Zettelkasten on PAPER?

I'm back at home after my week in California. Began revising my US History I syllabus yesterday for the new semester, and developing my South and Southeast Asia course.

While I was away I got a comment on a YouTube video about Krajewski's analysis of Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten system. The commenter invited me to "join the revolution", which when I dug into it and followed the link to his own channel, turned out to be a revolution against the computerization of the note-taking system.

The commenter was a guy named Scott P. Scheper, who has made a series of videos promoting what he calls Antinet Zettelkasten. He seems to believe that the current crop of apps such as Roam Research and Obsidian actually get in the way of effective note-taking. One of his arguments is that the work involved in physically creating a paper note helps the user remember the information on it. The idea seems related to the concept of "desirable difficulty" in retrieval practice. "Second Brain" advocates might argue that the note-taking system is supposed to let you off-load the information into the storage system until you need it or until a connection to other info makes it relevant again to a problem you're working on.

Scott also claims that the potential of the slip-box becoming a "conversation partner" is easier to achieve in a paper-based system than it is in a database like Obsidian. I think this may be an emergent property of a well-linked database, but I haven't experienced it myself yet. Scott seems to believe there's something transcendent about the knowledge he's creating with his zettelkasten. In one of his videos he talks about "approaching the mind of god" or something similar, in a way I can't entirely tell whether he is paraphrasing an early-modern note-taker or saying that's what he thinks he is doing himself. I don't really care whether he's religious or not, unless it compromises the system he's building.

One of the things that fascinates me about paper (or perhaps multimedia) note-taking is that I'm at a point where I'm trying to get info OUT of my note-taking system. It's not as easy as I'd like it to be. That may be because I haven't thought through the workflow and learned how to do the searches or use the tools that would facilitate me finding all the notes I've written on a particular topic, organize them, and prepare to turn them into a manuscript. OTOH, I'm a bit annoyed that this is not particularly intuitive. I've been thinking about using Scrivener as my organizing platform, as I did when I wrote my dissertation. It's a bit more linear than I'd like it to be. But ultimately, a book is a linear path through a forest of ideas, so maybe that's appropriate.

All that said, I do find the idea of notecards very attractive. I think I'll continue watching Scott's videos and play around with paper notes. Maybe if I jump back and forth between paper and Obsidian, that will improve the structure of my vault. I'm still writing in Obsidian and using it for my Daily Notes, video scripts, etc. I think it makes sense to put my Primary Sources in, so I can link them. That linking may help me create a slightly less linear text for my history students, if they can jump around from one passage to another based on links and keywords. I'll report on my progress, as I go. Also, I'm flirting with the idea of doing some interviews with people in history and also maybe note-taking. I've been talking with a lot of interesting people over the last half-year or so in the Obsidian Book Clubs. Maybe some of them might be interested in a one-on-one talk for a half-hour or 45 minutes. Maybe some of my historian friends too. I'll let you know if that develops and if you want to talk, drop me a line.