247 - Zettelkasten as an Abstraction Machine
Another way to conceptualize a zettelkasten is as an abstraction machine, whereby you abstract ideas out of a text then use them to create new ones using the copy, transform, combine creative remix. Below, looking at it through the REMIX FRAMEWORK
Copy
Read recommended books to understand their ideas and copy the most important Ideas into your notes collection. While books are the primary form of information gathering because they can be the easiest to process (fluid pause/rewind ability), you can copy information from anywhere. I use podcasts as a common source of information for my notes collection.
Transform
Generalization : a process in which detail is ignored to reveal a deeper structure. The term overlaps with abstraction, conceptualization, inductive reasoning, modeling, theorization, categorization, conclusion, unification, colligation, de-concretization, pattern extraction, pattern separation, and more.
Abstraction in its main sense is a conceptual process where general rules and concepts are derived from the usage and classification of specific examples, literal (“real” or “concrete”) signifiers, first principles, or other methods.
Combine
You can either combine a set of ideas to reach a higher abstraction, which would be like following themes across many different fields. Or you can combine concepts and ideas to come up with new ones.
A basic example of this would be to write out the sales pitch for a television show you love in one sentence. Do this twice, than write a third sentence that is a combination of the previous two sentences.
An ingenious real life example of this is how Gunpei Yokoi combined “withered technology” to make Nintendo what it is today.
Understanding
The zettelkasten is good for creating conceptual connections through copying, transforming, and combining. This is typically done by combining information you already know very well (your primary field of study) with novel ideas you get from reading broadly.
This presumes you have a primary field of study, which not everyone has. Especially someone who is first starting out (e.g. first year college student). When this happens to be the case, then a zettelkasten can be used for understanding through creating a private model of the field. Understanding in this case, is literally uncovering all the concepts of the field and how they are connected to each other.
This is good and bad. The model you end up building in your zettelkasten can be useful because the information serves as anchor points for new information that is related. But it is bad because the information loses its utility over time. For example, when first starting a job, having pictures of all your coworkers with their names on it would be useful. But overtime as you internalize everyone’s name, then the pictures/names become useless. The information that was once useful, now just takes up space.
