204 - Requirements for Knowledge Development
Development of knowledge, which the zettelkasten is all about, happens over both space and time. This means you need a system that keeps track of information spread out in between books (information spread over space) and time (books get released in different years).
Three Connections that aid in Development
Through linking you can develop your understanding of knowledge by providing more context, linking related concepts such that you get a better understanding of the overall picture when you come across a note.
The second type of development through connections is elaborating on ideas over time as you have new thoughts or come across new information. This typically takes the form of connecting notes in a sequence. With Luhmann this looks like “note 1, note 1a, note 1b, note 1c, note 1d, etc”. When there is a concept within one of those not directly related to the sequence (topic of note 1) that you want to elaborate on, then you create a new branch (e.g. note 1b, note 1b1, note 1b2, note 1b3, note 1b4, etc). So you can think of these branches as arbitrary and tangentially related.
The third type of connection you can create is to de-contextualize a piece of information from the original source, such that it leads to multiple context.This is an important ability in life because it allows a piece of information to gain more utility. This is in part what you are doing in the process of positive generalization, see Abstract Knowledge. Negative generalization is whereby the process leads to meaningless information because it is accompanied by a lack of understanding or application. For example, you exist in multiple contexts in your life. Luhmann describes this as multiple storage.