Affordances of different individual systems (notetaking)
Textual systems for taking individual notes (metaphors)
- Individual documents (text / rich text)
- using file system to organize
- Wiki (run locally)
- division between edit and view (preview)
- wiki-like linking
- revisions
- red links “afford” being filled in
- emphasis on creating organization, not leaving any note unlinked (orphan)
- Notational Velocity
- text with bold/italic
- can use Markdown to create rich text (export/preview)
- can have wikilinks (but are not color-coded)
- very easy to create new pages - no need to create them through adding a link and clicking on it
- usually navigate by page title, not through links
- feeling of pages getting “lost”, does not afford building up a site structure and seeing connections
- DevonThink
- rich text and other kinds of files (drag and drop pictures, etc)
- folder structure and file names
- wikilinking which is seldom used, usually clicking in a hierarchy or searching
- focus on hierarchy and folders, not interlinking
- very easy to dump stuff in buckets, no organizational principle
Difference between audience and level of care
- range from jottings on paper/scratch files to PhD thesis, published book on the other
- not just different audience but different time-scale, should it be useful tomorrow or in 100 years
- level of context-dependence; are there a few symbols and lines that only make sense right now, or is there an extensive literature review
- linking
- for others
- for yourself
- what does it do to your thinking process right now to be linking
- how does it change how you use the material in the future
- plus the salience of the red link that wants to be filled in
- different kinds of notes needed at different points
- at what point do you make your thinking/ideas open? granularity of group cognition
- even a wiki has some structure - could use sketching paper, mindmapping to clear ideas before I post them in the wiki
- same thing about a group space - compared to sharing absolutely everything
- cooperation vs collaboration?
- at what time do you write down your ideas? how long do you keep them in your head?
- stress from thinking you will forget ideas
- maybe that stress can be productive though, rather than “write it down and forget it”?
- or maybe the really good ideas survive
- intentionally sitting down to think about something without taking notes…
- effect on your current thinking process to have to “linearize” thoughts - putting them into more context-independent forms, like wiki, blog post
Constructivism
- Funny that we encourage constructivism, but when I come up with a bunch of ideas through reflecting on my own experiences, and what I read/hear, I feel silly to post it if I haven't done research to see if anyone else have though the same “Don't think you're the first to have thought of this” - Janteloven for ideas?
Uncategorized ideas
- granularity of wiki pages, and how much info to put on the link hubs vs on the detail pages (for example AERA notes)
- how easy it is to link to specific info from other pages
- (but can use anchors)
- how easy it is to see text in context, edit, read, etc
- thank god for tabs!
- how explicit is the organizing - organizing through moving text around on a page, vs. structured programs with nodes, links etc
- Scrivener nice example of a combination
- wish I had a split screen for the wiki
- notes on one screen and “synthesis” on the other
