PKM Bro Bootcamp

background image: @yadhu96

Goals

  • Learn about Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) systems that may be useful for your research
  • Critically examine PKM as a narrative environment where particular stories are told about knowledge, the brain, and technology

Contents

  1. Promise
  2. Practice
  3. Performance & Peril

I. Promise

picture 12

The personal knowledge management landscape Ness Labs

picture 20
picture 1

🗑️➡️🐚️➡️🥙️ Filtering; a broader theory of Very Online practice.
a.k.a. la méthode de la moule - @diagram.studies on Instagram

picture 2

Anatomical features of a freshwater mussel with the right valve removed.
Illustration by S. Trammell.

picture 3

🗑️➡️🐚️➡️🥙️ Filtering; a broader theory of Very Online practice.
a.k.a. la méthode de la moule - @diagram.studies on Instagram

picture 1

Linking Your Thinking’s Nick Milo on Twitter

picture 19
picture 16
picture 17
picture 13

Linking Your Thinking

#Roamcult & PKM Bros

picture 2

YouTube search results for “Roam Research”

picture 18

@marcjeanson on Twitter as testimonial on the Logseq website

picture 4

@CultRoam on Twitter

picture 3

Josh Brown 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 on Twitter (Roam Research co-founder)

While the brain does have a remarkable capacity for raw storage, probably in the range of several petabytes,it is infamously fallible in processing information. Memory retrieval is lossy and unreliable, […] The plasticity of the brain enables it to rewire itself with new connections, but even this is a ‘use it or lose it’ feature, causing neglected neural pathways to atrophy.

Roam Research White Paper

Zettelkasten
the orginal PKM promise

picture 1

A card file for personal knowledge management can be made up of notes containing numbers, tags (blue) and cross-references to other notes (red). A tag index (bottom right) allows topical cross-referencing. Wikimedia Commons

picture 2

Niklas Luhmann Archive

picture 3

Luhmann’s numbering system allowed to make sequences and intersperse notes between adjacent notes through adding another character to the end
Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method

picture 4

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_14-1_V

picture 4

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_14-1_V

What is Luhmann’s Zettelkasten? - /r/Zettelkasten

picture 6

Niklas Luhmann Archiv

II. Practice

PKM Elements

  • text files
  • markdown
  • wiki links
  • backlinks
  • transclusion
  • graph visualisations

Flat files

.
└── Personal Knowledge Management System
    ├── just.md
    ├── some.md
    ├── text.md
    ├── files.md
    └── often-markdown-files.md

Markdown

*Italic* ➡️ Italic
**Bold** ➡️ Bold
[link](https://website.com) ➡️ link
lists
headings
etc…

see markdownguide.org

┌─────────────────────┐     ┌────────────────────┐
│ Idea A              │  ┌──┤ Idea B             │
│                     │  │  │                    │
│                     │  │  │ This is idea B     │
│ some text here      │  │  │                    │
│                     │  │  │                    │
│ with a link to      │  │  │                    │
│                     │  │  │                    │
│ [[Idea B]]──────────┼──┘  │                    │
│                     │     │                    │
└─────────────────────┘     └────────────────────┘
┌────────────────────┐     ┌────┐
│ Idea B             │ ┌───┤ A  │
│                    │ │   │    │
│ This is idea B     │ │   └────┘
│                    │ │
│                    │ │   ┌────┐
│                    │ │ ┌─┤ D  │
│ ────────────────── │ │ │ │    │
│ References         │ │ │ └────┘
│                    │ │ │
│ -Idea A ───────────┼─┘ │ ┌────┐
│ -Idea D ───────────┼───┘ │ H  │
│ -Idea H ───────────┼─────┤    │
└────────────────────┘     └────┘

Transclusion

             ┌────────────────────┐
             │ Article draft      │
             │ ────────────────   │
┌────┐       │ ────────────       │
│ A  │       │ ┌───────────────┐  │
│    ├───────┼─┤Idea A         │  │
└────┘       │ └───────────────┘  │
             │ ───────────────    │
             │ ─────────────────  │
┌────┐       │ ────────────       │
│ B  │       │ ┌───────────────┐  │
│    ├───────┼─┤Idea B         │  │
└────┘       │ └───────────────┘  │
             │ ───────────────    │
             └────────────────────┘

Graph visualisations

picture 4

Obsidian on Twitter 🧵: Amazing graph by @NickMilo

Software Solutions

Roam Research

picture 9

https://roamresearch.com/

picture 10

https://roamresearch.com/

Obsidian

picture 8

https://obsidian.md/

Logseq

picture 7

https://docs.logseq.com/#/page/Contents

Tiddlyroam

picture 6

https://tiddlyroam.org/

Foam

picture 5

https://foambubble.github.io/foam/

III. Performance & Peril

Seeing the shape of your ideas is not the same as having new ideas. Creating a too-comprehensive portrait of your own thoughts can amount to locking yourself into a labyrinth of your own preconceptions

Minto, R. (2021) ‘Rank and File; What if my note-taking system could think for me?’, Real Life. Available at: https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/.

the ossification of keywords

Minto, R. (2021) ‘Rank and File; What if my note-taking system could think for me?’, Real Life. Available at: https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/.

picture 12

Mattern, S. (2017) ‘Small, Moving Parts; A Century of Fairs, Fiches, and Fantasies’. Available at: https://wordsinspace.net/small-moving-parts/.

Mattern, S. (2020) ‘The Spectacle of Data: A Century of Fairs, Fiches, and Fantasies’, Theory, Culture & Society. SAGE Publications Ltd, 37(7-8), pp. 133–155. doi: 10.1177/0263276420958052.

picture 11

Mattern, S. (2017) ‘Small, Moving Parts; A Century of Fairs, Fiches, and Fantasies’. Available at: https://wordsinspace.net/small-moving-parts/.

Mattern, S. (2020) ‘The Spectacle of Data: A Century of Fairs, Fiches, and Fantasies’, Theory, Culture & Society. SAGE Publications Ltd, 37(7-8), pp. 133–155. doi: 10.1177/0263276420958052.

Yarnwork

picture 10

Fargo, season 1, episode 9, (2014)

The operation does not feature in any policing manual or private detective’s handbook; there has probably been no instance of any professional dedicating working hours to a crafting pastime of such dubious value. This fictional in camera exists only on camera: it is a diagram of a diagram of thought in action.

Mackay, R. (2017) ‘Stages, Plots, and Traumas’, in Futures and Fictions. London: Repeater Books. Available at: http://readthis.wtf/writing/stages-plots-and-traumas/.

picture 11

True Detective, season 1 (2014)

picture 13

epistemological dramas, dramatisations of the process of obtaining and configuring knowledge

Mackay, R. (2017) ‘Stages, Plots, and Traumas’, in Futures and Fictions. London: Repeater Books. Available at: http://readthis.wtf/writing/stages-plots-and-traumas/.

promise of resolution
VS.
things don’t quite add up

picture 14

@hrdcrpxxx on Twitter

picture 15

@hrdcrpxxx on Twitter

PKM 👉 👈 OSINT

picture 16

FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning - Bellingcat - December 14, 2020

picture 17

Making Those Connections: Using Obsidian in Your OSINT Work - Micah Hoffman

Template Files

picture 18

Offshore Leaks Database - International Consortium of Investigative Journalists

picture 19

Entities of Interest

picture 20

Entities of Interest

Briefing

picture 12
picture 1

pkm.diagram.institute

https://pkm.diagram.institute