Zettelkasten

The visual components of both information and how we interact with information (such as using arrows to draw connections in the quotation below) reinforce the sensual aspect of working with information, knowledge, and metadata. In particular, this person’s statement that they make their “thoughts hold hands” brings a physical and almost erotic element to how they visualize the network of their thinking. i love arrows -> and drawing connections -> noticing patterns -> making my thoughts hold hands ->1...

Nothing we make is truly original. All creative work is inspired by something, draws from something, builds on something. As Tiago Forte says in the tweet below, creative work is assembled. Philosophically, assemblages are component parts brought together in a way that is fluid (not fixed). Donna Haraway uses the metaphor of [[cyborgs]]1 or “making kin”2 for assemblages: you bring together things that might not otherwise fit together instead of resolving the tensions between them....

Interacting with information in any capacity triggers sensual responses and resonances in our bodies and minds (which are also our bodies). Metadata workers describe and organize knowledge and information. This requires tuning in to those pleasurable or otherwise sensual reactions as organizing principles. I’ve come to think of the body as a computer, taking in more data from more sources than we could ever consciously consider. Our emotions are a vast subterranean intelligence, drawing on not only our senses, but the genetic memories of our ancestors and endless layers of communal thought....

Those in power and who hold capital will destroy, distort, and otherwise purposefully not collect information and create metadata about those they wish to silence and remove from any sort of historical record. the unintentional or purposeful absence or distortion of documentation of enduring value, resulting in gaps and inabilities to represent the past accurately.1 sprouted from archival silence [[@archival silence]] Dictionary of Archives Terminology ↩︎

Having silences in our archives is good when people would be put in danger or have their privacy violated otherwise. parent 1 Archival silence is a problem when its purpose is oppression See my presentation Describing Absence The Complicated Power of Metadata Surrogates in Libraries and Archives for specific examples and scenarios.

Rather than being necessarily good or bad, archival silence is a tool. We should know when to wield it and when to fix when it happens. parent 1a Archival silence is a good thing when its purpose is protection

Not every culture, group, or community is going to have the same knowledge management, knowledge transmission, or knowledge organization systems as the dominant library/archival science framework. There are oral traditions of music transmission, there are Tibetan Buddhist practices that are only shared between lama and student in an unending lineage back to the Buddha, there are traditions where information is only shared within that group. parent 1 Archival silence is a problem when its purpose is oppression

In a capitalist society, governments and corporations construct surrogates of us from the data they mine. And in a capitalist society, that data surrogate is more “real” and has more value than we do because it makes them money. Therefore, it is not always a bad thing to have silences in our collections. Sometimes, those silences are necessary. See 1a Archival silence is a good thing when its purpose is protection

Metadata surrogates are the descriptive record which stands in for the “original” item being cataloged. In this case, the “original” item would be the seed and the surrogate would be what grows and branches out from that original item. The surrogate is a representation of the original item. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari name arborescence or the model of the tree as the paradigm for knowledge and practice in the modern Western world; in this model, a small idea—a seed or acorn—takes root and grows into a tree with a sturdy trunk supporting numerous branches, all linked to and traceable back to the original seed....

When constructed by others in order to exploit us, the metadata surrogates of ourselves are the seed or original instead of being the thing that grows from and represents the original item. parent 2a Metadata surrogates are inherently arborescent