InfoQube IM - Community

Submitted by LeftEccoForIQ on 2020/09/16 03:07

Just a short rant:

I haven't personally tried out "Roam", but the underlying principle seems to be just like that of "The Brain", which I experimented with for a brief spell back back in the day.

All in all, I never really saw the point of it: If I am not aware of a connection between two nodes, I will not create a link between the two while taking notes. However, If I am aware of the connection, I am unlikely to forget it. To help myself not forget, I can always throw in a plain-text reminder as a subitem (e.g. "cf. topic"). At any rate, creating and maintaining all those links between items must be a lot of work - and what value do you really get in return? I can always do a search in my database for something I know is related and then read up on it when I need it. Hence, I really don't see the point of this kind of overhead for personal note-taking.

When it comes to publishing and sharing information, though, I guess it makes sense to produce a networked, Wiki-like format. So if you did a lot of that and didn't want to create links on a certain section of your notes from scratch before publishing, I guess I do see the point.

But maybe someone can enlighten me with some specific use cases?

Comments

It is difficult to make a case for linking many notes together precisely for the reasons stated by LeftEccoForIQ in his post. However it is my experience that there is a critical mass of interlinked information beyond which the notes become much more useful and seem to take on a structure which is determined by the notes themselves. I think this point is reached when the volume of notes is too large to be remembered in it's entirety by the person making the notes.

Manfred Kuehn explained this quite well in his article about ConnectedText when explaining the use of slip boxes for note taking. It is interesting that Niklas Luhmann's note taking system was entirely hand written on index cards, not a computer in sight. There is another interesting article written by professor Luhmann about talking to slip boxes which was translated into English by Manfred Kuehn and put on the web.

'The Brain' (what a pretentious name) is a very good program which can support a very large web of interconnected notes in a way which I find useful but it comes with pernicious licensing and aggressive upgrading. In order to stay current you have to keep on paying to the company, even if you bought a permanent license, that license is only valid for the current version and the upgrades come thick and fast.

The big advantage of 'The Brain' over other programs is the layout of the map. When you move the focus to a node it appears in the middle of the screen with parents above, children below, related items to one side and siblings to the other. This display is automatically generated, the user doesn't have to mess about with the layout (indeed they can't) it just happens. This is useful because the user doesn't waste time on perfecting the layout, the layout just happens. And when they move to a new node the display re-draws with the new node at the centre. I wish InfoQube did something similar to this.

The problem is that 'The Brain Technologies Corporation' have taken out software patents on these ideas and defends them vigorously, although the claims in these patents are so vague and far-reaching as to be spurious in my opinion. Only three of the patents appear to have been granted but they were successfully defended in a court case in California in 2005. Any company which produces a program which 'The Brain Technologies Corporation' think resembles their program too closely receives threatening letters from their lawyers.

However since then the Patent US6918096B2 “Method and apparatus for displaying a network of thoughts from a thought’s perspective” expired “due to failure to pay maintenance fee”, it expired on 12/07/2017.

I doubt if these software patents could be successfully defended today.

P.S. How is it possible to take out a patent on a layout which has been used by Genealogists for many centuries ?

Many thanks, Paul, for your very informative reply! I've also been giving this some more thought (watched an introductory video to Roam, for example). On the one hand, I'm still thinking along the lines of: "This type of software has been around for ages. If it really was able to produce a revolutionary increase in productivity, it would have gained a lot more traction by now and there would be lots of testimonials from people who have become successful through relying on it." On the other hand, there's no arguing away the prolific nature of Luhmann's work (though I am hardly familiar with any of it), and if one assumes that the Zettelkasten made a significant contribution to it, I guess there must be something to it.

I now believe carefully networked notes to be benefitial for people spending a great deal of time doing thorough research on complex questions with a view to publishing about them. That kind of person is much more likely to reach the 'critical mass' you suggest, Paul, and hence may stumble on connections between ideas that they were not previously aware of which may shed some new light on their area of research. I also think that it might be very useful for writers of fiction when sketching out characters, plots etc. as it should allow them to weave more complex and intricate stories.

In the context of 'merely' Getting Things Done / managing everyday workflow, I believe it to be mostly a waste of time and effort. However, everyone probably has some very few areas that they are expert at and invest a lot of time into (their 'immortality projects' so to speak, cf. "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker). For mine, I think I'll give Org-roam a shot over the next couple of months to get a feel for potential benefits.

I think there are few people who are interested in investing the time it takes to accumulate and then to maintain this volume of notes, which is why it has gained so little traction in the mainstream. Certainly for a small notebase used for 'Getting Things Done' there is only a small advantage which might not seem to be worth the time.

Another very informative view on this can be found in Taking Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens.

Thanks for reminding me to have another look at the book - had a first peep at it then put it aside. Got it on someone's recommendation here, possibly yours. If I was twenty years younger, I'd have dived right in with own 'Zettelkasten', but these days there just doesn't seem to be enough time.