Scott P Scheper, page 52
An Illustration of Context vs. Content
When you learn an idea in a given context (for example, the concept of asynchronicity while studying web development), the context is web development; the content is the concept of asynchronicity. Within the context of web development, asynchronicity refers to the loading of web assets in a parallel fashion. There are other contexts for the concept of asynchronicity, for instance asynchronous learning. Essentially, this points out the fact that the same content can have different meaning given a different context. Likewise, this is how human memory is structured and (not surprisingly) it’s how the Antinet is structured.853
Internal Context is a Very Powerful Thing
Around 2010, I recall a conversation with an investor in one of my past companies who was one of the top-level team members at Google’s advertising technology division. He told me that Google was currently facing a crisis—a threat to their business. Up to that point, its technology had revolved around content. That is, the search term one finds in front of them on the search results page and the ads the user experiences when browsing a web page. The ads and the search terms were based on the content of the page. For instance, if you were on a website about cats, you would get ads about cat food. Google’s ad technology was built around the content the user was currently accessing at the time.
However, a new technology emerged in ad targeting known as remarketing or retargeting. This technology targeted users based on their recent patterns and habits. This meant, whatever website they recently visited, would be affixed to the profile of that user. The way these profiles were built relied on website cookies (which you’ve probably now heard of, since almost every website prompts you to accept being tracked with cookies). As a result, when you’re viewing a website about cats, you’d start seeing ads for the website of the clothing store you visited yesterday.
Google quickly adapted to this new ad technology and implemented it in their own products. They even went a step further and enabled advertisers to not only target users based on recent websites they had visited, but also on the recent keywords they searched on Google.
Remarketing effectively led to a way of targeting people based on their search terms or the websites they had visited recently (the advertiser could define how recently). Users were essentially grouped into buckets based on their internal context. It started with targeting people who visited any given website, but later on became more abstracted. Google enabled audience targeting based on interests, affinity groups, and whether a person was hot and in the market to buy certain products (part of what’s called an in-market audience). For instance, advertisers could target people who were actively shopping for a new car (indicated by their having visited a number of car websites and navigated to the pricing pages).
Internal Context in the Antinet
Internal context in relation to the Antinet refers to your internal monologue and the internal thoughts that arise while reading a text or engaging with a piece of content.854 Your internal context is affected by whether or not thoughts are consciously accessible at the time you’re engaging with content.
The experience of internal context can be illustrated in an experience you might have had in which you have a completely different opinion of a book you read ten years ago, compared with your opinion after reading it in the present.
For instance, I recall being forced to read The Great Gatsby in high school. I found myself bored out of my mind. I didn’t retain much. The only thing I remember was some stupidly named place the book was set in, called West Egg and East Egg. Ten years later I read the same book and was captivated. It became one of my favorite books of all time. My mindset was different when I read it the second time. I was interested and intrigued by the prose and writing style. I also understood more background about its author, and was more fascinated with the book because of this.
With non-fiction books the power of different contexts is even more prevalent. For instance, reading the book How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker was an interesting experience. I would have probably found it more impactful if I hadn’t already read the book Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. In Pinker’s book, he introduced some very intriguing ideas; however they were ideas I was already familiar with thanks to reading Sapiens. The internal monologue in my mind was like, This is interesting. This reminds me of the section in Sapiens about the cognitive revolution. As a result, while reading How the Mind Works, I would simply write down the keyterm cognitive revolution on my bibcard. I then would create an external reference to the card on cognitive revolution that was already installed in my Antinet.
In brief, the internal context in which I read the book was quite different than what it would have been if I hadn’t read Sapiens first. I probably would have been more impressed with Pinker’s book if that had been the case, too!
When presented with a concept (or a thought) today, the concept activates related information internally in your mind.
For another simple example, imagine you were tasked with memorizing the following list: house, shoe, pig. Let’s hone in on the item pig. You probably imagine an abstract representation of a pig (like a pig emoji). I, myself, on the other hand have a completely different representation of pig. Why? Because for about a six month period while writing this book, I owned a pet pig named Garth. When I think of the word pig, I think of Garth (and the many times he pissed on my carpet).855
So what does this mean? In brief, even prior to the experiment taking place, I had a different internal context than you when beginning to memorize the list. As you can imagine, having certain internal representations could be quite advantageous for memorizing certain things.856
A thought, which is the raw material of an Antinet, is much like an experience. As scholars have long recognized, an experience cannot be repeated exactly on two separate occasions.857 Every thought is experienced in a somewhat different context. Context can include surrounding thoughts you’ve just had (and that are reverberating in your mind), or the setting in which you have the thought (the external context), or the time of occurrence.858
Let’s revisit the diagram showing the different variables which shape a thought:
Every thought is shaped by internal context. The Antinet captures the internal context of one’s mind quite effectively, and it locks it in time. It does this in a more effective way than digital systems. I contend this is because digital systems are always updating themselves. They’re too fluid and they do not show the internal context of your mind at the time you created a note. For instance, in one of the cards I was referring to when I wrote this section, there was a note that explained internal context, and then said, See ‘4214/3d/3b/2’. I have no idea or recollection of making this note, nor did I have any idea what note 4214/3d/3b/2 was. It turned out to be a card about external context. Essentially, when I was creating this card about internal context I mentioned something that had to do with external context and decided to create a cardlink to that card (which at the time was something I was closely familiar with). This communicates to me where my mind was during the time I created the card. When I created the card about internal context, my past self wanted to make sure I differentiated it from external context and I provided a link to external context in order to view the differences between the two. It stamps the state of my mind at that time, in a static place in (remembered) time.
With digital notetaking tools, such a note describing a topic would likely be a bullet point list, and would continually grow, only to be edited, rearranged, modified, or deleted. By the time I was ready to actually begin writing the section I would no longer see the original internal context and internal life of that note stamped in time. This is not ideal. You want to see an original track-record and a snapshot of the original state your mind was in when it created the note. Granted, I could update the card and add more links later on; however, to maintain this time connection, I suggest changing ink color for later additions so that you know it was updated later on.
This may seem like we’re getting into the weeds here; however, it’s something you’ll come to realize and recognize the benefits of when you work with your Antinet in practice.
For now, that’s enough on internal context. To truly understand how the Antinet locks in internal context better than digital systems, you’ll need to try it out for yourself.
The Physical Nature of the Antinet Engenders Memory Processes Not Found in Digital Systems
The eponymous album by the band Fleet Foxes includes a letter written by lead singer Robin Pecknold that serves as an illustration of the experience of using an Antinet. Pecknold writes:
My first memory has always been of me and my mom on a cold grey day down at some beach in Washington, along the Puget Sound somewhere near Seattle. I would be around two or three years old and we’re with a friend of mine from the neighborhood and his mom, walking around among the driftwood looking for crabs. Even now, I can remember the smell and temperature of the air, the feeling of the sand and the swaying tall grass. I can even remember looking over at my friend and how his face looked when he smiled back at me. Another memory that I’ll sometimes recall as my first memory is dressing up in the dead of winter as Jack London, with tennis rackets on my feet and wearing my dad’s hiking pack, in the middle of summer after seeing Disney’s (terrible) version of White Fang. Or there’s the memory of stealing my neighbor’s big wheel and riding it halfway down the block before getting caught and having to turn around defeated, or of wearing a fireman’s outfit while washing my parent’s car, or eating an orange popsicle from the ice cream truck.
These are and have always been some of my most distinct and persistent memories of childhood, so it came as a disappointment to me when one day as a teenager, I opened up a photo album and found pictures of each and every one of those memories. I didn’t have a single memory that didn’t belong to or somehow grow from pictures my parents had taken of me when I was growing up. Even the scenes I remember so clearly in my head are from the same angles as those photographs, and I don’t really know what to make of it. I’m going to guess that I’d seen all these photographs at some point, forgotten they were just photographs, and over time made them into my most tangible memories. That’s scary to me in a way.
This leads me to something weird about the power that music has, it’s transportive ability. Any time I hear a song or record that meant a lot to me at a certain moment or I was listening to at a distinct time, I’m instantly taken back to that place in full detail.
The phenomenon of feeling like you are “instantly taken back to that place in full detail” is something that doesn’t just occur with music: it happens in the Antinet.
After I had spent four years developing “critical thinking” skills in college, I determined two things: first, it’d be wise for me to record the very best concepts I learned during my undergraduate studies (so that I could have them for life). And, second, for some reason I determined the best mechanism for storing the best concepts would be 3 x 5 inch lime green notecards. Yes, lime green notecards.
Although the bright colors of these lime green notecards render my thoughts barely legible today, when I happen upon such cards, they’re amazingly valuable.
You see, the lime green notecards contain not only ideas written on them, but they transport me back in time. For myself, I’m transported back inside the room I lived in at the time. The Antinet, with its reliance on notecards, serves as a powerful mechanism for capturing and reminding one of certain internal contextual experiences. This derives from the different colors of notecards you choose to use. It also derives from the different diagrams, drawings and even the style of your handwriting at that point in time. This is very powerful when it comes time to writing and creating. This experience leads to potentially insightful breakthroughs that may not otherwise come about from digital notetaking systems (which possess weaker faculties for inducing internal contextual memories).
External Context in the Antinet
Color is an important attribute of human memory. We can observe this from our own personal experiences (for me, the lime green notecards taking me back in time). We can find such illustrations of this fact in novels.859 Or, we can refer to the field of human memory studies, which lumps this into a category called external context.860
External context refers to the physical environment and physical traits involved in learning something. This includes location, environment, and personal perspective. Your perspective derives from your position in the setting in the memory. External context also includes other parts of your sensory system—sounds, smells, tastes, textures, and other sensations.861
External context is an important functional memory input, as recent science reveals: what one learns in one environment is better recalled later on in that or a similar environment.862
In the digital-focused age of today, far too many people overlook the concept of external context, even though this component is critical for building memory and the mind.
Positional Coding in the Antinet
Related to the notion that backs up my use of lime green notecards is the usefulness of notes built using other odd formats. As I’ve previously mentioned, in my Antinet I have a notecard about love written on an actual leaf that my fiancé picked out for me. Whenever I come across this note, it cues the unique external context that generated or embeds the note.
A note such as this inhabits physical space in the Antinet, and also in one’s mind. The physical location of items that prompt memory is explained in human memory studies by the notion of positional coding. In this case, I know that the position of the leaf notecard is in the middle of the drawer of the 2000 branch of my Antinet. Whenever I wish to navigate to the subject of love, I simply navigate to that area without having to look up the keyterm love in my index. Whenever I’m reading a book, and the concept of love appears, I make a quick observation note of it on my bibcard, and then quickly install the idea near the leaf notecard in my Antinet.
With the Antinet, positional coding blends with spatial memory to create spatial encoding. That is, you know where to look for certain pieces of knowledge based on its spatial position.
Spatial memory is sometimes mentioned in self-help books and programs that promise to teach one how to develop a super memory.863 The basic premise of spatial coding involves assigning particular words (or concepts) to particular objects in the room you’re currently in. That is, readers are instructed to imagine “the items arrayed before them on a table or perhaps imagining themselves learning each item at a different sequential location along a familiar route.”864
The earliest reference to this practice was in 88 BC and is referred to as the method of loci. People who used this practice include Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. Cicero referred to it as artificio memoria.865 These thinkers assigned to the thoughts that backed their arguments items situated in rooms and gardens in order to facilitate their recall.866
The spatial memory of the method of loci operates differently than the spatial memory of the Antinet. With the Antinet, one isn’t so fixated on assigning thoughts to objects (such as assigning the thought about consciousness to a plant in the room). That said, properties of spatial memory do indeed surface when using an Antinet (like me knowing generally where to find the leaf notecard for love).
The reason for this occurring can be traced to “Neurons in the hippocampus [which] have been shown to be selective to one’s location in space.”867
The importance of external context and external memory, in which various objects in our physical environment is not foreign to scholars.868 This may be why many are hesitant to discard physically-dependent knowledge systems that have been actively evolved for over 2,500 years. These important features are not so easily replaced in the latest switch to using digital tools to manage our memory externally.
The Explicit Nature of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten
It’s important for you to understand these components of the Antinet to gain a sense for why each individual principle of the Antinet is important. The Antinet was not designed with little thought or care. It very much mirrors how human brain and memory work. Furthermore, the importance of context in the Antinet and how thoughts are developed within contexts (branches) is another component that should not be overlooked.
With the conclusion of this chapter you now have more than enough theoretical understanding of the Antinet’s nature to complement your own empirical experiments. As usually, the only right answer is to test the system for yourself, and experience the Antinet’s glory (for yourself)!
Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 290.
Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 290.
Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 300. When one analyzes the sources of Luhmann’s notes created, in preparation of his paper Communication with Noteboxes, we find references to W. Ross Ashby’s survey of the brain and human memory.
