(2009-09-02) Kimbro Computer Notekeeping Revisit

Lion Kimbro is revisiting his preference for a paper NoteBook (cf How To Make A Complete Map Of Every Thought You Think). Presently, I'm porting lessons learned from paper-based notekeeping to computerized notekeeping. I think the biggest idea is shifting from "capture" to "document reworking.".. I noticed that one of the great strengths of the notekeeping system I've been using since 2009-01-24, about 8 months now, is that it places thoughts in good sensible locations. (This system, by the way, is the subject of a chapter in RonHaleEvans' new book - MindPerformanceHacks 2, still in editing. I may just write a whole book on it, itself, at some point.)... But what we really need to be able to do, is to get from the "collection and capture" realm to the "SenseMaking" level. All those links in the given tag need to be structurable, either by writing text, or spatial positioning and iconography, or - ideally, both... Where one of the key strengths of computerized systems really comes to the fore: The ability to Delete. I don't mean "to delete" in terms of forgetting, but rather, in the sense of reshaping the clay, applying the eraser, remaking what was made before into an evolved form. History is nice, but secondary to the capacity to edit. It is very hard to delete on paper, and to edit by anything but addition on paper... Why did I (and others) make this mistake? I blame the ethic against deleting data. Since computers can store everything, we see it as practically immoral to destroy any data. Obscuring older data has a similar sensibility to it. So we get logs and logs of data. Yes, there are versioning systems, but somehow, we do not really use them in our notekeeping.