Category: Psyber

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Three Modes of Knowledge Development 

1. Personal writing

For me that was Evernote, then for a while Google Docs, now Obsidian

Obsidian suits because of linking and tags. And because I’m  not combining it with tasks, and because I’m  not using it to store reference material or bookmarks.  I’m  also learning to process my thoughts more fully.

Later: Sunday, 20 March 2022 – I use it for Tasks.  But not for storing reference material.  with Dataview plugin I can add a task to any note, and it will be on the list of tasks.  I don’t think it interferes with my knowledge dev.  I can add tasks that are just about plans for that note.  Writing Plans.

2. Public writing

This blog has almost 30 years of my public note taking.  Psyberspace — my overgrown garden with indexes and categories.  For it to be public there must be readers, and this blog does have some, dear reader!

3. Collaborative Writing

Google Docs, there must be a better way!  Social Media done right?  Social Creation?  Comments on posts?  Relationships are always the hardest, the neglected…

Consider this however, that this post was stimulated by a whole movement of people engaged in PKM and theorising about it.  I’m  not just a lonely brooder.

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The smell of ebooks

I love the smell of ebooks!  I collect them.  I highlight bits.  I pop bits into this blog. I have mostly Epub or Kindle versions.  I convert Kobi to epub  I find audio versions. All that is a form of sniffing!

Lately I have been delighted by Readwise.  They found all my highlights and let me review them a few every few days.  They also import them to Obsidian.  

Where they look like this:

 

The real treat is this: The Next Chapter of Readwise: Our Own Reading App

I’m on the list and I can’t wait!

If you like the smell of books you will get in the queue.

This post is one in the long tradition here of looking at the psyche in cyberspace, this Reader is a revolution in the psyche.

 

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Folders for browsing, tags for search (or just search?)

It seems there is a debate about tags vs folders.  They are not mutually exclusive.  Here is a principle I adhered to for years:

Folders for browsing, tags for search.

So what really is the difference between the two?

Physical libraries have shelves and things are grouped (like folders).  Tags are really not possible.  So it might be good to brows the theatre section if you are into theatre.

Digitally the same applies you can’t browse one big pile, so put stuff into folders, but not too many (at least at the top level). Folders are there to facilitate browsing.  The Dewey decimal classification has 10 top levels, and that is about right.  They are rather beautiful:

000 – Computer science, information & general works
100 – Philosophy & psychology
200 – Religion
300 – Social sciences
400 – Language
500 – Pure Science
600 – Technology
700 – Arts & recreation
800 – Literature
900 – History & geography

But what about ‘Karl Marx’?  Browse in Social sciences. But there would be stuff about him or by him in probably everyone of those groups!  Hard for librarians who are forced to chose one shelf for something like: Sociometry, Experimental Method and the Science of Society, An Approach to a New Political Orientation by J.L. Moreno, which also has a chapter on Marx.  Digitally it could be in many at once i.e. in three folders: Moreno, social science and politics. That is worth doing. Some one browsing might like finding it there.  But consider the power of tags.

Tagging that book with: Moreno, politics, social science would be useful, but imagine adding sociometry, Marx, psychodrama group work, philosophy, religion.

It would come up in a fairly short list with any two of those tags. Also be easy to see what other books come up with a search on any two of those tags.

*

But what the hell!  Functionality for tags is lousy in most apps. They take time to add. Maybe search has outsmarted tags. Google does it all.

In Google Drive a file can be in many folders, that’s an an aid to browsing. No tags, and search works well.

 

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The Map is not the Territory

Structural Differential — Alfred Korzybski.

 

Podcast

#278: Tim O’Reilly – The Trend Spotter The Tim Ferriss Show podcast

Transcript

Tim O’Reilly: Let me go back to George Simon because a lot of what he taught was a kind of mental discipline that was rooted in a model of how consciousness happens. It was framed somewhat in the language of Alfred Korzybski’s general semantics. Korzybski drew this wonderful diagram – it was actually a tool he used to train people – that he called the structural differential.

Korzybski’s fundamental idea was that people are stuck in language, but language is about something. And so, he represented what he called the process of abstraction so that people could ask themselves, “Where am I in that process?” So, the first part of the structural differential was a parabola, and the reason why it was a parabola is because reality is infinite, but we can’t take in all of reality.

And so, hanging from the parabola was a circle, and the circle was our experience, which is our first abstraction from reality. And then, hanging from the circle are a bunch of label-shaped tags – multiple strings of them – and these are the words that we use to describe our experience.

Korzybski’s training was for people to recognize when they were in the words, when they were in the experience, and when they were open to the reality. George mixed that in with this work of Sri Aurobindo, who was an Indian sage, and had come up with a model that integrated a spiritual view of this, and a practice which was just listening and being open to the unknown.

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Linking to a Facebook post – Roger awards

 

Hmm I saved the post then clicked on my saved posts and then again on this one and copied the url.

I might like to have some posts here as I can give them tags!  Find them later.

Click the F top right to go to the post.  Unfortunately the permanence is entirely up to Facebook. There is no actual data on this page other than the link.

OK — Here it is for as long as I maintain this blog. Copied from the post on Facebook

Going through old documents. Murray Horton kindly sent me a paper newsletter about the Roger awards. So I link to it here, and on my blog, and then I can dispatch with the paper. Interesting – wikipedia needs an update – there was also a 2016 winner – see http://canterbury.cyberplace.org.nz/…/youi-wins-2016-roger-…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Award

However this “safe” data will not have any likes or comments.  We are in Mark Zuckerberg’s hands.

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Reclaiming Conversation

1200px-Sherry_Turkle
photo jeanbaptisteparis

How Smartphones Are Killing Conversation

A Q&A with MIT professor Sherry Turkle about her new book, Reclaiming Conversation. – Amazon

Sherry Turkle has been a thorough investigator of the media – and I like her experiential – ethnographic approach in her first book Life on the screen – Amazon

We are in the early days of technology. Can we develop etiquette – a new norm in the way we have about things like eating with your mouth full. Will parents say, “Don’t put your phone on the table while we are eating.” ? It could happen. We changed norms around smoking. Around sexism. This interview begins to articulate new norms without being anti tech,

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