The Mini Space-Time Continuum of Personal Knowledge
A Coarse Map of a Zettelkasten
I have talked several times about the Space-Time Continuum of Personal Knowledge, so I thought I would show here a mini example from my
published notes at https://extendedbrain.substack.com
It is not a complete Personal Knowledge Management System, since atomic notes, literary notes, and many other permanent nodes are not included, but still, it could give the readers an idea of what the continuum is.
This Space-Time Continuum is actually high-dimensional, but since high-dimensional spaces are practically impossible to visualize, I have flattened it to show a two-dimensional space in a spreadsheet.
The vertical axis is time, each row representing posts in sequence. The flow of time is downwards.
The horizontal axis is the topics or categories, in this example, a much simplified one. Each topic has a unique color, so you can find the Folgezettel by following checkboxes of the same color.
Each row is an article and the checkboxes indicate the topics the article discussed. It means that the article discusses connections among the topics involved.
Attention happens horizontally within a single article, and vertically by following the Folgezettel.
Note that the diagram is easy to maintain, new categories (e.g. constraints, mental models) can be inserted at any time. Columns can also be rearranged for clustering of topics.