elucidates one of the greatest paradoxes we struggled with in the #roambookclub - "What, in the end makes something Zettel-worthy?"

Surely it's MORE than just a "high-fidelity replication of what someone else thought?" ... as @RaygunIcecream articulated it.

8/ Well, yes it is, but you kind of have to be able to look at your own Alhambra, in order to see it.

In other words you can't "find" these "green stones" until you have established *other things* to connect them to.

You can't just expect the Alhambra to build itself.

9/ So - you place these "green stones" and then you start to see other "green stones". Mosaics, links, in short, patterns.

Patterns in the full [[Alexandrian]] sense. Echoes, voids, iterations, calls and responses. It's all there.

But I think we need a minimal definition of -->

10/ a "green stone" --> and I think @beauhaan and the local structure he proposes of a small number of predictably related nodes in the networked graph of what you know might just be *that definition*.

One reason this is powerful to me, is that it encapsulates something -->

11/ I personally experience to be a universal quality of creative work,

namely,

that there seem to be three "phases", that I short-handed as

"1st feel the vibe,
2nd recapitulate what other people do, then
3rd find your own truth."

12/ If that sounds kind of abstract, let me just point out that these three phases are COMPLETELY evident in this recent viral video that I posted of Dave Scott collaborating with Bilal Göregen

https://twitter.com/Jeanvaljean689/status/1341014316728762369?s=20

This is literally EXACTLY how musical creativity works.

13/ and by the way, obligatory shoutout here to Matt McKinlay's excellent tweet thread on EXAPTATION of which this is just one example :

https://twitter.com/RaygunIcecream/status/1340830488626253826?s=20

14/ But I digress... because my point was that those three "phases" of creative work are precisely correlated with the three kinds of notes that we use to build [[Zettels]].

The names are arbitrary.

People may well argue the finer points of Evergreen vs Permanent vs Zettel.

15/ Similarly, whether Fleeting notes really ARE fleeting

(spoiler alert, I think they might well be the *most* important part, as they are often where our subconscious mind is most evidently at work ... messages from pre-verbal self) ... etc etc.

16/ And furthermore, I think the debate over taxonomies obscures a far more important point, which is that the essential distinction between

"feeling the vibe" / "watching others" / "doing our own thing"

17/ Is IMO at the *core* of a taxonomy that enables us both to understand our own creative thought, and also codify it in ways that are useful.

THAT'S how you know you've found a "small green stone" - you can trace its connections, on each of these levels.

18/ That's the very proof of the Zettel. You know it's a Zettel by its connections. And yet you can only connect it, knowing it's a Zettel.

"Ah, I see we have found a paradox! NOW we know we're getting somewhere" - Niels Bohr

19/ I know that it might help to bring this home, so I want to provide a real-life example of this agile, compact, yet semantically rich kind of note-taking, recently observed in the wild.

20/ this is from @ivanmkurnia , who demonstrated what this would look like, in a medical context:

https://twitter.com/ivanmkurnia/status/1339228220026048517?s=20

21/ So let me emphasize again - this structure is created locally and emergently. It's a small green stone!

Don't look for Alhambras. Look for small green stones. Because that's how you BUILD the mosaic of the Alhambra.

yes, I am excited to see where this goes.

22/ Right now I still have far more questions than conclusions. (And I like it that way.)

But if this resonates with you, be part of the discussion!

Sometimes I think this is going to lead in truly revolutionary directions.

23/ Like, a few generations hence, maybe people will look at how we organize knowledge today + be like 'yeah, that was before they discovered deep semantic annotation' and it will be with the mysterious blend of reverence and history, that we feel when we look at cave paintings.

24/ On that note, probably I better end the thread. It's been fun.

Looking forward to many more exciting discoveries, in 2021.

Cheers to all and best wishes for the holiday season.

"Only Connect." - E.M. Forster