ANTINET

ZETTELKASTEN
 ANTINET
ZETTELKASTEN
A KNOWLEDGE SYSTEM THAT WILL
TURN YOU INTO A PROLIFIC READER,
RESEARCHER AND WRITER

SCOTT P. SCHEPER

CALIFORNIA
 Published in the United States by
Greenlamp, an imprint and division of
Greenlamp LLC, San Diego, California

Greenlamp, LLC
600 W. Broadway, Suite 700
San Diego, CA 92101
Copyright © 2022 by Scott P. Scheper
All rights reserved
No portion of this book may be reproduced
in any form without permission from the publisher.
For permissions contact: copyright@greenlamp.com
Diagrams and illustrations by Arianna Zabriskie
ISBN: 979-8-9868626-2-0 (ebook: pdf)
I would like to thank
my co-author,
my Antinet, Stewie.
CONTENTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XI
PREFACE (DO NOT SKIP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XIII

PART I: THE STORY BEHIND THE STORY

C H A PT E R O N E
THE JOURNEY THAT LED ME TO PUBLISH A BOOK ON THE ANTINET. . . . 23

C H A PT E R T WO
THE WHO AND WHY OF THE ANTINET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

C H A PT E R T H R E E
THE CURRENT ZETTELKASTEN LANDSCAPE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

C H A PT E R FO U R
NIKLAS LUHMANN, THE MAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

PART 2: THE ANTINET

C H A PT E R F I V E
WHAT IS AN ANTINET?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

C H A PT E R S I X
ANALOG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159

C H A PT E R S E V E N
NUMERIC-ALPHA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222

C H A PT E R E I G H T
TREE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247

C H A PT E R N I N E
INDEX. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

C H A PT E R T E N
NETWORK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321

C H A PT E R E L E V E N
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE ANTINET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325
PART 3: KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT
C H A PT E R T W E LV E
KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368

C H A PT E R T H I RT E E N
SELECTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

C H A PT E R FO U RT E E N
EXTRACTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410

C H A PT E R F I F T E E N
CREATION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 439

C H A PT E R S I X T E E N
INSTALLATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487

PART 4: THE NATURE OF THE ANTINET

C H A PT E R S E V E N T E E N
MINDSET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 490

C H A PT E R E I G H T E E N
COMMUNICATION WITH YOUR SECOND MIND. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 502

C H A PT E R N I N E T E E N
HUMAN MEMORY AND THE ANTINET. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 530

C H A PT E R T W E N T Y
EVOLUTION, PERCEPTION, PERSPECTIVE AND RUMINANTS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 551

C H A PT E R T W E N T Y- O N E
RANDOMNESS, SURPRISES AND ACCIDENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 559

AFTERWORD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 575
APPENDIX A: LUHMANNIAN TREE STRUCTURE (ZETTELKASTEN I). . . . . . 577
APPENDIX B: LUHMANNIAN TREE STRUCTURE (ZETTELKASTEN II). . . . . 581
APPENDIX C: DIGITAL ANTINETS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 583
GLOSSARY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 589
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 593
ABOUT THE AUTHOR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 595
 AUTHOR’S NOTE

During the year i wrote this book, every day I woke up and deliberately
chose faith over fear.

I had recently come off a lucrative venture where I co-founded a cryptocur-

rency. I quit that venture in not the most pleasant fashion. My friends and
family expected me to start a newer, bigger, and better cryptocurrency. The
stage was set for me to “get back” at my old business partners who I had a
falling out with…

And there I was, assembling boxes of notecards and writing about it. There
I was, dedicating my life to a thing that flies over the heads of most people.
There was no clear path to recouping my time spent exploring the system
you’re about to learn in this book. Yet, I chose faith. There’s something here,
I told myself. There’s something that is bigger than a mere box of notecards. After
reading this book, I know you’ll find this to be true.

This book is for those who value the intellectual pursuit in life. It’s for those
who wish to unlock their inner-genius so that they can contribute something
to the world. It’s for those committed to growth and learning.

xi
12  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Thank you for joining me on this journey.

Just remember one thing—actually two: First, always choose faith over fear.
And second: always remember…to stay crispy, my friend.1

Scott P. Scheper
Sunday, 7:36 am
St. Thomas, Virgin Islands

1 This phrase is a funny joke I started saying when I was doing a daily podcast in early 2021.
The phrase stuck and you can find me using it in my highly entertaining emails. You can
join my email list at https://scottscheper.com.
 PREFACE (DO NOT SKIP)

The subject of this book concerns itself with a knowledge development

system created entirely out of notecards. I call this system the Antinet
Zettelkasten (or simply, the “Antinet”).

THE TRIPLE-ENTENDRE OF THE ANTINET

The Antinet is a triple-entendre.

First off, it’s a tongue-in-cheek jab at the digitally obsessed world we live in.
There’s no debating that digital technologies have changed our world, mostly
for the better. Digital technologies are better than their analog counterparts
for many things: navigation, an open encyclopedia, information sharing, and
so on. However, the one thing I contend that digital is not great for is this:
thinking. Deep, deliberate thinking. Both short-term development of thought
and long-term development of thought are best procured using analog tools.

This being the case, the Antinet doesn’t mean “anti-internet.” In fact, in this
book, I introduce an option for using a digital reference manager. Therefore,
the Antinet is not purely analog in nature. After all, digital reference man-
agers require the internet.

xiii
xiv  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The second meaning behind the term Antinet refers to its use as an acronym.
The Antinet is an acronym that maps to four principles (detailed later on). The
four principles the acronym maps to are the same four principles employed
by Niklas Luhmann, the main originator of the Antinet. I’ll introduce you
to the acronym of the Antinet later in this book. And I’ll introduce you to
Luhmann shortly. But first, let me tell you about the third entendre.

The third meaning behind Antinet refers to Antonin Sertillanges. This Cath-
olic intellectual and writer built his own Antinet-like system and wrote about
it in his book The Intellectual Life. I talk about Sertillanges throughout this
book. The “Ant” in Antinet also serves as an ode to Antonin.

ANTINET VS. ZETTELKASTEN

The Antinet most directly originated from the work of a German scholar
named Niklas Luhmann, a man who gained popularity for his genius-level
theoretical work in the field of sociology. Luhmann referred to his Antinet
as a Zettelkasten, which in American English means notebox, and in Euro-
pean English translates to slip box. Throughout the rest of this book, I’ll use
the terms Antinet, Zettelkasten, analog Zettelkasten, and Luhmann’s notebox,
interchangeably. And for any grammarians out there: I use the German
singular form of Zettelkasten as both singular and plural in English, rather
than trying to work in the German plural form of Zettelkästen. The Chicago
Manual of Style, on which this book’s format relies, dictates one should not
pluralize foreign words as though they were English.

I must caution you that outside of this book, the term Zettelkasten does not
refer to the same concept I’m referring to. When I use the term Zettelkasten,
I’m referring to the version of the Zettelkasten that Niklas Luhmann himself
used: an analog one. I am not referring to the abstracted interpretations
that the term has found itself cloaked in today. This so-called “cloaked”
version stems from the metamorphosis of a physical thinking system into
a metaphysical one. The embodiment of this new version is akin to that of
digital notetaking apps with note-linking capabilities. Such apps (which are
themselves digital Zettelkasten systems) merely link notes. I consider such
apps to operate in an entirely different realm altogether. Get ready to enter
the world of the Antinet. It’s a trip.
 Preface (Do Not Skip)  xv

A NOTE ON THE SUBTITLE OF THIS BOOK

The initial subtitle for this book was, The Secret Knowledge Development
System Evolved by History’s Greatest Minds. After I finished writing this book,
I decided to change its subtitle to the one you find on its cover: Uncovering
the True Magic of the Notebox System That Will Turn You into a Research and
Writing Machine. I believe this new version better emphasizes two “core
aspects” of the book, which I will detail now:

The first core aspect of this book centers around uncovering the true magic of
Niklas Luhmann’s notebox system (the Zettelkasten). You will learn how the
modern (digital) interpretations of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten are quite
different from its true (original) nature. These modern interpretations of
Zettelkasten lack the most important principles of the system. As a result,
the modern interpretations are far less effective when it comes to achieving
its main goal (genius-level creative output).1 In this book, we will uncover
the true magic of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten so that you can experience
its fullness (and avoid wasting your time with the modern, less-effective
digital interpretations).

The second core aspect of this book centers around directing us towards the
end goal. What is the end goal? The end goal is to become a research and
writing machine. You see, a common misconception regarding Zettelkasten
is that it is a subfield of Personal Knowledge Management (“PKM”). PKM
has largely come to refer to digital notetaking apps for storing informa-
tion. With each passing year, new digital notetaking apps emerge with
more and more features (linking notes, tagging notes, creating pre-built
templates for notes, metadata conventions for notes, etc.). The one thing
digital notetaking apps seemingly do not focus on is…helping you develop
knowledge! Luhmann’s sole purpose for building his Zettelkasten centered
on helping him become a research and writing machine. It was a system
that helped him develop knowledge. It was a system that helped him evolve

1 In fact, the modern interpretations of Zettelkasten can be even worse than ‘less effec-
tive.’ They end up being time-suck activities that revolve around linking digital files and
farting around with tags and metadata (when you should be developing knowledge). As
a result, not only are you left with ‘less effective’ creative output, you’re left with a mess
of thousands of digital notes that cause you to quit the project you set out to work on.
xvi  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the many thoughts that emerged from his readings (over four decades).
All of this was done with a sole focus on becoming a prolific research and
writing machine (which is what he became). In brief, the true nature of
Zettelkasten is not an information storage system; it’s a Knowledge Devel-
opment System—more specifically, it’s an Analog Knowledge Development
system (an “AKD”).2

Am I saying that the Zettelkasten is only for those interested in becoming

a research machine or a writing machine? Not quite. Even if you’re inter-
ested in becoming a reading machine (i.e., learning machine), an Antinet
Zettelkasten can help you. However, it is important to adopt the mindset
of approaching the books you read as if you’ll be writing a book about the
material. Paradoxically, adopting this mindset (as if you were going to teach
the material), helps you learn the material.3 In brief, by adopting the writing
machine mindset, you will become a better learning machine.

After I determined this was the better subtitle, I let things sit for a week or
so. To recap, the subtitle I was left with was, Uncovering the True Magic of
the Notebox System That Will Turn You into a Research and Writing Machine.
However, when looking at the length of the subtitle, I found it to be too
wordy. Therefore, I decided to condense it to what you find on the cover:
A Knowledge System That Will Turn You Into a Prolific Reader, Researcher and
Writer. That cuts straight to the heart of the matter (even though uncovering
the true nature of Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten remains a core theme of
this book).

While the new subtitle better encompasses the two core aspects of this
book, I think the very first subtitle is also worth diving into (aka, the “legacy
subtitle”). The reason why is that much of this book touches on the rich
history of the Zettelkasten. This adds important seasoning to the book.
Let’s dive into this now.

2 I hear you. The last thing the world needs right now are more acronyms, but whatever.
3 This is something we’ll discuss throughout this book. It touches on the mindset of growth
vs. the mindset of contribution.
 Preface (Do Not Skip)  xvii

THE RICH HISTORY OF ZETTELKASTEN

The legacy subtitle of this book is The Secret Knowledge Development System
Evolved by History’s Greatest Minds. Please take note of a few things:

First, note the phrase History’s Greatest Minds. This touches on the idea
that it was not Luhmann alone who produced the Antinet Zettelkasten.
After all, in 1786, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach described the usage of
slip boxes (Zettelkästchen).4 Indeed, some of history’s greatest minds used
systems closely resembling the Antinet. Luhmann was intimately familiar
with many of these scholars5. In turn, they have had a hand in evolving the
Antinet as we know it.

Those who evolved the Antinet include the following individuals:6

 Georg Philipp Harsdöffer  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

 Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm  Walter Benjamin
 Siegfried Kracauer  Aby Warburg
 Roland Barthes  Hans Blumenberg
 Reinhart Koselleck  Friedrich Kittler
 Jean Paul ( Johann Paul Friedrich Richter)
 Heinrich Heine  Jules Verne
 Arno Schmidt  Walter Kempowski
 Ernst Jünger  Michael Ende
 Vladimir Nabokov  Antonin Sertillanges
 Niklas Luhmann

Second, note the phrase Evolved by. The historical genealogy of the Anti-
net was “perhaps first mentioned in 1548 by Conrad Gessner.” It was then
expanded by Georg Philipp Harsdöffer (1607–1658), Joachim Jungius
(1587–1657), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). The Catholic

4 Helmut Zedelmaier, Christoph Just Udenius and the German Ars Excerpendi around
1700: On the Flourishing and Disappearance of a Pedagogical Genre (Brill, 2016), 102.
5 For instance, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
6 Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter Measure‑ ment
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 324.
xviii  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

intellectual and philosopher Antonin Sertillanges outlines a similar system

to the Antinet. His book, The Intellectual Life, published in 1921, contains the
instructions in explicit detail.7

The Antinet was developed by the likes of many learned scholars throughout
time. Yet, the Antinet’s “non-electronic completion” is viewed by scholars
as stamped by Niklas Luhmann.8

In the early 1950s, when Luhmann began building his Zettelkasten, he was
working at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court. It was there that
he spent his time “organizing a reference system for administrative court
decisions.”9 When asked by an interviewer what he did after getting off
work at five o’clock in the evening, Luhmann replied that he read a lot and,
“above all I started to work with a Zettelkasten.”10 From this, one infers that
whatever Luhmann learned while organizing the reference system for the
Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court ended up helping him evolve the
Zettelkasten into what it is today.

For this reason, the Antinet is not a secret knowledge development system
created by one individual; rather, it’s a secret knowledge development sys-
tem evolved by history’s greatest minds. The overhyped digital notetaking
systems of today have rendered the old way of developing knowledge
almost completely lost. Analog knowledge development has become a
secret. Its methods are a secret known only to a small collection of peo-
ple. For instance, scholars who study the evolution of notetaking in Early
Modern Europe.11 Even though the legacy subtitle is admittedly sensationalistic,
I hold that there is at least sensational substance to support its sensationalism.

7 OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 195–7.
8 Krajewski, Note-Keeping, 319.
9 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitau
sendeins, 2002), 10.
10 Luhmann, Short Cuts, 11.
11 For instance, the scholars who authored individual chapters in the collection,
Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe.
 Preface (Do Not Skip)  xix

In summary, you can see by the depth of both subtitles how robust this
book is. It touches on many aspects of the Zettelkasten: its true nature, its
modern misconceptions, its key principles, its history, its magic, its scientific
underpinnings, and more. This additional context gives you a greater respect
for the journey you’re about to embark on in reading this book. But before
you do, let’s talk about the goal of this book.

THE GOAL OF THIS BOOK

The goal of this book is both simple and complex. My goal is to help people
who are committed to growth and learning to create genius-level work.
I hope the genius-level work created lasts for two hundred years or more.
The reason any piece of work might last for two hundred years or more is
related to the contribution it makes to other people.

That is my why.

My what is this system: the Antinet. The Antinet is a knowledge development

system. It’s a tool that enables one to develop thoughts. I also contend that
it develops thoughts better than its digital imitators. The Antinet enables
one to unlock brilliant insights. It’s built on fundamental principles that help
develop one’s mind. It’s built on both order and chaos. In turn, it reveals
accidental associations and unconventional interactions between ideas.
There are other properties of the system I will introduce in the book as well.

My how is the way that I preach this system. Spoiler alert: I’m not an academic.

I couldn’t care less about ascribing to academic conventions (i.e., aca‑

demic jargon).

Anyway, I intend to write using my own voice. I intend to speak in a way

that discusses complex ideas in an as simple manner as possible, without
being simplistic. That is how I intend to deliver the message of the Antinet
Zettelkasten to you.

My why, my what and my how are both simple and complex. An Antinet is a
system founded on simple laws yet morphs into something quite complex.
xx  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The theory behind why it works is also simple yet has very deep implications
in the field of knowledge. Get ready for a fun ride.

THE DIFFICULTY LEVEL OF THIS TEXT

This book is intended for the general reader; however, it is not trivial. It’s quite
challenging in parts and quite theoretical in parts. In summation, it’s just as
theoretical as it is practical, yet its theoretical contents contain practical impli-
cations that cannot be reproduced by a mere “how-to guide” on this subject.

By becoming acquainted with the theoretical depth of the Antinet, you will
come away with a richer understanding of a system that, upon first glance, seems
rather simple. After reading this book, you will have a fuller understanding of
the system and the deep-rooted rationale for its structure. As a result, I believe
you will have a higher likelihood of sticking with the system in the long term.

THIS PROBABLY WILL NOT BE THE LAST

TIME YOU READ THIS BOOK
While writing this book, I began uploading YouTube videos demonstrating
how an Antinet works. As a result, I began receiving feedback, questions,
and comments. One comment, in particular, stuck out to me. It was from
an Antinetter named Kathleen, who specializes in the field of linguistics.
In a comment on one of my videos, Kathleen wrote:

“I just watched this again and finally, this being my third time
through this particular video, it made sense from start to fin-
ish. I don’t envy the challenge you have taken on to describe
this system. It’s so nebulous until you have the cards in front
of you… The video hasn’t changed, but this time through it
was a totally different video for me. How will you convey to
your readers that they might have to spiral back to chapters
previously covered once they start getting an inkling of what’s
going on with an Antinet?”

The answer to that question is simple: you will likely need to revisit this book
and review it after you have some experience building an Antinet. However,
don’t let this fact stop you from proceeding. If you value developing your
 Preface (Do Not Skip)  xxi

mind, developing your thoughts, and creating genius-level work, under-

standing and building an Antinet is worth it.

The fact that you may need to revisit this book regularly through the years is
a good thing. It means the content is important enough to actually revisit!
I have several books that I keep on my shelf in my office. They’re staring at
me right now from across the room as I write this. I revisit them from time
to time, and I keep them on my shelf to remind me that I ought to reread
them if I encounter a lull in my work.

In summary, you must be prepared to do two things when engaging this

book: (1) actively apply the knowledge and techniques (as Kathleen has),
and (2) revisit the information at various stages in your journey.

A NOTE ON HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

A curious thing happens when one develops knowledge using the techniques
you’re about to learn. In-depth context often accompanies each thought.
Other thoughts oftentimes inspire each paragraph. These inspired thoughts
can derive from your thoughts, or these inspired thoughts can come from
others’ thoughts. As a result, paragraphs and sentences end up so deep that
one’s writing begins to reflect this. It reflects this in the form of footnotes.

I have written this book using my own Antinet. As such, I have been quite
judicious in attaching comments and sources in the form of footnotes. This
text is ripe with footnotes. My recommendation is to read the book once
without worrying about the footnotes.

Do not get stuck on the idea that you must read every single footnote. If a
sentence with a footnote truly sparks your curiosity, certainly feel free to
read the footnote. Otherwise, do not get bogged down.

ADVICE FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO USE

THEIR OWN ANTINET WHILE READING
THIS BOOK
If you want to use (and build out) your own Antinet while reading this book,
then pay attention: do not read this book linearly.
xxii  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Here’s what you should do: First, read Chapter 11: The Hitchhiker’s Guide
to the Antinet. This chapter will give you a good base version for your own
Antinet. Follow the instructions in detail.

Second, within Chapter 14: Extraction, there’s a section titled The 2-Step
Luhmannian Bibcard Method. Read this section. Then, while reading this book,
use a bibcard and create brief bib notes. You can use multiple bibcards (you
don’t need to fit all your bib notes from this book onto one bibcard). After you
read that section, you’ll understand what bibcards are and what bib notes are.

Last, if you’re ever confused about a term, you’ll find a helpful Glossary in
the back of the book.

After you complete the steps outlined, you can begin reading this book,
starting from Chapter 1 and proceeding linearly.

A FINAL PIECE OF ADVICE

With this book, you have stumbled upon something special. It’s unique,
quirky, and—dammit—it’s downright crazy! You are embarking on a journey
in learning the old way to develop knowledge. With the recent over-hyped
popularity of digital tools, the old way of developing knowledge has become
the secret way. This revolves around using just your brain, pen, and paper.
I contend this secret way is the best way.

The greatest thinkers and writers of all time did not need a computer to
develop genius-level work, and neither do you. I’m going to show you how
to start thinking again, using a pen, notecards, and…your brain! Get ready
for the ride of your intellectual life.
 C H A PT E R O N E
�

THE JOURNEY THAT LED ME TO

PUBLISH A BOOK ON THE ANTINET

T here i was, lying on my couch one weekday afternoon during the pan-
demic of 2020. I had just finished a three-hour binge of the show Billions.

It’s a weekday, I said to myself. I should be doing something productive. Look

at me, I’m a single 34-year-old with nothing to live for besides my cat (a ragdoll
named Brodus Maximus). I felt like a complete slouch, a freaking loser.
I was empty and unfulfilled.

Roughly a year prior, I had left the cryptocurrency company I had co-founded.
For two years, I worked eight days a week to launch the company. In record-
breaking time, I helped take the company from $2.14 million in debt to be‑
coming one of the most exciting high-growth companies out there.1 We raised
roughly $10 million via what is known as an ICO (Initial Coin Offering).
We then raised over $14.1 million in equity during the next six months.2

Things were looking great. I was helping people, is what I thought. I was
raising money to build ground-breaking technology that would re-shape

1 “part ii,” accessed February 15, 2022, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data

/1577351/000119312518143726/d579201dpartii.htm.
2 “part ii,” accessed February 15, 2022, https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/
1577351/000119312519133301/d689828dpartii.htm#fin689828_5. This was done through
making use of the U.S. Security & Exchange Commission’s Program for startup com-
panies that was enacted as part of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (jobs Act),
known as a Reg A+ Offering.

23
24  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the way GPS works, using cryptocurrency to incentivize individuals.

We then held an exciting conference in downtown San Diego, and I spoke
to over a thousand excited investors and customers who were diehard fans.

Over the next year, however, the market proceeded down a slow death march.
Cryptocurrency prices across the entire industry dropped significantly.
My investment and investments made by my family and friends who trusted
me were down over 95%. The thousands of customers and investors who
had once declared their love for the company were disgruntled. They were
now practically threatening to bring pitchforks to our offices!

Since I was the face of the company, I took the brunt of it. It felt awful; I was
called a scammer and every other awful thing you can think of. Things got
even worse. We had to lay off almost half our company in a day (totaling
over forty people).3

On the day of the layoff, I observed my relationships with now-former

employees transform from some of my closest to my most contentious ones.
I felt depleted, yet I couldn’t show it because I still needed to lead the rest
of the team out of the mess. I pressed on for another six months. When we
got the company to a stable point, I knew deep down that I needed to take
a break, and I had to step away for personal reasons. I was empty inside.
On top of this, the technology really hadn’t panned out; it needed more
time to develop. Meanwhile, the vision was redirected into something
I wasn’t proud of. Yet, because I was not the majority partner or shareholder,
I didn’t have the legal control required to do anything about it. Nor did
I possess the energy to fight it. I was physically, emotionally, and mentally
burnt out.

Fast-forward a year later, and there I was, on my couch, lying down in a

vegetative coma of indolence, watching Billions. I wasn’t necessarily suicidal,

3 “San Diego Blockchain Startup XY Lays off 40 People, Losing Half Its Staff,”
San Diego Union-Tribune, June 4, 2019, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/busi-
ness/technology/story/2019-06-04san-diego-blockchain-startup-xy-lays-off-40-peo-
ple-losing-half-its-staff.
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  25

but I was sad; I had thoroughly lost my excitement for life. Plus, on top of
this, my other ragdoll cat, Mr. Bigglesworth (Brodus’s brother), passed away
from stomach cancer. He was only two years old. After watching him suffer
for months, I decided to pull the plug. It may seem ridiculous writing about
this; there are definitely more severe travesties in life. But I was single at the
time, with only two cats for company. Yet there I found myself, holding one
of them in my arms as the veterinarian injected him with something to make
his breathing stop forever.

I was depressed; I came down with a major case of black ass, as Samuel
Johnson would call it (his phrase for melancholy). On the surface, I wished
to create even more significant success than what I had engineered at the
cryptocurrency company. This time, however, I wanted more control over
the product and the company’s direction so that, in my mind, we wouldn’t
compromise on the vision.

Yet what I really desired was to serve people worth serving. Sure, there were
some excellent people I got to serve at the cryptocurrency company; but,
let’s face it, the vast majority of those involved were in it to make money
without having to do anything. The people interested in cryptocurrency were
there for one thing, and one thing only: to get rich doing nothing. When the
market is up, you’re Jesus Christ himself; when the market is down, you’re
the reason for all their problems.

I would rather not serve people who were get-rich-quickers, and I wanted to
avoid being in the business of wasting my energy with wasteful products.
Sure, I wanted to have a significant impact, but I also wanted to provide a
product that actually leaves future generations with something useful.

After finishing the entire season of Billions, I decided to sell my 72-inch big
screen TV and spend time brainstorming my next venture. I was still fas-
cinated with cryptocurrency, and I was intrigued by decentralized finance.
I saw innovation coming out of that space. But I was leaning toward creat-
ing something in my craft of marketing and copywriting. Specifically, I was
intrigued by the idea of creating a newsletter, and it would be in a format
inspired by my mentor, the late, great copywriter Gary Halbert. I began
26  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

to grow inspired by the idea of creating a newsletter related to marketing,

copywriting, cryptocurrency, and whatever else I was interested in.

In this state, I began to form a habit. For the next several months, I would sit
on my patio in the sun, smoking cigars and reading. I ended up smoking far
too many cigars. I got up to four per day, and it was so bad my lymph nodes
kept flaring up, screaming at me to quit (which I finally did).

Anyway, I began to read all day on my patio. I read psychology and philosophy
books. I would sit there in the sun and shade, take a few puffs of a cigar, read,
and then use a commonplace book to take notes. I had used a commonplace
book in the past to store notes, but I ran into limitations. After a few days,
I was reminded of those limitations.

I also had used notecards in the past. I began writing notes on notecards
roughly fifteen years prior, and I had been pretty consistent at taking notes
for books using 3 x 5 inch notecards. Yet, these notes had become numerous
and unruly because they were organized in “silos.” Each concept on the card
was difficult to find because they were clustered by the title of the book.
Nevertheless, even with these limitations, I inexplicably found notecards
to be the best tool for learning and retaining information.

Yet, using notecards proved difficult. I was on the patio smoking cigars in
the sun during this time. It was hard enough to read a book with the wind
constantly blowing, flipping the pages. Using notecards was even more
annoying, and they flew everywhere. For this reason, I stuck with using a
commonplace book.

The problem I was running into with the commonplace book was that the
silos of information I was creating were disconnected. I read books and then
wrote my thoughts out and came up with great ideas; however, the thoughts
were not connected. It was turning into a swamp of excellent knowledge,
turned mucky because it wasn’t connected to a source of clean water.

If I read something new that would develop and evolve a previous concept,
my previous ideas would remain locked inside a random page in the middle
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  27

of my commonplace book, requiring that I dig around to find it (or otherwise

forget it). The idea would become stale and disconnected.

Yet, while reading, I felt there was an incommunicable power in taking

notes by hand—whether that be in my commonplace book or on notecards.
Writing things down by hand developed my understanding of what I was
reading. It increased my retention of the concepts I wrote down and evolved
my thinking. It helped me form new ideas in a way that was far better than
typing notes into my laptop. Plus, a laptop workflow doesn’t work so well
when you read in the sun while smoking cigars. It gets hot and ashy and
dirty. And then there’s the glare factor.

I was aiming to begin organizing my thoughts and knowledge to turn them

into something that helped me create my next venture. I felt the urge to
connect my ideas as I spotted many patterns in my readings. These were
patterns across the disciplinary fields of psychology, philosophy, and mar-
keting. At this point, I turned to a surprising tool that, in retrospect, yielded
some surprisingly good results. I started using Microsoft Excel to link my
ideas. I also used it to diagram concepts and connections between them.
It proved handy in organizing information at a high level.

Over the years, I have tried out every tool you can think of. This includes
notetaking apps like Evernote, mind-mapping software, the reMarkable Tab-
let, and many other tools. The closest tool I found for helping me organize
my knowledge was Trello. Yet, even Trello was lacking compared to good
ol’ Microsoft Excel.

Several months went by, and I continued along in this way, settling for a
mishmash workflow: using my commonplace book, Microsoft Excel, and
sometimes notecards.

One morning, I woke up and did what I usually did—I checked a website
called Hacker News.4 This site serves as a hub of user-submitted stories,
in which the best ones get upvoted. That morning, at the top of the page,

4 https://news.ycombinator.com
28  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

was a submission titled, “Foam: A personal knowledge management and

sharing system for VSCode.” I clicked on the link and began exploring.
I learned that Foam was a “personal knowledge management sharing sys-
tem,” and it was for “organizing your research, [and] keeping re-discov-
erable notes.”5 I learned that all of this is just a fancy way of saying it’s an
application for creating markdown files and linking to other markdown
files within the text of the notes. This is done by using two square brackets
in a method known as wikilinks, for instance: [[Example Link to
Some Note]].

I also learned from Foam’s website that it was based on something called
Roam Research (“Roam”). Yet unlike Roam, and unlike something called
“Zettelkasten,” one could “use Foam without joining a cult.”6

I had no idea what Roam or Zettelkasten was, nor did I care. I had enough
on my plate (like trying to figure out what to do with my life). Plus, the idea
of joining a cult didn’t sound appealing. And after Googling “Zettelkasten”
and coming across the website zettelkasten.de, I found the content way
over my head. With that, I continued experimenting with Foam without
bothering to understand all the other stuff.

After downloading Foam, I recall picking it up quickly. The lightbulb went

on in my mind. It became clear how novel it was to create notes and then
link them together. My enthusiasm continued to grow when Foam presented
me with a nifty-looking bubble graph showing how my notes connected to
one another. I was blown away. It was official, I thought to myself, I’ve entered
the Matrix, and there’s no going back.

At this point, I ditched the mashup of my commonplace book, Excel, and

notecards. I was convinced I had discovered the new and better world of
linked notes.

5 “Foam,” Foam, accessed February 10, 2022, https://foambubble.github.io/foam/.

6 “Principles,” Foam, accessed August 27, 2021, https://foambubble.github.io/foam/prin-
ciples.html.
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  29

After a short stint using Foam, I stumbled across a similar tool called
Obsidian. After using Obsidian for a brief time, it became apparent that this
tool was better than Foam. It was slick and packed with more features. For
me, the killer feature was its ability to dynamically update all links. With
this feature, if you changed the filename of a note, the other links pointing
to the file wouldn’t break.

I found myself so enthusiastic about Obsidian that I would spend my evenings

watching YouTube videos on its best practices. In doing this, I came across
a particular YouTube channel with professional, well-produced videos. Its
creator was a sharp guy in his mid-to-late twenties who spoke clearly. After
watching a series of these videos, I learned that he had created a six-week-
long online course purporting to teach his methods.

I signed up for the course’s most premium package: $1,322 for a six-week
course with a 90-minute one-on-one session with its creator. I spent the
next six weeks learning the principles. Not only that, but I learned things like
how one should not copy-and-paste things into notes. I learned that folders
were “rigid” and “bad.” I learned that one should instead embrace tags and
create files that act as a “map of content” for notes. I learned more advanced
things like the concept of workflows and using templates for creating new
notes. I began exploring all the plugins Obsidian came with and I installed
new community plugins and began enhancing my Obsidian editor’s color
scheme and layout. I continued to learn the ins and outs of notetaking best
practices. I learned about the concept of taking something called “atomic
notes” and laboriously breaking apart my monolithic notes into individual
components. I learned about setting up different hotkeys and macros to
speed up my “notemaking” process.

After several months, I became a pretty advanced user of Obsidian. I had

custom commands and macros that were fed inputs and spat out nicely
formatted starter templates for my notes. I used these features extensively.
I had dozens of hotkeys I would use for various things to save time. I became
what I now call a “hotkey junkie.”

Nevertheless, discouraging thoughts would arise in my mind now and then.

30  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The thoughts revolved around the fear that all I was really doing was busy
work. Deep down, I felt like I was just majoring in the minor. “Never mistake
activity for achievement,” as John Wooden would say.

At this point, I was looking at a folder size of 105 MB, with 1,272 items in it.
Almost all the files were notes, though there were a few images and tem-
plate files. After this much work, I imagined I would feel more tranquil and
organized—or at the very least, closer to what I was trying to accomplish.

I had set out to use Obsidian to map out all the concepts from the books
I was reading. My goal was to organize them into a cohesive whole that would
become greater than the sum of its parts. I hoped to use the concepts to
produce a book or a newsletter on marketing, copywriting, and cryptocur-
rency. Yet, I had ended up with what amounted to a rat’s nest of 1,272 linked
files, and a nifty diagram presenting me with a bubble graph of the mess!

I felt hopeless, and like I had ventured further away from making sense of
my readings. Even the mishmash of my commonplace book and Excel felt
more helpful than the mess I had created with Obsidian.

At this point, a book showed up in the mail. I had heard about the book in the
online course I had taken. The book, How to Take Smart Notes, was written
by an academic named Sönke Ahrens. I began reading the book and soon
encountered the same term, which I recall coming across on Foam’s website,
where it had been implied that this term had a cultish following—the term
was Zettelkasten.

Yet as I read the book How to Take Smart Notes and learned more about
Zettelkasten and its creator, Niklas Luhmann, I started to gain a clearer
understanding of what it was actually all about.

Ahrens provided more explicit detail on how a Zettelkasten worked compared

with what I had found researching online. In addition, Ahrens explained
how an analog Zettelkasten worked. Although it provided a very sparse
description, it was the only description I had come across that explained
how an analog Zettelkasten works.
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  31

Oddly, however, Ahrens seemed less interested in the functions of the

analog Zettelkasten. Instead, he spent most of his time preaching that
Luhmann’s system could be refitted for the digital age by using digital apps
possessing note-linking capabilities. In this spirit, Ahrens seemed to invent
new concepts for doing this, coining terms like fleeting notes, literature notes
and permanent notes.

Although Ahrens’s notion sounded intriguing, from my previous experiences,

it created a digital mess. Instead, I decided to give the analog version—the
original version—a good solid try first.

As soon as I began using the Zettelkasten in analog form, I recall saying to

myself, “Ahhh…so this is how all this stuff is supposed to work!” I remember
thinking how different it was compared to the digital apps I had used—and
how much better the analog version was! The next day, I wrote by hand for
nearly twelve hours straight. I wanted to stop, but simply couldn’t. I had so
many ideas I felt needed to be developed. In the previous months, I had
spent most of my energy linking notes, formatting them, and making them
“atomic.” Now my thoughts were pouring out. I remember writing so much
that a callous formed on my index finger. Thoughts were being developed
on paper and flowing from my mind. Yet, I could actually see myself using
the knowledge and internally developing it over the long term. This expe-
rience was exciting.

Yet, Ahrens’s description of how an analog Zettelkasten worked was rather

wanting. It was missing a ton of detail and was vaguely outlined in several
paragraphs.7 But to Ahrens’s credit, his vague description was perhaps the
best out there of how an analog Zettelkasten worked. To compensate for the
vagueness of Ahrens’s description, I began researching online. Soon, I came
across something fascinating: a special project had commenced at Bielefeld
University in Germany, the same university where Luhmann was tenured.

7 Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers
(North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 18-20.
32  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The project entailed digitizing Luhmann’s entire Zettelkasten (roughly ninety

thousand notecards) and uploading it online for all to view.8

I began to scan Luhmann’s Online Archive and even started writing out
the translated versions of his notes by hand. Using Luhmann’s actual
Zettelkasten as a guide, I began building out my analog Zettelkasten over
the following months.

I also began porting over the notecards I had taken for the previous fifteen
years. I had been building out a notecard box off and on over the previous
fifteen years. These cards were not addressed, but just free-floating notecards.
The thing I was missing was the infinite internal branching brought forth by
the Antinet’s tree structure.

I started installing the old cards into my analog Zettelkasten by giving them
numeric-alpha addresses in the top-right corner, and then branching them
with similar cards. I began to observe how the notecards I had created for
over a decade began to reveal patterns I would have otherwise not seen if
they’d remained organized by book title. It was very exciting to observe the
power of such a system.

The experience and the journey I went through helped me realize that the
magic of a Zettelkasten—and indeed the magic of knowledge management—
rests not in the idea of creating notes; just as important is the medium one
uses to create the notes. The magic of Zettelkasten does not come from
taking atomic notes and linking them together using sexy software. Rather,
the magic rests in the analog thinking system Luhmann created. One built
of a pen, paper, and…a brain.

Over the following months, I began to see some encouraging results using
the analog Zettelkasten. From studying Luhmann’s archives, I discovered
there were four key principles that serve as the foundation of Luhmann’s

8 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolu‑
tion in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292.
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  33

system. These four principles comprise the acronym “ANTI.” From there
on, I began using the term “Antinet” to describe the system.

Meanwhile, I was progressing on the project related to marketing, copywrit-

ing, and cryptocurrency. I began to see my knowledge compounding, and
this helped me produce content.

I was gaining a ton of momentum and making progress. I also began using
an analog weekly planner to manage my to-do’s and my goals. I found my
productivity skyrocketing during this period. These practices also helped
me detach myself from the digital distractions brought forth by phone
and laptop.

More importantly, my mind felt like it was actually being stretched, and like
it was growing again. If I’m not learning and growing, I’m not the happiest
person to be around. This system started bringing me happiness and joy again.

I’ve since introduced the magic of the Antinet to my Little Brother, who I
mentor (initially, we met through the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentorship
program, and I’ve continued mentoring him beyond). I’ve seen him go
from starting fights in clubs to literally bring his Antinet into the library and
growing his mind all day. He reads and develops his notes from his readings
well past the time the sun goes down. He’s learning copywriting and market-
ing with my help. He’ll also soon be the first in his family to graduate from
college. Like me, he has named his Antinet (he named his “Huncho”; mine
is named “Stewie”), in recognition of what Luhmann himself described as
the magic of the Antinet: it functions as “an alter ego with whom we can
constantly communicate.”9

After discovering the power of the analog Zettelkasten (aka, the Antinet),
I began sharing my material online with people. I’ve met some incredible
people through my website, and through Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter. I’ve
started to see the transformation of others who use analog thinking systems.

9 Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
34  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

There are some fascinating people out there who are having success with
this tool. For instance, Stephanie Williams uses an Antinet to teach her deaf
son, who has a unique learning style.10

The Antinet helped me achieve what I was missing—a system that possessed
the power of thinking on paper. It helped me retain the power of writing
by hand without it turning into a disconnected knowledge swamp (which
is what commonplace books create). It helped me to finally make some
progress in my projects and develop them to fruition.

Yet something odd happened early on in my project related to marketing,

copywriting, and cryptocurrency. It fell to the wayside because I felt this
compelling desire to share the power of the Antinet. After all, I had to dis-
cover the system the hard way, and I knew others would have to go through
the same slog I experienced to discover the true power of the Zettelkasten
(in all its analog glory). At this point, I stopped and listened to my heart,
not my head. If I had learned anything from my previous cryptocurrency
experience, true fulfillment comes not from chasing money but from gen-
uinely creating a product one can be proud of. Sure, there’s more money
in creating a newsletter or book that provides money-making insights for
entrepreneurs, marketers, and crypto speculators. Yet, in my heart, I felt
less passionate about doing such a thing and more compelled to explore the
seemingly absurd idea of teaching people about an analog thinking system.

Let’s be clear, getting passionate about an analog Zettelkasten is quite

absurd. It’s a seemingly outdated system of notecards devised by some dead
academic whose books are nearly impossible to read! Yet I couldn’t resist.
I felt drawn to sharing what I had discovered. I remembered the fascinat-
ing people I interacted with in the online course I had taken on Obsidian.
I weighed these feelings and then decided. To hell with taking the safe route
and creating some crypto project to serve entitled speculators (who want
to get rich without lifting a finger)!

10 Stephanie Williams,…Filing the Courses I Plan to Take into My Analogue Zettelkasten

Aka #Antinet,” Twitter, January 30, 2022, https://twitter.com/utheol/status/1487584728
064606208.
 The Journey That Led Me to Publish a Book on the Antinet  35

I decided to do the risky thing—some would say the crazy thing. That is,
I decided to spend a year of my life reading and writing all day about an
analog notebox system—the Antinet. I’ve worked on this book like a dog;
however, I’ve done so without burning myself out.

I am energized writing about something that I know can help driven people,
academics, and knowledge workers develop their minds. It hasn’t been easy.
I’ve been living off my investments and savings, without making a penny
off this work. But I don’t care; I sleep soundly at night knowing I haven’t
sold my soul, or wasted people’s lives with wasteful, speculative products
that bilk other people out of money. Somehow I ended up doing what I
wanted to do all along—and I found it in quite an odd vehicle. I decided
to do something that was missing in my previous ventures, and that is this:
helping people worth helping.

It’s an honor for me to serve you and help you read more effectively, take
useful notes from readings, and transform them into powerful long-term
material that makes an impact in your field.

However, I would like to point something out: what you’ve signed up for
won’t be easy. You’re choosing to do things the hard way—the only way—
the best way.
 C H A PT E R T WO
�

THE WHO AND WHY

OF THE ANTINET

In‌ the early days of writing this book, I recorded a podcast every day.1
In the podcast, I mainly discussed items related to what I was discovering
about the Antinet.

One day, my father, who has served his community as a mortgage broker for
over thirty-five years, visited me in San Diego, California. I learned that he
had listened to a lengthy episode about the Antinet recorded the previous
day. Yet instead of feeling grateful, I felt a bit uneasy. This prompted me to
clarify who should bother investing their finite life energy into learning
about the Antinet. Sure, my dad probably listened to the podcast because
he loves me. But should he really invest his time learning about the Antinet?

Attention is the most valuable asset you have. You must not waste it learning
something that you really shouldn’t bother with. I love my dad and would
hate to think he’d waste his time learning about the Antinet when he really
should be spending it on his craft. Even though I don’t know you, I’d hate
for you to waste your time as well. For this reason, before you even begin
getting too deep into this book, I would like to provide some context and
reasons for why you should or shouldn’t read this book.

1 I have since discontinued the podcast, yet I continue to publish a piece of content every
day as part of a deliberate commitment. You can still listen to the podcast here: https://
podcast.scottscheper.com/

36
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  37

WHY YOU SHOULD BOTHER READING

THIS BOOK
Here are three reasons why you should read this book:

1. You’re a writer, author, or person who wants to create genius-level work

in your field—the type of work that will last for over two hundred years.

2. You already have experience writing by hand, and you’re aware of its
power—yet you ran into the same wall I once ran into stemming from
notecard systems organized by category.

3. You wish to use a system that develops the two most essential skills you’ll
need for thriving in the future: (1) the skill of getting to know your mind
(self-awareness) and (2) the skill of developing your mind’s flexibility.2

WHO SHOULD EVEN BOTHER READING

THIS BOOK
As mentioned in the preface, Niklas Luhmann was the originator of the
Antinet, and you will be learning more about him in this book. Luhmann
himself held that the Antinet was a “universal tool.” A tool that could capture
any thought and potentially provide value to anyone, as long the thought
could be written on a notecard.3

Although Luhmann held that one “can place almost everything in [the
notebox],” so long as it can be “noted down,” I hold a closer view to that of
several scholars, that an Antinet is primarily beneficial for researchers and

2 According to Yuval Noah Harari, a bestselling author, and profoundly independent

thinker, “We need to know ourselves better and we need to develop this mental flexi-
bility. Not as a kind of hobby for the side. This is really the most important quality or
skill to just survive the upheavals in the coming decades.” See Clay Skipper, “The Most
Important Survival Skill for the Next 50 Years Isn’t What You Think,” GQ, September 30,
2018, https://www.gq.com/story/yuval-noah-harari-tech-future-survival.
3 Niklas Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes,” accessed May 5, 2021, https://luh-
mann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes. “The slip box becomes a universal
instrument. You can place almost everything in it, and not just ad hoc and in isolation,
but with internal possibilities of connection with other contents.” Also, “It becomes a
sensitive system that internally reacts to many ideas, as long as they can be noted down.”
38  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

writers who wish to notate thoughts and ideas from their readings.4 It’s
mainly useful for non-fiction writers who do much reading, thinking, and
processing of ideas. The Antinet develops thoughts both in the short term
and long term. Thoughts serve as the raw material for non-fiction writers,
and thoughts stand as the raw material for the Antinet.

The purpose of the Antinet is to develop your thoughts so that they are
more thoroughly evolved and supported by the time they make their way
to your manuscript.

The Antinet is primarily a tool for researchers and writers. However, do note
the use of the term primarily. The Antinet is primarily useful for non-fiction
writers; yet, it’s not exclusively useful for such individuals.

A MORE PESSIMISTIC ANSWER

A pessimistic answer to the question of who should bother learning the
Antinet is this: most people shouldn’t bother with this book.

Here’s why—there are 1.65 million writers in the world.5 There are at least
7.8 million researchers in the world.6 For good measure, let’s throw in an
extra twenty million more individuals who are aspiring writers, professional
researchers, graduate students, and independent intellectuals. That’s 29.45
million people. Divide that into 7.9 billion people on earth, and you get
0.37%. In other words, there’s a 0.37% chance that an Antinet is helpful for
any given person. Therefore, there’s only a small chance that you should
bother with this book. However, you’re not an average person. Being that
you found yourself here and are reading this right now, perhaps I’ve already
filtered out the other 99.63% of people. And, in that case, I’m honored to
have you here!

4 Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.” “The slip box becomes a universal instru-
ment. You can place almost everything in it, and not just ad hoc and in isolation, but with
internal possibilities of connections with other contents.”
5 Devon Delfino, “20 Writing Statistics.” Writer, November 11, 2020. https://writer.com/
blog/professional-writing-salary-statistics/.
6 “UNESCO: Facts and Figures: Human Resources,” UNESCO: Facts and figures: Human
resources, n.d., https://en.unesco.org/node/252277.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  39

A MORE OPTIMISTIC ANSWER TO WHO SHOULD

EVEN BOTHER WITH LEARNING ABOUT THE
ANTINET
The Antinet is a system that serves as a ruminant for your thoughts. The idea
that only non-fiction writers can benefit from such a system is somewhat
limiting and probably inaccurate. Indeed, mathematicians who construct
proofs that require rumination over months (or perhaps years) would most
certainly find value in a system such as an Antinet.

Richard Feynman and many physicists would find their success watered
down if it were not for their analog devices that serve as a form of short-term
thought development and long-term rumination.

It appears that non-fiction writers and deep researchers are primarily those
who will benefit from thinking systems such as an Antinet.

If you’re an entrepreneur, an artist, a software engineer, a business profes-

sional, etc., here’s the cold hard truth: an Antinet will likely be less helpful
to you—unless you intend to publish and ship content. This goes for any
Zettelkasten system (even the digital knockoffs).

Regardless of what camp you fall into, there’s one thing you cannot forego.
And that is, a commitment over the long term to developing your knowledge
using an Antinet. Think decades, not years.

WHY NOTETAKING IS IMPORTANT TO

LEARN IN THE FIRST PLACE
It’s been put forth by scholars that “reading without noting” yields “superficial
knowledge.” This is because reading, as an act alone, is “not accompanied by
the attention and thought required to make a well-considered note.”7

Notetaking serves as the mechanism that enables a contradictory paradox.

One initially considers notetaking to be a memory replacement tool. That is,

7 Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices. (Brill, 2016), 138.
40  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

you don’t have to memorize anything because you can just dump it all in
an archive of notes; in other words, you can replace the need to memorize.
However, something else occurs entirely. Notetaking, if done via writing by
hand, acts as a memory enhancement tool.

Notetaking was thought to aid memory in two different ways, observes Ann
Blair in her work on the subject. First, it creates a written record to return to.
Second, and more interestingly, by forcing the mind to dwell on the material,
the act of writing excerpts and the thoughts they generate enables one to
retain better what was read or heard.8

Jeremias Drexel (1581—1638) observes that if one takes notes, their memory
becomes far from being neglected; in fact, their memory becomes “substantially
more effective.” As the scholar Alberto Cevolini reflects, notetaking promotes
better understanding of material. The reason why centers around the time and
attention devoted to the reading. “The reader,” observes Cevolini, “reflects lon-
ger on what he is reading, and the matter becomes more clearly understood.”9

In addition, notetaking procures long-term knowledge storage by setting up

the required material for maintenance rehearsal and elaborative rehearsal—
critical components of human memory that will be covered later in the book.

Simply stated, if developing deep, long-term non-superficial knowledge from

the books you read is of essential value to you, then notetaking is the most
critical skill you must master.

WHY A NOTETAKING SYSTEM

IS IMPORTANT
One reason to build a notetaking system centers on the simple idea that one
should follow in the footsteps of history’s greatest scholars and thinkers:
“In light of [notetaking’s] (literally) rich tradition, one would be well-advised

8 Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-Taking (Brill,
2016), 276.
9 Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories
(Brill, 2016), 168.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  41

to mind the recommendations of the scholars, and set about the construction
of [a notetaking system] as soon as possible.”10

Another reason is that a notetaking system allows one to offload the cog-
nitive processing work that memory requires for later recall. Cognitive
processing can then be used to think, develop, and reflect on ideas instead
of developing mnemonic memorization tricks, such as the method of loci
used by ancient Greek thinkers.

Yet, as previously touched upon, a notetaking system is primarily best suited

for writers and researchers who “ingest” and produce much content. Scholars
agree that a notetaking system is a valuable tool for those who mainly wish
to “work with information gleaned from reading.”11

WHY USE AN ANTINET

An Antinet is a strict interpretation of the already niche field of Zettelkasten,
which many believe to exist within the niche field of personal knowledge
management (PKM).12 PKM is a niche field within knowledge management,
which stands already as a rather niche field itself. In brief, the Antinet is
believed to reside in the deep alcoves of an already very niche field.

Chances are, you’re a nerd like me who geeks out over learning, growth,
reading, and the development of your mind. If that’s not you, then you’re
in the wrong place. If this describes you, then carry on reading.

The question then becomes, why should you invest your time learning about
the Antinet in the first place?

There are several reasons, which I’ll outline throughout the book; how-
ever, the short answer is this: it’s the purest, hardest, most-time-intensive,

10 Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement

against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 322.
11 Krajewski, Note-Keeping, 312.
12 This is a common misconception. In reality, Zettelkasten does not fall under the field of
PKM. The true nature of Zettelkasten revolves around knowledge development. It does not
revolve around storing and managing information (which is what PKM is really about).
42  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

but most rewarding way to develop your knowledge. Digital apps and
other new tools cut corners that produce stunted thoughts. Life’s too short.
If you’re going to produce work, do it the hard way. The result will show
signs of your commitment to this.

The Antinet is for those who aim to produce thought-provoking content,

even if it’s at the expense of being easy. Digital tools, I contend, are easier
and more convenient than building an analog knowledge system; however,
the output digital systems produce is of lesser quality than systems that
force one to think on paper.

THE ANTINET EVOLVES YOUR MIND

Another reason one ought to adopt and learn the Antinet centers around
evolution. If you wish to evolve as a person and evolve your mind, an Antinet
is the most full-bodied tool for doing such.

Akin to the concept of human evolution happening by way of externalization

(i.e., creating tools like axes, spears, vehicles for transport), a theory “that was
very successful in the second half of the twentieth century states that evolution
implies an increasing ‘exteriorization’ of individual memories.”13 This means
that to evolve, we must externalize our memories and move from the structural
coupling of communication from consciousness to communication with machines.

Yet, there’s a problem with this evolutionary leap. The issue is that when one
moves toward communication with machines (such as using digital notes to
interact with one’s own internally-sourced thoughts), one’s consciousness
becomes watered down and stripped of its individualism.

The Antinet Preserves One’s Consciousness Better

Than Digital Tools Because of Its Analog Nature
Your handwriting is a mighty powerful thing. Something covered later in

13 Cevolini, Alberto, ed. Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe. Library of the Written Word, volume 53, (Boston: Brill, 2016), 12.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  43

this book is the concept of an internal ghost, internal monologue, and internal
dialogue. Niklas Luhmann referenced this concept as well. The idea of the
internal ghost has been observed and studied by scholars as the interaction
between (1) external memory systems like the Antinet and (2) internal mem-
ory (which is the so-called wetware memory that resides inside your skull).

After studying John Boyle, John Locke, and Robert Hooke, one researcher
found that “annotations that are stored in the external memory can func-
tion only in tandem with internal memory, so excerpts and notes prompt
recollection of more than what they actually contain.”14 The magic that’s
happening here is that when one interacts with notes written in one’s
own handwriting and with other external contextual details attached to it
(like the color and shape of the notecards), one’s consciousness and
memory fills in the details and other thoughts that serve as a cue for
one’s consciousness.

In other words, the notes in your Antinet set off a chain reaction—a con-
versation, internally, that becomes an internal dialogue (not an internal
monologue). This experience is a powerful phenomenon generated in analog
knowledge systems such as the Antinet.

Unlike digital notes, which can multiply endlessly due to virtually unlimited
storage-space limits, notes in an Antinet serve as a cue for generating the
recall process in your mind. Digital notes take a different form; they tend to
be all-encompassing and thorough, which gets overwhelming. Your notes
should be a communication experience that takes place when you use them
to write your book, essay, blog post, or paper.

Evolution via Communication and Artificial

Consciousness
Evolution and human progress will emerge from the transition of the struc-
tural coupling of communication and consciousness to the structural coupling
of communication and artificial consciousness (by way of externalization).

14 Cevolini, Forgetting Machines, 12.

44  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The best tools are the ones that lead to artificial consciousness—by
which I mean a communication partner that seems to have its own
externalized personality.15

Thus far, digital notetaking apps have proven useful as information storage
systems, not as artificial consciousness storage systems. The Antinet is a
better artificial consciousness storage system, and it serves as a better cue
for the internal mental dialogue when it comes time to write. Moreover,
I contend that an Antinet is, paradoxically, closer to enabling human evo-
lution than digital tools even though digital tools are perceived as being
more evolved.

WHY YOU SHOULD EVEN CARE ABOUT

LEARNING A SYSTEM THAT STRICTLY ADHERES
TO NIKLAS LUHMANN’S ZETTELKASTEN
Among scholars—and one in particular who has surveyed nearly all knowl-
edge development systems used throughout history—Niklas Luhmann’s
Zettelkasten system is decidedly one that “stands out.” Alberto Cevolini
points out that Luhmann’s paper outlining his Zettelkasten can be regarded
as modern society’s most advanced result of a long-lasting reflection per-
formed on knowledge management.16

I contend that history’s physical analog thinking systems evolved to their

most advanced level with Luhmann’s Zettelkasten system. Instead of being
carried forth and developed from there, it has essentially been replaced
with digital notetaking tools, which I suggest are worse in many ways. The
popularity of analog thinking tools has dwindled as a consequence, and their
popularity has been supplanted with the usage of digital tools. Additionally,
the actual evolution of analog thinking systems has seemingly stopped.
I can only hope that my book will bring back some innovation in this space.

15 Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. Luhmann referred to this person-
ality as an “alter ego.”
16 Cevolini, Forgetting Machines, 26.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  45

Each Component of Luhmann’s Principles is Unique

and They Combine to Create a Whole Greater Than
the Sum of Its Parts
In this book, I’ll detail the four principles that make Luhmann’s system
unique. The four principles combine to create the Antinet. When you
interpret Luhmann’s system loosely, it loses its luster and impact. One of
its key impacts is its proclivity to transform from a memory replacement
tool to a system that actually ends up enhancing memory—a so-called
memory aid.

The four principles of the Antinet force something called neuro-associative

recall. Together, each aspect of the Antinet transforms it from a memo-
ry-storage system to a memory-supercharging system.

Luhmann echoes this notion. He suggests that the Antinet forces one to
file thoughts (“placing of the notes”). While it “takes time,” according to
Luhmann, it also does two things: (1) it helps enliven the “sheer monotony
of reading,” and (2) it “incidentally trains the memory.”17

WHY YOU SHOULD NOT BOTHER

READING THIS BOOK
Luhmann’s notebox system has become surprisingly popular recently with
the publication of several books, and it’s also become popularized through
online communities.18 Myths about Luhmann’s system have also emerged.
One such myth is that Luhmann’s system produces prolific amounts of
writing—without the process of writing being difficult.

The author of perhaps the most popular book on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

writes that Luhmann’s productivity is impressive, yet even more amazing
is that “[Luhmann] seemed to achieve all this with almost no real effort.”19

17 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,

2002), 83. See the last chapter of “Short Cuts” (available in German).
18 Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning
and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers. (North Charleston,
SC: CreateSpace, 2017); also https://zettelkasten.de.
19 Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes, 15.
46  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

This is a false notion that will be explored later in the book, but the result
of its proliferation is that the Zettelkasten finds itself presented as a system
that causes many people to overlook the actual realities of using it: the
truth is that Luhmann worked night and day, and his writing and theoreti-
cal work were his life. To a large degree, he produced so much because his
wife passed away, and he had a caretaker who cooked his meals and helped
him raise his children. This allowed Luhmann to focus almost exclusively
on writing. In brief, the Zettelkasten does not replace hard work; rather, it
greatly enhances the depth of thought in one’s work output; however, there’s
one caveat. Those who wish to use such a system must not shy away from
the prospect of hard work.

Another thing that must be considered is that an Antinet is something you

should investigate if, and only if, you have adequate time. If you’re under
constant deadlines, for instance—daily deadlines, such as those experienced
by a newspaper writer—an Antinet is probably not for you. Paradoxically,
unlimited time is also not ideal either. You must have short-term projects as
milestones. Luhmann had this in the form of peer-reviewed articles. While
the number of books Luhmann published is impressive (seventy), just as
impressive is that he published 550 articles.20 These served as short-term
projects which helped him develop his thirty-year undertaking to devise a
theory of everything in the field of sociology.

After Luhmann passed away, two hundred more unpublished manuscripts

were found among his possessions.21 The sheer volume of Luhmann’s output
stands as one of the main selling points for the Zettelkasten system. It’s a big
part of what has attracted many people to the concept. Further, Luhmann
continued to be productive even after he passed away with a half-dozen of
his books published posthumously. Sönke Ahrens writes that he knows

20 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine.” In Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management
Evolution in Early Modern Europe, edited by Alberto Cevolini (Boston: Brill2016), 289;
Vanderstraeten, Raf. “Luhmann on Socialization and Education.” Educational Theory 50
( January 25, 2005): 1–23.
21 Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt,” 2021, accessed May
11, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 24:30.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  47

more than a few colleagues who would give a lot to be as productive as

Luhmann—even as productive as Luhmann was after he died!22

However, here’s the reality: Luhmann’s books were poorly written (due to
academic German conventions still practiced today). Luhmann’s writings are
packed with very deep ideas, yet, reading Luhmann’s work is a sleep-inducing
experience. His books are extremely and unapologetically challenging to
understand. They’re convoluted with academic jargon and unnecessarily
large words. Even Luhmann himself acknowledged the issues with his writing
style that caused him to have difficulty getting his work translated. From
observing beginners and translators who tried reading his texts, Luhmann
once remarked, “I have noticed how haphazardly I write—despite consid-
erable care in preserving and refining theoretical coherences.”23

Hans-Georg Moeller considers Luhmann’s social theory to be the best

analysis of contemporary society presently available. Yet, he observes that
Luhmann’s work remains “far less prominent” than it ought to be. The rea-
son? Luhmann’s books were so difficult to read.24 This same scholar wrote
an entire book dedicated to exploring Niklas Luhmann’s theoretical work.
Before even beginning the book, he allocates a section dedicated to how
and why Luhmann produced books that were so challenging. Luhmann’s
word selection, style, and tone were that of an academic who gave lectures
so dense that you left feeling like you didn’t understand a thing. This gives
you a glimpse of what reading Luhmann’s work feels like. Luhmann’s writing
style is so thickly drenched in doctrinaire academic-prose that the scholar
who wrote a book on Luhmann refers to his writing style as soporific.25

WHY LUHMANN’S BOOKS WERE SO BAD

The reason Niklas Luhmann’s books were so bad centers around the
following aspects:

22 Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes, 14.

23 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 82.
24 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 3.
25 Moeller, The Radical Luhmann, 3.
48  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Academic Pretentiousness Described the German

Academic Climate of His Time
Luhmann’s dense academic writing style was almost a requirement in his
field if he wished to be taken seriously. It was an “environment of academi-
cally pretentious soporific authors.”26 The greatness of one’s work correlated
directly with how inaccessible and difficult it was to penetrate.27 In other
words, the more ridiculously challenging it was to read a person’s work, the
more respect the one who wrote it received—assuming the ideas weren’t
pure gibberish. Luhmann’s work most certainly was not gibberish; it was deep,
brilliant, unconventional, cross-disciplinary, and, astoundingly, quite valid.

Luhmann operated within the academically pretentious standard of Germa-

ny’s academic environment. As a result, his books reflect his environment.
One scholar states, “Luhmann (or rather, his writing) suffered from being
too closely associated with the German academic elite at the time.”28

Luhmann Barely Edited His Work

“Once I’ve written [a manuscript],” Luhmann stated in an interview, “I don’t
usually revise it.”29 In brief, he was not a perfectionist. He did not have a
writing process like F. Scott Fitzgerald, wherein he would write books in
longhand using a pencil in a notebook before typing the manuscript using
a typewriter. Luhmann wrote his texts by hand on notecards, but he put
little effort into making them cohesive and flow naturally. Luhmann was
more concerned with just getting his work shipped, as imperfect as it was.
“I don’t have any notion of perfection when it comes to books and essays,”
Luhmann said, “like some people who think they have to write a definitive
work with their first book.”30 Luhmann considered nearly all of his roughly
seventy books, 550 articles, and two hundred unpublished manuscripts

26 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 15.
27 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 14.
28 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 14.
29 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 17.
30 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 17.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  49

as “version zero.” The only book he did not hold as “version zero” was his
Theory of Society (which took him some thirty years to write).31 He created
major versions of this book every decade: one each in the 1960s, 1970s,
1980s, and 1990s.32

It may be overstating things to insinuate Luhmann never revised his manu-

scripts. In fact, he did insert new pages between existing pages of his drafts,
similar to how he made his notes branch in his Zettelkasten. For instance,
one finds manuscripts with pages 1, 2, 2a, 2b, 3. The pages 2a and 2b were
inserted as an afterthought.33 Therefore, clearly, Luhmann did some editing
after writing a manuscript.

Luhmann Desired to Be Impenetrable by the General

Public in Fear of His Career Being Threatened
There’s a dark secret in Luhmann’s life that isn’t talked about much.34 I will
cover it later in this book; however, it provides a perfectly understandable
reason why Luhmann would want to remain impenetrable to the general
public. Because his positions in sociology are so complex, it is conceivable
that the public would have placed him in an ideologically dangerous category,
thereby threatening his career. To mitigate such a risk, one can suppose
Luhmann erred on the side of being highbrow so that only well-read intel-
lectuals could decipher what he was saying. This risked fewer opportunities
of mischaracterization from untrained readers in the social sciences.

Luhmann’s writing style helped ensure that only academics proficient and
trained in such a style would be capable of even attempting to understand his
work. To illustrate this point, we can refer to an interview with Luhmann from
1973. The interviewer asks Luhmann what critics he fears most, and his reply

31 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 17.

32 Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 21:40 and 28:58.
33 Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.
youtube.com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 48:30.
34 This “dark secret” of Luhmann’s life is omitted from Sönke Ahrens’ book How
to Take Smart Notes, as well as from popular websites like zettelkasten.de
50  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

is classic: “The stupid ones.”35 Luhmann’s writing style prevented the stupid
ones from reading his work, and it’s continued to do so long after he’s passed.

Luhmann’s Zettelkasten System Created a Deep

Spider-Like Network That Was Hard to Disentangle
Using a Typewriter
Even academics trained in reading dense prose have found themselves chal-
lenged by Luhmann’s writing style, stemming from the complex, multidisci-
plinary webs of thought Luhmann’s books dump onto the page. Luhmann
proclaimed, in a seemingly proud manner, that “there’s no linearity, but a
spider-web-like system that can be started anywhere.”36 Such a non-linear
structure makes Luhmann’s work something that is “not reader-friendly,”
according to one scholar.37 Luhmann asserts that the non-linear nature of
his work is a feature, not a bug. It enables one to pick up one of his books
and start reading anywhere–such as the beginning or end of the book. Yet
this assumes some familiarity with Luhmann’s work. As Moeller points out,
anyone can indeed begin reading anywhere, but they can’t start understand-
ing anywhere.38 One can begin reading anywhere, assuming they’re already
well-versed in Luhmann’s work. Becoming well-versed in Luhmann is hard
to achieve if you start with Luhmann’s books, though it’s been said that his
lectures were easier to comprehend.39

There’s no friendly initiation when you begin trying to read Luhmann’s work.
You’re quickly confronted with unconventional, intimidating terminology.
This terminology is packed with sudden, chaotic shifts between ideas.40 Want
to know the best part about all this? Luhmann doesn’t even bother to explain
the unconventional terminology he introduces. He leaves you to embark

35 holgersen911, “Niklas Luhmann—Observer in the Crow’s Nest” (Eng Sub), 2012,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSCKSPMuDc, accessed May 11, 2022, 12:40.
36 Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2011), 11.
37 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 11.
38 Moeller, The Radical Luhmann, 11-12.
39 Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt,” 4:00.
40 Moeller, The Radical Luhmann, 11ff.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  51

on a mental journey down the complex jungle of intellectual self-discovery.

One thing is certain: you’d better be prepared to bring your own map.

Judging the books that contained such complex webs of ideas, one may
be quick to blame Luhmann’s Zettelkasten; however, that’s jumping to
conclusions too quickly. Luhmann’s environment certainly influenced the
complex style Luhmann strived for in his texts, but there are a few other
reasons Luhmann’s work is web-like: one is out of principle, and the other
is that Luhmann perhaps enjoyed being a troll. Let’s cover such aspects now.

Luhmann Desired to Be Impenetrable for The Sake of

Principle
Luhmann brings forth the idea that not everything ought to be easy to under-
stand. He once posed the question: “Should everything that is said be equally
forced under the rod of comprehensibility?… Comprehensibility without
effort? Understandable without any preparation, without any time thinking
and deciphering?”41 From this, Luhmann implied that one shouldn’t expect
all knowledge to be in a format that could be spoon-fed to those who are
not committed to the work involved in understanding advanced thought.
Advanced knowledge is something that must be earned, in other words.
It does one an injustice to make such knowledge so easily digestible; doing
such a thing waters down the impact knowledge can have on one’s mind.

Perhaps this is just a cop-out by Luhmann. After all, it’s easier to offload the
cognitive work involved in simplifying ideas. But maybe Luhmann does have
a point. It would degrade some of the world’s magic if all knowledge were
trivial to ingest. Perhaps Luhmann’s right in this respect.

Indeed, the more complex and impenetrable a subject is, the more attractive it
can become for those with a thirst for knowledge. The difficulty of deciphering
Luhmann stands as the very thing that initially attracted Johannes Schmidt
(the scholar heading up the digitization of Luhmann’s literary estate). When
Schmidt first came across Luhmann’s work, he did not understand a word of it.

41 Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English), 6.

52  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In making his texts challenging to decipher, Luhmann essentially filtered

out and disqualified those he could not care less about—that is, people who
weren’t serious and committed to putting in the work required to engage
with theoretical sociology.

For those serious about social theory, the complexity of Luhmann count-
er-intuitively seemed to serve as the key attraction. From there, his writing
sucked people into The Matrix of Sociology, if you will.

In an interview with Johannes Schmidt conducted by a man who runs a

podcast covering complex philosophical and social concepts, they both
shared the same experience upon first encountering Luhmann: “When you
first read Luhmann, on the one hand, you don’t understand at all, but on
the other hand that makes you want to!”42

We could refer to this as the phenomenon of complexity attraction—referring

to the event wherein complexity serves as an attraction mechanism for those
passionate about a field.

Another example of complexity attraction is illustrated by the author of the

book, The Radical Luhmann. He recounts a story in which an academic
friend of his missed a talk by a guest lecturer in philosophy. When the
friend asked another academic who attended the conference how it was,
the person replied in all seriousness, “It was awesome—I did not under-
stand a word!”43

LUHMANN DESIRED TO BE IMPENETRABLE FOR

THE SAKE OF BEING AN IRREVERENT TROLL
Luhmann’s character is described as an obscure, ironic, radical thinker.44
Perhaps today we’d consider him a bit of a troll. Luhmann has some
trollish tendencies, covered later in the book. His theories were often
quite paradoxical and, after long explanations, pointed back to them-

42   Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt,”, 6:50.

43   Moeller, The Radical Luhmann.
44 Moeller, The Radical Luhmann.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  53

selves and the beginning of where they started. He was fascinated with
self-referential systems wherein the beginning is the end, and the end
is the beginning. His Zettelkasten system reflected such ideas, which is
somewhat unsurprising.

In brief, one should not get caught up in the idea that the Zettelkasten will
magically enable you to spit out a massive number of books or papers that
are instant classics and perfect. It can undoubtedly produce excellent work;
however, the sizable amount of work Luhmann produced largely also came
from the fact that he only lightly edited his work. Furthermore, his work was
tangled in a spider-like web. Some of this is due to his Zettelkasten, which
is due to the aforementioned variables.

In my opinion, there’s a healthy balance for how to use a Zettelkasten system.

It centers around the age-old balance of quality vs. quantity. The Antinet’s
main benefit is its ability to develop thoughts thoroughly. It truly does
help create profound ideas; however, you must also be prepared to take the
time to edit your work and make it readable for your audience—if, that is,
you wish to appeal to general readers. Instead of publishing seventy books,
if Luhmann had instead focused on making, say, ten books (and thus had
taken the additional time to make his ideas easier to digest) perhaps his
theoretical work would be much more popular than it remains today.

Using an Antinet will enable you to develop and put all the crazy, otherworldly
thoughts from your mind into a rumination system that allows it to grow.
From there, their complexity will grow. You can certainly decide to forego
simplifying your text for the general reader. Or, you can use such a system to
enable you to offload the complexity that usually lives in your mind so that
you can then create a more reader-friendly, more straightforward version
for your audience. It’s entirely up to you.

It’s essential to keep all of this in mind when deciding whether you wish to
build your own Antinet. When using an Antinet, your ideas and thoughts
will indeed be developed to a greater degree than they otherwise would. Yet,
it also means that the complexity and entanglements of your ideas will also
grow, thus requiring much editing to make your work digestible.
54  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In brief, Luhmann’s pedantic, and overly-complex writing style can be

attributed to several things. Primarily it stems from the German academic
climate of his day. It also stems from his carnivalesque and trollish nature.
He purposely sought to be impenetrable by “stupid” critics. Yet, the Antinet
itself isn’t to blame for Luhmann’s writing voice.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, we find Umberto Eco, an Italian

scholar who used his own Antinet-like system. Eco’s notecard system, like
the Antinet, possessed web-like cross-references. However, Eco wrote in a
way that both entertained and informed his readers at the same time.45 Just
because one uses a web-like analog system doesn’t mean their writing style
magically becomes arrogant.

Now, should you write in the trollishly pedantic academic style of Luhmann?
Or, should you opt for the entertaining and informative style of Umberto Eco?
My opinion is to follow the advice of Hemingway: write the truth. Write the
truest sentence you can. Write with your 100% authentic voice. Your readers
can smell it on you. People are more perceptive than you think. If writing
like a trollish academic pleases you, and if it is you, then by all means write
that way! Otherwise, err on the side of writing to communicate, instead of
writing to confuse.

Assuming I haven’t scared you away at this point, let’s now move on to why
one would opt for an Antinet in the first place. Let’s talk about where the
Antinet shines.

WHERE THE ANTINET TRULY SHINES

The entire point of using an Antinet centers around producing unconventional,
deeply evolved thoughts. Certain aspects of an Antinet ensure unconven-
tional, deeply evolved thoughts emerge from the system, and these areas
are where it shines in comparison to other knowledge systems.

45 Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis, trans. Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina,
Translation edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2015), xiv.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  55

PRODUCING GENIUS-LEVEL WORK THROUGH

CREATIVE INSIGHTS AND UNCONVENTIONAL
INTERACTIONS
Let’s start from the end result of what an Antinet aims to produce, and then
work backward from there.

An Antinet aims to produce genius-level work. Plain and simple.

To produce genius-level work, one must unlock creative insights that

otherwise would remain disconnected in disparate fields. As a thinker,
your goal centers not on hitting targets that others find difficult to hit, but
to hit targets that others can’t even see. This comes about by unlocking
creative insights.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb observes that the primary reason for America’s
dominance in the global economy (with companies like Apple, Amazon,
Nike, Google, Facebook, etc.) all stems from one key strength: creativity.46

The question then becomes: how does one unlock creative insights?

Unlocking creative insights stem from one thing: unconventional interactions.

For something to be unconventional requires some degree of randomness
and the paradoxical quality of being true, with the insight often inspiring
a sense of awe and wonder. The requirement for interactions is comparison.
That is, one must be able to relate and associate concepts. This primes sim-
ilar ideas to be nested and neighbored around one another so that when an
unconventional link is connected to a “neighborhood” in the Zettelkasten,
it creates unexpected ideas that emerge from viewing it in context with its
neighboring cards.

At the center of innovation rest two seemingly different concepts, from two
seemingly different contexts, that interact to create something greater than
either of those two concepts individually. This is a central idea of commu-

46  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2nd ed.,
Random (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2010), 64.
56  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

nication theory—a field Luhmann’s work was deeply rooted in and that he
understood quite well. Innovation and breakthroughs in thinking happen
when two different ideas, with different goals and perspectives, communicate
and create new meaning.47 This is related to the concept of emergence in
systems theory, in which new properties and behaviors emerge when indi-
vidual parts interact in a broader whole.

Such phenomena appear to occur more profoundly within a system such

as an Antinet. Unlike digital systems (which have the tendency of being
flooded with too much information), an analog thinking system seems

47  See Luhmann “Communicating with Slip Boxes”: “Information, accordingly, originates

only in systems which possess a comparative schema—even if this amounts only to:
“this or something else.” For communication, we do not have to presuppose that both
parties use the same comparative schema. The effect of surprise even increases when
this is not the case and when we believe that a message means something (or is useful)
against the background of other possibilities.”
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  57

to generate fewer yet much more meaningful interactions, which, in turn,

generate creative insights that are not replicable by the system’s digital cousins.

THE ANTINET SHINES WHEN ONE DESIRES TO

DEVELOP A LONG-TERM THESIS OR SERIES OF
WORKS IN AN AREA (SUCH AS A THIRTY-YEAR
THESIS)
The reason Luhmann created his Zettelkasten in the first place is two-fold.

First, Luhmann set out to create a system for retrieving things forgotten
by memory. Yet after a certain point, as early as 1981, he discovered its true
power—his Zettelkasten became a thinking tool and communication partner
that emerged almost as if it were its own mind, a ghost in the box. More on
this will be covered later. More pertinent right now, however, is the second
reason Luhmann started his Antinet.

The second reason relates to his main objective: to embark upon a thirty-
year-long quest to excavate a theory of everything as it relates to human society.

Authors like Robert Greene and Ryan Holiday have publicly shared their
notecard systems, yet their systems are quite trivial compared to an Anti-
net. They’re organized by topic or book title. They were created primarily
for writing one book, which are projects lasting one to several years. Their
notebox systems were not architected for projects with a time span of three
decades. A short-term project is more straightforward in scope than a thir-
ty-year theory of everything. This likely explains why Greene’s and Holiday’s
notebox systems don’t seem to restrict them. However, when you’re trying
to categorize and prepare for a project that will last thirty years, you must
embrace chaos. You cannot hope to have the categories you start out with be
perfectly ordered and arranged by topic forever. You can’t expect to have the
notebox adhere to the original set of organized sections over the long term.
The thoughts and ideas must emerge as your research grows. Knowledge will
emerge from the trees and branches of thought in unconventional places.

This raises some problems with category-based notebox systems, however.

Each time you finish a book, the cards live only in the silo of that project.
58  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

A great wall is seemingly hoisted around the project, preventing future work
from smoothly referencing its parts. It’s forever walled off from the other
future projects you embark upon. Its fruitful and potent ideas are blocked
off from colliding with ideas related to any future work you create. As a result,
you cannot experience the cumulative compounding miracle the Antinet
seems innately built for.

The compounding miracle cannot be unleashed if you have to start over from
scratch every time you start a new project, as evidence suggests Holiday
does each time he starts a new book.48

Luhmann recognized this, which is one reason he architected his

Antinet in such a way. “I started the index card file,” Luhmann explained,
“because it was obvious to me I would have to plan for a lifetime not for a book.”49

In brief, the Antinet is best for long-term projects and also if you intend
to leverage the miracle of compounding your ideas over a thirty-year-plus
timeframe. That doesn’t mean you must commit to working on one project
for thirty years; instead, it means you must commit to having your work
compound and interact with itself over thirty years (this is made possible
by way of the Antinet’s structure).

Other problems with categorical-based notebox systems will be outlined

later on in the book.

THE ANTINET SHINES IN REVEALING

STRUCTURED ACCIDENTS
The Antinet enables users to slow down their minds and develop their
thoughts. It also excels in stimulating one to think of associated ideas and then

48  Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And
Using Everything You Read,” RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April 1, 2014, https://ryanhol-
iday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-every-
thing-you-read/. For instance, one can observe a dedicated box of notecards being creat-
ed for Holiday’s book, The Obstacle is The Way.
49  Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 290.
 The Who and Why of the Antinet  59

link to those ideas in the note. Some confuse this (the concept of linking)
as the unique benefit of Luhmann’s system; however, this is not the case.

The practice of reading something and writing the idea immediately into a
digital markdown file, and then linking that file to some other idea is not
what is meant by unconventional interactions. For something to be an uncon-
ventional interaction, it must genuinely be unconventional. Nearly anyone can
search their digital notes to find keywords related to the current idea they
just wrote down and link that idea. The idea of simply linking your notes in
this way is a misinterpretation that plagues countless numbers of people in
the digital Zettelkasten world.

For instance, David Kadavy’s book about digital Zettelkästen outlines the
advantage of the system, stating that you activate your mind’s “associative”
machine when you think of a related concept in your mind, which “collides”
with another related idea.50 While this is true to a degree, it largely misses
the mark. Here’s why:

The point of the Antinet is its ability to serve as a thinking machine, as a

knowledge development system, and as an extended memory. The system
forces the user to think of the keyterm they would use to describe a concept.
Only after this critical step do you look up the concept and go through your
notes and compare and remind yourself of the things you’ve forgotten in the
process. The magic of an Antinet does not center on one’s ability to think
about what a new concept you’ve read relates to (as that’s a conventional
interaction, not an unconventional interaction). Rather, as Luhmann puts
it, its magic stems from “interactions that were never planned, never pre-
conceived, or conceived” by your current way of thinking.51

50  David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples, Kindle Edition
(Kadavy, Inc.), 35. “By trying to think of how to describe the passage in my own words,
I activate the associative machine, which often causes the current idea to collide with
some other idea in my mind. Associative thinking promotes a positive mood, so it
shouldn’t be a surprise how fun this task is. If writing a passage makes me think of some-
thing related, I write it in parentheses.”
51  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”: “The slip box provides combinatorial pos-
sibilities which were never planned, never preconceived, or conceived in this way.”
60  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The magic of innovation and of unlocking creativity stems from the possi-
bility of (1) making relations using the term you’re currently thinking of, but
more importantly (2) the analog nature of the system with its tree-structure
(which you’ll learn about later in the book), ends up inducing structured
accidents that are otherwise impossible to replicate.52

This is why it’s critical, in Luhmann’s words, that your “selection and com-
parisons are not identical with the schema of searching for them.”53 Why is
this the case? Because simply searching for a keyword, digitally, robs the
potential for innovation to occur not through seeing what you felt was related
in that moment, but through the ingenious, unconventional discoveries you
make along the way navigating to the nearby cards, and nearby branches
of thought that have emerged and evolved around the cards you’re looking
for. This tree-like structure, of which the Antinet is comprised, is what helps
unlock truly unconventional interactions. The concept of the tree-like structure
is something to be covered in detail later in this book.

52  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”: “The communication with the slip box
becomes fruitful only at a high level of generalization, namely that of establishing com-
municative relations of relations. And it becomes productive only at the moment of eval-
uation, and is thus bound to a certain time and is to a high degree accidental.”
53  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”: “This effect of innovation is based on the
one hand on the circumstance that the query provokes possibilities of making relations
which could not be traced prior to it. On the other hand, it is based also on the fact that
the internal horizons of selection and comparisons are not identical with schema of
searching for them.”
 C H A PT E R T H R E E
�

THE CURRENT ZETTELKASTEN

LANDSCAPE

WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE THIS BOOK

L et’s first start with why i am not writing a book about the Antinet
(i.e., an analog Zettelkasten).

I am not writing a book on the Antinet to sell a massive number of books.

As mentioned, I started out working with an Antinet because I desired to
write about my interests in other fields (specifically: marketing, copywrit-
ing, philosophy, and psychology). While working on a book in these fields,
I decided to use an analog Zettelkasten to help me. In doing this, I discovered
how wrong the conventional wisdom is about Zettelkasten. I had to learn this
the hard way. In order to figure out the truth, I went straight to the original
source: Luhmann’s online archive. I spent many months reverse-engineer-
ing Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. I wrote out many of his notecards by hand to
understand how it truly works. I discovered that the Zettelkasten is much
different than how it’s described everywhere else.

I think it’s important to publish this book on the Antinet because there’s
already a wealth of wonderful books in the field of marketing, copywrit-
ing, and psychology. Within the realm of Zettelkasten, there’s really only
one dominant book out there right now: How to Take Smart Notes by
Sönke Ahrens.

This would be fine if the book was excellent; however, there are two issues
with the book. First, it contains information that gets the most critical

61
62  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

pieces of the Zettelkasten wrong. And second, many people don’t even
realize Ahrens’s book exists. This becomes problematic because the online
environment for gaining an accurate understanding of a Zettelkasten is
even worse. I surveyed the top nine search engine results for the term
“Zettelkasten.” In brief, every one of them contains flaws in their description
of what a Zettelkasten is.

When searching for the term “Zettelkasten” on Google, the first result is
Wikipedia’s entry for Zettelkasten. This entry gets it wrong in several ways.
First, it describes the Zettelkasten as a hierarchical structure.1 This is wrong.
A Zettelkasten is a tree-like structure wherein each leaf is of the same impor-
tance as any other. Each leaf, like each note, just lives in a different location
on a tree. Second, Wikipedia posits a Zettelkasten as something built in
digital format using “specialist knowledge management software.” The entry
then reluctantly admits that it “can be done on paper using index cards.”2
In reality, the true power of Zettelkasten revolves around the fact that it
is—in its very essence—an actual notebox!

The second result I was given was the website zettelkasten.de.3 When I
first began surveying the top search results for Zettelkasten, I landed on a
“Lessons Learned” post on the home page of zettelkasten.de. The post was
written by a machine-learning researcher who shared his journey using
a Zettelkasten. This researcher mentioned the frustration using tags. The
site owners responded, sharing their frustrations with tags, saying that the
“mess” it creates resonated with them. Yet as a solution, they referenced a

1  “Zettelkasten,” in Wikipedia, June 8, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti-

tle=Zettelkasten&oldid=1027589556. “The notes are numbered hierarchically, so that
new notes may be inserted at the appropriate place, and contain metadata to allow the
note-taker to associate notes with each other.”
2  “Zettelkasten,” in Wikipedia.
3   I am grateful for this website and its owners and operators. They have done much to
proselytize the idea of Zettelkasten. I have since become friends with the two individ-
uals who operate the website. I find them very open-minded and receptive to my views.
Still, I possess different philosophical views, and I disagree with them on several fronts
(when it comes to Zettelkasten). Naturally, this is the case as I’m a fervent adopter of the
analog Zettelkasten in its purest form.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  63

post that discusses a distinction between good and bad tags.4 To me, this just
seems like complexity built on unnecessary complexity. Remember, I was
very new to the field of Zettelkasten at the time. I soon discovered that the
creator of Zettelkasten, Niklas Luhmann, never used tags. This illustrates
what I believe happens to many people who are new to Zettelkasten. They
end up stumbling across these types of online posts and find themselves
unnecessarily confused.

The search engine’s third result on the term “Zettelkasten” also came from
zettelkasten.de. It was the Getting Started Overview page where one finds
advice such as “Don’t use categories. Use tags instead.”5 The problem here is
twofold. First, as stated previously, Luhmann never used tags (as the concept
was not yet invented). And second, Luhmann didn’t even subscribe to this
notion in spirit. Luhmann used categories and top-level sections for his
Zettelkasten. They weren’t strict categories like the Dewey Decimal system.
They were more like rough starting points. Nonetheless, they were indeed
categories. In Luhmann’s first Zettelkasten, he had 108 categories. His second
Zettelkasten was more narrowly focused on his sociological work, yet it still
contained 11 top-level categories.6

The next handful of search engine results suffers similar inaccuracies. They
contain material overly focused on the digitized—and in my opinion,
compromised—version of the Zettelkasten. They also include complete
inventions first devised by Sönke Ahrens. They also confuse Luhmann’s
numeric-alpha notecard address system by telling readers to use dates for

4   @boxcariii, “Field Report #2: Lessons Learned From Processing,” Zettelkasten Method,
57:36 100AD, https://zettelkasten.de/posts/field-report-2-lessons-learned/. “…Oh man,
the “my tags are a mess” part resonated with me. I still have notes from almost a decade
ago, before Sascha brought up the useful distinction of topic-vs.-object tags in our dis-
cussions. I guess we all must suffer from experiences like this at least once :)…”
5  “Getting Started • Zettelkasten Method,” accessed June 28, 2021, https://zettelkasten.de/
posts/overview/.
6   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Part‑
ner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in
Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292.
64  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

their notecard IDs.7 The best information source on the Zettelkasten doesn’t
even make it into the first five pages of the search results.8

Simply stated, learning what a Zettelkasten is by searching the term online

is like walking into a minefield of misinformation.

I believe there are only a handful of sources the inquisitive are left with if
they wish to gain an accurate understanding of Zettelkasten in its purest
form (the analog form). Those sources are (1) the online archive of Niklas
Luhmann’s actual Zettelkasten, (2) the paper outlining Zettelkasten written
by Niklas Luhmann himself, titled, Communication with Noteboxes, (3) the
works of Johannes Schmidt, a scholar at Bielefeld University who heads up
Luhmann’s archive project, and who has studied Luhmann’s materials closest.9

These three sources are difficult to penetrate and understand. With pen and
notecards in hand, I spent one month reading Luhmann’s paper, Communi-
cation with Noteboxes. When printed out, this paper totals a mere four pages.
It’s so densely written it requires very careful reading in order to grasp what
is being said. I spent over a month reading this paper! Yet, my careful review
was worth it; there is so much to learn by reading the paper. I spent about
six weeks doing the same thing with Johannes Schmidt’s in-depth article
on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten.10 This, too, was a very dense read.

7  “A Beginner’s Guide to the Zettelkasten Method,” Zenkit (blog), April 29, 2021, https://
zenkit.com/en/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-zettelkasten-method/; Rebecca Williams,
“The Zettelkasten Method: Examples to Help You Get Started.,” Medium, October 5, 2020,
https://medium.com/@rebeccawilliams 9941/the-zettelkasten-method-examples-to-
help-you-get-started-8f844fa9ae6; David B. Clear, “Zettelkasten—How One German
ScholarWasSoFreakishlyProductive,”Medium,January17,2021,https://writingcooperative.
comzettelkasten-how-one-german-scholar-was-so-freakishly-productive-997e4e0ca125.
8   The best source is Niklas Luhmann’s online archive (https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/).
9   (1)https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/; (2) https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/
bestand/zettelkasten/tutorial; (3) Johannes F.K. Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card
Index: The Fabrication of Serendipity,” Sociologica Vol 12 (July 26, 2018): 53-60; and
Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool.”
10  Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool.”
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  65

I tell you all of this not necessarily to encourage you to do the same. Instead,
I tell you this in case you’re curious and want to venture down the rabbit-hole
of Zettelkasten knowledge yourself. These are the primary sources. They’re
difficult. Thankfully, however, you don’t have to spend weeks trying to
piece together a Zettelkasten from those few articles. That’s why I’m here—
to introduce to you the world of the real Zettelkasten (without boring the
heck out of you with dense academic prose). Even if I do bore the heck out
of you in some parts, just know that it could be worse, much worse. If you
doubt that, just try reading Luhmann’s paper!

Before moving on, let me first outline my intent in describing the misin-
terpretations others hold in regards to Zettelkasten. I am not doing this
because I’m motivated by some sadistic pleasure gained from criticizing the
well-intentioned work of others.11 In fact, I feel bad about calling to light what
I see as the errors and misinterpretations of such people. Every individual
I’ve come across in the personal knowledge management and Zettelkasten
fields are well-intentioned. Granted these people often sell online courses,
or online consulting, and have agendas related to those sales; yet it’s not
disguised. It’s quite apparent what the catch is. Every one of them believes
he or she is teaching material that will help people produce better knowledge.
Moreover, much of the proselytizers of Zettelkasten knowledge come close
to getting things right. Indeed, some authors share useful principles that
even Luhmann himself did not bother mentioning.12

As I was learning Luhmann’s Zettelkasten myself, I observed something

that reminded me of a cognitive error called the availability cascade. Even if
you’re unfamiliar with the term, you’re undoubtedly familiar with its con-
cept. An availability cascade describes the phenomenon of an idea spreading

11   I’ll leave that to people like Nassim Nicholas Taleb!

12  Much of the material in Ahrens’s book is interesting. See his more qualitative material
relating to the concept of flow, and his other related readings. See also “10 Principles to
Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing,” Forte Labs, February 4, 2020, https://for-
telabs.co/blog/how-to-take-smart-notes/. “Principle #1: Writing is not the outcome of
thinking; it is the medium in which thinking takes place… Principle #6: Our work only
gets better when exposed to high-quality feedback… Principle #7: Work on multiple,
simultaneous projects… Principle #10: Save contradictory ideas.”
66  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

rapidly and creating a self-reinforcing cascade of information. It occurs as

the result of encapsulating a novel and complex concept into a simplified
version—and here’s the key part—the simplified version is slightly less
accurate. This creates a waterfall of incorrect information that re-circulates
itself and spreads rapidly. Why? Because simpler ideas spread more easily.

Recently, a study at UC San Diego was published showcasing the availability

cascade. The study found that research that is less likely to be true is cited
153 times more if the material is interesting. Implicit in this is the following
idea: research spreads more if it’s simplified enough to be interesting in the
first place (regardless of its accuracy).

The phenomenon of the availability cascade finds itself ever-so-present within

the land of Zettelkasten. It’s negatively affecting every well-intentioned
knowledge worker who becomes hopeful and excited about Zettelkasten.
Here’s why: a second wave of teachers of the Zettelkasten finds itself emerging
right now. Most of them do not use the primary sources as their material
for teaching others about what a Zettelkasten is. Instead, this new wave of
Zettelkasten evangelists use Sönke Ahrens’s work, namely his book How to
Take Smart Notes, as the primary material on which they rely.13 The problem
with these new Zettelkasten evangelists is not just their misunderstanding of
how the Zettelkasten truly works, but also the contradictions they introduce.14

For instance, one self-declared bestselling author published a book recently

on how the Zettelkasten works.15 His book not only preaches Ahrens’s work,
it appends new inventions onto it. As a result, one is left with inventions

13  “10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing” ; David Kadavy, Digital
Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc., 2022), 7; “A Beginner’s
Guide to the Zettelkasten Method,” Zenkit (blog); Williams, “The Zettelkasten Method.
14  For instance, you find authors asserting things like the analog Zettelkasten has a “slow rate”
of exposing users to information, and thus “reduces your focus.” Whereas, in reality the
exact opposite is found to be as true. For the source of such contradictions, see: Kadavy,
Digital Zettelkasten: “You may find it easier to sort through digital notes than paper, or you
may find the slow rate with which you’re exposed to new information with paper notes
reduces your focus.”
15  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 64.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  67

built on top of an already sizable list of inventions. I will introduce you to

these inventions shortly. They derive from a new quasi-religion that has
developed a rather malignant growth inside the world of Zettelkasten. I call
this quasi-religion, Ahrensianity.

AHRENSIANITY
Mark Twain once wrote to himself privately in his notebook, “If Christ were
here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.”16 This indeed may be
true. After all, Jesus referred to himself as Jewish and never called himself
a “Christian,” for one. Second, he was a poor Galilean who was illiterate
and didn’t speak Greek (the language the New Testament was written in).
Where did “Christian” come from then? From the early Hellenic-Jewish
Apostle named Paul—a man who never met nor knew Jesus, yet who served
as a forceful voice in the formative decades after the death of Jesus. Paul’s
teachings and writings formed the core beliefs and doctrines of Christianity.
In brief, his interpretations of a remote Jew he didn’t even know are what
ended up giving birth to Christianity as we know it.17

Since the 1700s, scholars have been publishing arguments that show how
Paul’s teachings differ from and contradict Jesus’s teachings. Furthermore,
Paul’s teachings add inventions to Jesus’s preachings that were never held
by Jesus. This has given rise to the term “Pauline Christianity,” or “Paulism,”
which the world today knows as Christianity. Yet, again, this body of teach-
ings finds itself profoundly different from that of the founder—Jesus of
Nazareth.18 I don’t know about you, but I’m a much bigger fan of Jesus of
Nazareth and his teachings, than I am of religious dogma.

It may seem absurd, but the phenomenon of Paul learning of Jesus and
then inventing the notion of Christianity is similar to that of Sönke Ahrens
learning of Niklas Luhmann and inventing the notion of Zettelkasten. Yet

16  
“Mark Twain Quotations—Christianity,” accessed July 1, 2021, http://www.twain
quotes.com/Christianity.html.
17   Reza Aslan, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Reprint edition (New
York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014), 171, 186–7.
18   Aslan, Zealot, 190.
68  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

what Ahrens teaches is not the Zettelkasten system as Luhmann conceived

of it; rather it contains its own flavor and spin. Yet, with Ahrens’s insistence
on the idea that the power of the Zettelkasten revolves around the mere
linking of notes (in digital form), it’s perhaps been taken even further away
from the original form than what Paul did to Jesus’s teachings.

In brief, Ahrens’s interpretations of Zettelkasten should not be called Zettelkas-

ten. It should be called Ahrenskasten, or perhaps…Ahrensianity!

The doctrine of Ahrensianity is composed, primarily, of three types of notes:

(1) fleeting notes, (2) literature notes, and (3) permanent notes. All three
of these notes stand as an invention and were never terms Niklas Luhmann
used. Of the three, perhaps literature notes are closest to what Luhmann
actually did; however, there are even issues with the description of such
notes in Ahrens’s book.

THE LATTER-DAY AHRENSIANS

In a newly released book with Zettelkasten in its title, David Kadavy pro-
ceeds to illustrate the doctrine of Ahrensianity in his chapter, “Anatomy of
a Zettelkasten.”19 He then adds his own inventions by adding three more
components to the mix: “inbox,” “someday/maybe,” and “raw.” This leaves
us with even more complexity built on top of something not even based
entirely on Zettelkasten in the first place (but rather based on the interpre-
tations of Sönke Ahrens).20 This is an example of interpretations piling on top
of interpretations. Meet the latter-day Ahrensians.

As mentioned briefly, there exist confusion and contradictions within this

new wave of Zettelkasten interpretation. After exposure to the lessons of
Sönke Ahrens and observing confusing and contradictory reasoning brought

19  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 25.

20  Perhaps this is why the Bible’s Book of Revelations began implementing the first crude
form of copyright law in warning copyists and scribes who were liberal with their in-
terpretations of their texts! For more on this, see Revelations 22:18-19. See also Bart D.
Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Reprint
edition (New York: HarperOne, 2007).
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  69

forth by the new wave of Ahrensian devotees, it becomes clear why it’s so
crucial to properly understand Zettelkasten.

For instance, one finds authors both touting the benefits of digital notes for
enabling search functionality, and devaluing the analog method. Kadavy does
this by stating that because an analog Zettelkasten possesses a “slow rate” of
exposing users to information while using it, it consequently “reduces your
focus.”21 In brief, this notion is absurd. It even conflicts with what Ahrens
would admit as a primary benefit of analog.

This demonstrates something that is happening at a more rapid pace within

the field of Zettelkasten. We have Kadavy, an Ahrensian follower, providing
an example of why digital-based thinking and notetaking may be better
because of search functionality. We also have him adding his own spin on
top of the Ahrensian spin and advocating for digital search functionality
of a notetaking system because, he asserts, more exposure to information
will increase one’s focus.22 Again, this is absurd. But the contradictions get
worse: ten pages after asserting this, Kadavy advises readers to not worry
about being “efficient.”23 He goes on to declare that the “bottleneck” of great
ideas does not stem from the speed and quantity of writing and thinking,
but from slow, consistent, hard, and deliberate thought.24

In essence, an author who wrote a book on digital Zettelkasten finds himself

really an advocate of the analog Zettelkasten—yet perhaps he’s too blind to
see its power. He’s blinded by the digital age we live in, and seems so con-
vinced of the technologies it’s yielded. Yet he discounts the technology of
the organ that resides inside one’s skull. This technology, the human brain,

21  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 19.

22  There are several reasons the notion that being exposed to more information causes one’s
focus to increase is absurd. One reason comes from the findings of Nobel Prize winner,
Herbert Simon, who observed that more information exposure is directly and negatively
correlated with one thing—you guessed it!—focus. In brief, information exposure kills
attention.
23  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 29.
24  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 29.
70  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

seems to do better in environments where its allowed to slow down and

think on paper (when it comes to writing, at least).

A Lesson from Robert Caro

Where does slow, consistent, hard, and deliberate thought come from? Let’s
ask two-time Pulitzer Prize winning author, Robert Caro. In an interview,
Caro was asked why he wrote out all of his books long-hand first, and then
by typewriter. Caro responded, “It’s to slow myself down.” He concludes,
“If I write by hand it’s a little bit slower and I think things through.”25

How did Caro learn the power of such a method? He learned it early in
his writing career. One of Caro’s writing professors once imparted advice
to him. The advice ended up exposing Caro’s writing methods at the time.
As Caro recounts of the experience: “You know, sometimes you know when
someone has seen right through you.” Right then and there Caro knew his
professor had seen through him. What Caro was referring to was the advice
he received from his professor: “Mr. Caro, you’re never going to achieve
what you want to achieve unless you learn to stop thinking with your fingers.”
By this, Caro’s professor meant that Caro must stop just writing papers
directly using his typewriter. Instead Caro ought to slow down and think
on paper, with a pen. When Caro wrote his first book, he changed up
his process. At the time he was still not heeding his professor’s advice.
Why? Because he was “a newspaper man” and time was of the essence.
Yet, when he set out to write his book, he switched. When he set out to
write his book, he first wrote the draft in longhand, and then he wrote it
out via typewriter.26

In summary, slow, consistent, deliberate thought comes from the world of

analog. Specifically, it comes from writing by hand. This is something built

25  Democracy Now!, “From LBJ to Robert Moses: Robert Caro on Writing About Political
Power & Its Impact on the Powerless,” 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R
4j1h71xVG4, Minute 38.
26  New-York Historical Society, “Inside the Robert A. Caro Archive, Episode 1: Electra 210
Typewriter,” 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORf1AhUhQPQ.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  71

into the Antinet. Trust me, it will transform the way in which you think.
It will transform your research. And it will transform your writing.

Those Who Teach Zettelkasten Don’t Even Know

What a Zettelkasten Truly Is
Unless you’re a careful and scrutinizing reader, these seemingly contradictory
positions may go unnoticed. However, since you’re now privy to Ahrensianity,
you are better equipped for two things. First, you’ll find it easier to spot such
contradictions when you read an article about Zettelkasten that, in reality,
is teaching the Ahrensian interpretation of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten (and
not the real authentic Zettelkasten); and second, you will understand why
the author is confused in the first place. The reason the author is confused
about what a Zettelkasten is, is simply this: a Zettelkasten isn’t merely a
notetaking methodology. A Zettelkasten is a method to build your own
person—a second version of yourself with whom you can communicate—
a second mind. More on this will be explored in detail later in the book.

An Example Contradiction: Dynamically Updating Links

A key feature of digital Zettelkasten apps is the dynamic updating of links
across all files when you update the filename. In other words, when you
edit a note’s filename, all other notes that link to that filename dynamically
update as well (so that the links don’t break). This is an important feature
because the majority of digital “Zettelkasten” are not truly Zettelkasten.
A true Zettelkasten system has numeric-alpha filenames (e.g. 2701/1A).
Apps without the dynamic-updating function instead utilize filenames that
are typically a human-readable concept name. For instance, a note that out-
lines confirmation bias would typically be named confirmation bias.md. If
one were to, for instance, change the filename from confirmation bias.md
to confirmation fallacy.md, then all of the links pointing to the original
would break. One would have to use the find-and-replace-all text feature to
fix the broken links. This is not the case with the dynamic updating feature
in certain notetaking apps. As a result, much time is saved with the valuable
dynamic updating feature.

In essence, the ability to dynamically update links is quite useful for those
who use digital Zettelkasten. Yet, one finds authors writing about these
72  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

apps contradicting the value of such a feature. Kadavy flat out states that it
is an “overrated feature” for digital Zettelkasten.27 I don’t even use a digital
Zettelkasten, nor do I wish to, yet even I can see how poorly informed this
opinion is! Such an assertion could be understandable if one were using
numeric-alpha addresses (that is, is using Zettelkasten in its truer form), as
there would be no reason for the filenames to ever change in the first place.

The numeric-alpha naming convention Luhmann devised enables one to

infinitely internally branch thoughts and link all entries anywhere. In fact,
the reason one ought never to update filenames is that mistakes or odd
conventions (and old naming of concepts) prove quite valuable. Moreover,
they form odd clusters that order themselves in unique ways allowing one to
observe the evolution of one’s thinking. This is invaluable for the knowledge
development system that a Zettelkasten is.

Another Contradiction:
Linking Notes vs. Rewriting Ideas
The very same author who undermines the value of dynamic links in a
digital Zettelkasten makes an even more absurd statement that introduces
confusion for those wishing to become more effective knowledge creators.
Kadavy states that linking is overrated and he supports rewriting instead of
linking. Why? He reasons that it’s easier to just rewrite things by typing.28
I find this rather absurd because it diminishes the major premise of a digital
Zettelkasten: the attractiveness of a digital Zettelkasten, in comparison with
a digital note database, centers on the benefit of linking thoughts. One ratio-
nale for this is that by linking, users need not constantly rewrite everything.
Instead, they can revise and develop the thought that they link to. Many
first-generation Ahrensian followers base their biggest idea around that of
linking thoughts.29 For this reason, it becomes a bit of a mess when one digital
Zettelkasten follower promotes one idea and the other promotes the exact
opposite notion. At the center of this mess rests the core of it all: basing one’s
teachings on someone other than the system’s creator (Niklas Luhmann).

27   Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 30.

28   Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 31.
29  “Linking Your Thinking,” accessed July 7, 2021, https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  73

Instead, when you base your opinion on an early Zettelkasten apostle (Sönke
Ahrens), you’re left with contradictions. You’ll find one digital Zettelkasten
teacher advocating for one thing, and a different digital Zettelkasten teacher
advocating for the exact opposite. The key lesson here? Start with Luhmann,
start with the original source, and then work backwards from there.

Another Contradiction: Highlighting Books

Advising readers to highlight books while reading is something Luhmann
never did. Yet we find such advice from Kadavy, the teacher of digital
Zettelkasten methods. This author advises readers to highlight text in their
e-readers.30 This goes against even Sönke Ahrens’s advice. Further, Kadavy
then advises readers to “highlight the highlights.”31

On the matter of highlighting texts, I will say this: highlighting is not advis-
able. It is not a good method for focused reading of challenging and complex
information. For challenging material, it’s best to invest the time required to
reformulate it, and reflect on it in the form of notes. There are no shortcuts.

While highlighting does not possess the cognitive-development power of

reformulating and reflecting on information, it is not “completely pointless,”
as one cognitive scientist, Fiona McPherson, points out. The reason it’s not
completely pointless is that highlighting books can have the helpful effect of
forcing one to actually read the words.32

But look at what the cognitive scientist is really admitting here. Her main
point is that highlighting is not completely pointless; it’s just barely above
completely pointless. In other words, it’s mostly pointless.

I’d advise you to stay away from the practice of highlighting. If the material
is familiar to you, and especially if it’s complicated, highlighting won’t help

30  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 31.

31  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 33.
32  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 17.
74  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

much. Furthermore, research shows that highlighting may even “harm” your
ability to recall information in certain scenarios.33

As McPherson observes, the main value of highlighting does not intrinsically

add much value to your understanding of the material. Its main benefit centers
on its ability to motivate one to spend more time with the material.34 This
effect caused by spending more time with material will resurface throughout
this book. Perhaps not so ironically, the reason the analog Zettelkasten out-
weighs the effectiveness of digital Zettelkasten is because the analog form
forces users to spend more time developing thoughts.

Direct Contradictions of Luhmann’s Teachings

I’ve laid out several contradictions that have emerged within recent digital
Zettelkasten teachings. Unfortunately, many more continue to rise to the
surface. Some contradictions are even more severe than others.

There are also direct contradictions of Luhmann’s teachings. For instance,

Luhmann calls the Zettelkasten a “universal instrument” which accepts
any keyterm one wishes to create in the index.35 Even the simple, isolated
basic keyterm of “Picasso” is fine, as Luhmann says, because it may unlock
accidental insights.36 According to Luhmann, it’s more fruitful to create
keyterms that generalize different things, and relate heterogeneous things
to a larger theme or observation. More on this will be explained later in this
book. However, we find Kadavy citing Ahrens on how one ought to select
keyterms for tagging.37 Note that he cites Ahrens instead of the creator of
the Zettelkasten, Niklas Luhmann. He then prescribes to the reader the

33  McPherson, Effective Note-taking, 23; James H. Crouse and Peter Idstein, “Effects of
Encoding Cues on Prose Learning,” Journal of Educational Psychology 63, no. 4 (1972):
309–13.
34  McPherson, Effective Note-taking, 24.
35  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
36  Plus, thinking of the keyterm “Picasso” may help you recall the idea, and then travel
down the branch of thought you’re looking for.
37  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 47.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  75

following directive: “avoid generic keywords, such as ‘psychology’.” 38 This

directly conflicts with Luhmann describing the Zettelkasten as a “universal
instrument” into which one can place almost any keyterm and get back
unconventional insights.

Unfortunately, those who accept such advice may never experience the
magic and accidental insights generated by working with an analog thinking
system. While the analog route may seem difficult at first, the alternative isn’t
that nice and pretty. Furthermore, it’s rather vague. For instance, toward the
end of Kadavy’s book on digital Zettelkasten, there’s a section that debates
“linking vs. tagging vs. both.”39 Luhmann never found himself bothered with
such drivel because, as I’ve already stated, the concept of tagging notes didn’t
exist. Kadavy’s solution to this topic remains to be decided by the reader as
he concludes, “there’s no right answer.” 40 Actually, there is a right answer.
Do what Luhmann did, and use an analog thinking system and stop worrying
about such irrelevant things!

Stripping Away The Importance of The Numeric-

Alpha Card Addresses
Within the Latter-day Ahrensian Zettelkasten school, there exists a more
pernicious contradiction of the original form that promotes downplaying
the importance of numeric-alpha card addresses.

If you wish to take Luhmann seriously, then you must accept his notion that
an alter ego arises out of an analog Zettelkasten. A ghost in the box arises in
the form of a second mind (if you structure your analog Zettelkasten properly).
This creates an entity that allows you to communicate with it in the first place.

As Luhmann makes clear, the numeric-alpha card addresses are a key com-
ponent that “makes possible its ability to communicate in the first place.”41

38  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 48.

39  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 50.
40  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 50.
41  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”
76  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It becomes, therefore, quite confusing when digital Zettelkasten proponents

take a nonchalant approach to this concept—if they even decide to mention
it at all, that is!42

For instance, Kadavy’s book that supposedly teaches digital Zettelkasten starts
off the chapter on file identification with, “A big debate among Zettelkasten
practitioners is file-naming convention.”43 In reality, there is no debate if one
is to subscribe to the Zettelkasten in its truest form. Yet the author of this
book carries on and lists out four options to choose from.

Here are the recommendations described by the author:

The first option this author lists is to use “phrases” in the filename. This
practice is precisely what Luhmann says one should not do! Luhmann
explicitly advises that the Zettelkasten must not rely on a structure that uses
content-based order.44

The second option Kadavy lays out for IDs is that of an ugly date-timestamp
number.45 This makes very little sense, as the magic of Zettelkasten revolves
around the idea that you branch internally, in an infinite manner based on
the idea—not the time and date in which that idea formed. Date-time IDs
destroy the beauty of the numeric-alpha convention Luhmann used. It adds
complicated bloat to something that is otherwise so simple.

The third option for IDs Kadavy mentions is, in his words, “the most com-
plicated naming convention.”46 He references the naming convention called

42  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten; “Building a Second Brain: An Overview,” Forte Labs,

February 20, 2019, https://fortelabs.co/blog/basboverview/.
43  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 38. Mind you, the author’s discussion of what Luhmann
deemed a “most important [decision]” in constructing a Zettelkasten, doesn’t arrive un-
til chapter eleven of this author’s book on digital Zettelkasten.
44  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.” “Fixed numbers, abstracted from any
content-based order relying on the entire structure has a number of advantages which,
taken together, enable us to reach a higher type of order.”
45  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 39.
46  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 40.
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  77

Folgezettel. This is a term that has, for some odd reason, gained popularity
amongst the new digital Zettelkasten school (note: Luhmann actually never
used the term). What this term means is essentially an address affixed to each
card that is numeric-alpha and that can be branched, and internally evolved
(e.g. 2412/1A/1). I will not go into detail on this now, as it’s a core component
of the Antinet and will be discussed in great length later on. The author
goes on to declare it as “unnecessary” for building a digital Zettelkasten.
But something that is even more unnecessary in a digital Zettelkasten is…
the digital part!

Where Kadavy goes from bad to worse, however, is in his misunderstanding

of what numeric-alpha card addresses actually are. He states that it forces
a “hierarchical arrangement of notes in a system supposed to be non-hier-
archical.”47 This notion is absurd. Each note in the Antinet is like a leaf on a
tree. Every leaf on a tree is of the same class as other leaves; they just live in a
different location on the tree. As Johannes Schmidt points out “the position
of a special subject or card says nothing of the theoretical importance of the
card.” As far as hierarchy, “there’s no bottom and there’s no top.”48 Secondly,
who stated that the Zettelkasten is “supposed to be non-hierarchical?” Even
though an analog Zettelkasten (and its numeric-alpha card addresses) is not
hierarchical (which the author gets wrong), the notion that a Zettelkasten
is “supposed to be non-hierarchical” stands as a myth.

Kadavy outlines the final option for how to identify one’s notes: use a com-
bination of mixing up all three of these options.49 This is fine advice if you wish
to spend your days reading and spinning your wheels in the mud trying to
make use of what you’ve just read.

From this one starts to get a glimpse of how much of a mess the current
landscape is for English-speaking people who dare do an internet search
for the term “Zettelkasten.” Just as an illustration, if you end up searching

47  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 43.

48  Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt,” 2021, https://www.you
tube.com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 37:20.
49  Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten, 46.
78  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

for “Zettelkasten,” you end up with an 80% or greater chance of selecting an

article that does not teach the ID system Luhmann used for his Zettelkasten
(the numeric-alpha address version).

This misinformation continues to spread at a rapid pace. The availability

cascade of inaccurate but simplistic Zettelkasten information exacerbates the
issue, and it’s getting harder for potential users to grasp what the Zettelkasten
system actually was, and is.

The Problem with Latter-Day Ahrensian Teachings

The problem with the teachings of those basing their source material off of
Sönke Ahrens’s publications is the fact that all of the subtleties and magic of
the Zettelkasten are discarded. There exists a magic in building a pen-and-
paper-based system, a communication partner, an alter-ego, a second mind.
This type of system creates accidents and randomness that are invaluable. Its
essence is watered down, if not altogether nuked by its digital, inbred, cousins.

It’s unfortunate that those who teach the Zettelkasten system have missed out
on the true underlying magic of Luhmann’s system in its purest form. Going
in search of the magic requires a person to be rather crazy (like yours truly).
You must take a risk and purchase the materials required and go through
the long slog of creating your own analog Zettelkasten (using only pen and
notecards). Furthermore, it’s a lonely journey as there’s not much information
out there about how to build an analog Zettelkasten (though hopefully I’ll
help make the road less lonely). It’s also one that may be filled with missteps
that are hard to correct given the fact that there’s no find-and-replace-all func-
tionality. Yet it’s worth the investment. Sure, it’s unfortunate that these digital
Zettelkasten teachers never discovered the true magic of Zettelkasten. But it’s
more unfortunate that they end up unintentionally misleading others who
may have otherwise put in the work to build a true Zettelkasten (if they had
only known how it really works and what is to be gained by it).

WHY I DECIDED TO WRITE A BOOK

ABOUT THE ZETTELKASTEN
Even though the information landscape pertaining to Zettelkasten is riddled
with inaccurate information, it’s not the reason I decided to publish a book
 The Current Zettelkasten Landscape  79

on the Zettelkasten. I mean, there’s a massive amount of misinformation

in many other fields. The field I spent much time in several years ago was
that of cryptocurrency. There are massive sums of inaccurate information
in that field. Yet, this didn’t drive me to publish a book on cryptocurrency.
Why? It’s simple. Because that audience is primarily filled with speculators
who want to make money without lifting a finger.

The reason I decided to publish my views and findings related to the Zettelkas-
ten system stems from the following:

First, the misinformation connected with Luhmann’s Zettelkasten is mul-

tiplying due to the availability cascade phenomenon.

Second, if I don’t write about what I’ve learned about Zettelkasten now
(while my passion for it is still fresh), then I probably never will.

Third, and most importantly, I actually care about sharing this information
because I care about the people who would potentially waste their lives
learning the wrong methods and techniques to build a Zettelkasten. I believe
that many people have, are, and will waste their precious life energy learning
the ins-and-outs of digital apps instead of creating the genius-level work
they’re capable of.

Why do I care to publish my findings on the Zettelkasten? I’d like to think

it’s because I’m a saint, and that it’s simply just the right thing to do. But
seriously, I think the reason why I care about such people like yourself is
because I was once in your shoes.

I very clearly recall the confusion I experienced and even the suffering I
experienced from not knowing how to organize all the thoughts floating
around in my head.

I care to share with you what I’ve learned because I’ve seen the faces of
those in the community of people who are eager to learn. When I took an
online course on personal knowledge management, I interacted with people
like you—people who are committed to growth and learning. That course
80  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

humanized the need for the information I learned, and so too has interacting
with people like yourself on my YouTube channel.50

In brief, I’m publishing this book because as I’ve demonstrated, I believe

the landscape of accurate information pertaining to the Zettelkasten sys-
tem is bad and it’s getting worse, and it’s worth sharing my views with this
community because the people it’s comprised of are people worth serving.

Now, before we get into the core of the Antinet, let’s first dive into the
mind of its creator: Niklas Luhmann. Understanding the mind of its creator
provides tremendous value in understanding the nature of what we’ll be
building together: the Antinet Zettelkasten.

50  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnvMBVMXMPKA4Lmy5Ihd-FQ
 C H A PT E R FO U R
�

NIKLAS LUHMANN,
THE MAN

B efore we begin diving into Niklas Luhmann’s notebox system, there’s

one area worth first exploring: Niklas Luhmann, the man. That is,
Luhmann’s background, his theories, his beliefs, and his attitudes.

WHY IT’S IMPORTANT TO GAIN

FAMILIARITY WITH NIKLAS LUHMANN
The structure, spirit and personality of the Antinet carries imprints of its
biggest contributor, Niklas Luhmann.

The Antinet enables one to be “light of mind” amidst the complexity of

knowledge. This type of state reflects Niklas Luhmann’s tendency toward
being abstract, vague, trollishly carnivalesque and—at the same time—
brilliant. The Antinet carries with it such a demeanor. It is one of order, disor-
der, absurdisms, and brilliance—yet the Antinet also contains imperfections.
Its order is not perfect either. A system of perfect order is seen in the digital
realm—with its deterministic, orderly execution of programs that subscribe
to a uniform, predictable protocol. For a glimpse of imperfections and chaos,
one need only review the archive of Luhmann’s notebox, or view his private
home office.1 In brief, Luhmann’s theoretical work was not developed in an
environment of pure order.

1  holgersen911, Niklas Luhmann—Beobachter Im Krähennest (Eng Sub), 2012, https://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSCKSPMuDc.

81
82  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Simply stated, the Antinet is not for OCD-individuals who can’t sleep at
night unless their workflow follows some made-up atomic protocol.2

Because Luhmann’s writing was so dry and complex, it leads to confusion

and misinterpretations of what his system actually is. This confusion of what
a Zettelkasten actually is continues to spread to this day.

Up until now, those who desired to understand Luhmann’s Zettelkasten in

its purest form were faced with disentangling the prose of Luhmann’s paper
“Communication with Noteboxes.” This paper took me about three weeks to
read and extract into my own Antinet. I spent almost six days a week doing
this; I then spent another month doing the same with Johannes Schmidt’s
paper on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, and another month perusing the digital
Zettelkasten archives.

Like Luhmann’s books and papers, he left his Zettelkasten system to be under-
stood only by those who invest the time and energy into disentangling his prose.
Most people have not done this. As a result they’ve been left with a surface-level
understanding of what he built. However, if you venture deeper and dig into
what Luhmann really said, one discovers the system to be quite profound.3

A BRIEF BACKGROUND OF
NIKLAS LUHMANN
Niklas Luhmann was born in Lüneburg, Germany on December 8, 1927.
He was the son of a brewer, though Luhmann himself was disinterested in
drinking.4Drinking beer at festivals and the local Biergarten was (and still is)

2   By “atomic” I’m referring to the interpretation that Luhmann’s notes were perfectly con-
tainerized units of thought. This is a myth. Luhmann’s notes were streams of thought
that carried over across multiple notecards.
3   One example of this is the fact that Luhmann created the system to use a multiple-storage
architecture—something that has become the dominant model for computers to man-
age memory. Luhmann devised this in the early 1950s before computers were dominant
and before the notion of multiple-storage was widely-accepted. For more, see: Johannes
Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner,
Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in
Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
4   Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  83

seen as “a social virtue” in Germany.5 Abstaining from such events, which

offered invaluable networking opportunities, likely contributed to Luhmann
becoming an outsider. This also created a barrier to his advancement in his
early career as a civil servant, working for the government.

According to Luhmann’s youngest son, Clemens, Luhmann avoided drink-

ing alcohol throughout his life. Yet, on very, very rare occasions, Luhmann
would drink alcohol. When he did it was one glass of red wine. According
to Clemens, the reason his father avoided alcohol was simply this: he didn’t
want to appear stupid!6

Back to young Luhmann: After a year working at the Lüneburg Higher

Administration Court, Luhmann took another bureaucratic job in Hanover,
Germany. After a year there, and after “problems had arisen, especially in
the area of Nazi reparations,” Luhmann took a different job at the Lower
Saxony Ministry of Culture.7

It soon became clear Luhmann did not wish to be a mere government

employee. He desired an easy job where he could immediately go home at
five o’clock sharp. He desired this type of work-life balance so that he could
pursue his true passions in the evenings. When asked by an interviewer
what those true passions were, Luhmann replied that his interests at night
revolved around two things: first, reading books, and second, his notebox
system (that is, his Antinet).

During this time Luhmann recalls that he “read a lot.”8 He read sociology and
philosophy—mainly Descartes and Husserl. In sociology, he was absorbed
by a concept that would stand as a core component of his social theoretical

2011), 121-2.
5   Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 153.
6   Clemens Luhmann, Interview by Scott P. Scheper, April 27, 2022.
7   Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 10.
8   Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main:
Zweitausendeins, 2002), 11.
84  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

work. The concept is called functionalism. One can browse the notes from
those readings in Luhmann’s online archive.9

Yet Luhmann spent most of his time in the evenings working with his Antinet.
He did this “above all” other activities.10

Luhmann’s paradise was reading and conversing with the greatest minds of
humanity. He would read philosophy and sociology, and then reformulate
and reflect on the readings by expressing them on paper via writing by hand
with a pen. After this he would install into his Antinet the thoughts from
these conversations between him and the author he was reading.

Yet one day, early in his career, Luhmann’s paradise would come under
attack. His job became more demanding. Nights spent with his books and
his Antinet were “no longer possible with growing tasks.”11

One day a senior member of his company sat Luhmann down. Hoping to
advise Luhmann and help advance Luhmann’s career as a civil servant, he
proffered some advice. “You should look into doing some extracurricular
volunteering, and work in a district.” Luhmann replied that he wouldn’t.
“Why?” the senior employee asked. Luhmann replied, “I am reading Hölder-
lin.”12 Luhmann was referring to Friedrich Hölderlin, a German philosopher
and poet. It was a higher priority for Luhmann to expand his mind than to
expand his career prospects playing the conventional games of bureaucratic
advancement. A short while later, Luhmann would leave the government
job and attend Harvard University.

A brief lesson can be learned from this important point: Luhmann’s vocation

9  “ZK I: Note 80.6 - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed June 1, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_80-6_V.
10  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 11.
11   Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 11.
12  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 11.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  85

was reading, thinking, and writing. He turned his vocation into his vacation.
The Antinet did not serve Luhmann as a tool to replace this line of work;
instead, it was a tool to aid and enhance it.

• • •

Later on in life, when Luhmann did finally get his dream job working as a
professor at Bielefeld University, he was able to spend his time doing what
he loved: reading, thinking, and writing. At that point Luhmann didn’t
desire fame from his work. He didn’t desire wealth or riches so that he
could spend days bronzing on Caribbean beaches. He instead desired one
thing: “more time.”13

Luhmann desired more time so he could spend it doing more of what he

loved: reading, writing, and working. When asked of his ultimate Utopia,
Luhmann replied, “I could imagine that for me, the day has thirty hours.”14
He wanted thirty-hour-long days spent mostly reading, writing, and thinking.

As for Luhmann’s family life, in 1960 at the age of thirty three, Luhmann
married his wife, Ursula. They had three children together and a nice life.
Sadly, she died in 1977, when Luhmann was fifty years old. After she died,
Luhmann never married again. He had a caretaker cook meals and help him
take care of his three children. This enabled Luhmann to focus and continue
spending time on his true passions: reading and his Antinet.

Luhmann’s professional life was a successful one—albeit a rather quiet one.

He is referred to as “the most important German sociologist in the twentieth
century.”15 Yet he lived a rather simple lifestyle. His routine and workflow
will be covered later in the book. His life revolved around his intellectual

13   Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 15.
14  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,
2002), 15.
15   Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 19:16.
86  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

pursuits. His life was dedicated to his grand theory of everything as it per-
tains to society.

Luhmann’s publication footprint is sizable and impressive. The “sheer number

[of publications] is unprecedented,” writes one scholar.16 Luhmann produced
550 academic papers and seventy books in approximately forty years.17 In his
literary estate, Johannes Schmidt uncovered three thousand manuscripts,
two hundred of which were previously unpublished.18 As Schmidt puts it,
Luhmann was (with the help of his Antinet) “a publication machine.”19

LUHMANN’S PHILOSOPHICAL AND

POLITICAL VIEWS
Luhmann was misconceived to be a conservative, right-wing thinker because
he debated Jürgen Habermas, a popular left-wing liberal ideologue. Those
who attended the event say Luhmann dismantled Habermas’s positions,
which resulted in Luhmann becoming “rather famous” in Germany.20

Yet Luhmann was not a right-wing conservative. His views could be likened
to a laissez faire approach to politics and the economy. He could more be
likened to a Libertarian (to use American political terminology). Luhmann
was an ironic character with a stoic demeanor. So too were his political
positions. Perhaps a better description of Luhmann’s political position
could be that of absurdism, with a trend toward being carnivalesque. Luh-

16  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolu–
tion in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 289.
17   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management
Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 289; Raf Vanderstraeten, “Luhmann on
Socialization and Education,” Educational Theory 50 ( January 25, 2005): 1–23.
18  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 24:30.
19 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management
Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 311.
20  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 102.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  87

mann’s philosophical views were a unique blend of stoicism, Spinozism,

and Daoism.21 He was always careful to not fall into the trap of moralizing
issues, and practiced being one step removed from established positions
on matters. He desired to avoid the trap of dogmatism, which first starts
with a strong belief in one side being good, and the other side being bad.
Luhmann spent a lot of time disciplining his mind so that it could always
remain one thing: detached.

As one author puts it, “[Luhmann was] quite disturbed by ideological

attempts at taking democracy too seriously and thought that such attempts
may paradoxically pose a danger for its existence.”22

The same could be said of Luhmann’s views toward nationalism (or “love
for one’s country,” as some would deem it). In his opinion, passion could
turn into dogma, which then could turn into storming the United States
Capitol. Having learned from a childhood experience (which will be revealed
shortly), Luhmann was quite reticent about allowing dogma to influence
his thinking. Thus, he remained disciplined in a rational, detached thinking
style. This is worth noting because it would have been quite easy for him to
have gone a different route. One of Luhmann’s greatest influences, Georg
Hegel, was quite an enthusiastic ideologue.23 It would be easy to conceive
of Luhmann trying to further the ideologies of his mentor; yet, he did not
do such a thing.

Of what can be said of Luhmann’s religious views remains rather brief:

he was not very religious.24

21  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 116.
22  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 103.
23  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 37.
24  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 37.
88  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

LUHMANN’S THEORETICAL CONCEPTS

There are a series of concepts that continually resurface in Luhmann’s writ-
ings. These concepts were of great importance to his work, and they will be
covered in further detail throughout the book.

One of Luhmann’s cornerstone concepts revolves around communication.

One of his more frequently quoted statements suggests that “Humans
cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not
even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication
can communicate.”25

In light of this, it’s worth considering that the Antinet revolves around
communication. Ideas communicate through being stored in contextual
branches and stems of thoughts. The ideas also communicate with one
another through remote linking to other leaves of thought in the internal-
ly-constructed tree of knowledge.

Communication was not only a pillar of Luhmann’s theoretical work;

it also stands as a pillar of his Antinet. This is why Luhmann titled his paper,
“Communication with Noteboxes” [emphasis mine].

Another cornerstone of Luhmann’s theoretical work is systems theory. This

relates to the field of cybernetics and self-referential systems, which houses
itself in the term autopoeiesis.26 This concept is a very interesting one. It’s a
biological concept that Luhmann applied to social sciences. Later on in the
book, I’ll unpack these concepts and explain them in further detail.

SYSTEMS THEORY 2.0

Luhmann’s take on systems theory was not conventional. It could be better
likened to systems theory 2.0.

25   Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer, Materialities of Communication
(Stanford University Press, 1994), 371.
26  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausen‑
deins, 2002), 26.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  89

Systems theory 1.0 revolves around the mereological notion of whole-part-

theory. In this model, the system equals the whole. The parts are like organs
in a body yet are thought of as more modular and static in nature. When
you think of systems theory 1.0, think simple input-output machines (like a
vending machine). You put a dollar in, and it spits out a snack (assuming it
doesn’t get stuck)!

Systems theory 2.0 finds itself in a world of complex interdependent sub-

systems. Complexity serves as a cornerstone of Luhmann’s theoretical work
and as such it strongly influenced his notion of systems. The ‘system’, in
Luhmann’s systems theory 2.0, consists of an internal environment that
houses subsystems. The ‘parts’ are actually subsystems, each with their own
complex processes and interactions with their environment. Whereas the
parts in systems theory 1.0 are thought of as modular and static organs, the
parts in systems theory 2.0 are themselves systems, like the cardiovascular
system and immune system in a human body. The parts are essentially their
own complex systems, which are comprised of their own complex systems,
which are comprised of their own complex systems, and on and on. It’s
essentially one big complex fractal of systems and subsystems.
90  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Systems theory 2.0 suggests that the environment of the subsystems is provided
by other systems: “Within a complex system, such as the human body, there
are a large number of subsystems that mutually provide the environment
for one another.”27 One scholar observes that Luhmann’s work in systems
theory raises the question of whether it should be more appropriately named,
“system-environment theory.”28

In the world of the Antinet, the subsystems are essentially contextual stems
of thought that form around notes. Each of these subsystems cluster together
to form themselves as a subsystem. They also can link to and connect with
other subsystems in remote parts of the Antinet. These clusters of subsystems
create an internal environment in the Antinet that mirrors the chain-linked
structure of how human memory works.

Luhmann devised radical theories that were not conventional and that were
not based on classic sociological concepts. As mentioned previously, Luh-
mann’s intellectual rival, Jürgen Habermas, aimed for his theoretical work to
“improve society by making it communicate more rationally.”29 Habermas
subscribed to Karl Marx’s famous dictum that philosophy and theory must
not merely analyze the world; it must set out to change it.30

Luhmann thought such notions futile. In his opinion, ideology packed into
theory and science result in bad science—namely, confirmation bias. His
opinion was colored by the social unrest of the time (1968), and the tendency
of packing ideological political agendas into sociological theories.

Luhmann sought to de-anthropocentrize sociology by exploring what the

field would look like if it did not revolve around people. Rather, he conceived

27  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 128.
28  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 62.
29  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 135.
30  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 25.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  91

a social system centered on concepts and systems. Luhmann called his

theoretical work “radically anti-humanist,” and “radically anti-regionalist.”31

By anti-humanist, Luhmann was not implying that he was against human

beings. Rather, he held that anthropocentric models of reality are “unfit
to theoretically describe and analyze communication.”32 By anti-regional-
ist, Luhmann desired for his theoretical work to be like mathematics; i.e.,
a science that works across cultures. For example, math works in Japan, and
it works just the same in America.

These terms, anti-humanism and anti-regionalist provide a nice summary of

Luhmann’s thought.33 The terms are rather alarming at first; yet, when you
peel away the layers and truly understand what they mean, they’re rather
concise and quite profound.

After conducting a comprehensive analysis of Luhmann’s work, one scholar

labeled his theories as metabiological. “Just as Greek metaphysics explained
the world beyond the physical by applying physical concepts,” one scholar
writes, “Luhmann applied biological concepts for a descriptive analysis of
the nonbiological world and, in particular, society and communication.”34
In sum, Luhmann’s theoretical work was deep, radical, and widely researched,
spanning many disciplinary fields. By understanding this, one begins to
understand why he structured the Antinet the way he did. It allowed
him to link together and pull from many sources to illustrate his ideas in
great depth.

Understanding this provides ideas for how you yourself may wish to apply
such a methodology to your own disciplinary field. You are undoubtedly

31   Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 19.
32  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 131.
33  This serves as yet another reason why the term Antinet encapsulates the essence of
Luhmann’s system. It was Anti-convention!
34  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 124.
92  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

unique in the way you think, and in your understanding of the material
from which you pull ideas together. The Antinet serves as a fantastic sys-
tem to assemble this wide-ranging material in such a way to make it more
straightforward so as to communicate thoughts from your own uniquely
genius ways of thinking.

LUHMANN, THE TROLL

Luhmann was polite, respectful, and sharp; yet he was also a trollish, ironical
character.

One scholar describes Luhmann’s writing style as using “dry, technical, and
conceptual language frequently interspersed with bits of sarcasm, satire,
and parody.”35

INSTANCES OF LUHMANN’S TROLLISHNESS

Luhmann’s work tends to provoke others and give off a trollish air; yet upon
closer review, it packs wisdom and poses very good points.

As mentioned, Luhmann held that society is composed of internal subsystems

that can affect one another (as they’re related)—like the way a human body
includes the cardiovascular system and immune system. He likens these to
the economic system and political system.

However, Luhmann also held that the subsystems themselves cannot control
one another. Therefore, organizations like the International Monetary Fund
(IMF), and the G8 Summit, which deem themselves to have influence and
control over the economic system function, in Luhmann’s view, in a similar
way to the members of tribal groups who do rain dance rituals. This, accord-
ing to Luhmann, helps the tribe “spread the impression that something is
being done rather than merely waiting until things change by themselves.”36

35  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 50.
36  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 28.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  93

That Luhmann posed such an idea was quite the controversial thing to do.
The notion is quite unsettling, especially for the members of the IMF and
G8 Summit who might come across this assertion.

Luhmann, however, was not presenting this notion to divide and humiliate
the people and members of the IMF and G8 Summit (or the tribal members
who dance for rain). He is not claiming they’re irrational or silly, or that
such things should be abolished. Rather, what Luhmann asserted is that
such organizations serve a function in modern society, just as they did in
tribal society. They provide optimism and hope to its members. Even if the
organizations cannot control the future, they give its citizens the impression
they do, which provides optimism for people to press forward.37

Although Luhmann introduced radical notions (even at the expense of

offending established institutions), he was described as distanced, but
“extremely polite.”38

Luhmann would politely wait for people to finish making their point, no
matter how confused or absurd the question was. Instead of flatly telling
a person that they were wrong, Luhmann’s replies were softer in manner:
“Of course you can do it that way,” Luhmann would start, “but I would prefer
to start with a different distinction.” Luhmann was very polite in delivering
his message, yet he was also very clear and precise.

THE IRONIC, CARNIVALESQUE SIDE OF LUHMANN

The philosophy underneath the foundation of Luhmann’s troll-like ironic
and smirky demeanor can be described as something I mentioned earlier:
he tended toward the absurdist and carnivalesque.

Yet the result of being an absurdist does not connote becoming filled with
despair (after accepting the notion that life and reality are absurd, even point-

37  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 28.
38  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 57:45 and 58:55.
94  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

photo credit: “Carnivalesque Luhmann,” accessed January 25, 2022

https://miro.medium.com/max/940/0*eMW-vEwe5E56raEs.jpg

less). Rather, the reasonable reaction is to be filled with a lightness, knowing

that the world’s complexity is something uncontrollable and unknowable.
One may even feel a sense of joy in knowing this.

Enlightenment thinkers were not of the type to accept such notions. They
possessed comparatively serious dispositions—“Cartesian scientific ‘cer-
tainty’”—with regard to their beliefs in right and wrong. Yet when one adopts
a more open, curious, and awe-filled view of the absurd complexities that
compose reality, one can achieve a lightness of being.39

Irony is the art and science of paradoxes, that is, dichotomies that arise in
our perceptions of truth. Irony is when something is, at the same time, and
to the same extent, both serious and not serious—both valid and invalid.
It’s when something makes sense, and at the same time, it also “makes non-
sense.”40 Luhmann’s theories, and even the Antinet itself, can be reflected in

39  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 50.
40  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 113.
 Niklas Luhmann, the Man  95

this notion. Here rests a system that enables one to be a publication machine
by slowing down. It rapidly produces large amounts of well-formed text by
undertaking the comparatively non-rapid process of writing thoughts by
hand. Like Luhmann’s theories, the Antinet is rather ironic and paradoxical
in nature.

LUHMANN, THE BEATLES FAN?

Luhmann wasn’t just a pedantic academic with a certain trollish predispo-
sition. He was plugged in and ‘in-touch’ with popular culture.

For instance, he would use lyrics from The Beatles to illustrate his points
(citing “Everybody’s got something to hide, except me and my monkey”
and “Your inside is out, and your outside is in”). He used such quotes to
illustrate the social unrest movement of 1968.41

Although Luhmann mentioned Beatles lyrics every now and then, according
to Luhmann’s youngest son, Luhmann wasn’t a fan. Luhmann primarily
listened to Louis Armstrong and classical music.42 For Luhmann, a large
part of being in-touch with popular culture is thanks to the fact that he
lived with his children after his wife passed. “My children are an essential
part of my life,” Luhmann said. “I live here with them and the whole youth
culture around them.”43

LUHMANN, THE JOKER

A final example of Luhmann’s character can be found in his own Antinet.
On one of his cards, one finds the following note:

In the notebox is a note containing the argument that refutes

the claims on all the other notes. But this note disappears as

41  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitaus‑

endeins, 2002), 38.
42   Clemens Luhmann, Interview by Scott P. Scheper, April 27, 2022.
43  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitaus‑
endeins, 2002), 20.
96  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

soon as you open the notebox. I.e., he assumes a different

number, disguises himself and then cannot be found. A joker.44

I haven’t been able to figure out this riddle. Perhaps the card Luhmann is
talking about is his own internal monologue; his own inner voice, Luhmann
himself—a joker.

CONCLUSION
You now have a taste of the type of character Niklas Luhmann was. You
also have a sense for the theories underlying Luhmann’s research. These are
important aspects to understand. As you’ll soon find out, these properties
are felt within the architecture and nature of the Antinet Zettelkasten.

44“ZK II: Zettel 9/8j—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed February 23, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8j_V.
 C H A PT E R F I V E
�

WHAT IS AN
ANTINET?

“Heyoutboy!” a soldier shouted at 17-year-old Niklas Luhmann, “stick

your arm!”

Young Luhmann complied. He stuck out his arm.

Luhmann stood as a prisoner captured along with his friends. They ranged
from fifteen to eighteen years old. One expects they were scared. Yet, instead
of being frightened, Luhmann was one thing: he was hopeful.

“Finally,” one imagines Luhmann thinking to himself, “I’ll be freed of the

glorified slave labor I’ve been forced into for the past several years!”

What happened next would be stamped onto Niklas Luhmann’s psyche—

and also stamped onto his body—for the rest of his life.

The soldier who shouted at Luhmann approached him and got into Luhmann’s
face. Next, the soldier ripped away Luhmann’s wristwatch from his arm. He
then threw Luhmann to the ground. Luhmann was kicked and beaten for what
felt like hours—viciously beaten by the soldier—an American soldier—who
had just hauled in his latest herd of Nazi captives, which included Luhmann.

A detail not often mentioned of Niklas Luhmann, the godfather of the

Zettelkasten notetaking system, is the following fact: Niklas Luhmann
was, technically, a Nazi.

97
98  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Yet before wishing upon him Inglorious Basterds forehead-carving treatment,

I ought provide you with an additional bit of information: serving in the
Nazi ranks was not Luhmann’s choice.

On January 22, 1943, following the implementation of a decree, the Nazis

enacted an order. The order called for drafting entire school classes of male
students born in 1926 and 1927 into military units. Supervising this program
were two institutions: the Hitler Youth organization and the infamous Nazi
air force, the Luftwaffe. Because of this order, fifteen-year-old Niklas Luh-
mann (born on December 8, 1927) was forced to join the Nazi ranks of the
Luftwaffenhelfer. These were assistants to the infamous air force of the Nazis.1
However, at the desperate end of World War II, Luhmann was sent to the
front lines of the war. Shortly after this assignment, he and his comrades
were captured by American soldiers.

Note that Luhmann was conscripted into Nazi service. The word, conscripted,
basically means one is given the so-called “early honor” to serve their coun-
try, for free, and without pay. It was a government order. They had no say
in this matter.

Toward the end of World War II, the Nazis realized things looked bleak for
them. For this reason, they forced their citizen’s children into slave labor for
their ‘just’ cause. These children were supposed to have been between the
ages of fifteen to eighteen years. Yet American soldiers reported capturing
Nazi children as young as eight years old carrying guns.2

1   “Luftwaffenhelfer.” In Wikipedia, April 13, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Luftwaffenhelfer&oldid=1017572660.
2   Though there were reports that those conscripted into service by the Nazis were even of
much younger age—during World War II, as the Nazi party grew desperate, American
soldiers found children enlisting as young as eight-years-old, and that the Nazis were
equipping them with guns. See, “The History Place—Hitler Youth: Hitler’s Boy Soldiers
1939–1945,” April 22, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150422044533/http://www.
historyplace.com/worldwar2/hitleryouth/hj-boy-soldiers.htm: “American troops re-
ported capturing armed 8-year-olds at Aachen in Western Germany and knocking out
artillery units operated entirely by boys aged twelve and under.”
 What Is an Antinet?  99

Luhmann did not elect to serve the Nazi cause, and he was not a fan of the
Nazi ideology; however, that didn’t matter. Luhmann had no choice but to
serve the Nazis.

When the American soldiers captured Luhmann, he was beaten as if he were

a Third Reich soldier of the highest-rank.

Yet this most unfortunate experience transformed Luhmann’s thinking pro-

cess in an invaluable way. You see, what made Luhmann such a profound
thinker stems from one thing, perspective.

As we’ll discuss more in a later chapter, perspective derives from the Latin
roots, per, meaning “thoroughly and fully,” and specere, meaning “to observe,
and see, and spectate.” Combined, perspective means thoroughly observing,
seeing, and spectating.

Luhmann’s theories encompass some of the most radical perspectives in

the social sciences. His perspectives were shaped by his experience of being
tortured at the hands of American soldiers.

Many people, including myself, tend towards the simplicity of dualis-

tic philosophies. We prefer the simplicity of good vs. evil. We love Hero’s
Journeys—stories like Star Wars and the light side vs. the dark side. Yet,
as Luhmann learned very early and painfully, reality is not so simple. Reality
is often quite complex.

Luhmann discovered this when the Americans captured him and beat him
during the final moments of World War II. On that day, Luhmann (and
his fellow glorified slave-laborers) found themselves hopeful. They were
hopeful that the “coercive apparatus”—the Nazi regime—would wither
away once the Nazis were defeated.3 Luhmann believed the world reflected
that of good vs. evil. Even though Luhmann was working for the Nazi party,

3   Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts. Orig.-Ausg., 4. Aufl. Short Cuts 1. Frankfurt am Main:
Zweitausendeins, 2002. Page 11.
100  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

he believed the Nazis to be the evil side. After all, they coercively enslaved
him into service, and the Allied powers were thought to be the good side.

Luhmann and his colleagues were quite elated when they were captured.
They were now captured by the good side, soon freed of the Nazi evil they
had found themselves chained to. Once Luhmann and his colleagues were
captured, however, they were ushered like cattle into a room. When the
soldier shouted at Luhmann to hold his arm out, Luhmann extended his
arm as if to embrace his American savior. Luhmann wished to clasp hands
and thank the soldier for rescuing him from the Nazi’s forced labor.

Yet, instead of being embraced with the clasping of hands, the American
soldier ripped off Luhmann’s watch, threw Luhmann to the ground, and
proceeded to beat him viciously. Luhmann’s friends looked on in dismay.

“What the hell’s happening?!” we can imagine Luhmann asking himself in a

state of distress. “I thought the Americans were here to rescue me and to free
me!” Luhmann thought Americans—aka, the good guys—were rescuing him.

It’s rather heartbreaking to imagine the young 17-year-old Luhmann in such a

state. Imagine the painful thoughts racing through Luhmann’s mind. It’s sad
to think of other children like him who experienced the same; children scared
for their lives, suddenly being thrown to the ground and beaten. Luhmann’s
experience was not isolated, either. It happened to many POWs—children
and adults.

Luhmann realized the world was not as simple as the paradigm of good
vs. evil during this moment. The world was complex, and the world was
sometimes rather sad.

This life experience led Luhmann to realize that political regimes “could not
run along the axis of “good/evil, but rather that one must judge the figures in
their limited reality.”4 To be clear, the beatings of Luhmann and his friends
were not permitted by the Allied powers. The preventative mechanism for

4   Luhmann. Short Cuts, 11.

 What Is an Antinet?  101

such abuse was supposed to be the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Con-
vention outlined provisions for properly treating prisoners of war (“POWs”).
Its goal centered on protocols designed to treat POWs with honor and respect.5
Apparently, the terms honor and respect were loosely interpreted by the
American soldiers. These soldiers were presumably emotionally exhausted
by the war. Seeing friends suffer and die (in physical form) weighed more
heavily than the Geneva Convention’s rules (which were of metaphysical
form). The Geneva Convention’s metaphysical rules seemed purely imaginary
compared to physical death.

From the abuse and violence inflicted on Luhmann and his fellow Nazi-
slave-children, Luhmann saw reality as the murky picture it is, perhaps for
the first time in his life.

The lesson in all of this? Simply this: no system is impenetrable to evil acts.

Luhmann viewed Americans as the lesser evil, saying, “The American system,
for example, seems to me the most good.” Nevertheless, Luhmann was not
blind to the systematic problems ingrained in any political system.

Luhmann recognized reality as a complex system mixed with a lot of good

and a lot of bad. He later declared that non-Nazi systems of governance
possess “more positive features and more negative features than any previous
society. So today is both better and worse.”6

The experience shaped Luhmann so profoundly that he devised a thinking

system for himself, and made sure to architect it in such a way as to challenge
others’ perennial tendency of drifting back into an overly simplistic view of
the world. He needed a system to deter the common tendency of drifting
into simple dualistic suppositions of good vs. evil.

5   “Treaties, States Parties, and Commentaries - Geneva Convention (III) on Prisoners of War,
1949–14—Respect for the Persons and Honour of Prisoners.” Accessed January 4, 2022.
https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/ART/375-590018?OpenDocument.
6   Luhmann. Short Cuts, 30–31.
102  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It’s “increasingly rare,” Luhmann said, that thoughts or disagreements can

be developed in a useful way if you “moralize” them.7 Luhmann needed a
system to constantly adapt his perspective in such a way as to filter out the
tendencies and biases conducive to falling into the simplicity fallacy—
that of oversimplifying reality.

THE ZETTELKASTEN AS AN ADAPTIVE

OPTIC SYSTEM FOR RAW AND DISTORTED
THOUGHTS
Luhmann needed a tool similar to something called an adaptive optic system
(in the world of astronomy). This technology is built into telescopes, and
it converts blurry, distorted pictures of the universe into crisp and clear
images. It achieves this by sending the initial light waves it receives, which
are raw and distorted, into a self-correcting feedback loop that measures the
distortions. Next, a critical step happens: the system generates an inverse
wavefront to compensate for the initial distorted light waves.

The Zettelkasten system works much like an adaptive optic system. Except
instead of crystallizing raw and distorted light waves, raw and distorted
thoughts serve as the materials crystallized.

• • •

Now, back to Luhmann’s experience of being tortured by American soldiers.

Let’s wrap up this part of the story.

Shortly after being held in captivity, Luhmann was released. He was one of
the luckier ones simply because he was still seventeen years old. He was not
technically an adult yet. However, the nightmare of American captivity was
not yet over for his friends who had recently turned eighteen. They were
sent to French mines and forced into slave labor and even more beatings.8

7   holgersen911, “Niklas Luhmann - Observer in the Crow’s Nest (Eng Sub),” 2012, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSCKSPMuDc, 18:00.
8   Niklas Luhmann: Society as a System of Communication HANS-GEORG MOELLER 367.
Philosophical Profiles in the Theory of Communication. Accessed August 20, 2021. https://
 What Is an Antinet?  103

In his later adult life, Luhmann held these memories in his mind. His the-
ory of society proposes radical notions—such as sociology not necessarily
being about people, but of environmental factors. That is, society is more
ecological than sociological. Also, he held that polar extremes in society
are necessary. These radical views are but one reason Luhmann’s writings
were so complicated and hard to understand. I cover this in more detail at
another point in the book, but in sum, Luhmann’s antithetical ideas were
at risk of triggering uproar; therefore, he was incentivized to package his
complex views with difficult prose. He did this to shield himself from being
read by casual readers.

Luhmann’s Zettelkasten served a critical function in doing this (among many

other things), and would later assist his ideas in gaining notoriety. Eventually
Luhmann became one of the greatest modern social theory thinkers of our
time. His system for managing his theories—the Zettelkasten—informs
and inspires knowledge workers to this day.

Yet there’s one issue emerging today which risks watering down the impact
of the Zettelkasten system Luhmann devised. That’s what we shall talk
about next.

SPECIFIC PRINCIPLES VS. GENERAL

PRINCIPLES
It is my belief that there is a risk to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten system becoming
misinterpreted and thereby morphed into something it is not.

A principle is defined as a fundamental truth that serves as the foundation

for a system.9 Seems straightforward, right? The problem today is that the
specific principles of the Zettelkasten system that Luhmann himself specified
in his own paper are being cast as general principles.10 The specific principles of

www.peterlang.com/view/9781453902028/9781453902028.00019.xml.
9   Angus Stevenson, and Christine A. Lindberg, eds. New Oxford American Dictionary 3rd
Edition. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
10  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luhmann.surge.
sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes; Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes
(Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
104  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann’s Zettelkasten system were cast aside and written off as unneces-
sary and archaic. Luhmann’s system is built entirely of physical, not digital,
parts. With those parts of Luhmann’s system stripped away, deleted, and
morphed from physical form to metaphysical form, the critical essence of
the Zettelkasten system has been demoted. The parts have been deleted
and replaced with analogous abstractions, with the belief that the original
parts were non-critical. In reality, these substituted parts are indeed very
critical to the whole!

This entirely different system I’m alluding to is that of digital notetaking apps.
These apps possess functionality enabling one to link notes. Even though
such apps are thought of as a Zettelkasten, the magic that Luhmann built
into his system is lost. Or at the very least, much of the Zettelkasten magic
is replaced by something else entirely.

Digital notetaking apps with note-linking capability are often thought of as

Zettelkasten systems. This is not the case. As a result, people who are newly
curious about Zettelkasten end up hopelessly lost and confused. Or people
end up thinking they understand what a Zettelkasten is. They proceed to
take thousands of digital notes before they realize they’re lost and confused.
They’re left with a mess of digital information, and they have no idea why
they even began to take notes in the first place.

I’m not against progress; however, it becomes confusing when a new concept
(i.e. digital notetaking apps with linking capabilities) ensconces itself in a
term used by an entirely different concept (i.e. Niklas Luhmann’s
Zettelkasten).

At the core of this situation rests the delineation of specific vs. general principles.

Let’s first discuss general principles.

I am not a fan of creating your own instantiation of a system and then refer-
ring to it as if it’s identical to that which it was inspired by.

Take a deep breath, and reread that paragraph.

 What Is an Antinet?  105

OK, now let me give you an example of this. Let’s start with a wiki. A wiki is
an information source developed collaboratively by a community of users.
It allows any user to add and edit content.11 If I were to create my own version
of a wiki in physical form, and if, as a result of the different medium, I were
forced to alter and change the essence of how it works, I would hope that
I wouldn’t do one thing—and that is this: I hope I wouldn’t call it a wiki!
Doing so would confuse everyone; I would term the new system (inspired
by a wiki) differently, since it’s new. It is (only) inspired by the concept
of wiki. I also would not force those who still use digital wiki systems to
forever specify that they use digital wikis (as opposed to my new analog
wiki). Yet this rather absurd illustration is precisely what has taken place
with regards to the Zettelkasten. If you use a physical Zettelkasten system
today, with the same principles that Luhmann used, one is forced to specify
that they’re using an analog Zettelkasten, or a Luhmannian Zettelkasten (as
opposed to a Zettelkasten—that is, a digital notetaking app with linking
functionality).

Look, I am not against identifying general principles and adapting such

principles into more convenient forms in support of your own personal
preferences and goals. Research in knowledge science espouses the view that
“general principles should be adapted by individuals.” Even ancient learned
scholars believed this to be necessary. Early modern Europe produced strict
doctrinaire thinkers. One such thinker was the Jesuit pedagogue, Jeremias
Drexel (1570–1625). Drexel once asserted, “If [the] precepts and rules of
notetaking do not please you, draw up other precepts for yourself, fewer
in number, shorter, suited to your studies, just as long as you take notes.”12

The question then becomes: in Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, what stands

as a general principle and what stands as a specific principle? That is, what could
be altered and eliminated in the name of inspiration, and what is a specific
principle that must be strictly adhered to if one were to strive to use the same
system Luhmann used when he used the term Zettelkasten?

11   Stevenson and Lindberg, eds. New Oxford American Dictionary 3rd Edition.
12  Richard Yeo. Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices. Brill, 2016, 139.
106  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

On this matter, I have two beliefs:

First, I believe that general principles in a Zettelkasten system are processes—

such as how one takes notes from the materials one reads. So-called literature
notes are an example of a general principle in a Zettelkasten. Relatedly, the
term literature notes is suboptimal. Literature notes was a term never used
by Niklas Luhmann, but was popularized by modern authors who loosely
interpret Luhmann’s system. Furthermore, the term literature note renders
the types of notes Luhmann took as ambiguous.13

The bottom line is that the manner in which you take notes while reading
is an example of adhering to a general principle. Reason being, the process
of taking notes while reading is a highly personalized activity. The content
you select while reading, and the manner and style in which you choose to
extract that selection is highly personalized. How you do it must be adapted
by you. As the scholar, Alberto Cevolini, puts it, “what attracts attention
and is deemed memorable in a book may not be the same for all readers. By
definition, information retrieval is a selective performance; in turn, selection
is a highly personalized activity.”14

My second belief concerns itself with what constitutes specific principles in

a Zettelkasten system.

I suggest that there are four principles which are specific principles in
a Zettelkasten.

I am not the first to propose that a Zettelkasten consists of four principles.

The first person to do so was Niklas Luhmann himself. He referred to the
principles as requirements. The second individual to outline its four principles
was Johannes Schmidt, the scholar who perhaps knows Luhmann’s work best.15

13   Luhmann took different types of notes. Some were word-for-word excerpts (i.e. quotes),
some were notes that were brief observations, and some were summaries in his own
words of what he read. I’ll discuss these types of notes in detail later.
14  Alberto Cevolini, ed. Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe. Library of the Written Word, volume 53. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016, 4.
15   Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt,” 2021, https://www.youtube.
 What Is an Antinet?  107

The principles I’m presenting are mapped onto Luhmann’s four principles;
however, in my perfectly biased opinion, they are more simple and useful
in understanding the Zettelkasten. Plus, they form a cool acronym!

Three of the four principles I introduce are referred to by Luhmann as internal

requirements. One of the four principles he specified was referred to as an
external requirement.16

It’s worth noting that my views on what stands as a general principle vs. spe-
cific principle remain an area in which I hold different opinions than others.
Sascha Fast, a leading educator of the Zettelkasten system and who operates
perhaps the most visited website pertaining to the Zettelkasten (zettelkaste.
de), quotes the Israeli fitness trainer, Ido Portal who says, “Principles are
higher than techniques. Principles produce techniques in an instant.”17 This
quote implies that the four specific principles outlined by Niklas Luhmann
are merely techniques that could be adapted and adjusted freely without
worry of compromising the whole.

Fast goes on to outline several principles, such as the “Principle of Atomicity”

which pertains to the idea that one should “put things that belong together
into a single note, give it an ID, but limit its content to that single topic.” 18
Fast’s second principle, labeled the “Principle of Connectivity,” argues for
alternative techniques for implementing two of the principles Luhmann
specifies as internal requirements for a Zettelkasten system, that of (1) “the
possibility of arbitrary internal branching,” and (2) “possibility of linking”
via the numeric-alpha addressing scheme used by Luhmann.19

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 34:00. Johannes Schmidt’s version of Luhmann’s princi-

ples is as follows: (1) a “specific system of organization”, (2) “rules of numbering”, (3)
“internal system of linking”, and (4) a “Comprehensive keyword index.”
16  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”
17  “Getting Started • Zettelkasten Method,” accessed June 28, 2021, https://zettelkasten.de/
posts/overview/.
18  “Getting Started • Zettelkasten Method.” Accessed June 28, 2021. https://zettelkasten.
de/posts/overview/.
19  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luhmann.
surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes; Niklas Luhmann, “Zettelkasten,”, accessed
108  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I do not hold the first principle (the “Principle of Atomicity”) as a general

principle because Luhmann generally did not abide by such a principle. One
idea per note is a convenient idea espoused by many people, but it is largely
a myth as it pertains to Luhmann’s system.20 Yet, for digital Zettelkasten,
I agree with Fast in that it’s probably a useful practice.

The same applies to Fast’s “Principle of Connectivity.” Perhaps it’s a useful

practice for digital Zettelkasten; however, it essentially demotes two of
Luhmann’s core principles (the “internal branching” tree-like structure of
notes, and the numeric-alpha addressing of notes) and passes them off as
mere “techniques.”

The reason this is important to know, and why it’s worthy of your time, centers
on the fact that when too many aspects of a system are relegated to abstrac-
tions, you generalize it so severely that it transforms the original system into
something it is not. It strips away a system’s unique, rough personality and
smooths it down into a watered-down, blurry image of what it once was. The
image you see when you squint your eyes at the Mona Lisa: is it the Mona
Lisa you’re seeing? Or a blurred-out version? More directly, if you define
the principles of a Zettelkasten as something that is founded on atomicity,
and connectivity, then thousands of systems could qualify as a Zettelkasten.
Wikipedia could be considered a Zettelkasten by these principles (even
though it’s not). A website could be regarded as a Zettelkasten in that case.
A thesaurus (with its See also references) could be considered a Zettelkasten.
Or, as most people believe, a digital notetaking app with note-linking func-
tionality (via something popularized with the term wikilinks), yes definitely
this, could even be considered a Zettelkasten. In the considerable amount
of time I’ve spent working with an analog Zettelkasten—one which adheres
to Luhmann’s four principles—I can say that such a system operates much

August 3, 2021, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.

20   This idea was popularized by Sönke Ahrens in his book, and has since been spread rap-
idly throughout Personal Knowledge Management communities online. For the source
of this myth, one may consult his book How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique
to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book
Writers. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017.
 What Is an Antinet?  109

differently than any of these things. In other words, Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

system stands apart as an entirely different entity compared with Wikipedia,
websites, thesauri, and digital “Zettelkasten.”

These are but philosophical views; however, I consider it essential to present

the idea that one ought to take seriously the requirements that Luhmann
himself specified. One should take these requirements seriously enough
to at least try them out. I’ve found the four principles to be pivotal in my
experience working with a Zettelkasten.

For the time being, I’ll continue referring to the analog Zettelkasten as a
Zettelkasten; however, in a little bit I’ll introduce the four specific princi-
ples adopted by Niklas Luhmann. After I do this, I’ll be introducing a new
term that I believe encompasses Luhmann’s system more accurately. In the
meantime, the term Zettelkasten shall suffice.

In brief, a Zettelkasten possesses four specific principles. These four princi-

ples define what a Zettelkasten is. However, before I share these principles
with you, I’d like to turn to what a Zettelkasten is not. Why? Because it helps
demystify the essence of a Zettelkasten in preparation for being introduced
to what it actually is.

Let’s dive into this now.

THE TERM ZETTELKASTEN

I lied. Before I tell you what a Zettelkasten is not, let’s hone in on the term
Zettelkasten itself.

The term Zettelkasten in American English translates to notebox. The term

notebox is the shortened form of a “notecard box.” Zettel is the German word
for note, and kasten is the German word for box.

The reason this is worthy of mention is because of the widespread misin-

terpretation of the term Zettelkasten. When searching the web, one finds
references of it as a “slipbox.”
110  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The reason slip is translated from zettel stems from a translation defining it
as a slip of paper. In popular English-German translation dictionaries, slip of
paper remains listed but is no longer used as the preferred definition.21 The
most widely used and arguably the “best among all” translation sources is
one that does not hold slip as the most correct term for zettel.22 It holds that
the most correct translation for the term zettel is simply a note.

The mix-up with slip vs. note stems from specifications provided by the
American National Standards Institute (“ANSI”) and the European paper
standards, International Organization for Standardization (“ISO”).23

The type of paper used by Luhmann is not commonly found in the US.
I know this, of course, because it’s the first thing I tried getting my hands on
after learning what type of paper Luhmann used. It’s tricky to find, but more
tricky is finding cabinets with drawers that can properly store such paper.
The paper size used by Luhmann is ISO’s paper size, A6, which is 4.1 inches
by 5.8 inches. According to ISO standard 2784, the American equivalent of
A6 paper is paper sized 4 inches by 6 inches, which are notecards (or blank
index cards).24

In brief, Luhmann used zettel (i.e. note) to refer to a notecard. In other words,
a zettel is a notecard; Luhmann never used zettel in the manner in which
people use it today—which is to connote a digital document containing
text, usually in markdown format.

21  “Zettel—English translation in English—Langenscheidt dictionary German-English.”

Accessed July 17, 2021. https://en.langenscheidt.com/german-english/zettel.
22  “(4) Is Google Translator the Best among All?” Quora. Accessed July 17, 2021. https://www.
quora.com/Is-Google-Translator-the-best-among-all; “Google Translate.” Accessed
July 17, 2021. https://translate.google.com/?sl=de&tl=en&text=zettel&op=translate.
23   Printleaf ’s Blog for Design and Printing Solutions. “Standard U.S vs European
Paper Sizes Infographic,” January 18, 2018. https://blog.printleaf.com/standard
-us-vs-european-paper-sizes-what-you-need-to-know.
24  “Paper Size.” In Wikipedia, July 9, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Papersize&oldid=1032765899.
 What Is an Antinet?  111

In Luhmann’s formative article on his Zettelkasten system, “Communication

with Noteboxes,” Luhmann meant notebox as in notecard box; he did not
refer to a note as some metaphysical instantiation of a notecard; he would
otherwise refer to that as a thought.

From this one ought not to discount the importance of notecards—with

their physical properties that include having a static fixed place in space,
and limitations on character-length which they strictly enforce by their size.
One also must not discount the effect these properties had in shaping and
forming Luhmann’s thoughts. Why? Because the medium one uses not only
is the message, it develops the message.25

This may seem like dry material, but I assure you, it’s necessary knowledge
if you wish to properly adopt and use a Zettelkasten system and avoid
the landmines you’ll face the second you begin exploring the concept of
Zettelkasten outside this clear canvas I’m about to paint for you. It’s straight-
forward that Zettelkasten means notebox if you’ve read what I’ve written here.
Be forewarned, however; as soon as you begin surfing the web or watching
YouTube videos, you’ll begin to come upon descriptions of Zettelkasten that
are outdated, misguided, or flat-out wrong (unless you’ve stumbled onto
my YouTube videos, of course)!

Now that you know that Zettelkasten translates to notebox, it’s time to belabor
this matter further by exploring the next topic: what a Zettelkasten is not.

WHAT A ZETTELKASTEN IS NOT

Zettelkasten does not refer to any notebox system. For instance it does not
connote a notebox organized by human-readable top-level concepts or
names, such as the system described by the author Ryan Holiday (which
he adapted from the author Robert Greene).26

25  “The Medium Is the Message.” In Wikipedia, November 25, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.

org/w/index.php?title=Themediumisthemessage&oldid=1057037064.
26   For instance, a Zettelkasten is not the equivalent found in Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard
System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read.”
RyanHoliday.net (blog), April 1, 2014. https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-
the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/.
112  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann makes it clear that what he means by the term notebox is not a “mere
container from which we can retrieve what we put in.”27 When Luhmann
writes of “communication with noteboxes,” he’s not really communicating
with noteboxes but with what the notebox becomes. What he’s communicat-
ing with, he says, is a system that can “communicate” in the first place. The
benefit of a communication partner is the learning that comes through
not only new information, but through accidents and surprises. We’ll cover
these in detail later on in this book. Accidents and surprises emerge not
via dynamically-structured notecards ordered by topic; rather, the magic
Luhmann writes about emerges from the interplay of four specific principles
he outlines. This is but one reason why just any notebox system does not
connote a Luhmannian notebox system.

In brief, a Ryan Holiday notebox system is not a Zettelkasten.

A Zettelkasten is also not the equivalent of a commonplace book, which is

essentially a notebook organized by topic. The limitations of commonplace
books centers around the following: they only enable short-term knowledge
development. They do not cater to allowing thoughts to evolve over time,
infinitely. They do not allow for the infinite internal branching and expansion
of ideas. One of the four principles of the Zettelkasten (the true Zettelkasten)
enables this expansion. This sets the Zettelkasten system apart from all others.

Let’s hone in for a moment on commonplace books.

I find the people who prefer analog thinking systems are oftentimes those
who greatly value commonplace books. Actually, I think commonplace
books are fantastic thinking systems; yet they pale in comparison to the
Antinet over the long haul.

Commonplace books are closely related to florilegia. These were notebooks

containing religious verses and excerpts grouped by theme. When I refer
to this type of knowledge system I refer to commonplace books. These
types of tools were incredible tools for advancing science and knowledge—

27  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”; Luhmann, “Zettelkasten.”

 What Is an Antinet?  113

especially during the Renaissance. One scholar refers to these tools as

“the person-plus-notebook-system.”28

There are many great thinkers throughout history who used commonplace
books. Thomas Jefferson was an avid user of commonplace books. Dutch
humanist, Desiderius Erasmus (1446-1536) was an ardent advocate of com-
monplace books.29 Sigmund Freud used a “new kind of notebook, the
‘wunderblock’ or (magic notepad).”30 Behind the cool name is the same
thing: a commonplace book.

An image of one of Thomas Jefferson’s commonplace books.

photo credit: “Image 36 of Thomas Jefferson, 1758-1772, Literary Commonplace
Book,” image, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, accessed May 4, 2022.

28  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 131.
29  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 135.
30  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 129.
114  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Yet, there are shortcomings of commonplace books. They embody that of a

“subsidiary memory,” whereas the Antinet is more than this. The Antinet is
a second mind, an equal. In fact, you’ll oftentimes find yourself humbled by
the knowledge the Antinet surfaces. The idea of the Antinet as something
greater than a subsidiary memory, does not come from myself. It actually
originates from scholars who analyzed both commonplace books and Antinet
Zettelkasten systems. “The florilegium was a type of ‘double memory’ to
which scholars could resort anytime their personal memory failed, the filing
cabinet behaves as a true communication partner with its own idiosyncrasies
and its own opinions.”31

As one scholar observes, florilegium and commonplace books act as just

another ego, whereas an Antinet behaves as an alter ego. It’s no surprise to
learn that Luhmann referred to his own Antinet as an alter ego.32

An ego is the conscious sense of self. It’s what you think of when you use
the word ‘I’.33

When you write down your thoughts in commonplace book or Moleskine

notebook, you see yourself in them. It’s a linear version of yourself. It’s less
chaotic in nature usually because each page is closely related in time.

An alter ego is a second identity. It’s a second mind that exists metaphori-
cally.34 The alter ego exists either as a substitute or a representative of your
mind, yet it possesses unique characteristics. It possesses its own unique
personality. Think of Superman, compared with his alter ego, Clark Kent.

31   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016),
28-29.
32   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
33  “Ego—APA Dictionary of Psychology,” accessed December 13, 2021, https://dictionary.
apa.org/ego.
34  “Alter Ego—APA Dictionary of Psychology,” accessed December 13, 2021, https://dic
tionary.apa.org/alter-ego.
 What Is an Antinet?  115

The Antinet is more of an alter ego. It develops its own unique personality
whom you communicate with.

An Antinet is not a collection of excerpts, quotes, kindle highlights, or flori-

legia. It’s something more complex than these types of devices. The Antinet
is not a subsidiary memory; it’s a second mind.

In brief, if you’ve ever kept a notebook containing your thoughts and readings,
and organized them by category, that’s not a Zettelkasten system, nor is it
something which I believe you’ll ever want to go back to once you begin
using a Zettelkasten.

I won’t cover the advantages and disadvantages of such systems here; just
for now, know that they’re quite different from a Zettelkasten system.

WHAT A ZETTELKASTEN SYSTEM IS

I hold, like Niklas Luhmann held, that his notebox system is built on four
specific principles. One of the principles (or requirements) is external
according to Luhmann, which means it lives in physical reality. The other
three principles are internal concepts, which means that they are more meta-
physical in nature—though they are present within the physical principle.

THE FOUR PRINCIPLES OF A (TRUE) ZETTELKASTEN

Principle #1: Analog
The first principle is what Luhmann referred to as an external requirement for
a Zettelkasten. By external, Luhmann meant it’s something that is physical
in nature: “Wooden boxes, which have drawers that can be pulled open,
and pieces of paper.”35

Luhmann referred to this principle as a mere externality; however, he referred

to it as mere for good reason. At the time there was no metaphysical, internal
way of memorizing knowledge other than resorting to the mnemonic tech-
niques. Such techniques were used by ancient Greek thinkers like Socrates.
This involved mapping metaphysical thoughts onto physical items present

35  Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes”; Luhmann, “Zettelkasten.”

116  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

in either a literal or an imagined room or space. The physical objects acted

as cues allowing one to better recall any thought stored in memory.

Believe it or not, at the time when learned scholars and thinkers began to
transition from such mnemonic techniques (which are metaphysical in
nature) to notes stored in physical materials (such as was tablets, and later on,
paper), it was met with much resistance—even Socrates himself, we learn
by way of his followers, derided the emerging popularity of taking physical
notes.36 Plato echoed the same sentiment as Socrates: “According to Plato,
the true learned man should rather be autonomous. He should not ask for
help coming from the outside; instead, he should be able to help himself,
especially in face-to-face interactions.”37 Yet Plato also began adopting the
idea of storing thoughts in physical materials. His tool of choice was the
wax tablet.38

In my opinion, using physical materials to work with knowledge unlocks

some of the most powerful results. Later in the book, I detail why I believe
the analog component to be so important. I will also share research and
specific illustrations showing why physical materials are so critical to devel-
oping knowledge. To that end, Luhmann did not need to specify analog as
a requirement over digital. Why? Because digital tools were not an option
when he started building his Zettelkasten. I have reason to believe that
if Niklas Luhmann were alive today he would continue using his analog
Zettelkasten. There’s magic within the analog medium incapable of being
reproduced in digital tools. I will share why I believe this to be the case
later on in this book.

36  Ann M. Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age,
First Edition (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011), 78.
37  Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 1.
38  Related note: I ended up purchasing a wax tablet to experience what it would’ve been
like for Plato in developing his knowledge. I found it surprising how useful the tool is;
it’s almost like a portable whiteboard. However its key differences are: 1) its more pain-
ful to write knowledge down so you must be very deliberate in thinking before you write,
2) the limitation of space forces you to be very concise (and thus err on the side of writ-
ing down short words, or cues, that trigger a longer thought).
 What Is an Antinet?  117

Principle #2: Numeric-alpha Notecard Addresses

Perhaps the most important principle in Luhmann’s notebox system is
that of the numeric-alpha notecard addresses. Numeric-alpha refers to card
addresses which start with a number and then are combined with alphabetical
characters to branch down and internally expand to an infinite degree. This
simple practice creates a self-referential object for every single one of your
thoughts. This enables what Luhmann phrased, “the possibility of linking.”39
Linking thoughts is the very thing which enables the system to become
self-referential in nature, a cybernetic network as Luhmann thought of it.40

What is meant by addresses should also not be overlooked. In the first

Zettelkasten Luhmann created in the 1950’s, he used a convention that
employed commas for separating his different branches of thought in his
Antinet. For instance, his notecard “5,1A” contained an excerpted quote by
an author.41 In Luhmann’s second Zettelkasten, which was built specifically
to help him with his thirty-year-long undertaking to create a unified theory
of everything as it applies to society, he used a mix of slashes and periods
and commas. For instance: ‘21/1,1’.42 I simply use the numeric-alpha scheme
combined with slashes (I do not use commas or periods as separators). For
instance: ‘27/2a/12’. I’ve yet to find it necessary or natural to use periods or
commas. Regardless, we’ll explore in detail the specific schemes and practices
of building your own Antinet later in the book. The beauty of the system is
that there’s not a strict computer science protocol. There’s no scheme you
must adhere to in order to work with the system. You can mold it and work
with it in the way your brain most prefers (as long as you operate within the
framework of the four principles I’m introducing now)!

Now back to the concept of card addresses for a moment. When people first
see a card address like, ‘27/2a/12’ they immediately think it adheres to a

39   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”; Luhmann, “Zettelkasten.”

40  “ZK II: Note 9/8—Niklas Luhmann Archive.” Accessed January 10, 2022. https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V.
41  “ZK I: Note 5.1a—Niklas Luhmann Archive”” accessed January 11, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_5-1a_V.
42  “ZK II: Zettel 21/1,1—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_21-1-1_V.
118  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

hierarchical structure. The address does not indicate a hierarchy, however.

It’s merely the location of where the leaf lives on a branch of your tree. Think
of it more like a geographic coordinate system, like latitude and longitude (for
instance ‘-77.0364,38.8951’). The periods do not connote a hierarchy; the
address ‘27/2A/12’ could simply be represented as ‘27.2A.12’, and that would
be just fine. It’s a matter of personal preference.

Anyway, we’re in the weeds here. Much about numeric-alpha addresses will
be covered later on in this book. For now, just know that this is perhaps the
most important principle of Luhmann’s four principles. It also happens to be
the principle that people overthink the most, too! Assigning a numeric-alpha
address to a notecard paralyzes people. It can be the thing that kills your
progress. This all stems from one’s internal tendency towards perfectionism.
Digital notetaking tools have trained many to be perfectionists (even at the
expense of being productive). This tendency is something we’ll be fixing.
With the Antinet you’ll learn to focus on what really matters: developing
knowledge (not cutesy bubble graphs displaying connected digital notes).
I’ll be teaching you to major in the major (instead of majoring in the minor).
Don’t worry, I’m here to help in your recovery.

Again, the importance of numeric-alpha addresses cannot be emphasized

enough. It not only enables linking, it enables the self-referential composition
of the Zettelkasten which gives it a unique personality. Luhmann holds this
as one of the most important aspects of the system. The unique personality
stands as the raw material which will help the Zettelkasten morph into an
unexpected structure allowing you to communicate with the second mind, the
doppelgänger, the ghost (or spirit, or mind) in the box, as Luhmann referred to
it.43 This is the entity Luhmann was suggesting would communicate when he
titled his paper, “Communication with Noteboxes.” Numeric-alpha addresses
make this possible.

43  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3 - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
 What Is an Antinet?  119

Principle #3: Tree

The third principle Luhmann specifies is a structure that allows for “the
possibility of arbitrary internal branching.”44

Luhmann realized early on in life—thanks partly to his experiences being

tortured by the so-called good guys at the end of World War II—that the
world is not so simple. It’s quite complex. Reality resolves to nature, which
resolves to chaos. If scientists seek to discover and publish the truth, then it’s
necessary to accept chaos. Life is not a simple dualistic affair, as Luhmann
discovered. It’s not always one of good vs. evil. The world is complex, and
so is the human mind.

With this understood, the question then becomes: how can one devise a
system built on that which best models reality? Reality is chaos, yet it also
emerges from ordered and simplistic rules (think the laws of thermody-
namics). Reality (chaos) also emerges from simplistic parts (for instance,
the atomic theory posits that matter is composed of particles called atoms).
Reality is chaos built out of simple laws of order, and units of order. These
simple laws and units of order bind the system together, allowing one to
navigate complexity. It was with this in mind that Luhmann crafted his
notebox system.

Within the current popularity of communities forming around Personal

Knowledge Management (“PKM”) systems, it’s become a popular idea to
embrace so-called dynamic systems—ones that are fluid and are built on
things like wikilinks, and tags. An idea taught in the popular PKM course,
Linking Your Thinking, preaches this idea in dogmatic fashion: “Folders are
rigid and exclusionary by their nature. Whatever is in a folder lives separated
from the main collection. It’s a rigid hierarchy that imposes order.”45 This
notion, however, is mere pop-productivity opinion. Luhmann’s Zettelkasten

44   Niklas Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” trans.
Manfred Kuehn, accessed May 4, 2021, https://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-
with-slip-boxes.
45   “1c.3 Using Folders—LYT Curriculum / Unit 1—PKM & Idea Emergence,” Linking Your
Thinking, accessed October 25, 2021, https://forum.linkingyourthinking.com/t/1c-3-
using-folders/142/2.
120  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

was not dynamic, nor was it fluid. It could be argued that it was built entirely of
folders (in the digital computer directory sense). The reason why a dynamic,
fluid structure is one you ought not to strive for centers on the following fact:
such a structure would be lacking in rough, unique conventions. It would
lack a unique personality, which is what Luhmann’s system optimized for.
In brief, it would not mirror the systems found in nature.

Simply stated, Luhmann’s Zettelkasten structure was not dynamic or fluid in

nature. Yet, it was not rigid, either. Examples of a rigid structure are classifica-
tion systems like the Dewey Decimal System, or Paul Otlet’s massive notecard
world museum known as The Mundaneum. These types of systems are useful
for interpersonal knowledge systems; however, they’re not illustrative of what
Niklas Luhmann’s system was: an intrapersonal knowledge system. Luhmann’s
notebox system was not logically or neatly organized in a way that allowed
for convenient public access. It was pure chaos to anyone (other than its
creator) who perused its contents. In other words, Luhmann’s Zettelkasten
was not a structure that could be characterized as one of order.

In brief, Luhmann’s notebox system was not dynamic and fluid. Yet it was
not one of order, either.

So what are we to think of Luhmann’s notebox system? In my experience

using it, I find it to be more organic in nature. Like nature, it has laws and
rules by which it operates; yet, it’s also subject to complete and total random
choice. We know this because in describing it, Luhmann uses the word arbi-
trary to describe its arbitrary internal branching. Defined, arbitrary, means
something that is decided randomly on personal whim.46 This arbitrary,
random structure contributes to one of its greatest aspects—the aspect of
surprises. Even though I’d call it an organic structure, that term seems rather
trite. Other ways you can think of it is as a molecular structure, or an atomic
structure. Yet, in recent time, concepts like atomicity, as I’ve touched on,
have been overused and abstracted unnecessarily. Sure, atomicity could be
considered a property of the Zettelkasten, but it could be argued atomicity
is a property of nearly everything that is composed of matter!

46   Stevenson and Lindberg, eds., New Oxford American Dictionary 3rd Edition.
 What Is an Antinet?  121

Let’s not get carried away, however. Let’s jump back to the question: how
are we to think of Luhmann’s notebox system?

It’s actually quite simple, and I’ll share with you precisely how you should
think of the Zettelkasten in just a moment. Until then, it’s important to close
the loop on the characteristic which describes it.

One of the scholars who studied Luhmann’s Zettelkasten closest is the

researcher Johannes Schmidt from Bielefeld University in Germany. Biele-
feld is the same university Luhmann worked at, and where he used his
Zettelkasten to devise his impressive social theoretical work. It’s no coin-
cidence that Schmidt knows Luhmann’s system so well. Schmidt has spent
countless hours sifting through Luhmann’s notebox card-by-card in person.
He’s currently the scientific coordinator of the project to digitize Luhmann’s
notebox and publish its contents online for all to explore.47 According to
Schmidt, Luhmann’s notebox system is “a rough structure.”48 It’s organized
“by subject areas, which is reflected in the first number assigned to the card.”49
The characteristic which describes a Zettelkasten is simply this: it’s a rough
structure that consists of both “order and disorder.”50

Now that we know the characteristic of a Zettelkasten not as a dynamic, fluid

structure, nor a structure of complete order, we can think of it as a rough
structure. Yet, knowing this gets us only so far. Knowing the abstract char-
acteristic of a system is nice, yes, but not really that useful in practice. For
this reason, I’ll share with you what I’ve found to be the best illustration of
what type of structure a Zettelkasten is.

47  “PEVZ: Johannes Schmidt - Contact (Bielefeld University),” accessed January 11, 2022,
https://ekvv.uni-bielefeld.de/perspubl/publ/PersonDetail.jsp?personId=25653450.
48   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 295.
49   Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 295.
50   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luh-
mann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes; Luhmann, “Communication with a
Notebox (Revised Edition),” accessed August 3, 2021, https://daily.scottscheper.com/
zettelkasten/.
122  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Think of a Zettelkasten as a tree. A real tree. Not a tree that is platonic in nature.
Not a diagram of a tree. Not a tree directory structure that you think of in
computer science. Rather think of the Zettelkasten as an actual tree. What
does an actual tree contain? It contains a trunk, branches, stems, vines, and
leaves. We’ll go into detail on this later on in the book; but for now, think
of each individual leaf as a notecard. With a Zettelkasten, you’ll be building
trees of knowledge, one that has different trunks, different branches, different
stems of thoughts, and even vines that link to other branches, allowing you
to explore and swing between branches and trees.

The importance of the Zettelkasten’s tree-like structure should not be

overlooked. Human memory works in a way that closely models tree-like
structures. Even physically, the human brain, neurons, and neural networks
follow branching structures. Some of the most beautiful tree-like images are
the networks of the human brain: “If each nerve cell enlarged a thousand
fold looks like a tree, then a small region of the nervous system at the same
magnified scale resembles a gigantic, fantastic forest.”51

The structure of your second mind (which is what a Zettelkasten, if built

properly, will create) is critically important. It’s not just about storing infor-
mation and creating cool bubble graphs of notes that link together (that’s
what digital tools focus on); rather, it’s about exploration, as one scholar put
it. The tree structure of the Zettelkasten enables meaningful exploration, as
Alberto Cevolini points out: “secondary memories themselves have an inner
order that allows for exploration.”52

Later we’ll be exploring the tree structure of Luhmann’s Zettelkasten in

more detail. We’ll be exploring how to think of it. More practically, we’ll be
exploring how to leverage it to help you develop and evolve your knowledge
over time.

51   For beautiful images and more exploration on this subject, see: Giorgio A. Ascoli, Trees
of the Brain, Roots of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015).
52  Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 16. Emphasis added.
 What Is an Antinet?  123

Principle #4: Index

The last principle in Luhmann’s notebox system is the index. Luhmann calls
this concept a “Register.”53 I prefer index, but you’re welcome to use whatever
terminology you like best. You can think of the index as a map. It’s your map
for exploring your own tree of knowledge.

Say you’re traveling, staying in a new location and suddenly you realize you
haven’t eaten all day. You’re starving. You think to yourself, I’m really craving
In-N-Out Burger right now. You recall seeing an In-N-Out Burger the previous
day, but since you’re traveling, you’re not sure how to get there. You pull out
your phone, open your maps app, and then what do you do? Do you type
in the latitude-longitude coordinates ‘32.7794303,-117.242262’? Or, instead,
do you type in the human-memorable name known as ‘In-N-Out Burger’?
Chances are you opt for the human-memorable name. This is precisely
how to think of the index for your Zettelkasten. The index is a key-value
associative array. They keyterm is the human-readable name, and the value
is the location of the leaf on a tree in your Zettelkasten. For instance, here’s
an example taken directly from my Zettelkasten: “Truth”: ‘5455/1’.

If you’re a software developer or programmer, and you’re familiar with data

structures like JSON, or Python dictionaries, or YAML arrays, you can get
pretty advanced with your index. You can create nested items of key-value
pairs. If you’re not a nerd (or a wannabe nerd, like me), then don’t worry
about this stuff. We’ll cover keyterms and the index in detail later on (and
you won’t have to be a computer nerd to understand it).

The bottom line is this: think of the index as your own map that enables you
to swing onto a certain leaf, on a certain branch of a certain tree. From there,
you can then continue exploring by reviewing the nearby stems of thoughts
and the individual cards which, themselves, contain remote links. These
remote links enable you to swing around to other leaves on other branches
of your tree of knowledge. More on this will be revealed later in the book.
But for now, you’re ready to be introduced to what an Antinet is composed of.

53   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”; Luhmann, “Zettelkasten.”

124  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

INTRODUCING “THE ANTINET”

To summarize, these are the four principles of a Luhmannian Zettelkasten:

1. it is Analog;
2. it uses Numeric-alpha Addresses;
3. it has a Tree Structure;
4. and an Index.

The first letters of each of those four things (“A”, “N”, “T”, “I”) are what
make it an Antinet.

Many people, when first coming across the term Antinet, may mistake it for
being anti-digital, or anti-technology. This misinterpretation is something
I understand, and frankly, something I take delight in. I snicker at the idea
of ruffling people’s feathers because there’s a part of me that is a troll, just
as Niklas Luhmann himself was.

The consequences of this aren’t the most pleasant, however. In my very early
days sharing this knowledge, I was met with much resistance. In online forums
whenever I answered Zettelkasten questions (from an analog perspective),
I received polarized reactions. That is, I tended to receive a healthy supply
of upvotes, and a heavy supply of downvotes. That’s fine with me. I deserved
it; however, if you spent some time reading what I actually said, I was not
as anti-digital as one would think.

To be clear, I am anti-digital when it comes to a knowledge development

system such as the Antinet; but within reason. I understand that some
people may operate and think better with digital tools. That’s fine. In my
book you’ll find a section for those who refuse to give up digital media for
working with knowledge. It’s a compromised version—I strongly believe
that—but it may be useful for some. However after you read the science
and rationale for an analog knowledge development system, I’m confident
you’ll at least give such a system your best shot first.

Now that I’ve explained what Antinet stands for, I will be using the term
Antinet as the primary term through the remainder of this book (instead of
 What Is an Antinet?  125

Zettelkasten). Here and there I’ll drop in the term Zettelkasten; but my pre-
ferred term is Antinet. I choose to do this because today the term Zettelkasten
connotes digital notetaking apps with linking capabilities. Also, the reason I
don’t just use the term notebox system is because it’s already used for systems
that simply store notecards categorically.54

Before we move on, there’s one last thing you should know. It pertains to
the net in Antinet.

The “Net” in “Antinet”

The net in Antinet refers to network. To Luhmann, the system he built was
a cybernetic network. It was self-referential in nature because of its ability to
cross-reference its contents through the numeric-alpha addresses.55

Luhmann, familiar with how human memory worked, understood how

the brain is structured—as a network, just as we know it today—a network
that possesses approximately 100 billion neurons and 200 trillion connections.56

• • •

Now that you know the four principles of the notebox network Luhmann
designed, you’re closer to understanding it. But there’s only one problem:
you now know what an Antinet is, but you still have no idea what an Antinet
really is. The four principles describe the parts of Luhmann’s system. They
describe its fundamental raw “atomic” material. They do not describe the
whole it creates—and trust me, the four parts do combine to create a whole
greater than the sum of its parts.

54 As, for instance, seen in Holiday, “The Notecard System.” RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April
1, 2014. https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering- orga-
nizing-and-using-everything-you-read/.
55  “ZK II: Note 9/8 - Niklas Luhmann Archive.” Accessed January 10, 2022. https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V.
56   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 30.
126  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When the four principles are combined into a system, the Antinet becomes
a thinking tool, a communication partner, and a second mind. They combine
to produce many other novel phenomena, such as insightful surprises by
way of ordered randomness. The Antinet becomes a system where thought is
developed—both in the short term (by way of writing by hand, and thinking
on paper) as well as the long term (by its branched architecture that stamps
things in time that are most useful later on: this includes mistakes in your
own thinking that are stamped in time, which will prove valuable). Also
stamped in time is your own mind, and its own context, with its own links
(that one thinks of at the time of writing and developing thought). In brief,
there’s a temporal context which is stamped and installed into your Antinet.
This context, this inner voice, if you will, then develops into a second mind
enabling you to communicate with it, and in Luhmann’s terms, to ask it
questions. It is the combination of all four principles which transform the
Antinet from a mere notebox into a second mind.57

Magic takes place when the four principles interact in the Antinet. Johannes
Schmidt observes that, when the four principles of an Antinet are combined,
“all of them together create a complex cognitive system.”58 This is accomplished,
through the four principles, in several ways:

1. The neuroimprinting on the mind via its analog medium of writing by hand.
2. The “(selective) relations” between notes enabled via the numeric-alpha
addresses.59
3. The “special filing technique”, with its infinite internal branching via the
tree structure.60
4. The index, which enables you to neuro-imprint ideas and cues in human-
memorable language.

57  It’s become a marketing idea of late to refer to a system that stores information as a sec-
ond brain; yet, that’s not really what you want, nor is that even a good term for what
you’re developing with an Antinet. What you’re building is a second mind. In the schol-
arly field, this idea is often referred to as an extended mind. More on this concept later.
58   Undisciplined, “Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt.”
59   Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 309.
60  Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 309.
 What Is an Antinet?  127

All of these four elements interact and create unexpected effects, including
reverberation—as it’s called in the science of human memory—allowing you
to retain more knowledge and connections than you ever thought possible.
You’ll begin to notice yourself reading differently. Certain index keyterms
arise while reading; all you have to do is write the keyterm down on a note-
card (called a “bibcard”). This is what Luhmann did.

As it relates to the four principles, this structure, as Johannes Schmidt observes,

demonstrates how quickly the Antinet sets you on a path away from what
one would deem ordered (and taxonomically sound). Although seemingly
nonsensical, to the creator—that is, to you—the Antinet becomes perfectly
natural to understand. One is led away from the original topic and to a vari-
ety of other subjects—ones that would not have initially been associated with
one another.61 All of these incommunicable experiences are formed by the
structure of the Antinet’s four principles.

The whole of an Antinet is incommunicable—meaning, you’ll need to

understand it yourself by experiencing it yourself. Don’t worry, though.
I’ll be showing you precisely how to build your own Antinet a few chapters
from now. Until then, I’d like to share with you a little bit more about what
an Antinet really is.

WHAT AN ANTINET REALLY IS

An Antinet, defined, is composed of four principles which form a knowledge
system (as well as other systems) which in turn, transforms itself into a
second mind.

From this definition, it may not seem like much, but there’s a lot to unpack
here. Unpacking this definition is what I’ll be doing in this section. My
goal centers on two things: first, to give you a glimpse of the metaphysical
experience in working with an Antinet; and second, to do so in a way that
isn’t boring as hell. Sound good? Let’s get started.

61   Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 309.

128  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE FUNDAMENTALS OF KNOWLEDGE

DEVELOPMENT
We’ll be discussing the concept of knowledge development later. First, though,
we need to understand the fundamental raw material of what we’re even
working with as knowledge developers. The best place to start is merely with
the question, What is a thought?

What Is a “Thought”?
The best way to understand what an Antinet really comes from asking what
it contains.

What does an Antinet actually contain? Notes, yes. But what does a note
contain? There are many types of notes, yes. But for all intents and purposes,
a note contains one thing: a thought.

The latest research in cognitive neuroscience shows that the average person
experiences 6,200 thoughts per day.62 Many of these thoughts are useful, yet
they need some time to develop. They need what Luhmann referred to as
rumination in order to sprout and grow. Unfortunately, most thoughts never
have the chance to ruminate. Even if captured digitally, thinkers rarely under-
take the practices necessary to sort and make use of all the information they
encounter. Why? Simply because they quickly find themselves drowning in
too much information (and as a result, too many thoughts). In other words,
we experience thought overload—and this is especially the case for thoughts
enmeshed in digital workflows.

The problem of thought overload, however, is the very thing Luhmann figured
out how to solve. By way of metaphor, Luhmann’s Antinet transforms one’s
mind into a persistent, supercharged version of itself. Luhmann devised a
knowledge structure for his thoughts which transformed his mind—and
he admitted he was not naturally very proficient at remembering thoughts.

62  “Discovery of ‘Thought Worms’ Opens Window to the Mind,” Queen’s Gazette | Queen’s
University, July 13, 2020, https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/discovery-thought
-worms-opens-window-mind.
 What Is an Antinet?  129

Luhmann desired to create a marcescent tree of knowledge. A marcescent tree

is one which never loses any of its leaves. It’s a phenomenon in nature. Like
the leaves of a marcescent tree, Luhmann created a mind that never loses
thoughts. Indeed, the Antinet is a mind that never loses its thoughts. It’s a
marcescent tree. The only risk is if it catches on fire or is destroyed (which
is something I’ll address later in this book).

OK, let’s now address the question: What actually is a thought in the first
place?! For this answer, let’s turn to the dictionary for help.

Perhaps the world’s biggest trolls are those working at Merriam-Webster who
devised the definition for the word thought. By their definition, a thought
is something that comes from thinking.63 How profound. If you look up the
word thinking, you’ll learn that it’s something a mind does to produce thoughts.64
What we’re left with is a circular reference that doesn’t tell us very much.

Thankfully from the land of psychology emerges a definition of thought

that is of more use: a thought is simply a representation of reality.65 In other
words, a thought is a reflection or observation of reality. Such things are
what you write down on a notecard. Its aim is to represent some aspect of
reality (physical or metaphysical reality).

Your thoughts do not live in an isolated universe. They’re shaped by several

dimensions, which are constantly changing over the course of your life.
Thoughts are a product of self, space, time, reverberation (recent behaviors
and interests), and content (current context). These five dimensions stand
essentially as a container which shapes a thought. More on this will be written
about later in the book. For now it’s worth knowing that one of the core

63  “ What Actually Is a Thought? And How Is Information Physical? | Psychology Today,
“accessed July 29, 2021, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/finding-purpose/
201902/what-actually-is-thought-and-how-is-information-physical.
64  “Definition of THINKING,” accessed July 29, 2021, https://www.merriam-webster.
com/dictionary/thinking.
65   Ralph Lewis, “What Actually Is a Thought? And How Is Information Physical? |
Psychology Today,” accessed July 29, 2021, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/
finding-purpose/201902/what-actually-is-thought-and-how-is-information-physical.
130  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

strengths of an Antinet is its ability to preserve not just the thought itself,
but the container of dimensions in which a thought is formed.

What Is a ‘Memory’?
Great, now you know that a thought is. It’s your mind’s representation of
reality. You also know that it’s shaped by several dimensions.

The next question is, what’s a memory?

Before answering this question, one must delineate between a memory, and
memory (as in human memory). We’ll start with what a memory is.

Put simply, a memory is a stored representation of a thought. Like a thought,

your memories are also a function of several dimensions which shape it.
Scientific experiments in the study of human memory show that different
brain regions process different dimensions attributed to a memory. This
model of memory is called the attribute model of memory. To reiterate, the
attribute model of memory asserts a view in which different brain regions
process different dimensions of a memory. Like the dimensions of thought,
the dimensions attributed to a memory include variables like space, time,
sensory perceptions, and emotional aspects.66

What Is ‘Human Memory’?

Now we know what a thought is, and what a memory is. There’s only one more
thing we ought to get on the same page about before trying to understand
what an Antinet really is.

But first, now is a good time to take a step back for a moment. Let’s answer the
question of why it’s even important to understand what an Antinet really is.

The reason it’s important is that by learning how knowledge development

works, your own thinking, researching, and publishing output will be greatly
enhanced. Even if you decide that building an Antinet is not for you, you

66   “Attribute Model of Memory—APA Dictionary of Psychology,” accessed

November 8, 2021, https://dictionary.apa.org/attribute-model-of-memory.
 What Is an Antinet?  131

can still greatly benefit from learning these concepts. Got it? Good. Let’s
jump back into the fundamentals of knowledge development (thought,
a memory, and human memory).

The last thing you ought to know centers around what human memory is.

The reason memory can be a confusing concept centers on the fact that a
memory is different from plain ol’ memory. The term memory refers to
the collective process of encoding, storing, and retrieving a memory.

Now that we know that a memory is a stored representation of a thought,

and a thought is your mind’s representation of reality, effectively, human
memory is your mind’s ability to encode, store, and retrieve represen-
tations of reality.

This is a greatly simplified conceptualization of human memory. Why? Sim-

ply because human memory is one of the last major unknowns in the field
of neuroscience. Human memory is still a mystery.67 In my opinion, this is
very exciting. Richard Feynman, the revered American theoretical physicist,
observed it as “a very important problem which has not been solved at all.”68

Luhmann was familiar with how human memory works. He understood it

not as something composed of one thing; rather, he knew it as something
composed of trillions of connections built on association. The concept of
association shall be discussed later in the book. According to Richard Yeo,
memory isn’t something that happens in the brain alone. It’s more complex
than that. Memory is “often distributed across heterogenous systems com-
bining neural, bodily, social, and technological resources.”69

There are different lenses and models scholars use to study human memory.
I won’t get into them now, nor will I get into the pros and cons of each. The
tendency to overcomplicate things plagues the disciplinary field of human

67   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 31.

68   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, ix.
69   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 129.
132  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

memory studies (and, let’s be honest, many academic fields as well). Often,
scholars fall prey to the complexity cognitive fallacy. They overcomplicate
ideas, filling them with unnecessary technobabble when trying to explain
something even they don’t understand yet.70 This is why, for now, and for our
purposes, the simple definition of human memory I laid out previously will
more than suffice in aiding our understanding of what an Antinet really is.

Before moving on, here’s a summary of the three fundamental components

of knowledge development we’ve just learned:

 A thought is your mind’s representation of reality.

 A memory is a stored representation of a thought.
 Human memory is the collective process of encoding, storing, and retriev
ing a memory.

What Is “Reality”?
For the sake of moving forward, I’m tempted to dive right into addressing
what an Antinet really is; however, I simply can’t.

Here’s why: if you review the definitions of the three concepts I’ve laid
out previously, there’s one concept I haven’t properly addressed yet. That
concept is, reality.

I bet you didn’t think you’d be faced with the question what is reality? when
you began reading about something called an ‘Antinet’; but alas, here we are.
I’m not going to dive too deeply into the solving of the question of reality
right now, but I’ll give you a better understanding than you might otherwise
have had. In brief, no two people share the same reality (it’s, like, relative,
man). In all seriousness, Einstein proved reality is not one fixed state. Reality
is really an infinite number of unique realities that depend on where you are,
and how fast you’re moving in spacetime.71 More pragmatically, there are

70  For an example of this, one need only read academic textbooks on computational theo
ries of human memory. Specifically, see Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 35–7.
71   Scott Adams, God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel
Publishing, 2004), 85.
 What Is an Antinet?  133

three types of reality: (1) objective reality, which are things like gravity that
we all experience, (2) subjective reality, such as pain or another sensation
one might experience, and (3) inter-subjective reality, which include shared
beliefs and sociological concepts (like money, politics, and power).72

From a philosophical perspective, the concept of reality has been debated

for aeons. There are different ontological positions describing reality. These
positions include monism, dualism, pluralism, and my favorite—dialectical
monism. I’m not going to continue any further down the philosophical dis-
cussion of reality, but for now, think of reality as any physical or metaphysical
truth you experience. By physical truth, this refers to that which your sensory
system detects in your environment (sight, smell, taste, touch, sound).
By metaphysical truth, this refers to that which your mind (or body—via
intuition) detects, experiences, and believes to be true. These sensations
and insights are your reality, and they’re represented in thought.

OK, whew! We’ve now successfully gone down the metaphysical and the-
oretical rabbit-hole. We’ve addressed what thought is, what a memory is,
what human memory is, and what reality is. Here’s a full summary of four
fundamental components involved in knowledge development:

 A thought is your mind’s representation of reality.

 A memory is a stored representation of a thought.
 Human memory is the collective process of encoding, storing, and retriev
ing a memory.
 Reality is any physical or metaphysical truth you experience.

Your Ultimate Task When Working with an Antinet

What we could technically do next is chase down the definition and our
understanding of truth. Ultimately this exercise is never-ending. Like the
Antinet, the truth of the cosmos is a self-referential, recursive beast. It’s filled
with seemingly never-ending paradoxes that point back to its self.73 For an

72  Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Illustrated edition (New
York, NY: Harper, 2017), 144.
73  For advanced Antinetters: Here’s a sign that you’re on the right track when developing
134  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

example of what I mean by self-referential, let’s take the dictionary’s definition

of truth. The Oxford English Dictionary defines truth as “the quality or state
of being true.”74 That’s as self-referential as it gets right there, and that’s the
truth (I couldn’t help it). In brief, we can define truth simply as that which
we believe as true. From there we can explore the concept of belief, but I’m
going to stop now before someone gets hurt.

Ultimately, as knowledge developers, and knowledge creators, we’re all in the

business of truth. When using an Antinet and writing down your thoughts
in the form of notes, the ultimate goal is to write down your truth—and
to do it honestly. This directive is deathly serious. One of the most critical
factors that will make your time building an Antinet worthwhile is to write
down as honestly as possible, your truth. For example, “The author men-
tions rumination and surprise, but I fail to see the significance of such things.”
Or, “I honestly have no idea what my goal is with learning an Antinet at this
point, and the reason why is x.” Or, “What the author says makes a lot of
sense; however, I’ve already invested so much time building thousands of
digital notes using tool x. If I switch now, who’s to say I won’t just switch
again to a new knowledge tool three months from now!”75

Writing your honest truth results in you taking your Antinet seriously.
It will mitigate the risk of ever abandoning it. Perhaps most importantly,
it will result in creating and publishing genius-level work built to inspire
others for centuries.

We humans have a very keen sense of bullshit. People are better than you
think at detecting bullshit. We can tell when someone’s writing the truth, and

knowledge using an Antinet: if you notice contradictions in your knowledge; if you

notice seemingly absurd paradoxes. If you notice one piece of insight, but can link to
the seemingly exact opposite insight (yet both ideas are true); All of these events are
a signal that you’re using the Antinet properly. They’re signals that you’re developing
knowledge properly. In fact, I have a section in my Antinet dedicated to such paradoxes
(“1609”). This is something you’ll want to create as well.
74   Stevenson and Lindberg, eds., New Oxford American Dictionary, s.v. “truth.”
75  The Antinet will be the very last knowledge development system you’ll ever need to
learn and use (if you stick to the knowledge development process I teach in Part III)!
 What Is an Antinet?  135

when someone’s writing something just to sell books. The way to sell books
is, paradoxically, to not try to sell books! The way to sell books is to write the
truth—your truth. And that starts by writing the truth in the form of notes.
This doesn’t only apply to writing books, it applies to any form of creative
output (e.g. music, plays, songwriting, etc.). The bottom line is that, with the
Antinet, the name of the game is writing your truth, as honestly as possible.

In Ernest Hemingway’s fantastic non-fiction book, Death in the Afternoon,

he takes the reader through the world of bullfighting. While it’s a seem-
ingly grotesque sport—especially in modern times—it is a book I highly
recommend reading if one wishes to observe what I mean by writing the
truth. It’s a master-course for what good writing is. In the book he writes
of bullfighting, “I should not try to defend it now, only to tell honestly the
things I have found true about it.”76 Like Hemingway, your ultimate task
when developing your thoughts in the Antinet concerns itself with one
thing: it’s to tell honestly the things you find to be true.

WHY AN ANTINET IS NOT ABOUT STORING NOTES

An Antinet is not an analog note database. It’s not even about storing notes.
The Antinet concerns itself with the dualistic emergence of a second mind.
A second mind is formed by properly integrating the four principles of the
Antinet, and implementing an effective workflow enabling it to operate as
a thinking system.

An Antinet is not a notetaking system; it’s not a notetaking app based on

the functionality of linking notes (that is, wikilinks). To its creator (Niklas
Luhmann), the Antinet was not “just an analog database,” writes Johannes
Schmidt.77 It was not a container for storing notes; it was not chaotic for its
creator either. The Antinet “was not a maze but a thinking tool, a commu-
nication partner, and a publication machine.”78

76   Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon (London: Vintage Books, 2000).
77    Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner,
Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolu‑ tion in Early
Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/ 2942475, 310.
78 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
136  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The problem with thinking of the Antinet as a notetaking system is that, well,
it’s not a notetaking system! The term notetaking connotes the idea that you’re
writing down facts or thoughts that are already formed. Luhmann’s Antinet
was not a notetaking system. Hell, even the principles of an Antinet are not
that important if the only thing they yield is the better taking of notes. The
reason why an Antinet is important centers on the benefits it yields for one’s
mind and thoughts. The Antinet is a thinking system because it transforms
the way one thinks. It also is a thought system because it develops thought,
both in the short term and the long term.

The key differentiator between an Antinet and a digital notetaking app is

precisely that the Antinet is a thinking system.

The Antinet, when used properly, and when its four principles are involved,
results in one’s thinking being transformed. The way you read books and recall
thoughts changes in the course of using the Antinet. It’s an incommunicable
experience, and something I’ll be touching on throughout the book.

Digital notetaking apps, on the other hand, can perhaps be employed to

develop thought. In that respect they can be thought of as thought systems;
however, they cannot be characterized as a thinking system (unless they are
properly structured by way of the four principles of the Antinet). Even then,
a digital notetaking app’s effectiveness is watered down because it naturally
omits the first principle of the Antinet (analog).

The analog principle is critical because it involves writing by hand. This practice
results in neuroimprinting thoughts on the mind, which is a critical element
involved in a process called neuro-associative recall, which we’ll discuss next.

From using the Antinet, it could be postulated that Luhmann’s mind

grew in two areas: (1) memory span of thought (or thought-span), and (2)
neuro-associative recall.

Let’s explore both of these concepts now.

in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 311.

 What Is an Antinet?  137

The Antinet’s Effect on the “Memory Span” of

Thoughts (“Thought-Span”)
Within the field of memory research, scientists use the term memory span
to refer to the minimum number of items one can recall.

Related experiments traditionally focus on more rudimentary recall tasks.

They entail asking participants to recall a list of words, letters, or digits.79 The
goal with an Antinet is to develop your memory span not for words, letters,
or digits; but to develop your memory span for thought. That is, the goal
is to develop the mind to instantly recall thoughts, and to recall as many
thoughts as possible. This is what is meant by thought-span.80

How is it possible to develop the memory span of thoughts? This is achieved

through neuroimprinting thoughts on your mind via something called elabo-
rative rehearsal in the field of human memory. Also involved is maintenance
rehearsal. Both of these processes are procured by a feature innate to the
Antinet by way of its first principle (analog). Before moving on, let’s take a
moment to address what is meant by the term neuroimprinting.

NEUROIMPRINTING IN THE ANTINET

Within the world of copywriting (which is the profession of writing com-
pelling advertisements), one of the greatest copywriters who ever lived is
Gary Halbert.81 This self-proclaimed, “Prince of Print,” used a method called
neuroimprinting by which he taught copywriters how to become the best in
their field. The simple practice is to write down, by hand, every single word
(word-for-word) of the best advertisements ever written.

By trade, I was a copywriter in my previous professional life. Today, I am

more generally, a writer. I was a good copywriter—scratch that—I was really

79   On a related note, the average memory span of most people is five words, six letters, and
seven digits. This is why phone numbers in the United States consist of seven digits.
80   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 271.
81   Sir Gary C. Halbert, “The Prince of Print”. For his website, see: “The Gary Halbert
Letter,” accessed January 13, 2022, https://thegaryhalbertletter.com/.
138  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

good. My experience as a copywriter provided me with the greatest gift one

could ask for: a lime green Lamborghini.

Just kidding!82 Success as a copywriter has given me the gift of time. It’s given
me time to concentrate on writing about things I become fascinated with.
For the past year, this fascination became an obsession with the powerful
physical thinking system used by Niklas Luhmann. I had been writing and
developing a notecard database from readings over the course of sixteen
years. It wasn’t until fifteen years into this that I discovered the secret magic
of Niklas Luhmann’s Antinet. My notebox has since been transformed and
transitioned into an Antinet. How to transition a legacy notebox isn’t some-
thing I’ll cover right now, just know that it is indeed possible.

Here’s the point: I’ve had a lot of success as a copywriter, which has gifted
me with the time of writing right now, to you. The secret to how I developed
such skills as a copywriter can be found inside my own Antinet. Inside of
it, I have over three hundred hand-written notecards of the best headlines
ever written in advertising. I have personally experienced the magic of neu-
roimprinting. I won’t belabor this point. Neuroimprinting is a critical tool for
developing one’s skills, mind, and thoughts. I have not found this magic to
translate into the digital medium in a lossless way.

If you write out a great poem by keyboard, it will be imprinted on your screen.
If you write out a great poem by hand, it will be imprinted on your soul.

the deep roots of neuroimprinting

It can be argued that neuroimprinting is a biological term observed to occur
in infant birds, such as geese, ducks, and chickens.83 However I believe the
concept to be less formal in nature (scientifically). Regardless, I hold the
concept of neuroimprinting to be true because of empirical evidence.

82  I’ve since sold the Lamborghini. It was fun for a while, but I’m happier with a more sim-
ple life. Plus, my other car is great. It’s a Tesla Model S Plaid. It’s wrapped in a beautiful
lime green. And, oh yeah, it’s faster than the Lambo. The Italians have a lot of catching
up to do!
83  Hiroko Ohki-Hamazaki, “Neurobiology of imprinting,” Brain and Nerve = Shinkei
Kenkyu No Shinpo 64, no. 6 ( June 2012): 657–64.
 What Is an Antinet?  139

The concept of neuroimprinting has rich and deep roots in scholarship. The
scholar Francesco Sacchini (1570–1625) cites ancients who copied down
texts. He explains they did such a practice not in order to have copies of
them, but in order to better retain the knowledge.84

Sacchini recounts a story of Demosthenes copying down Thucydides eight

times in order to understand the ideas more thoroughly. Sacchini also asserts
that Saint Jerome (342–420 ad) wrote many volumes by hand, “not due to
the weakness of his library but out of desire to profit from the exercise.”85

The New England preacher Richard Steele wrote in 1682: “The very writing
of any thing fixes it deeper in the mind.”86

At Harvard College in the late seventeenth century, students were taught in

the following manner. They were given the assignment to write down text-
books bought in England, by hand.87 It may sound like a lazy way of teaching;
however, there remains a serious argument for the power of teaching students
by making them write out knowledge by hand. We have moved away from
the practice in modern times, but it’s something that may warrant revisiting.

The Antinet’s Effect: Neuro-Associative Recall

By neuroimprinting thoughts on your mind, via writing by hand, you’re
primed to develop the most important muscle for recognizing and installing
important thoughts from the books you read. The “muscle” I’m referring
to is the neuro-associative recall “muscle” of your brain. The strength of your
neuro-associative recall muscle is predicated on the analog principle of the
Antinet. It’s also predicated on the index principle of the Antinet. The index
principle forces you to imprint a term onto your mind. That term then maps
to a specific numeric-alpha address. Without these two principles, you lose
the ability to exercise and strengthen the neuro-associative recall muscle.
In other words, when using an Antinet you’re training your memory by

84   Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-Taking, 277.
85   Blair, Early Modern Attitudes, 277.
86   Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes, 277.
87   Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes, 278.
140  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

lengthening the memory span in which to recall a thought. You’re doing so

by neuroimprinting a cue (in the form of a keyterm). This cue acts as a way
to immediately recall thoughts to your mind. This exercises your neuro-as-
sociative recall muscle, which transforms your brain. While reading you’ll
suddenly spot an idea or a thought. Instead of thinking of this thought as
something new, you’ll immediately think of the keyterm it relates to in the
Antinet. This better allows you to classify the idea, associate the idea, and
then develop the current knowledge that you have of the thought. All of this,
again, is founded on the four key principles of the Antinet. It’s specifically
founded on two of those principles working together (analog and index).
If it’s not apparent by now, it should start to become more obvious why the
four principles are so critical for developing the type of system Luhmann
used. When you strip the system of such functionality (which is what digital
Zettelkasten do), you prevent such phenomena from happening.

When you use a physical thinking tool like the Antinet, you end up exercis-
ing your brain and its various “muscles,” and its various pathways. There’s
no easy-way out; no lazy search mechanism that enables you to avoid
thinking and associating ideas. It may seem outdated at first, but I assure
you, a system that requires you to think and exercise your mind beats the
latest and greatest digital app every time. Why? Because the best computer
you’ll ever have is the one already operating inside your skull. Using an
Antinet results in developing this organ; it could be argued that digital
tools work in the opposite direction—perhaps they even tend to degrade
your thinking.

The Antinet Is Not in the Same Category as

“Notetaking Apps”
Notetaking apps primarily concern themselves with storing information
that is mostly developed already. With an Antinet system you’re developing
thoughts primarily through the process of writing them down by hand.
It is a thinking system because it produces thoughts. It’s not the best tool
for storing already thought-about information; though that does indeed
have major benefits (neuroimprinting the great ideas and work of others on
your mind). Primarily, the Antinet is a tool for developing information into
knowledge—knowledge being your own thoughts.
 What Is an Antinet?  141

The primary benefit of a digital notetaking app is its storage capacity. People
seem to find comfort in digitally storing notes and syncing them across
devices. They prefer this, without realizing they are prioritizing storage over
the more crucial benefit: developing and evolving thought. It is my belief
that a system that develops and evolves thought into developed thought is
preferable to a system that merely stores (and links) undeveloped thought.
Paradoxically, it seems that digital notetaking apps ultimately do a worse
job of storing thoughts. Why? Because information is encountered less
frequently, and thus recalled less frequently by the user than the knowledge
stored in an Antinet. Why? Because digital information faces the perennial
issue of generating a black hole of too much information.

WHY AN ANTINET IS NOT A “MEMORY SYSTEM”

While an Antinet is a thinking system; it’s not only that type of system.
It comprises other systems: it is a memory system, but not only a memory
system; it’s also a sorting system, and a search system. Markus Krajewski has
observed that an Antinet is not just a “memory aid” for recalling thoughts. It’s
also, (1) a “sorting aid” (for sorting through thoughts), (2) a “search engine”
(by way of index), and (3) a “computer” (in German, Rechenmaschine), “in the
strict etymological sense of rechnen as ‘to organize’, ‘to guide’ and ‘to prepare’.”88

Another way of phrasing it is that an Antinet acts as a pre-processing engine

allowing your thoughts to become ruminated on, fixed, corrected, recor-
rected, and matured. All of this happens before even writing the first word
of your book, paper, essay, dissertation, blog post, or anything else. The way
in which a thought forms and evolves is also different compared to how it
would otherwise evolve in digital notetaking apps.

A key reason the Antinet is not a memory system, but more of a thinking
system, centers on its proficiency in bringing to the surface parts of your
thinking that are, upon further rumination, potentially not entirely correct.
The Antinet, thanks to its structure and analog design, allows for proactive
interference. It does this in a manner that is different—if not entirely impos-

88   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement

against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 319.
142  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

sible–for digital tools to achieve. What is meant by proactive interference will

be covered next.

Human memory is complex, important, and still a mystery.89 When Luh-

mann began building his Antinet, it was in reaction to his “poor memory.”90
Yet he discovered the issue to be much more complex, in part because his
understanding of memory was incomplete. What he referred to as a “poor
memory” when he began building his Antinet in the 1950s related to retro-
active interference, the interference caused by losing thoughts you’ve already
previously learned.

Another type of interference in human memory prevents one from thinking

clearly. It’s called proactive interference.91 You’ve probably heard the expres-
sion involving the notion of being your own worst enemy. This expression is
founded on the idea that your own false-beliefs and cognitive fallacies can
end up harming you more than any other person could. This isn’t an imag-
inary notion; much of the time it perfectly describes reality.

Wherever you go in life, you carry something with you. You carry information,
facts, knowledge, and beliefs. These are stored in your mind. These things
rely on your memory for their encoding, storage, and retrieval. There’s a
problem, however: your memory may have filled in gaps or assumptions with
an oversimplified representation of reality to support the encoding, storage,
and retrieval of thought(s). These parts proceed to go unquestioned; they’re
never analyzed or consciously recognized by yourself. The core problem with
this is that these memory shortcuts, if you will, end up preventing you from
assimilating new, deeper, and more profound ways to think about things. In
brief, it is not the inability to recall thoughts that is the problem; rather it’s the
inability to learn and evolve current thoughts that becomes a problem. This is
what is meant by proactive interference.

89  Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, ix.

90  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 290.
91   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 7.
 What Is an Antinet?  143

Why does proactive interference happen? It happens because thoughts remain

in a fixed state; not in a state where they can evolve—and just as important—
not where the trail of a thought’s evolution can be clearly viewed. This is
one of the benefits of analog notecards. When notecards combine with the
evolving branching and stemming tree structure component of the Antinet, it
is possible to observe knowledge growth. This prevents thoughts from being
subject to proactive interference by forcing the thinker to constantly review
and recall thoughts they stumble across—this happens more frequently in
an Antinet because users are forced to swing from card to card, guided by
the index, instead of simply searching the collection by keyword (like in
digital notetaking apps).

Thinking systems that mitigate proactive interference are a critical component

to improving the intelligence of one’s work. “Intelligence is traditionally
viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet, in a turbulent world, there’s
another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink
and unlearn.”92 A system that mitigates proactive interference is a system that
helps one rethink and unlearn. This type of system is precisely what the
Antinet allows with its third principle, the tree structure.

In summary, the Antinet is not a memory system, alone. Memory systems

imply helping solve for one type of interference in human memory (that is,
the interference that causes one to forget something). The Antinet solves for
both types of interference in thought development (including the interfer-
ence caused by thinking you know something that you don’t really know).

WORKING WITH AN ANTINET DEVELOPS YOUR

MEMORY FACULTIES
An Antinet is not an external system that enables you to simply offload the

energy you’d otherwise rely on for your brain to recall thoughts. It acts as
a system that exercises and enhances your brain’s memory faculties. That
is, the Antinet enhances your brain’s ability to encode, store, and recall

92   Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (New York, New
York: Viking, 2021), 2.
144  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

thought(s). The Antinet, with its neuroimprinting process, develops your

mind’s capabilities for recollecting and recognizing interesting patterns when
you read. This enables you to make connections to material ruminating in
your Antinet. In the field of human memory studies, this involves a process
called recognition.93 Let’s cover this briefly now.

In the field of human memory studies, when you recognize a concept, two
processes occur in the mind:

1. Familiarity: this process involves placing a confidence value on how

familiar you are with the content you encounter. This includes what those
who study human memory call strength theory.

2. Recollection: this process involves the recall of contextual information

related to the content you encounter while reading.

It’s critical to recognize a concept while reading because it provides for two
things: (1) it enables you to create information via comparison, and (2) it
allows you to relate this information to a selective set of other relations. This
is a necessary precursor for creating knowledge, and ultimately, achieving
wisdom. The concept of selective relations will be discussed at length later
in this book.

Let’s jump back to the two processes occurring in the mind during recogni-
tion: familiarity and recollection. The question becomes How does the Antinet
serve to enhance these two processes?

The Antinet enhances the process of familiarity (familiarity with a concept)

through the practice of two of its principles: (1) its analog principle, which
spawns neuroimprinting, and (2) its index component, which results in consis-
tent reviewing of information while searching for previously-noted thoughts.

The Antinet also enhances the process of recollection through forcing users
to develop thoughts within contexts. This emerges via the third principle of the

93   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 102.

 What Is an Antinet?  145

Antinet, its tree structure. Users create different contexts by organizing their
knowledge around branches, or stems of thought in their Antinet.

As scholars have observed, both variables (familiarity and recollection) para-

doxically transform a notetaking system from something designed to replace
human memory into a system that both replaces and enhances human
memory. Alberto Cevolini points out that handwritten notetaking, due to the
repetition that helps the mind retain passages, and the respective construction of
a card index, serve as both a substitute for personal memory and a memory aid.94

The Antinet structures itself in a way that enhances the familiarity and
recollection processes involved in recognition. This allows you to recognize
thoughts from readings, and better encode and store those thoughts for later
recall. In short, the Antinet achieves this from doing one thing: developing
your mind and its memory.

AN ANTINET IS PRIMARILY A THINKING SYSTEM

By now it should be apparent that an Antinet is not a notetaking app cen-
tered on the convenient storage of and access to thoughts. Its primary
concern is in the developing and evolving of thought. An Antinet is not
a notetaking system. What an Antinet really is, is quite apparent: it’s a
thinking system. If you want a memory system, there are tools like Anki.95 If
you want a notetaking system, perhaps one of the digital notetaking apps
(or supposed digital Zettelkasten) would be of value. The Antinet, on the
other hand, is a thinking system. It’s a thought development system, as well. It
falls under the all-encompassing concept of a knowledge development system.
It naturally improves your memory, but it does more: (1) it strengthens your
neuro-associative recall ability, which was touched upon previously, and (2)
the Antinet improves your ability to learn faster, and at a deeper level.

Specifically, in human memory, there are several critical processes we’ve

discussed already: (1) recognition, (2) recall, and (3) familiarity. However,

94   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 24.

95   “Anki—Powerful, Intelligent Flashcards,” accessed January 14, 2022, https://apps.anki-
web.net/.
146  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

there’s another process that is just as critical. That process is known as asso-
ciation.96 This concept will be further explored later in the book.

In brief, a traditional notetaking system is more like a personal information

storage system. Again, an Antinet is a thinking system. It’s also a thought devel-
opment system. It’s something that develops thought in both the short term
and the long term because of what memory is. Sure, human memory’s raw
material consists of memories, which are representations of thought; how-
ever, the process of memory itself is an active process, an “active operation.”97

Now that you know what an Antinet primarily is, you’re starting to get a
clearer idea of what an Antinet really is, which we’ll be diving into next.
Be forewarned, however, that we’re about to get metaphysical. Don’t worry,
it’s not spiritual woo-woo stuff. There will be no tarot cards read, or astro-
logical birth-charts to explain what an Antinet really is. However, we are
getting more and more into the land of empirical productivity. And this
land, as Luhmann himself expressed, is filled with incommunicable truth.
Let’s proceed into this land now.

INTRODUCING YOUR SECOND MIND

The magic inherent in the system Niklas Luhmann built did not center on
its features. Many think the key defining magic in Luhmann’s system is its
ability to link notes (that is, to create so-called wikilinks). Or, thanks to some
authors, some are led to believe the magic centers on Luhmann’s proclivity
to elaborate on notes, as opposed to collecting excerpts from books.98 Both
of these notions do not encapsulate the magic of Luhmann’s system.

96   Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 112.

97   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016).
98   Such as Sönke Ahrens and his book, How to Take Smart Notes; also, the notion that
Luhmann did not excerpt passages from books is false. Luhmann most definitely did
quote texts in both of his Zettelkasten.
 What Is an Antinet?  147

The Two “Magical” Effects That Emerge

from an Antinet
The magic of Luhmann’s system stems from two effects that emerge when
the four principles of the Antinet are implemented properly.

The first magical effect is what happened to Luhmann’s mind (and by extrap-
olation, what can happen to yours). Luhmann’s mind essentially morphed
from using the Antinet. This metamorphosis of Luhmann’s brain, I contend,
would not have taken place if he used digital tools (which lack the four
principles of the Antinet).

We’ve already discussed the ways in which the mind changes from using an
Antinet. This includes the impact of neuroimprinting, and how one’s reading
changes due to the exercising of one’s neuro-associative recall muscle. For this
reason I won’t go into detail on such now.

The second magical effect is what happened after a “number of years” work-
ing with his Antinet. Until the emergence of the second magical effect, the
Antinet “functions as a mere container from which we can retrieve what we
put in,” writes Luhmann.99 After Luhmann outlines the four principles of
the Antinet in his paper, Luhmann explains that something else emerges:
“an alter ego with who we can constantly communicate.”100 In other words,
it is a second mind. Luhmann writes that such an entity emerges “as a result
of extensive work with this technique.”101

HOW DOES THIS SECOND MIND EMERGE?

The second mind emerges thanks to (1) long-term thought evolution, as well
as (2) short-term thought development, which happen on paper via writing
by hand. These aspects of the Antinet effectively transform it from a mere
container of notes, into a different metaphysical entity altogether. Similar to
the human phenomenon of consciousness, and related to the whole-part theory

99  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://
luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
100   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”
101   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.”
148  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

and mind-body duality, the Antinet proceeds through a similar metamor-

phosis. The nature of this mind-body duality is what we’ll venture into next.

The Mind-Body Duality of the Antinet

One of the most intriguing fields in philosophy studies the mind-body problem.
The philosophical branch called philosophy of mind studies this phenome-
non. In brief, it all centers on these questions: What is the mind? What is
consciousness? Does the mind even exist? Are your thoughts formed by your brain,
which is a whole system made up of individual parts (for example, neurons)?

If one subscribes to a materialist view of the world, then there is no mind. There’s
only your brain, with its neurons that connect to other neurons. We’re just one
big blob of biochemical processes, according to some pop-science authors.102

In other words, the interaction of neurons connecting to other neurons,

is the illusion we call the mind. But is this all there is? Or is there a whole
created by these neurons that is greater than the sum of its parts? This sum-
marizes the mind-body debate which has stumped the greatest thinkers for
hundreds of years.

As an aside, according to Hans-Georg Moeller, who studies Luhmann’s

theoretical work, Niklas Luhmann apparently introduced a solution to this
problem, deeming it “the most obvious, and yet most overlooked achieve-
ment of the Luhmannian shift to theory.”103 But I won’t take you down that
rabbit-hole right now. I’m interested in helping you create genius-level work
that shakes up the field you’re in for two hundred years. The system which
will help you do this is the Antinet, so I’ll focus on that.

In summary, only you can decide whether or not you have a mind. Your
experience of the mind is just that—an experience. It’s empirical, but you’re

102   For instance, in Homo Deus, Yuval Noah Harari claims the mind does not exist. Such
an entity has never been identified. As far as we can tell, Harari asserts, it’s just neu-
rons connecting new neurons in the brain.
103   Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), xi.
 What Is an Antinet?  149

the only subject that can observe the phenomenon of your own mind. This
is why Luhmann prefaced his paper on the Antinet as empirical sociology.
Luhmann grants that the usual research methods of empirical sociology
would fail; yet, “still, it is empirical, as this case really obtains.”104

THE BRAIN OF THE ANTINET

The one prerequisite for creating a second mind, and even forming and
devising the mind-body problem is one thing: it’s called…a brain!

Think of the brain of your Antinet as the raw material, the notecards, and
the four principles applied within the notebox. The brain of the Antinet is
composed of analog notecards, numeric-alpha addresses, the tree structure,
the index, and the network. The brain one creates using this structure is
unique, and thus will create a unique second mind. The second mind that
emerges from a different brain will by nature be quite different. For instance,
a compilation of notecards organized by author or category is much more
conventional than an Antinet. The Antinet is a structure of both order and
disorder. This is why it is so critical to pay attention to how Luhmann built
his Antinet. It is why it’s critical to not abstract away its parts into whatever
you deem more convenient or modern. Luhmann structured the brain of his
Antinet with an intimate understanding of how human memory works. Only
by building a system composed of the same parts of the human brain can one
effectively create one of the magical effects of the Antinet—a second mind.

Does the idea of creating a metaphysical entity (a second mind) out of a box
of notecards sound questionable? If so, that’s fine! Again, Luhmann pref-
aced his paper with the assertion that this whole subject area is empirical.
In other words, you can’t spend your time just reading about it, or asking
questions in Zettelkasten forums online. There’s only one way you can
decide whether or not there’s any truth in the concept of a second mind, and
that is to test it out yourself.

104   Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes.” Luhmann writes, “What follows is a
piece of empirical sociology. It concerns me and someone else, namely my slip box or
index card file. It should be clear that the usual methods of empirical sociology would
fail in this special case. Still, it is empirical, as this case really obtains.”
150  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Later in the book I’ll be taking you through, in detail, precisely how you
go about testing out the Antinet yourself. Until then, let’s dive into more
detail and research on the concept of the second mind, or, what Luhmann
once referred to it as, the ghost in the box.

The Ghost in the Antinet

When you peruse the thoughts written in the hand of someone who has
died, it’s almost as if there’s a ghost-like quality to it. Ann Blair observes that
handwriting gives readers a “privileged point of access to the person writing.”105

This phenomenon is experienced with the Antinet. Yet unlike Blair’s exam-
ple, when it’s just you and your Antinet, you experience this sensation by
reading your own thoughts, written in your own hand. When working with
an Antinet, you begin communicating with yourself in a unique fashion.
Instead of an internal monologue, you begin to experience something called
internal dialogue. More on this will be discussed later.

John Locke realized the advantages of having an internal dialogue. He expe-

rienced the advantages of viewing a historical record of his own thinking.
It “carried the possibility of him reading it, in the future, as a historical record
of his thinking.”106 It allowed him to have a dialogue with himself, and to see
where his thinking went wrong.

Reading Johannes Schmidt’s account of perusing the contents of Luh-

mann’s Antinet, one pictures Schmidt having a similar experience. It’s an
experience of perusing the “backstage” and inner thoughts of one’s own
mind. Of Luhmann’s Antinet, Schmidt observes that it “is more than just an
analog database of Luhmann’s theory.” Schmidt likens it to “the backstage”
of Luhmann’s grand theory and scholarly work, “and therefore [as] Niklas
Luhmann’s intellectual autobiography.”107

105   Blair, Early Modern Attitudes, 265.

106   Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory, 149.
107   Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool,” 310.
 What Is an Antinet?  151

Of the mind in a box or ghost in the box concept, Niklas Luhmann himself put
forth an interesting illustration. Recognizing that this concept is difficult to
communicate, Luhmann chose to illustrate this by comparing reading notes
without access to the second mind, with the difference between viewing
porn and having sex.

In one of the infamous notecards in the Zettelkasten section he used for

preparing the paper Communication with Noteboxes, Luhmann wrote:

Ghost in the box?

Spectators come. You get to see everything and nothing but

that—like porn movies. And so is the disappointment.108

What Luhmann means is that the voyeur sees everything, just as people get
to see all of Luhmann’s thoughts when perusing his Antinet. However, in
reality, they’re seeing nothing. They’re not seeing the internal dialogue and
experience Luhmann himself has when he (as its creator) peruses his own
Antinet. Like watching porn, you get to see everything; yet, you don’t expe-
rience the incommunicable connection and internal/communal dialogue
two lovers are having during sex. Granted, perhaps the internal dialogue
isn’t as prevalent when two porn stars are going at it, but you get the point.

Modern day scientists agree with Luhmann’s notion of a mind in a box

emerging from Antinets (and other physical external memory devices).
“The effectiveness of [Antinets] does not lie in the sporadic access that it
provides to single entries, or in what these entries, once selected, may teach
the user. A card index is a true secondary memory when…inquiries become
an opportunity to trigger a network of associative references and links
which give birth to ‘collaborative’ reasoning that had not been previously
designed.”109 The scholar, Alberto Cevolini, confirms this notion. “To argue
that the filing cabinet simply stores records would be to give a too short (and

108   “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
109   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 19–20.
152  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

therefore misleading) description of the interplay of user and machine.”110

The interplay of user and machine provides an external glimpse into what’s
really going on—internal dialogue with yourself, and an instantiation of
yourself in external form (your second mind).

The concept of this second mind, and the internal dialogue which emerges
as a result of its presence, has been observed and studied by scholars as the
interaction between the following items: (1) external memory (that is, the
Antinet), and (2) internal memory (the memory biologically stored inside
your brain and body).

After studying John Boyle, John Locke, and Robert Hooke, Alberto Cevolini
confirms “that annotations that are stored in the external memory can func-
tion only in tandem with internal memory, so excerpts and notes prompt
recollection of more than what they actually contain.”111

In other words, the notes in your Antinet set off a chain-reaction of

thought-connections; that is, the notes in your Antinet act as a cue that
precipitates a chain-reaction of communication and internal dialogue.

This generates the recall process in your mind.

In their paper The Extended Mind, Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, assert
that the memories contained in external form (like the Antinet) are not
merely memory systems, and therefore, they’re not really external memo-
ries.112 Rather, they’re extended minds.

THE TERM “SECOND MIND”

In the field of knowledge, a term that is increasingly popular is extended mind.
The scholar, Richard Yeo, argues that the term extended mind is problematic
because confusion arises between consciousness and communication. “Con-
sequently, memory is seen as a psychic phenomenon.” Yeo further points

110   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 19.

111   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 12.
112   Andy Clark and David J. Chalmers, “The Extended Mind,” Analysis 58, no. 1 (1998): 7–19.
 What Is an Antinet?  153

out an issue with the word extended, asking What does “extended” actually
mean? And by mind, he asks whether it should be termed cognition, which
refers to the mental action of acquiring knowledge and understanding.113

The problem with the term extended cognition centers on the fact that it
misses the ghost in the box quality or phenomenon Luhmann, and other
scholars have described. However, there may be some validity to the issue
Yeo points out concerning the term extended. For this reason, I choose to
retain the term mind (in order to encapsulate the ghost-like spirit and the
experience of having internal dialogue). However, I opt to drop extended,
and prefer second in its place. Why? Because as Yeo points out, extended is a
rather vague term. Is it truly extended thought since it’s really my own thought?
Or is it rather a second storage mechanism for my own thought? As a result,
I opt for second.

Finally, we get to the point of what an Antinet really is: a second mind.

SECOND MIND VS. SECOND BRAIN

You may be wondering about the recent popularity of the term second brain
used by Tiago Forte.

Forte runs a business which sells online courses that aim to “train knowledge
workers in how to use technology to radically improve their productivity.”114
Forte’s material centers on upgrading David Allen’s Getting Things Done
method. He teaches people how to capture material they read online, and
how to process that material to get things done. He proposes the concept
of organizing content into explicit areas like projects and resources.

As far as knowledge development goes, Forte doesn’t have too much to say.
I believe this to be the case because, “[Forte’s course] Building A Second Brain
started out as a course on using Evernote more effectively.”115 Evernote is

113   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 12.

114  “About Forte Labs,” Forte Labs, accessed January 17, 2022, https://fortelabs.co/about-forte-labs/.
115  “Building A Second Brain,” Fernando Gros, June 24, 2020, https://fernandogros.com/
building-a-second-brain/.
154  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

an app that does not prioritize the linking of notes, nor does it promote
knowledge development. Rather it focuses on cross-device digital storage
of information.

In brief, Forte’s usage of the term, second brain really relates to processes
inspired by David Allen’s Getting Things Done (“GTD”). Forte’s primary
application of the term second brain revolves around productivity (not
knowledge development). And this is fine! I have nothing against this, even
though I don’t subscribe to it.

Forte moves David Allen’s Getting Things Done into the digital age. He does
this by proposing strategies for organizing digital information into seemingly
logical categories on your computer (for instance a folder for projects). This
really isn’t a brain; it’s more of a philosophy on being more productive with
digital information.

Regardless of Forte’s second brain not really being a second brain (but more
a digital productivity philosophy), I hold that a second brain isn’t really what
you want anyway (if your goal is knowledge creation).

you want a second mind, not a second brain

With Forte teaching how to record information (using apps like Evernote),
he’s essentially promoting a system that cannot communicate with itself.
Evernote is not a system that contains parts that can self-reference in a fixed,
permanent state. It’s essentially a brain comprised of a blob of neurons—
a blob of neurons that cannot communicate with one another and that cannot
connect with one another to create new entities. Many digital Zettelkasten
are second brains; however, they’re not second minds. Digital Zettelkasten
are a hodge-podge of parts that don’t communicate. Instead of a tree of
knowledge, they’re a pile of leaves. If a person’s brain were constructed
in the same manner, the person would not be alive. They’d be a vegetable.

In brief, you want a second mind, not a second brain. A brain is a materialistic
blob of biochemical gunk. A second mind is a system wherein the whole has
become greater than the sum of its parts. While I could continue down this
metaphorical road, I won’t belabor this too much.
 What Is an Antinet?  155

One last thing, before we move on: I believe Tiago Forte’s content is helpful
and valuable for those who wish to be more productive working with digital
information. If that’s what you’re looking for, this book is not for you. We’re
concerned with knowledge development. We’re concerned with developing
and evolving your thoughts (both in the short term and long term). The
reason we’re concerned with such centers around one thing: creating genius-
level knowledge. The goal with the Antinet is to turn you into a learning
machine, a content machine, a research machine, and a writing machine.
Bottom line: if you do what I outline in this book, you’ll become all of
these things. You’ll become an unstoppable knowledge machine.

the problem in trying to explain a second mind

Niklas Luhmann was one of the major thinkers involved in the establish-
ment of systems theory, especially within the sociological sphere.116 It is
therefore rather intriguing that he did not use systems theory as the basis
for his explanation of the Antinet; rather, he used communication theory to
explain it. One problem with Luhmann using communication theory, how-
ever, is that a core part of human experience and knowledge is more than
that which is acquired through theory. Rather, truth and reality, at least for
humanity, are also influenced by the metaphysical realm. Both Eastern and
Western philosophies share one common assumption: that there is such a
thing as incommunicable truth.117 This concept suggests that in order to truly
understand the power of the second mind, it cannot be taught; rather, it
can only be experienced.

Another issue with trying to explain an Antinet is the fact that it could take
a number of years of working with it before the second mind emerges. This is

116   Rudolf Stichweh, Systems Theory; “Since its beginnings the social sciences were an
important part of the establishment of systems theory. Jürgen Ruesch and Gregory
Bateson were in 1951 the first who tried to base a social science discipline on an infor-
mation and communication theory coming from cybernetics (“Communication. The
Social Matrix of Psychiatry”). But the two most influential suggestions were the com-
prehensive sociological versions of systems theory which were proposed by Talcott
Parsons since the 1950s and by Niklas Luhmann since the 1970s.”
117   Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed, Bollingen Series XVII
(Novato, Calif: New World Library, 2008), 25.
156  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

one factor all too conveniently omitted from books like How to Take Smart
Notes. Again, for better or worse, Luhmann declares in his paper that it will
be a number of years before the second mind emerges; until then the Antinet
operates as a mere container for storing notes.

In my experience, however, the emergence of the second mind comes sooner

than several years into the practice. It is likely to emerge several months
after regular and committed use. For me, it emerged perhaps three or four
months after I began working with it. However, it should be noted that I
worked with it five days a week. In addition, the presence of the second
mind grows stronger every single day.

The bottom line is this: the more time you spend with a thing, the more of
you it becomes, and, the more of it becomes of you.

The Nature of the Second Mind

The Antinet is a unique type of system; more so than the novelties preached
in digital-Zettelkasten-land which over-emphasize its features, yet overlook
the magic.118 An Antinet is an intrapersonal knowledge system. It possesses a
unique proclivity for inducing internal dialogue (as opposed to internal
monologue). Its evolution over time happens in a self-organized fashion
that cannot be pre-planned. It’s also consciousness-oriented, instead of
comprehension-oriented. It works in tandem with its creator and is not
designed to be a stand-alone system that is easily comprehensible to the
public eye. The material and content it contains stem from deep-thinking,
from working out ideas on paper, through rumination, and in the seeking
of deep understanding. The ideas that emerge from it will surprise you.
What makes it even more surprising is seeing how the ideas stem from
you—from your own handwriting. The nature of the Antinet is founded
on a communication theory because it really is a communication relationship
between you, and your past self. When you try and transition such a system
to digital, you’re destroying a core aspect of the Antinet. You’re destroying

118   These include features like linking notes, atomic notes, and other flavor-of-the-month
ideas.
 What Is an Antinet?  157

a key piece of the second mind—you’re ripping away that person, and its
personality, before it even has a chance to be born.

When I read my handwritten notes, and observe the material of the note-
cards it was written on from fifteen years ago, it communicates something to
me—something special that cannot be communicated in digital-file format.
I see myself in my handwriting. I see the state of my life I was in at the time.
I see the state of my mind at the time. Sometimes I have a reverence and
respect for what I’ve written. Did I really write that and come up with that?
And sometimes I see something where I think, Geez, I’ve really developed
my thinking, and my mind, and have grown a lot since then. This is one aspect
and one experience you’ll have when working with your second mind. I’m
excited for you to experience it, but that’s really all I’m going to say for now.
I’ll share more in detail later in the book; however, as I’ve mentioned before,
much of it is incommunicable.

The reason one ought to take the four principles Luhmann outlined so seri-
ously is that they’re key ingredients for transforming an Antinet into what
it really is, which is a second mind.

I’ve touched on the importance of the four principles already; however, it’s
worth restating how intentional Luhmann was in the construction of the
Antinet. One scholar observed Luhmann’s system is “clearly constructed as
a cybernetic machine.”119 Luhmann was influenced by cybernetics, the field
concerned with the study of goal-oriented systems founded on communication
and feedback. Ultimately, Luhmann’s Antinet “reproduces itself recursively”
in order to produce knowledge.120

The Antinet also relates to another concept Luhmann introduced to the

field of sociology—autopoiesis.121 This term stems from two Greek terms (1)
αὐτo- (auto), which translates to self, and (2) ποίησις (poiesis), which means

119   Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 26.

120  Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines, 26.
121   “Autopoiesis—an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics,” accessed January 18, 2022, https://
www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/autopoiesis.
158  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

creation. In brief, autopoiesis means self-creation and concerns the study of

systems which create themselves.

While it could be argued the Antinet exhibits autopoiesis, it technically

doesn’t create other Antinets; rather, it creates a different entity altogeth-
er—a metaphysical second mind with whom you communicate. While the
Antinet itself may not be autopoietic, the second mind that emerges from
the system, and specifically its memory, could be said to “function as an
autopoietic system,” observes the scholar, Alberto Cevolini.122

CONCLUSION
By now, you’re starting to understand the depth of this seemingly-simple
system of notecards. Before moving forward let’s recap what we’ve covered.

As you may recall, we defined an Antinet as a system comprising four prin-

ciples which form a thinking system. This thinking system transforms itself
into a second mind.

You know what the four principles of the Antinet are (analog, numeric-
alpha, tree, index). You understand the Antinet is a network. You know what
is meant by the Antinet as a thinking system. You are also familiar with the
concept of the second mind.

What we’re going to cover next concerns the scientific reasoning for devoting
so much energy and commitment to such a system. We’re going to explore
this by taking a closer look at the explicitness in Luhmann’s design of the
Antinet. We’ll be doing this by diving into each of the principles of Luhmann’s
Antinet individually. We’ll be starting where the magic of the Antinet really
begins: its analog nature.

Let’s go.

122   Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories
(Brill, 2016), 163.
 C H A PT E R S I X
�

ANALOG

“The technical requirements of slip boxes involve wooden boxes, which have drawers
that can be pulled open, and pieces of paper in octavo format (about half of a
letter-size sheet [4 x 6 inch notecards or a6 paper slips]). We should only write
on one side of these papers so that in searching through them, we do not have
to take out a paper in order to read it. This doubles the space, but not entirely
(since we would not write on both sides of all the slips). This consideration is not
unimportant as the arrangement of boxes can, after some decades, become so
large that it cannot be easily be used from one’s chair. In order to counteract this
tendency, I recommend taking normal paper and not card stock.”

—Niklas Luhmann, Communication with Noteboxes1

DISCOVERING THE ANALOG

IMPLEMENTATION OF ZETTELKASTEN

Istumbled upon the analog version of the Zettelkasten purely by acci-

dent. At the time, I was fully committed to the digital version. I actually
came upon the idea of the analog Zettelkasten through Sönke Ahrens’s book
How to Take Smart Notes. It was a brief mention, but it was enough to get
me started on the path. A path that would become my life for the following
year: reverse-engineering how the analog Zettelkasten actually worked.

1   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.

159
160  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Initially I tried using the analog version of the Zettelkasten merely to implement
anything I was not currently doing using the digital notetaking app, Obsidian.

I hoped that Ahrens’s book could help me mitigate my fear of stopping the
current streak I was on (of creating and publishing content consistently).
I had some good momentum, which finally seemed to have pulled me out
of a lull of just consuming knowledge (instead of producing it).

I was on day forty-eight of my commitment to my daily practice (which

entailed things like reading every morning, installing the right mental mind-
set, working out, actually getting out of my house, and going to my office).

It was a Sunday in early March at 2:16 pm. Before getting down to work in
my office in downtown San Diego, I wrote the following:

One thing I will say is this: I had the thought today that I really wish and
hope that I [do] not make [my daily writing practice] a chore by going insane
[using] an atomic workflow.

Atomic workflow is a term that refers to a trend in web development. The aim
is to simplify components of websites by creating representations of different
website parts analogous to biological concepts (atoms, molecules, organisms,
etc.). For instance, a button on a website is likened to an atom. An input field is
another atom. When both atoms are combined, they create a search box (which
is likened to a molecule). The search molecule provides search functionality.2

Novel, though this idea may appear, it adds yet another layer of abstraction
(and distraction) to the already overly complex field of web development.

The temptation to apply the concept of atomicity to fields is not new. In fact,

in the field of human memory studies, one researcher proposed that human
memory, too, adheres to the atomic composition principle. In other words,

2   “Atomic Design Methodology | Atomic Design by Brad Frost,” accessed July 15, 2021,
http://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-2/.
 Analog  161

an item in memory is not one single thing; rather, it’s composed of many
smaller subunits like protons, neutrons, and electrons.

The problem with this is the fact that atomicity can be loosely applied to
almost anything. This sentence is atomic. Each sentence is an organelle,
comprising molecules (words) that themselves comprise atoms (individual
letters). This whole abstraction really doesn’t do much. It’s just a trendy fad
to break things apart into atomic components. It distracts from the really
important stuff, that is, your actual writing output.

The atomic design ideology seems to have gripped the imaginations of those
enthralled with the world of personal knowledge management (“PKM”).
The PKM folk end up spending much of their time on forums debating
workflows and best practices which, paradoxically, results in less productivity.
As a result, less knowledge is developed for PKM folk to “manage.”

Back to the story: on that Sunday afternoon in my office, I felt myself falling
into the trap of majoring in the minor. I’ve fallen into this trap thousands of
times. I was worried and fearful that all of my recent hard work and progress
in getting out of my creative lull and into a productive lifestyle was at risk.
The reason why comes down to one word: complexity. The whole atomic
workflow concept became a distraction. It led me into the land PKM people
habitually become infatuated with: templates, workflows, layouts, plugins,
CSS styles, etc.

Yet, I held out hope that the solution to not falling into the trap of complexity
would be resolved by reading Sönke Ahrens’s book on notetaking.

When I started reading How to Take Smart Notes I got a glimpse of how to
actually build out an analog Zettelkasten. Every other place online, including
the most visited website promoting Zettelkasten, only taught the digital
version of the system.

I remember the realization and thoughts I had shortly after trying out the
analog form of the Zettelkasten. I said to myself, Ohhh, so this is what the
Zettelkasten is actually supposed to be like! Mind you, this was after I had spent
162  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

months learning what a Zettelkasten supposedly was (according to people

who taught the digital Zettelkasten).

At this point I had already gone through a six-week-long course on linking

digital notes, and a ninety minute one-on-one session with the creator of
the course. Yet, the lightbulb didn’t turn on until I actually tried using a
Zettelkasten in analog form. Side note: It makes me wonder if the people
teaching digital notetaking courses are even aware of what working with a
Zettelkasten is actually supposed to feel like!

Anyway, at the time I thought I knew what a Zettelkasten was, but after trying
an analog Zettelkasten, it became clear to me that I didn’t. At most I knew
10% of what a Zettelkasten really was all about. I didn’t realize how little I
knew about the system until much later. It also took me a while after that
to discover that Ahrens’s interpretation of Luhmann’s system was actually
quite different from what Luhmann actually did.

It was very soon into my working with the analog Zettelkasten that I
realized how much better the physical version was. I thought it took me
about a week to realize this; however, after reviewing my notes later on,
I realized it was even sooner than a week that I realized the power of
analog. I felt a sense that analog was more powerful than digital not by a
little bit, but by a lot!

It was important that the benefits of analog needed to outweigh the benefits
of digital by a large margin because I had spent many months of my life
building out an extensive digital Zettelkasten (with over a thousand notes).

However, even with the extensive amount of work I put into the digital
Zettelkasten system, I simply couldn’t deny the truth: the analog version
of the Zettelkasten was simply better than the digital.

Two days after I had started reading How to Take Smart Notes, I wrote the
following down in my journal: “I can’t help but feel like it may be best to
move towards analog completely.” I then added the following admission:
“To be honest, the primary thing that makes me want to stick with my
 Analog  163

digital notetaking app is the beautiful font and layout and style I spent this
weekend creating.”

The truth was apparent: the digital Zettelkasten system resulted in me not
producing genius-level creative output. Instead the digital Zettelkasten
system resulted in me distracting myself with the bells and whistles of the
tool. The most recent time-sucks had included restructuring the directory
structure and folders of my notes into an atomic format. It also included me
spending an entire weekend creating a nifty theme for my notes. I sometimes
just can’t help but get distracted with things that don’t matter!

Anyway, I found myself still resistant to switching over completely to analog

because of the sunk cost fallacy. I was committed to digital because of how
much time I had already spent building out my digital notes. Plus, I had no
idea about the power of analog yet. As one Antinetter put it to me, “When
you use digital notetaking apps, you have no idea how lost you are until you
switch to analog.”

Anyway, to help me through this process, I did the ole Benjamin Franklin
tactic. I created a pros and cons list.

Here’s what I wrote down in my journal:

Pros of Analog:

 Simple
 Fewer distractions
 Makes use of my beautiful Montblanc pens
 More freedom and creativity
 Past success (writing by hand really helped
my results in college)
 Academic research backing improved understanding
while learning by writing by hand
 Constraints breed creativity
 Feynman said “thinking is writing,” and by this he meant,
writing longhand.
164  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Cons of Analog:

 Cannot quickly search for keywords. Though to be fair, I don’t even use
this feature too extensively right now with [my digital notetaking app].
In addition, the results are rarely that relevant to what I’m looking for).
 Misses out on training me to write quickly and freely on the keyboard.
Though, to be fair, is this really a con? It may be good to slow down and
write via longhand because it forces me to actually think deeply before
I write.
 Cannot share or publish my notes easily online. Though, who even wants
half-developed information? It’s best to publish work that has already
been deeply processed and structured.

These were my initial pros and cons, and they are largely still true today;
however, I’ve learned more since writing that list. There are more cons to
consider, of course (like the risk of fire or water damage to notes, which I’ll
address). Yet I discovered later that the initial cons of analog actually are
some of its greatest pros.

Let’s now dive into a more in-depth look at the pros and cons of analog I’ve
since realized.

THE PROS OF ANALOG

ANALOG CREATES A BETTER COMMUNICATION
PARTNER THAN DIGITAL
A thing people seem to overlook in regards to Luhmann’s Zettelkasten is
that, to Luhmann, his Zettelkasten was not a tool. It was a person.

Animism centers on the belief that certain objects, places, plants, and crea-
tures possess a distinct spiritual essence—a soul, if you will. The Antinet
serves as a perfect example for such an idea. The Antinet becomes its own
unique entity with its own unique personality with whom you communicate.

This type of system is watered-down in the world of digital notetaking apps.

Digital notetaking apps rarely retain a core structure. Their arms, legs, and
feet (i.e., notes, directories, and tags) can be deleted on a whim. They have
 Analog  165

nothing to build on or stand on. Digital Zettelkasten systems end up looking

like a massive interlinked graph of notes, with no personality.

The Antinet, on the other hand, does indeed retain a core structure. Its
branches, stems of thoughts and notes are never deleted. They evolve and
they grow with you throughout your life. They are real, they are physical,
they are an extension of you, and they become a part of you. The Antinet
becomes your second mind with whom you can communicate with. Again,
this is something missing in digital notetaking apps.

The communication component of the Zettelkasten is critical. Luhmann

believed this himself, which is why he titled his paper “Communication
with Noteboxes.” As one of the inventors of systems theory, Luhmann said
he regards both himself and his Zettelkasten as “systems” and joked that
“no one will be surprised [by this].”3 He says this jokingly because he’s one
of the first and major proponents of applying systems theory to the field of
sociology. Yet, Luhmann goes on to explicitly say that “systems theory” is not
his choice to begin explaining the Zettelkasten system. Rather, he chooses a
“communication theory” to explain what his Zettelkasten actually is.

The idea of a notebox system emerging into an external instantiation of

one’s own communication partner did not originate with Niklas Luhmann.
Rather, “this idea actually dates back to a situation already described in 1805 by
Heinrich von Kleist in his impressive analysis of the ‘midwifery of thought.’ ”4

If you’re going to create something valuable, it requires deep thought, sophis-

ticated ideas, and deep connections. This type of thinking is achieved through
writing. Period.

Since the hardest part is the actual writing (and thinking) it is useful to then
transform the process into something that will grow and evolve forever.

3   Niklas Luhmann, “Communicating with Slip Boxes,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luh-
mann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
4   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 325.
166  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It also becomes worthwhile for your structure to grow and develop its own
unique personality.

Writing this book on the Antinet Zettelkasten would be a much different

experience and would yield different ideas if I were to write it using the same
section of my notes ten years from now. In other words, due to the internal
branching nature, my current Antinet will inevitably evolve and grow inter-
nally over the years. The Antinet, just like a person, grows in unique ways,
and there’s so much richly packed knowledge that it will yield surprising
ideas for years to come. This is exciting, as the Antinet presents itself as a
goldmine of knowledge waiting to be stumbled upon and used some time
in the future, whether that be a year from now or ten years from now.

As Luhmann observed, one of the greatest benefits of communication is

that each partner can mutually surprise the other with unexpected insight.5
When you’re using an Antinet, you’re essentially having a conversation
with it as you’re perusing its contents. After you look up the location of an
idea in the index, you then embark upon the process of sifting through the
cards in the area your index pointed you to. From there, you’re reading your
own thoughts in your own handwriting and trying to decipher what that
internal voice is saying. Along the way, you’re challenging one another. You
come across a card and question its bold claims; yet, upon a closer look you
actually realize that its claims are right and you’re wrong! This is like any
high-yielding real-life communication experience. You debate one another
and are sometimes proven wrong, which is a good thing!

In the several companies I’ve started, I’ve found some of the greatest innova-
tions to come about through just random conversation. My former business
partner and I would have lengthy and profound discussions. We would both
end up revising and updating our initial perspectives and come up with truly
brilliant ideas. This type of experience is something that seems to happen
when using an analog Zettelkasten. It’s one of those incommunicable truths
that one must experience for themselves to truly grasp.

5  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://
luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
 Analog  167

What Luhmann meant by communication with noteboxes relates to having a

conversation with one’s Antinet. This concept is similar to having a conver-
sation with the author of a book that you read. As Mortimer Adler points out
in his classic work titled How to Read a Book, reading a book is very much a
communication experience. In the book Adler lays out an analogy of a pitcher
and catcher in baseball.6 The pitcher (the book author) is throwing you a
thought (which is the baseball). You, the reader, are the catcher. A baseball
catcher is active, not passive. He’s actively anticipating the pitch, ready to
adjust to it and adjusts in order to receive it. Communication is not a vege-
tative experience. The same holds true for reading. It’s not like sitting down
on the couch, binge watching whatever is popular on Netflix. It’s a very alert
process. This is what it’s like working with an Antinet.

ANALOG CAPTURES ONE’S CONSCIOUSNESS

BETTER THAN DIGITAL
Another instance of analog serving as a pro over digital revolves around
capturing consciousness.

The Antinet Zettelkasten unlocks the type of communication relationship

Luhmann referenced in “Communication with Noteboxes.” The Antinet
Zettelkasten captures your own consciousness, your own past self, in a way
that outshines digital Zettelkasten systems because it is truly a partner in
a communication relationship between your current self and your past self.

Alberto Cevolini writes: “Compared with the rhetorical storehouse, the

card index preserves a knowledge—we could also say, a past—that not only
continually changes but also can be recalled in a highly selective manner.”7

When you go digital, you’re quite literally destroying the magic of the Anti-
net, stripping the system of the person and personality that lives inside it.

6   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 5.
7   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016),
32. Emphasis added.
168  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When I read my handwritten notes from fifteen years ago, they feel much
more real than any digital notes I took fifteen years ago (which, believe it or
not, are harder for me to find than my physical notes). When I come across
handwritten notes from fifteen years ago, I see myself in the handwriting.
I see a different version of myself. A past version of myself. My mind is
transported into that state, much like a song transports you into some state
you were in when you first heard it.

For instance, take the album by Coldplay titled X&Y (yes, I admit, I once
listened to Coldplay). Anyway, when I hear a song from the album today,
it transports me to the summer of 2005 when I was listening to it on vaca-
tion with my family in Hawaii. A similar phenomenon happens when you
interact with handwritten notes. You’re transported to the time and place
you first read the book and took the note. With each handwritten note, you
also transcribe a piece of your own consciousness—your own state and
self-awareness—onto the card. This does not seem to happen in the same
way with digital systems.

This argument may sound like woo-woo mysticism, but I assure you it’s
not. Scholars are familiar with this notion and Luhmann himself certainly
felt this was true.8 This is noteworthy since Luhmann’s “Communication
with Noteboxes” is heralded as “the most advanced result of a long-lasting
reflection performed by modern society.”9

In a thorough and deeply cogent paper on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten, Johannes

Schmidt “investigates the origins and development of Luhmann’s filing
technique in detail, also availing himself of first-hand information about
the content of this exceptional filing cabinet.”10 From this paper, Alberto
Cevolini concludes that Schmidt’s paper “demonstrates that Luhmann did

8  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3 - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
9   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 26.
10  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 26.
 Analog  169

not regard his filing cabinet as a simple slip box, rather he interacted with it
as if it were a true communication partner.”11

The reason handwritten notes produce the ghost in the box effect (that is,
preserving your past self) seems to emanate from one thing: consciousness.
Handwritten notes capture your own experience, sentiments, and sentience
at the time you wrote your thoughts on the card.

Knowledge = meaning x information. Knowledge is dependent on internal

dialogue between you and your past self. That is, knowledge deepens
during the intrapersonal communication process with your past self ’s
consciousness. When you read your old notes, in your own handwriting,
oftentimes there is meaning that is communicated through the notes that
only you, its creator, can understand. This transitions the note from being
just information to being a unit of knowledge (information combined with
meaning). Analog systems with handwritten notes seem to retain their
meaning better than commoditized, non-unique digital typefaces. With
digital systems, you can never be 100% absolutely certain that it was indeed
you who wrote the text. After all, the content could have been copied and
pasted. With your own longhand handwriting, the spirit of your past self
is much harder to spoof.

ANALOG TRANSFORMS THE ZETTELKASTEN

INTO A THINKING TOOL (BOTH SHORT-TERM
AND LONG-TERM)

[Luhmann’s Zettelkasten] served him as a thinking tool.

This is not only true in terms of the proposition that the file
acted as a communication partner in the research process but
also in regard to the fact that in Luhmann’s mind the process
of writing things down enables disciplined thinking in the

11   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016),
26. Emphasis added.
170  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

first place: “Underlying the filing technique is the experience

that without writing, there is no thinking.”

—Johannes Schmidt in Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index:

Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine

Johannes Schmidt regards Luhmann’s Zettelkasten as a thinking tool.12 There

are really two components to this thinking tool: (1) it enhances immediate
short-term thinking, and (2) it helps thoughts evolve over the long term.

The tool enhances thoughts in the short term through the process of forcing
one to think by writing by hand. As Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Richard
Feynman once said, “you have to work on paper.”13 Or take Alexander Gro-
thendieck, a leading figure in the creation of modern algebraic geometry. In
watching Grothendieck work, one person observed, “[Grothendieck] was
improvising, in his fast and elegant handwriting. He said that he couldn’t
think without writing.”14

In the long term, the Antinet (the thinking tool) grows by way of its tree-like
internal branching structure, with more and more handwritten thoughts
linking together and creating new related stems. As mentioned, this essen-
tially transforms the Antinet into a new entity altogether—a second mind.

Both the short term component of the thinking tool, and the long-term
component of the thinking tool rely on the analog nature of the Antinet.

12   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management
Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/
2942475.
13   “Many Eminent Thinkers Need a Writing Surface to Think,” Andy’s working notes, ac-
cessed March 19, 2022, https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z5WDNZizsbAzE1p2BLwr
339 f V4TCpzNvaztP2.
14   “Many Eminent Thinkers Need a Writing Surface to Think,” Andy’s working notes, ac-
cessed March 19, 2022, https://notes.andymatuschak.org/z5WDNZizsbAzE1p2BLwr
339f V4TCpzNvaztP2. Emphasis added.
 Analog  171

NOTECARDS’ LIMITED SPACE FORCE UNLIMITED

COMBINATIONS OF THOUGHT
I’m not a fan of synthetic atomicity. Take for instance, the previously men-
tioned atomic design methodology which entails thinking of website compo-
nents as atoms, molecules, organisms, etc.15 Such a paradigm overcomplicates
the already overcomplicated field of web development. Digital Zettelkasten
workflow warriors have jumped on this bandwagon, with people synthetically
trying to make their notes atomic by arbitrarily breaking them into smaller
parts. However, with most digital Zettelkasten systems, there’s no actual size
constraint, such as a character limit, like one would find in Twitter.

For instance, Sönke Ahrens in How to Take Smart Notes writes, “I highly rec-
ommend treating a digital note as if the space were limited… Each note should
fit onto the screen and there should be no need of scrolling.”16 The problem
with such advice is that, after some time, it’s too easy to forget to follow it.

Notecards are different. There is an actual, physically limited, space into

which one must condense thoughts. The limited notecard space forces true
atomicity, unlike inadequately implemented digital notetaking apps.

Here’s why this is important: scholars studying the field of knowledge argue
that atomic knowledge (“dismembered” into notecards) creates combina-
tory power by way of “links and cross-references” that allow users to “shift
their cognitive energies (newly relieved of the burden of memorization) to
processing information.”17

The shift in cognitive energies does not happen because one is completely
relieved of having to memorize anything (as in the case of storing thoughts
in a digital notetaking app). Rather, with analog systems, the shift happens

15   “Atomic Design Methodology | Atomic Design by Brad Frost,” accessed July 15, 2021,
http://atomicdesign.bradfrost.com/chapter-2/.
16   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 129-130.
17   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 16.
172  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

because you’ve actually stamped the knowledge into your mind by way of
neuroimprinting the knowledge on your mind. This provides you with a
working memory of knowledge you can carry with you as you read more
material. The name of the game isn’t about offloading thoughts; it’s about
neuroimprinting thoughts. This feature, combined with the character limits
of notecards, is a great advantage of analog systems.

It’s a paradox. The slower pace required to use an analog Zettelkasten results
in a decrease in the number of items put into the system; it simply takes
longer to add the same amount of information one might add to a digital
system. The same applies to the processing of the information put into
each system. With the analog system, more time is required to convert the
material you read into knowledge by adding your own reformulations and
reflections—something not commonly undertaken in the digital versions.

Yet here’s where the paradox emerges. The workflow of the analog system
(which takes more time to consume and process less information), actually
results in producing a greater quantity of output in less time, compared with
digital systems. Also, the quality of the output outshines output produced
by digital notetaking systems.
 Analog  173

There are two key factors that enable the paradoxical occurrence of greater
work output from an analog system that slows work down: (1) neuroim-
printing enables a more robust working memory when writing and creating
output, and (2) the character limit of analog systems enable combinatorial
possibilities in perpetuity that thereby enable more content to be generated
from the same units of knowledge (namely, from the same notecards).

ANALOG PREVENTS HYPER-SELECTION OF

IRRELEVANT MATERIAL WHILE READING
The most critical aspect of notetaking is not what to select from the material
you read; it’s what not to select from the material you read. According to
Fiona McPherson, a cognitive scientist specializing in the study of Note-
taking, the “most crucial” part of the entire process revolves around selection.
By selection she is referring to determining what information is important,
and just as critically, not selecting information that is not important.18

For this reason, tools that help you to not select irrelevant information prove
advantageous. The Antinet shines in this respect due to the time and effort
required to select material by writing it down by hand (in the process of
extracting worthwhile notes and writing them down on a bibcard). This
takes much more effort than merely highlighting somewhat interesting
passages on a Kindle (something I did before discovering the Antinet). This
extraction and selection process ends up increasing your focus while reading,
so that you soon adopt a habit of selecting only the most truly meaningful
ideas from the material you read.

Analog systems are “highly selective,” as the scholar Alberto Cevolini points out.
Its selectivity is a feature, not a bug. Handwriting text is harder than typing text.
It takes longer. It forces “selectivity” in the system. “It would be meaningless
to move the whole content of a book into [a Zettelkasten],” writes Cevolini.19

With digital systems, it’s trivial to extract and store information from the

18   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 13.
19   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 31.
174  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

material you read. This is not a good thing. Very quickly you accumulate
and collect way too much information. Before you know it, you’re drowning.
The bad information crowds out the good. This is another reason analog
systems outshine digital.

ANALOG ENABLES ONE TO COMPARE,

CONTRAST, AND ORGANIZE THOUGHTS
BETTER THAN DIGITAL
As Sönke Ahrens observes, “to have concrete notes in front of our eyes and
be able to compare them directly makes differences, even small ones, much
easier to spot.”20

I couldn’t have written this book without the aid of laying out all of the
different sections on my desk. I created a hub of cards that had collective
cardlinks on them. Each card was organized by topic and contained subtopics
that pointed me to various card addresses in my Antinet. I then moved them
around a large table to create the perfect logical layout for this book. Here’s
a picture of it:

20   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning
and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North Charleston,
SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 122.
 Analog  175

To write the book, I simply proceeded card-by-card and column-by-column.

Each card contained its own numeric-alpha address in the top-right corner
so that they could later be refiled in my Antinet. Here’s a closer look:

In the past, I’ve used analogous digital tools like Trello, Scrivener and others
to organize information. None came close to my experience of physically
working with knowledge. By moving around the individual units on a table,
writing my book became a much easier task. This is but another overlooked
advantage of analog knowledge systems.
176  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

ANALOG FORCES ONE TO FOLLOW BEST

PRACTICES
One of the other benefits of an analog system centers on the fact that it
forces one to follow best practices and guidelines brought forth by digital
Zettelkasten teachers. For instance, one author teaching digital Zettelkasten
recommends linking and rewriting notes in order to make notetaking less
boring.21 This advice is a recommendation for digital Zettelkasten users. For
analog Zettelkasten users, it’s a requirement. There’s no other choice. There
seems to be confusion among digital Zettelkasten practitioners about this.
Every single time you install a card in the Antinet, you’re effectively linking
it to all other cards in the system. You give it a numeric-alpha address that
provides it with a chained location in your tree of knowledge. It’s essentially
linked to its closest neighbors, and their closest neighbors, and their closest
neighbors, and on and on.

With digital Zettelkasten systems, developers devise synthetic rules and

methodologies to improvise for their own best practices. Digital Zettelkasten
systems have jury-rigged guidelines and principles that are all but impossi-
ble to follow because they require near-perfect self-discipline to stick with.
With the Antinet, no self-discipline is required. The best practices of linking
every note and rewriting and rephrasing ideas is built into the core protocol
of analog systems.

In brief, Digital Zettelkasten systems rely on willpower to function.

If you’re using a system that relies on personal willpower, it’s inevitable that
a breakdown will occur at some point. With the Antinet, this is not an issue.

ANALOG EXPOSES YOUR OWN MISTAKES AND

SELF-DECEPTIONS MORE EFFECTIVELY THAN
DIGITAL
Modern society’s most fundamental metaphorical symbol for good vs. evil
is the biblical tree of knowledge. Like the biblical tree of knowledge, your
own tree of knowledge that you create in the Antinet is susceptible to evil

21   David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc.,
2022), 14-15.
 Analog  177

information. Actually, let’s not call it evil information, but unwise information.
The unwise information I speak of does not derive from cunning serpents
tempting you to eat a fruit.22 Rather, the unwise information I speak of derives
from a different beast altogether: yourself!

Indeed, when you review the thoughts of your mind and happen upon a
view or opinion you no longer hold as true, it’s extremely difficult to delude
yourself into believing you never held such an opinion. Why? Because it’s
staring you in the face—in your own handwriting.

You see, your Antinet, your own tree of knowledge, contains both wise fruit
and unwise fruit (or good fruit vs. evil fruit).

On one hand, it’s important to express your thoughts and ideas truly with
conviction and self-belief. As Charlie Munger says, “Never underestimate
the man who overestimates himself.”23 As Gary Halbert, the best copywriter
who ever lived puts it, “Nothing is impossible for the man who refuses to
listen to reason.”24 While certainly containing some truth, both Munger’s
and Halbert’s statements communicate the jocoserious reality implanted
within their words. At one level, Munger and Halbert were advocating for
their readers to believe in themselves; yet, at another level they were warning
of the power wielded in doing so.

Taken to the extreme, self-belief quickly can transform into self-delusion.

“The simple truth,” as Munger puts it, “is that we aren’t adapted to face the
world as it is today.” He goes on to outline how critical the environment was
for shaping the traits of our ancestors. “We can learn to push our minds into

22 Robert Alter, ed., The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, First edition
(New York; London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 90-91.
23   Taylor Locke, “Charlie Munger on Elon Musk: ‘Never Underestimate the Man Who
Overestimates Himself,’” CNBC, February 14, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/
02/14/charlie-munger-shares-opinion-of-tesla-ceo-elon-musk.html.
24   “A Quote from The Boron Letters,” accessed March 21, 2022, https://www.goodreads.
com/quotes/7317468-nothing-is-impossible-for-a-man-who-refuses-to-listen.
178  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

alternative ways of thinking, but it isn’t easy.” Why’s that? It comes down to
one thing, according to Munger: “self-deception.”25

Systems that expose us to our own self-deception and mistakes in thinking

are far more valuable than systems that conceal such things.

Analog Stamps Your Mistakes In Time (And This is a

Good Thing)
There is a saying dating back to at least 1915, “Everybody makes mistakes—
that’s why they put erasers on pencils.”26 I first heard this saying from my
dad. However, when he recited it to me, I found myself disagreeing with a
small but important component of it. My position is that, while it’s useful to
erase mistakes, there is an even more valuable exercise in not using an eraser
at all! Instead, it’s better to append new, corrected information behind or
under the initial mistake. That way, you can view a history of your mistakes
and see your growth. It also serves as a useful tool in the future for reviewing
your past mistakes.

Why are mistakes valuable? Because they curb the risk of a grandiosity.
Charlie Munger says it best: “I like people admitting they were complete
stupid horses’ asses. I know I’ll perform better if I rub my nose in my mis-
takes. This is a wonderful trick to learn.”27

After stating my case against erasers, my mom chimed in and backed me on

this. Of course my dad wasn’t arguing for the literal idea of forgetting about
your mistakes. Neither was the original quote stating this. The quote about
erasers argues that you should be OK making mistakes. This is 100% accu-
rate. But if you want to experience next-level growth, you need to append

25  “Charlie Munger on The Psychology of Human Misjudgment,” 25iq, February 2, 2013,

https://25iq.com/2013/02/02/charlie-munger-on-the-psychology-of-human-mis-
judgment/.
26   Barry Popik, “Barry Popik,” accessed May 23, 2021, https://www.barrypopik.com/in
dex.php/newyorkcity/entry/everybodymakesmistakesthatswhytheyputeraserson-
pencils.
27  “Charlie Munger on Mistakes,” 25iq, November 16, 2012, https://25iq.com/2012/11/16/
charlie-munger-on-mistakes/.
 Analog  179

revisions to your mistakes behind or beneath the initial mistake. Don’t erase
them. More, you need to rub your nose in your mistakes! It’s humbling, it’s
deflating, but after a while, you start to develop a thick skin.

The power of the Antinet is that it stamps your mistakes in a capsule of time.
You then view the evolution of your own self-deception in order to not fall
into the trap of making similar mistakes again.

With digital systems, it’s all-too-easy to simply overwrite or delete your

own mistakes.

As Johannes Schmidt observes of Luhmann’s Antinet:

It contains not only validated knowledge but also reflects

the thought process, including potential mistakes and blind
alleys that were later revised but not removed from the file
as the original cards always remained in Luhmann’s file and
perhaps a new card with revisions was added if needed.28

As the scholar, Markus Krajewski, writes of using an analog Zettelkasten,

“The reader is not only reading his own memory, but rather also his shifting
frame of reference over time.”29 Thus, when you review your own notes
(in your own handwriting), you have changing perspectives that shift over
time. You can view your “less complex” thoughts and how they’ve changed,
developed and internally evolved over a long period.

Most surprising are the links stamped onto the cards at the moment you wrote
them that shed light on what the past version of you was thinking at the time
when you wrote them. “What is more surprising are the references listed.”30

28   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolu‑
tion in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
29   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 331.
30   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 331.
180  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Here’s an example from my own life. I once confused the terms prospection
and proprioception.

Prospection is the concept of creating mental representations about the

future (or possible future scenarios). Proprioception refers to your body’s
ability to sense movement, action, or its location.

This is one of my older notes (on a 3 x 5 inch card; for newer notes I use
4 x 6 inch cards). It’s a reformulation note I took from reading the book,
Sapiens. The card address is 2714/4:

In the bottom left-hand corner I added an update in green ink (which tells
me it’s a new comment I added long after making the card): “Error,” and in
blue ink I include the cardlink: 3525/2A.31 If we navigate to card 3525/2A,
we find the following:

31   Note: I don’t use blue ink anymore; I only use black ink (for main notes), red ink (for
references), and green ink (for both comments and cardlinks).
 Analog  181

Immediately linked to this card (by way of the tree internal branching
structure), I find an old card 3525/2.

Aha! This is what I thought of originally when I wrote the first card (2714/4),
but I couldn’t quite recall where the idea came from, or what the term I
was thinking of was. When I initially wrote 2714/4, I made the mistake of
confusing the term proprioception with prospection, a concept I first learned
about in the book Stumbling on Happiness.
182  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Locking this mistake into a permanent state then allows me to communicate

that such terms are sometimes confused. For instance, when writing a piece
that happens to use the concept of prospection in the future, I could start
with something like, A term sometimes confused with proprioception is that of
prospection, which means X, whereas proprioception means Y. Stamping such a
mistake permanently in the Antinet helps me refresh and re-remind myself
of the confusion in order to prevent the mistake from occurring again. Even
more powerful, however, is the opportunity this creates for an accidental
breakthrough and creative insight. For instance, I could ask myself, How are
the concepts of proprioception related? Interestingly enough, they are somewhat
related. Proprioception involves the mental representation of your present
self; whereas prospection relates to the mental representation of your future
self. We can then explore why this may be the case by digging into the ety-
mology of the terms. Before you know it, you’re embarking on a journey of
going deep into a field of knowledge that fascinates you. Inevitably you’ll
end up with much richer insights than is typically found taking digital notes.

There are ways to jury-rig such a system in digital form (using Git, for
instance). However, I find that such solutions are an afterthought. They
may expose the “change history” of a note or a document; however the
feature is usually placed to the side of the screen of the main note. Even
then, it requires manual digging and clicking to reveal the commit history
(or change history0 of the note. With an Antinet, such a feature is baked
into the core protocol of the system.

ANALOG ENABLES YOU TO GAIN BETTER

FAMILIARITY WITH YOUR KNOWLEDGE
Another key property of the Antinet is revealed by Luhmann’s familiarity
with his own tree of knowledge. Luhmann knew his Zettelkasten like the
back of his hand. His knowledge was permanently stamped onto his mind.
One critical aspect of becoming a “publication machine” is how well you
know your way around your knowledge. Johannes Schmidt does not overlook
this factor, observing Luhmann “engaged in an ongoing process of tending
to his file.”32 The extensive time he spent doing this resulted in him gaining

32 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

 Analog  183

a deep understanding of his knowledge. For a thirty-plus year repository of

information, one would think there would be a detailed table of contents
to help him navigate; however, “Luhmann never created a detailed table
of contents.”33

Luhmann benefitted greatly by being essentially forced to work with his

knowledge as it accumulated (due to the Zettelkasten’s analog nature, and
there being no search feature). This critical property allowed him to store
deeply interconnected and complex information. It helped him integrate
new ideas, all while gracefully navigating his mind and memory (past and
present). He would insert newly acquired information into the appropriate
place which resulted in deeply evolved thoughts.

How did Luhmann achieve such a deeply imprinted “groove” of his thoughts?
There’s several ways. First, his ideas were neuroimprinted on his mind due
to the analog nature of the system. Second, he developed rapid recall of
information from the deep web-like network embedded in the analog system.
He developed this faculty by engaging in the ongoing process of tending to his
Antinet.34 When you partake in this process, it’s very much distinct from
the process of reviewing digital files. Reviewing digital files can cause your
eyes to glaze over. You forget what you’re searching for and soon become
distracted by other things.

With the Antinet, searching for notes becomes a fun, active process, during
which you think about and have a conversation with the material. You often
find yourself challenging your notes, or, trying to understand the context
that led you to write a particular thought. Most important, the process builds
your memory in such a way that you and all of your thoughts and learnings

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution

in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 305.
33 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 305.
34  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 305.
184  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

reverberate in your mind. You effectively prime your mind for compounding
growth, which emerges in your output.

For me, this was an unexpected hidden benefit of analog. In retrospect,

however, it’s pretty obvious. You build out your brain’s memory constantly
without feeling like it’s a chore.

In my time using digital notetaking apps, I forced such a practice upon myself
using a plugin that opened a random note. This didn’t last long. Opening a
random note every day felt like a chore, and I quickly dropped the practice.

A more effective method, which I’ve stuck with for over a decade, is the
practice of reviewing a random chunk notecards. I would randomly sift
through my reading notes and allow the concepts I had previously read to
reverberate through my mind.

Still, it requires self-discipline and seems to wane after some time. However,
in working with an Antinet, one reviews thoughts automatically while search-
ing for ideas. It’s a lot more fun. It’s less of a chore, and it always introduces
opportunities for surprises.

The ability to rapidly learn and later retrieve novel associations, memories,
and information is an important ability. In fact, it’s a core part of what
makes us human. This is why such a feature is so important in the Antinet.
As Michael Kahana states, one’s ability to recall and associate ideas is “an
important tool in coping effectively with one’s environment.”35

Yet in our era of rapidly expanding digital technology, with regard to human
memory, people seem to throw logic and rationality out the window. That
same Kahana also points out that having a good memory may not be all that
important for the ultimate survival of the species due to our “present era of
personal-data assistants and Google’s vast searchable databases.”36

35   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 112.
36   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
 Analog  185

This logical jump misses one thing: actual logic. Developing your memory
and your ability to recognize patterns when learning new information is
critical—and likely will remain critical—at the least for noteworthy success
in your field. Analog systems enhance this faculty; digital systems seem less
effective in doing so.

OTHER PROS OF ANALOG SYSTEMS

One concept you’ll learn about in this book is what is termed external
context in the field of human memory studies. External context introduces
properties that can later help you recall information and knowledge. These
things include parts of your sensory system—sounds, tastes, textures, etc.37
These properties are found in analog systems; they are not native to digital
systems. In a later section I talk about how I retrieve certain memories and
ideas based on the external context and cues generated by certain notecards.
Digital systems do not possess such features.

The Science Behind Analog Systems Developing

Knowledge
The premise of analog systems aiding in the development of your mind
(compared with digital systems) can be explained by the latest research in the
study of human memory. With analog systems, you’re constantly in a state
of recognition, reviewing thoughts found in your own system and trying to
recognize the core idea behind the concept. When you read new information
you’re also trying to recognize the core idea behind the concept.

When you recognize a concept, thought, or idea, two processes occur within
your mind.

First, the familiarity process kicks into gear. When you think of the concept
or idea, a value of your confidence in the familiarity of the content that arises
emerges. It’s essentially a confidence value of how confident you are and how

Press, 2014), 112.

37   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
186  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

familiar you are with a thought. This concept comprises something called
strength theory in human memory.

The second process is the recollection process. The recollection process involves
the recall of contextual information related to the content of the thought.

For exceptional knowledge work, it’s critical to exercise your mind’s recogni-
tion ability—that is, the faculty for recognizing concepts, thoughts, and ideas.
This is critical because it allows you to do two things when reading a text:

First, it enables you to create information by way of comparison. As Luh‑

mann writes:

Information is an intra-systematic event. It results when one

compares one message or entry with regard to other possi-
bilities. Information, accordingly, originates only in systems
which possess a comparative schema—even if this amounts
only to: “this or something else.”38

By neuroimprinting concepts in your mind, you’re effectively enabling a

working memory store of knowledge to compare with new ideas that you
come across in your reading. You then set off a process of comparing the idea
from your readings with the knowledge already stored in your Antinet. You
cannot install a new piece of knowledge in your Antinet without comparing
it to your current knowledge. You’re forced to find the most similar location
wherein that knowledge should be installed. With digital systems, this is
not a requirement. Digital does not force the comparison process into every
single note before it’s created.

Second, by exercising your ability to recollect concepts, you are forced to

relate information to a selective set of other relations (a process necessary to
create knowledge, and through action, wisdom).

38  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://
luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
 Analog  187

To summarize, the analog nature of the Antinet develops the mind’s faculties
for recollecting and recognizing interesting patterns while reading. This allows
you to make connections to material ruminating in your second mind.

Familiarity is developed through writing longhand, and it is furthered due

to the system not having a search feature. There’s no other choice but to
actively review and work with your knowledge.

Recollection emerges through developing your thoughts within contexts

(i.e., branches, stems and areas within your tree of knowledge).

As some scholars have observed, both of these variables paradoxically

transform notetaking from a system designed to store memories into a sys-
tem that both stores and enhances memories. “[Handwritten] notetaking
[due to repetition that helped the mind retain passages] and the respective
construction of a card index were considered both a substitute for personal
memory and a memory aid.”39

This phenomenon may not be exclusive to analog systems, however I argue

that it’s more common in analog systems because analog systems force
the occurrence of familiarity and recollection, even if it’s inconvenient
(it’s much more convenient to use the search box of a digital notetaking app).

Luhmann talked about generalizing concepts and abstracting them out in such
a way as to create containers of insight later on. He highlighted the practice
of creating answers to specific questions that he could ask his Antinet. For
instance, Luhmann posed the following question: why are museums empty,
whereas exhibits of paintings by Monet, Picasso, or Medici are too crowded?
The answer seems to revolve around exhibits being short-term events—
they’re “temporally limited.” Luhmann then created the following index
entry: “preference for what is temporally limited.” This allowed Luhmann
to accumulate more cards that exhibit a preference for what is temporally

39  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 24.
188  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

limited.40 Later, when more cards accumulated under this entry, Luhmann
could compare the different phenomena that correlated with a preference for
what is temporally limited. From there he could spot patterns and propose a
theory for why certain things occur.

This is a deliberate process. It takes work and effort to create. There’s no

magical future to surface such insights. Cutesy bubble graphs of notes won’t
magically surface such insights. Neither will the so-called “power of digital
search.”

Let’s talk briefly about the notion concerning the power of digital search.
In reality, the power of digital search is a myth. Due to search functionality,
digital notetaking systems possess less impetus to exercise the recognition
faculty of one’s mind. With analog, you’re forced to deliberately create pat-
terns in your mind as well as shortcuts for concepts to spot later on. This is
yet another advantage of analog systems.

These are the pros of working with an analog system. These strengths have
emerged from my own experience working with an Antinet for over a year,
and from my research into analog thinking systems. There are other posi-
tive aspects that are more obvious; however, I won’t bother going into the
obvious ones in detail. It’s best to experience them for yourself by testing
the Antinet for yourself. That’s the fun part, anyway!

Let’s now discuss the cons of analog.

THE CONS OF ANALOG

There are no cons of analog.

Just kidding! There are a number of negative aspects that arise while working
with analog systems. Let’s go through them now.

40  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://
luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
 Analog  189

ANALOG FACES THE RISK OF DESTRUCTION DUE

TO FIRE, FLOOD, OR OTHER DISASTER
At least once a week I get the following type of comment on Reddit or my
YouTube channel: Yeah, sounds great Scott, but what about a fire or flood?

It’s a valid question. Many of history’s greatest minds who used analog
knowledge systems suffered the downside of losing their archive to fire or
flood. For instance, Thomas Jefferson’s personal library and notes were the
casualty of a house fire, causing him great despair.41 The same happened to
Aldous Huxley in his later years when a brushfire broke out at his California
home. He rushed in and saved his manuscript of the book he was working
on at the time (The Island).42 Unfortunately his personal library of four
thousand books was engulfed by the flames.

There’s no denying that a downside of analog centers around its risk of

destruction (due to fire, flood, or other natural disaster). But is it really
enough risk to warrant opting for digital over analog? I think not.

Here’s one way to think of this: would you rather live a life possessing
something extremely valuable that can be lost, or, would you rather possess
something that is worth less without risk of loss? Note: I contend that digital
notes are not worthless; but they are worth less in that they contain less worth
than analog notes. The reason centers on the thought that is poured into notes
written by hand. They are worth more. They take more time, they require
more attention, and they are created at greater expense than digital notes.

Like any good hero’s journey, after you spend months or years building your
own Antinet, you’ll experience the moment of realizing where the value
truly resides. The value of the Antinet and its analog notes does not reside
in the cabinets in which you store your thoughts. Rather, the value resides in
how your brain develops and changes. Working with an analog system like
the Antinet transforms the way that you think. In essence, the true value of

41   Jon Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, Illustrated edition (New York, NY:
Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2013).
42  Dana Sawyer, Aldous Huxley: A Biography (Trillium Press, 2015), 182.
190  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the Antinet is not its physical material, it’s the metaphysical material that it
creates. The value is in what the analog system does to your mind, not the
actual contents of the box itself.

This mirrors that moment in the hero’s journey wherein the hero has victory
in his or her sights. Yet the hero foregoes crossing the finish line because his
friend who had helped him on the journey (and who the hero may be in
conflict with) is suddenly in trouble. In this moment, the hero realizes the
physical prize is worth less than the fulfillment and love of relationships and
connection with others (i.e., the metaphysical prize). In other words, the
hero chooses fulfillment over achievement. With this realization, the hero
comes to understand that life isn’t about struggling for the external physical
item signifying achievement. Rather, life is about the fulfillment of internal
metaphysical qualities (such as virtue, growth, challenge and self-respect).

I realize this may sound sappy and ridiculous, especially in the context of
reading a book about developing knowledge using notecards, but I assure
you there’s truth in this notion. The true value of the Antinet journey is
not in the external physical knowledge; it’s what the process of developing
the knowledge does to your mind. If my Antinet burned down, I’d do two
things: (1) I’d sit down and write furiously to finish the project I was in
the middle of, while the knowledge was still fresh, and (2) I’d start a new
Antinet. It’s that simple.

That’s a metaphysical solution to analog’s risk of destruction due to disaster.

However, there’s also a physical solution. Fireproof and waterproof cabinets
exist and they’re quite effective. However, they aren’t cheap. They’re in the
same price range as a computer. Still, they are an option. If you live in an
area where you greatly fear the risk of damage and destruction, you can
certainly go this route.

For myself, I have not gone this route. I have thought about looking into
fireproof and waterproof cabinets built specifically for the Antinet’s note-
cards; however I have not done this yet at the time of this writing. For me,
I sleep soundly at night knowing my Antinet is stored in a safe office in a
nice building. It’s not without risk, yet it doesn’t keep me up at night.
 Analog  191

Now, I would like to pose a counter-intuitive idea: the risk of destruction is

a good thing. I think there’s a subconscious component to my notes being
analog whereby I’m more motivated to turn my notes into a published prod-
uct. Because my notes stare me in the face (and there is a sizable amount of
notes to stare me in the face), I’m more motivated to actually sit down at the
computer and type them into my text editor. When my notes are converted
into text, it extinguishes the risk of fire (pun intended). The risk of fire or
water damage actually forces me to publish my work faster, and to turn it
into something useful more immediately.

To wrap things up, the risk of damage and destruction of notes due to fire,
flood, or other natural disaster is real—yet it’s also not real. It’s real in that
it can physically happen; yet it’s not real in that it cannot physically happen
unless your mind is destroyed by the fire, flood, or other disaster—and
that’s a different problem altogether! That’s a problem digital systems cannot
account for either.

ANALOG IS HARDER THAN DIGITAL

Another con of analog is that it’s harder than digital. It requires more effort,
time, and deliberate attention. More, it requires a greater quantity of work to
produce less. With digital notetaking systems, knowledge is easier to create.
It’s also cheaper to create. However, I contend that the extra effort and the
deeper thought processing is worth it. Oftentimes, the hard way is the best
way. In fact, it can be argued that it’s the only true way.

Writing by hand was valued by writers in the early modern period precisely
for the reason that it was hard. It sharpened not only their faculties for
controlling their attention, but also improved their retention of material.
As scholar Anne Blair observes, writers used the process of writing by hand
as “a mental and physical discipline that sharpened attention and retention.” 43

For myself, using an analog system helps cure my ADHD-tendencies. When

I begin writing a main note (i.e., reformulating or reflecting on material),

43   Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-Taking
(Brill, 2016), 265.
192  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I feel almost sucked into the experience. I cannot pry myself away from my
desk until I finish the thought. This practice is certainly not exclusive to
analog; however, I find it more prevalent in analog. I also find my thoughts
to be better developed and processed when writing by hand. Much of this
book was written by hand using my Antinet. This sentence and this section
you’re reading right now, however, were not written by hand. I’m thinking by
typing on my computer (hypocrite)! While I do not think this is necessarily
a bad section, I do think it would have been much better and had a stronger
impact if I had taken the time to deliberately write it out by hand first. The
reason I have not done so is because the content backing much of what
I’m writing here will be covered in another section of this book (a section
on the power of writing by hand). So, essentially I have indeed written out
the core idea of this section (the power of writing by hand), yet I have not
specifically handwritten this section. Still, I have deeply thought through the
core idea I’m writing about in this section. How so? Because I developed it
elsewhere through writing by hand.

Analog is harder than digital not only in terms of the effort it requires, but
in other ways as well. With an analog system, you must buy a variety of
materials. Blank notecards, boxes, containers, Wite-Out, pens, rulers, and
other items. That’s not too difficult, yet it does indeed require more space.

Analog systems also result in quizzical regard from others who see you using
such. They may question your sanity for investing so much time and energy
into boxes of physical notecards. If you aren’t strong-minded, you may even
end up questioning your own sanity!

Here’s The Truth: The Hard Way Is Better

One of the biggest myths about Zettelkasten centers around the tradeoff
between ease vs. effort. Here’s the truth: you must be prepared to do things
the hard way if you wish to produce great work. The paradox, however, is
that the hard way turns out to be the easy way. The up front hard work of
writing notes by hand later turns into the greatest benefit of the system.

As Mortimer Adler outlines in his classic How to Read a Book, one must be
prepared to go about processing books the hard way. “That is the only way,”
 Analog  193

Adler writes. “Without external help of any sort, you go to work on the book.
With nothing but the power of your own mind.”44

After Ryan Holiday wrote a piece outlining his notebox system, he responded
to a question he is frequently asked: “Wouldn’t digital be easier?” Here’s
Holiday’s response:

Yes. But I don’t want this to be easy. Writing them [notes]

down by hand forces me to take my time and to go over
everything again (taking notes on a Kindle is too easy and
that’s the problem). Also being able to physically arrange stuff
is crucial for getting the structure of your book or project
right. I can move cards from one category to another. As I
shuffle through the cards, I bump into stuff I had forgotten
about, etc.45

Holiday makes three important points here. One is the benefit of an analog
system enabling him to better develop his thoughts. The other is the benefit
of haptic factors utilized in knowledge management (that is, being able to
lay the cards out in front of you to physically rearrange). The last benefit
Holiday touches on is bumping into stuff he had forgotten about. Here
Holiday is describing maintenance rehearsal in human memory.

All of these aspects, admittedly the hard way to do this, end up producing
better work. The hard way, paradoxically, becomes the best way.

The bottom line is that analog thinking systems are hard. They take more
time and energy investment than digital systems. They’re also less conven-
tional than digital systems, and thus suffer from an implicit bias that digital
systems are used by smarter people who are geeky enough to know shortcuts

44  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 7.
45  Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And
Using Everything You Read,” RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April 1, 2014, https://ryanhol-
iday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-every-
thing-you-read/.
194  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

and hotkeys (rubbish). This is a false notion. There are no shortcuts. In fact,
the shortcuts end up falling far short of the desired destination: excellence.

ANALOG IS LESS MOBILE THAN DIGITAL (OR IS IT?)

Another con of analog centers around the perceived immobility of the sys-
tem. Its roots, once again, trace back to Sönke Ahrens. In How to Take Smart
Notes, Ahrens says he chose to use a digital Zettelkasten for “mobility.”46 His
presumption is that a laptop storing his notes is easier to carry than a filing
cabinet full of notecards. While this may be true, he’s actually making the
wrong comparison. Sure, a laptop carrying notes is more mobile than carrying
around filing cabinets full of notecards. However, they are not equivalent.
He mistakenly believes that the two are equal when, in reality, they are not.

An analog system like the Antinet contains thoughts and a structure of

knowledge that are irreplicable in a digital notetaking system. The knowledge
Ahrens carries with him on his laptop is of lesser value and worth than the
knowledge contained in a robust analog system.

In addition, the material you carry with you when using an analog system
does not just reside in the card boxes. The knowledge resides in your mind.
Such knowledge, when digitally managed, would otherwise not be stamped
in your mind in such a way. In effect, with the Antinet you carry knowledge
with you, wherever you go. Whether you’re in the shower (where break-
throughs in thinking actually happen), or whether you’re on your couch
reading, you carry with you knowledge that would otherwise be missing if
you used digital systems. In this way, it can be argued that digital systems
are less mobile than analog systems. Why? Because with analog systems,
you can carry more knowledge, internally, than you can with digital systems.
Plus digital notes result in cheaper, less processed knowledge stored in the
depths of a notetaking app.

46  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 31.
 Analog  195

ANALOG KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS VS.

DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
As the data scientist John Foreman observes, machines can help us measure
the correlations and proximities between clusters of groups or individuals
who buy a particular item; however, they cannot tell us why people do not
buy.47 There is an internal experience (a theory of mind) that is invisible to
computers. Computers do not know what it’s like to be human. Humans do,
and there’s no replacement for this missing feature. I’d like to propose that
analog systems retain humanness better than digital systems. They seem to
also introduce the understanding of the internal human experience better
than digital systems.

Many people inappropriately compare digital and analog Zettelkasten sys-

tems. Even learned scholars deeply familiar with knowledge systems make
such a mistake. For instance, Markus Krajewski writes: “A critical advantage
lies in the fact that software based literary databases are not simply able to
remember, but can also be employed as productive assistants in the production
of arguments.”48 The problem with this scholar’s assertion centers around
two things: First, Luhmann himself described his Zettelkasten as a personal
productive assistant.49 And second, Krajewski does not explain why he holds
the view that a digital Zettelkasten can be a productive assistant whereas an
analog Zettelkasten cannot.50

47  John W. Foreman, Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into
Insight (Indianapolis, IN: Wiley, 2014). There are a lot of reasons why someone does not
take an action, but only a few reasons why someone does. This introduces the concept
of cosine distance, a mathematical method for determining the similarity between two
documents or vectors. Yet the problem still remains for computers: determining why
someone did not buy. These are creative problems that involve understanding the human
experience, which computers are not as capable of solving (compared with a marketer
who studies psychology, at least).
48  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 322.
49  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8,1—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 21, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-1_V.
50   Although perhaps it can be explained by the fact that he created a piece of software that
proposes to replace the need for an analog Note-taking system. Along these lines, the
scholar could be simply seeing his software through rose-colored glasses.
196  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE DOWNSIDES OF DIGITAL

Many seem to overlook the downsides of digital. We have a vague sense that
digital environments are distracting; however research is starting to show
us how distracting they actually are. For instance, one study tracked the
anonymous digital activity of fifty-thousand users. The results illustrated
that half of the users checked communication apps (like Slack and email)
“every six minutes or less.”51

When you’re working, even if you have notifications turned off, a distract-
ing app is just a click away. This environment is not optimal for deep work
or writing.

Furthermore, the digital work environment has been shown to result in

suboptimal health. The International Archives of Occupational and Environ-
ment Health published a study that observed long-term trends of nearly five
thousand Swedish workers. The results showed a trend of suboptimal health
outcomes associated with high information and digital technology usage.
Other research shows that email is connected with unhappiness. In other
words, every six minutes or so when you’re looped into checking email, you’re
also looped into an activity that has been shown to cause unhappiness.52

In brief, the digital environment appears to be more distracting and also leads
to less happiness and suboptimal health. Yet the digital work environment
is the very thing I find myself having to convince the majority of knowledge
workers to escape!

IF LUHMANN WERE ALIVE TODAY

One might be tempted to think that if Luhmann were alive today, he would
opt for a digital notetaking system. I have several reasons why I think he
would not.

51   Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication
Overload (New York: Portfolio, 2021), 11.
52  Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication
Overload (New York: Portfolio, 2021), 37.
 Analog  197

First and foremost, Luhmann lived until 1998. Personal computers were
introduced in 1977 and became common in the 1980s.53 It’s likely that an aca-
demic who was familiar with information science and systems theory would
be savvy enough to learn how a personal computer works. Yet Luhmann
never seemed to move to the digital medium for managing his knowledge.

In fact, later in his life (when computers were a more accessible option)
Luhmann wrote a piece titled Learning to Read. In it, Luhmann introduced
various best practices for reading. He advised the taking of notes (not excerpts,
but reformulation notes), and he also advises readers to store those notes in
a computer or an analog Zettelkasten.54 Even after parting with this advice,
Luhmann continued to use his analog Zettelkasten. Therefore, perhaps the
question is not whether Luhmann would choose digital if he were alive
today—after all, he already had that option. Rather the question becomes,
why did Luhmann choose to stick with his analog Zettelkasten? The pri-
mary reason centers on what his analog Zettelkasten became for Luhmann:
it became his second mind.

There’s a continual fallacy that arises in confusing systems storing information

for others vs. systems that store knowledge for oneself. The same scholar
who calls digital systems productive assistants also asserts that slipboxes,
noteboxes (and Antinets), are for “internal use only.”55

Luhmann’s goal, quite literally, centered on creating a productive assistant

to bounce ideas off of, and guess what…he achieved it with his analog
Zettelkasten. When given the choice to discard the second mind he cre-
ated (and opt for digital instead), Luhmann clearly made the right choice:
he chose his Antinet.

• • •

53  “Home Computer,” in Wikipedia, July 15, 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?

title=Homecomputer&oldid=1033746593.
54 Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
55   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 319.
198  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The physical, external properties that make such systems like the Antinet
more powerful than digital are becoming increasingly recognized by schol-
ars for their powerful features (when they’re not shockingly overlooked).
The best advertisement for an analog Zettelkasten is perhaps an article
titled “Rank and File,” in which the author professes awe for the intellectual
prowess of a professor who inspired him.56 It turns out that this revered pro-
fessor used an analog system of notecards. The author attempted to employ
such a notetaking system in digital form, only to realize its shortcomings.
It’s rather head-scratching, but the author doesn’t then try an analog Zettelkas-
ten system. Instead, after his failure in making use out of a digital Zettelkasten,
the author gives up on the idea completely. It’s unfortunate. The only thing
he got wrong in his digital Zettelkasten was the digital part.

PEOPLE OF ANALOG
My uncle is an attorney based in Los Angeles, California. He was born to
be an attorney. He’s one of the rarer attorneys who is passionate, charming
(in his own mind), and most shocking of all, he’s an attorney who is not a
complete a-hole! He also has a steel trap for a memory. According to him, it’s
not that he has a good memory, it’s just that he can’t seem to forget things!
The things he remembers aren’t legal cases and practical stuff. They’re things
like football stats, player’s names and numbers, Heisman trophy winners
by year, the scores of every Super Bowl ever played, and more. He knows
every single winner of the Indianapolis 500, dating back to the year 1911. You
simply give him a year, and he’ll instantly tell you the name of the winner
and any other contextual details about the event.

On a recent Super Bowl Sunday we decided to watch the football game at

my parent’s home. A few hours before the game started, I decided to take a
break from being around company, and I found a quiet place in my father’s
home office where my father was working as well. At a separate desk, I began
making main notes from the bibcard I had created while reading Luhmann’s
book Short Cuts. After some time, my uncle walked in to see what me and
my dad were up to.

56  “Rank and File,” Real Life, accessed January 14, 2022, https://reallifemag.com/rank
-and-file/.
 Analog  199

My dad was up to his usual stuff: paying bills, returning emails from clients,
etc. However, my uncle turned to me and saw six notecards of main notes
scattered on my desk. “What the hell are you doing?” he asked. “Whoa,
that’s actually pretty good handwriting!” After giving him a surface-level
explanation of the notecard system and professing the power of writing by
hand, he replied, “That’s been my secret to success. Every opening statement
I’ve ever done in my legal career, I’ve written out by hand.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if writing things out by hand also stands key to his
steel trap memory.

The more I share the power of analog methods, of notecards, and writing by
hand, the more people I discover who use such tools. I get information sent
to me from my fellow Antinetters attesting to this. I also keep an eye out
while reading. I frequently spot people who reveal their secrets to revolve
around analog knowledge tools. When I do, I usually note them down.

For instance, take Ted Nelson, the godfather of hypertext documents and
hyperlinks who inspired the internet as we know it. One would expect him
to arrive at meetings with a laptop. Yet, he uses analog tools like notebooks,
notecards, sticky notes, and tape recorders. In a humorous account by Kevin
Kelly, the creator of Wired magazine, Kelly shares how Nelson arrived at
their meeting to outline the future with such tools.57

One of the best marketers of all time is an old curmudgeon named Dan
Kennedy. He’s a character who sports a horseshoe mustache and a “No B.S.”
attitude (which also serves as the title for his book series). A central point
in his book No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs focuses on creating
a “success environment” for oneself. This environment is to be stocked with
analog tools. He lists off tools including clocks, symbols of wealth, folders,
massive Ziploc bags for each project, and, of course, notecards.58

57  Kevin Kelly, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape
Our Future (New York, New York: Penguin Books, 2017).
58  Dan S. Kennedy, No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs: The Ultimate No Holds
Barred Kick Butt Take No Prisoners Guide to Time Productivity and Sanity, 3rd edition
200  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

On the very first page of The Journals of Abraham Maslow we find Maslow
stating the importance of managing his knowledge using analog tools and
3 x 5 inch notecards.59

Indeed, the “soul” of Umberto Eco’s classic book, How to Write a Thesis, is
his analog notecard system.60

And then there’s John August, the screenwriter behind movies like Big Fish,
Charlie’s Angels, Titan A.E. and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. What’s
the secret to August’s success? Writing his story down on notecards and
laying them out on a table. From there he organizes the story and develops
the screenplay.61

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his novels by hand using paper and super sharp
pencils. He didn’t even erase his mistakes, preferring to cross them out.62
His personal assistant later in his life observed how Fitzgerald would
write by hand every day (presumably even after recovering from his epic
gin-induced hangovers)!63

Other people who use analog tools, including notecards, and who write by
hand include the following people: comedian Jerry Seinfeld, author Elizabeth
Gilbert, author Ryan Holiday, author Robert Greene, novelist Anne Lamott,
and writer Robert Caro (whom I talk about elsewhere in this book).64 The
list goes on and on.

(Irvine, California: Entrepreneur Press, 2017).

59   Richard Lowry, ed., The Journals of Abraham Maslow, First Thus edition (Lexington,
Mass: Penguin Books, 1982), 1.
60   Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis, trans. Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina,
Translation edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2015), xvii.
61  “Hollywood Screenwriter John August’s 10 Best Index Card Practices,” ScreenCraft,
December 30, 2019, https://screencraft.org/blog/hollywood-screenwriter-john
-augusts-10-best-index-card-practices/.
62  “The Great Gatsby,” SP Books, accessed March 22, 2022, https://www.spbooks.com/67-
the-great-gatsby-9791095457428.html.
63 Frances Kroll Ring, Against the Current: As I Remember F. Scott Fitzgerald
(Figueroa Press, 2005), 34.
64   The New York Times, Jerry Seinfeld Interview: How to Write a Joke | The New York Times,
 Analog  201

HISTORY’S GREATEST MINDS USED ANALOG

THINKING SYSTEMS LIKE THE ANTINET
A great many intellectuals of the past used tools like the Antinet, including
the German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
(1646–1716). Around 1676 he built a so-called excerpt cabinet (scrinium
literatum). He was inspired by the Swiss physician and naturalist, Conrad
Gessner (1516–1565), who built a “humble paper-slip” system.65 Gessner is
known as possibly the first person in history who is mentioned using an
Antinet-like system.66 Other early adopters of an Antinet-like system include
Georg Philipp Harsdörffer (1607–1658) and Joachim Jungius (1587–1657).

The first English dictionary, famously built by Samuel Johnson, was assembled
using notecards. He sorted the dictionary entries into alphabetical order
and then glued them into a master manuscript.67

I won’t risk boring you with a comprehensive history of people who used
Antinet-like systems. The list of people who did is rather robust and can
be found in many books dedicated entirely to the scholarship of analog
thinking systems.

2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itWxXyCf W5s; Tim Ferriss, “Elizabeth

Gilbert’s Creative Path: Saying No, Trusting Your Intuition, Index Cards, Integrity
Checks, Grief, Awe, and Much More (#430),” The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, May 8,
2020, https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/; Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard
System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read,”
RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April 1, 2014, https://ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-sys-
tem-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-everything-you-read/; London
Real, HOW I WRITE MY BOOKS: Robert Greene Reveals His Research Methods
When Writing His Latest Work, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ueMHk-
GljK0; Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, 1st edition
(Anchor, 2007), 133.
65   Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 30.
66   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 319.
67   Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 32.
202  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

If you’re interested in exploring the history of analog thinking systems, I’ll

provide the following list. The list makes no claim of being exhaustive, how-
ever the books listed certainly serve as a fine jumping-off point for those
interested in the history of knowledge systems.

 Blair, Ann M. Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the
Modern Age. First Edition. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2011.

 Cevolini, Alberto, ed. Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evo-

lution in Early Modern Europe. Library of the Written Word, volume 53.
Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016.

 Krajewski, Markus. Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929.

Translated by Peter Krapp. History and Foundations of Information
Science. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2011.

 Wright, Alex. Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Informa
tion Age. 1st edition. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.68

 Yeo, Richard. Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science. 1st
edition. Chicago ; London: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

THE POWER OF WRITING BY HAND

MY JOURNEY DISCOVERING THE POWER OF
WRITING BY HAND
One of the secrets to my success in college can be attributed to one thing:
writing by hand.

Many of my other peers brought their laptops to class. When the professor
began talking, they’d flip it open and take notes for a while, never looking
up to engage with the professor. After some time, they’d open up a new

68 For Antinet-like systems and the people who used them, see pages: 30–33, 41–42, 49, 78,
and 230. For the power of analog notecards and paper slips, see: 80–81, 229–30, 223, 239,
251, 253, and 286.
 Analog  203

tab, surf the web for news, check email, respond to messages, and be taken
away from class.

I never experienced the temptations that would lead me to fall into this trap.
I always had only one thing in front of me. Actually, two: a Five Star spiral
notebook, and a pen.

One reason why I never brought a laptop to class was that it felt disrespectful
to the professor. They can’t see what you’re doing, and they have no way of
telling if you’re just flat-out ignoring them. There you have a person dedi-
cating their life to teaching you something, and you’re staring into a screen,
seemingly ignoring them. It just didn’t sit right with me.

That said, the feeling of being disrespectful to the professor wasn’t the only
reason I didn’t bring a laptop. I didn’t bring a laptop to class for several
other reasons.

First, by taking notes by hand, you end up understanding the material better
(as research now confirms).69 When you write by hand, you’re thinking and
understanding in a way that is more effective than taking notes using a laptop.

Second, when you write by hand, you end up paying very close attention
to the physical cues of the professor or lecturer. You’re better able to filter
out what’s truly important.

Third, when you write by hand, your selection skills and your ability to select
important material improve. Why? Because you’re more constrained by
what you can actually write down. Writing by hand is harder, it takes more
time. You have to slow down and select only the most important pieces of
information, and you must do it in a concise way that captures the concept.

69   Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,” Psychological Science 25, no. 6
( June 1, 2014): 1159–68.
204  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Fourth, when I wrote by hand in class, I was more present. This resulted
in two things: first, time flew by. And second, I enjoyed class much more
than I would have if my laptop had been open. In fact, research suggests that
those who write by hand end up experiencing much more joy than those
who type away at their keyboard.70

Last, when you write by hand, you simply get better results.

In a college environment, one might assume it to be socially acceptable to

be perceived as studious or a hard worker by peers. Yet, this wasn’t always
the case. I’d often find myself faced with direct questions from my peers.
For instance, my friends would say to me, point-blank: The lecture material
is posted on the class website. Why are you taking notes? I found myself having
to answer this question more often than one would imagine.

I recall a fellow student bragging, I don’t need to take notes. He then pointed
to his head and said, I keep everything in here.

In these situations I was faced with a choice. Should I stick with taking notes
by hand, or should I try to appear smarter by holding it all in my head? I decided
to press forward with my practice of taking notes by hand (even though it
was hard work and slow).

Thankfully I stuck to the hard way, because every single time, in every single
class, I outperformed my other classmates who didn’t take notes. I also out-
performed everyone who took notes by typing. Oh, and the guy claiming
to keep everything in his brain? He almost flunked out.

THE PARADOXICAL HISTORY OF LONGHAND

The power of writing by hand isn’t something realized only in modern times;
there’s rich history behind the practice of writing by hand.

70   Aya S. Ihara et al., “Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words:
Evidence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index,” Frontiers in Human Neuro‑
science 15 (2021): 679191.
 Analog  205

Something counterintuitive happened during the Renaissance among

learned scholars and thinkers. During this period, the typographic industry
exploded in growth (the so-called ars artificialiter scribendi).71 Previous to
this, scholars relied on “helpers” and scribes to do their writing for them.
After the typographic machines came onto the scene, however, scholars read
texts via typographic medium by themselves. They also began to write their
own thoughts in commonplace books. Soon after, the scholars began parting
ways with their scribes and helpers. Instead of dictating their thoughts to
them, they “chose to handwrite.”72 Why? Because writing by hand developed
their thoughts to a far greater degree than simply dictating their thoughts
to their helpers.

WRITING BY HAND ENABLES A COMMUNICATION

PARTNER TO EMERGE IN THE ANTINET
At the time of his death, Luhmann’s literary estate contained three thousand
of his manuscripts, two hundred of which were previously unpublished.
The starting point for these manuscripts was Luhmann’s Antinet, where he
developed the foundation through writing by hand.

Writing is not what follows research, learning or studying,

it is the medium of all this work.73

Writing is not the pharmakon of memory; instead, it is

a hypomnematic device that encourages scholars to use
their mental energies for more abstract—that is, context-
detached operations.74

71   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in

Early Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill,
2016), 24.
72   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in
Early Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill,
2016), 24.
73   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 2.
74   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in
206  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Writing does not come after research. It is the very thing that develops the
research. Writing is the process by which you actually understand research.
And as the scientific literature shows, writing by hand promotes this under-
standing better than typing on a keyboard.75 Sönke Ahrens points this out
as well: in terms of understanding what they had been taught, students who
write by hand outshine those who write by keyboard.76

This illustrates an important point: developing your thoughts through

writing by hand builds the foundation for your thinking and is the starting
point from which thoughts can be developed into something even greater.
It is not the end itself. If someone believes that an Antinet alone spits
out great work, they’re dreaming. This seems to be the belief of digital
notetaking bubble graph boiz. For an Antinet to truly bear fruit, the initial
thought that is developed with the Antinet must continue to be processed
in manuscript form.

This seems to be less of a likelihood with digital tools. It’s all too easy to
copy-and-paste notes and then try developing them from there. When you
use an Antinet, there’s no other choice but to rewrite the knowledge from
your cards into your text editor (and thereby, you reprocess your already
processed thoughts). You’re essentially reprocessing the thoughts you’ve
already processed when you originally wrote them down by hand. This is
hugely advantageous and should not be overlooked.

Luhmann’s Antinet put his thoughts through an intense process so that,

by the time they were included in a manuscript or book, the thought was
developed to a far deeper degree than just thinking while typing. Luhmann

Early Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill,
2016), 1.
75   Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,” Psychological Science 25, no. 6
( June 1, 2014): 1159–68. In addition, more scientific literature backing the power of writ-
ing by hand is explored elsewhere in this book.
76   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 78.
 Analog  207

found himself in a fantastic position to develop his thoughts even further.

He started with a “leg up” compared to the alternative of thinking on the
fly while writing a manuscript.

When writing a manuscript with your Antinet, you have your notecards to
guide you, and it begins to feel like a true partnership.

I’ve experienced this myself by writing this book. The notes from my Anti-
net have already gone through development in two ways: (1) short-term
development through writing by hand, and (2) long-term development
by way of engaging new, supporting evidence and further calcifications
of an idea (backed by more examples, reflections, reformulations and
excerpts).

When it comes down to typing the notes into a manuscript, it’s boring to
just type things word-for-word from your notes; instead, the experience
is a lot more active and fun if thinking is involved while typing and while
trying to fully decipher what is being said. You end up developing thoughts
to further clarity. Right now, I’m writing this paragraph you’re reading
right now with my notecards sitting to the left of my keyboard. Oftentimes,
I’ll find myself arguing with what I’ve written on the notecards and sometimes
phrase what I’ve written very differently. I question what I’ve written on the
notecards and feel compelled to re-check sources. Did the author who I’m
quoting, really say that?! I say to myself. I then check, and more often than
not, I find that the author did indeed say it.

This entire experience enables me to connect with the reader more and
communicate the idea properly by sharing with the reader my own initial
skepticisms when presented with an idea. For instance, I know what you’re
about to read may sound suspect. I realize the concept of ‘communicating with a
ghost in a box of notecards’ sounds like woo-woo mysticism. Yet, this is precisely
how the greatest social scientist of the 20th century explained the Antinet.

In this respect, the Antinet becomes a true communication partner, a true

writing partner. At the foundation of such an emergent experience is the
technology of analog notes…written by hand.
208  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

WRITING BY HAND SPARKS AN EVOLUTIONARY

ADVANCE THAT DEVELOPS WORKING MEMORY
CAPACITY
The deliberate process of writing by hand, observes Harvard University
researcher Ann Blair, “produced a somewhat odd effect.” The system, which
was supposed to simply replace the cognitive overhead of having to mem-
orize information both, (1) replaced cognitive overhead of memorizing,
and unexpectedly, (2) it enhanced one’s ability to retain almost everything
learned Renaissance scholars had read. The handwritten notetaking system
and “the respective construction of a card index were considered both a
substitute for personal memory and a memory aid.”77

What Blair describes is a contradiction. Contradictions, such as a method that

both replaces the cognitive process of memorization and, at the same time,
enhances it, serves as a sign of a “transitional” phase towards progress in evo-
lution.78 In effect, the practice of writing things down by hand, and thereby
building a thinking system that enhances one’s ability to retain information,
serves as an evolutionary jump for humans who possess this faculty. This
scholar observed the phenomenon of a thinking system (built of hand-writ-
ten notes and indexes) replacing and enhancing memory, and observed
that such a system “may be understood as signs of evolutionary advance.”79

Central to evolutionary advances sits one key concept: contradictory phenom-

ena. Therefore, it’s rather puzzling that the world of notetaking today finds
the majority of its practitioners opting for digital systems. These systems
have not proven themselves to possess the contradictory phenomenon of
analog systems. Indeed, science proves digital systems to be less effective
than analog systems for learning and understanding (which will be covered
shortly). Digital systems may serve as an adequate memory replacement tool;
however, they are not memory enhancement tools. Analog systems are both.

77   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 24.
78   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 24.
79   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 24.
 Analog  209

The seemingly contradictory nature of being both a memory replacement

tool and a memory enhancement tool points to analog systems as the more
evolutionarily advanced medium (as absurd as that may seem).

The practice of writing by hand, as pointed out by Ann Blair, results in the
enhancement of memory. This is of supreme importance because one of
the most critical elements involved in learning is the development of one’s
working memory capacity.80

Let’s talk briefly about the science of human memory now.

Working Memory, Short-term Storage,

and Long-term Storage
Working memory refers to the process in which information is stored in your
short-term memory, where it is actively worked on and encoded. After this
stage, memories can then be stored in long-term storage for later retrieval.

Luhmann wrote of multiple storage memory systems being around the corner,
yet the computing power of his era wasn’t able to produce such a thing.81
However, we also know that Luhmann wasn’t convinced that computer
memory would replace the need for systems relying on human memory.
From Luhmann’s notecard we can see Luhmann was familiar with W. Ross
Ashby’s view that “our scientific thinking [of human memory] tends to be
grossly misled by the example of the big digital computer.”82

80   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press,
2018), 7-8.
81  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8b2—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed September 21, 2021, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b2_V; “ZK II:
Zettel 9/8,2—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 3, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-2_V; Johannes Schmidt,
“Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication
Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern
Europe 53 (2016), https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475, 299.
82  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8b - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 17, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V; W. Ross
Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1, 1967):
95–104, 103.
210  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

By referencing the concept of multiple storage, Luhmann seems to be more

in-tune with how the concept worked in abstract models of human mem-
ory (rather than the abstractions of abstractions of human memory, which
computer science devised).

What Luhmann may have been alluding to was something one scientist in
human memory refers to as “the most influential computational model of
memory.”83 The model referred to was proposed by Atkinson and Shiffrin in
1968—during Luhmann’s prime theoretical working days—and was known
as dual storage.84

The conception of dual storage systems became popular in the 1970s because
of its analogy to computer systems that have separate short-term and long-
term storage components.85 It does not seem coincidental that Luhmann
wrote of both in such a close proximity to one another.86 In brief, he was
likely aware of the dual storage memory model.

Today the dual storage memory model is encompassed under the term
Search of Associative Memory, or “SAM”. According to SAM, remembered
information is stored in two different types of “containers” within your
mind: (1) short-term storage (“STS”), and (2) long-term storage (“LTS”).87

SHORT-TERM STORAGE (STS) AND THE ANTINET

Short-term storage is thought of as a “buffer.” In a computing context,

83   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 223.
84   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 223.
85   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 225.
86  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8,2—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 3, 2022, https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-2_V; “ZK II: Note 9 /
8b2—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed September 21, 2021, https://niklas-luhmann-
archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b2_V.
87   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 224.
 Analog  211

a buffer is a temporary memory-storage area where data is stored before

being processed and installed into long-term storage.88

STS has limited capacity for the number of items it can store.

Think of it like writing a bullet point list of ideas on a card and then shortly
thereafter elaborating on each of those bullet point ideas on a dedicated card.

STS is the phase in which you write main notes. You write excerpts, refor-
mulations, or reflections from your readings or source material. It’s the RAM,
in computer terms. It’s the working memory, which is developed through
writing by hand.

LONG-TERM STORAGE (“LTS”) AND THE ANTINET

In a later chapter, I’ll be teaching you the core components of the Antinet. The
primary box in which knowledge is developed happens in something called
“the main box.” Think of long-term storage as the main box of your Antinet,
the area where your developed thoughts are then stored for the long term.

Memory scientists liken LTS to a variant of associative neuro network models,

yet LTS comprises the following features: (1) it stores associations among
items, and (2) it stores associations between items and context.

The Antinet’s tree structure, with proximity-based associations built into its
protocol, as well as its context branches, are a perfect instantiation of LTS.

Both the architecture of short-term storage and long-term storage are per-
fectly represented in the Antinet—much more perfectly than a collection
of mere bubbles linked together in a digital graph (cough, digital notetaking
apps, cough).

Let’s jump back to working memory.

88   Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg, eds., New Oxford Amerian Dictionary 3rd
Edition, 3rd edition (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), s.v. “Buffer.”
212  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Before information can be installed into long-term storage (the main box
of your Antinet), it must first be encoded and then processed. You encode
and process the thoughts by writing by hand.89

A popular factoid related to working memory is the idea that it can only hold
seven chunks of information in it.90 However the latest research argues that
working memory can only hold four items during the processing phase.91

When doing knowledge work, and when thinking, it’s advantageous to pos-
sess the ability to hold multiple ideas in your mind simultaneously. Often I’ll
create a card that states four or five hypotheses.92 Each individual one then
will get a dedicated card to be built out individually.

We find instances of Luhmann doing this as well. For instance, take the
following note from Luhmann’s archived Zettelkasten:
photo credit:
“ZK I: Note 17,11e—
Niklas Luhmann
Archive,” accessed
March 23, 2022,
https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/
bestand/zettelkasten/
zettel/ZK_1_
NB_17-11e_V.

89  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 8.
90  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 7.
91   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 8.
92  Note how I use the term hypotheses instead of theses. A hypothesis is a proposed explana-
tion made on the basis of limited evidence. A thesis is a statement that is put forward as a
premise to be proved. When you’re developing your knowledge using an Antinet, you’re
putting forth an idea for further investigation (usually on limited evidence). For this rea-
son, it’s more fitting to refer to such as a hypothesis
 Analog  213

Luhmann lists out five hypotheses to be further developed. Each has a

corresponding letter which represents the dedicated card on which the
individual hypothesis is to be explored.

The parent card housing the hypothesis possesses the card address 17,11e.
The other cards are explored according to the red letter accompanying them.
For instance, 17,11ea, 17,11eD, 17,11eB, 17,11eA, etc.

The graph view of the tree looks like this:

photo credit: “ZK I: Note 17,11e - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 23, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_17-11e_V.

Being able to hold a handful of hypotheses in your mind at the same time
(as opposed to to one or two) becomes advantageous. It is valuable to
exercise and build up your working memory capacity because it is critical in
developing truly insightful thoughts.
214  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In addition, there is an important subcomponent within working mem-

ory called “executive control,” which factors into your ability to control
your attention.93

Writing by hand and working in an analog system generates “less distractions

and less competing demands,” compared with the digital environments
(where you’re blasted with notifications, for example). Even for those who
profess to have self-discipline, are faced with the reality that they’re just one
click away from lost time. Even for those who claim to wield total self-disci-
pline, with digital notetaking, you’re just one click away from lost time. And
as Benjamin Franklin pointed out, “Lost time is never found again.”

WRITING BY HAND DISENTANGLES THOUGHTS

Dawson Trotman’s statement that thoughts disentangle themselves when they
pass through your fingertips certainly rings true for me, and other authors
have expressed similar sentiments. For instance, clinical psychologist and
bestselling author, Jordan Peterson. Peterson writes his books by coming up
with a skeleton framework of his thesis. He places the “skeleton framework”
in a Microsoft Word document and creates a mental image of the framework,
which he refers to as a memory palace.94 Yet even with Peterson’s techniques,
he ran into difficulties while finishing his book 12 Rules for Life. What helped
Peterson during this time was a certain pen with a light affixed to it that
allowed him to write in the dark. The Pen of Light is how he referred to it.
Instead of slogging away at his keyboard, he decided to write by hand. He
underwent the act of disentangling his thoughts by getting them out on paper
with a pen, enabling him to “find the words to properly close [the] book.”95

WRITING BY HAND EXERCISES

NEURO-ASSOCIATIVE RECALL
In your quest to create genius-level work, you must exercise neuro-associative

93   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 9.
94  “Jordan Peterson Reveals His Thought Process and Writing Techniques –YouTube,”
accessed February 25, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKc4-iVJsL0.
95   Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Later prt. edition (Toronto:
Random House Canada, 2018), 368.
 Analog  215

recall to uncover unconventional insights. 96 This entails recognizing a cue

(in the form of a keyterm), and recalling a concept, thought or idea that
you’ve associated with the cue.

I refer to this as neuro-associative recall, and I hold that the Antinet develops
this ability much more than digital systems do.

For instance, I’ve employed the neuroimprinting process of writing by hand

and creating dedicated keyterms in my index for certain ideas, which has
resulted in my being able to instantly recall a concept or set of thoughts.
For instance, when presented with the concept of power law, or the pareto
principle or the 80/20 principle, I instantly think of the keyterm big impact.
The phrase big impact comes from a principle outlined by Nassim Nicholas
Taleb in The Black Swan. He discusses the tradeoff between the big picture
of things and micro theory. That is, the big events vs. micro events. He advises
one to focus on the big picture items that have a big impact.97

I’ve stamped this concept into my mind so that whenever I read something
new, I can instantly recall the thought. I know where in my Antinet to place
such similar thoughts that I come across while reading. This involves a strong
neuro-associative recall ability.

Neuro-associative recall involves the process of (1) consuming information

and inputs, and (2) recalling a concept associated with the new information.

This simple two-part process allows one to compare new information with
previous information to learn from and recognize surprising realizations.
Thus, it enables the Antinet to truly turn into a surprise-generator (one of
its core functions).

Let’s hone in on the second component of this process: “recall.”

96   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 112. Kahana points out that the technical term is “associative recall.”
97   Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2nd
ed., Random trade pbk. ed (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2010), 142ff.
216  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Memory researchers, when analyzing the critical process between an item’s

concept and a thought moving from short-term storage (such as in devel-
oping thoughts on main notes) to long-term storage (such as installing
the cards into your main box) demonstrate that the manner in which you
encode a concept turns out to have a substantial impact on recall.98 In other
words, speaking thoughts into a voice recorder, as opposed to typing them
out or writing them out by hand, has a drastically different result for how
well you’ll recall that item. Not only this, it has a drastically different result
for how well you will think through the ideas in the first place.

Scientists specializing in human memory have identified two mechanisms

for encoding thoughts. These items have an impact on your ability to later
recall the thoughts. I go into these concepts in more detail elsewhere in the
book, but suffice it to say that these concepts are maintenance rehearsal
(refreshing on the notecards by reviewing them), and elaborative rehearsal
(thinking through the thoughts by writing them out by hand).

Encompassing both of these mechanisms that increase the strength of

recall is the following observation: recall critically depends on the amount
of time an item has spent being processed in short-term storage.99 In other
words, the more time you spend processing ideas (as is involved in writing
by hand compared to typing digitally), the greater your ability to recall the
thought or concept later on.

If you still aren’t convinced in the power of writing by hand, I would like
to turn to two resources right now who will back me in this: (1) Science,
and (2) God.

HOW RESEARCH SUPPORTS WRITING BY HAND

There have been numerous studies outlining the benefits and power of
writing by hand. Let’s go through them now:

98   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 246.
99   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 246.
 Analog  217

One group of researchers conducted an experiment that tested subjects’

ability to recognize characters. One segment of subjects copied down the
characters by hand; the other segment typed the characters on a keyboard.

Results showed that when the characters had been learned

by typing, they were more frequently confused with their
mirror images than when they had been written by hand.
This handwriting advantage did not appear immediately, but
mostly [appeared] three weeks after the end of the training.100

In another study, a group of researchers studied the process of learning new

words. They compared three groups of people: those who wrote by hand
with pen, those wrote by hand with a digital pen, and those who typed on
a keyboard.

Some interesting results emerged from this study. First, “positive mood during
learning was significantly higher during handwriting than during typing.”101

Second, the researchers found that “movements involved in handwriting

allow a greater memorization of new words.”102

Last, “handwriting with a digital pen and tablet can increase the ability to
learn compared with keyboard typing once the individuals are accustomed
to it.”103 This last finding may prompt one to consider using a digital pen

100  Marieke Longcamp et al., “Remembering the Orientation of Newly Learned Characters

Depends on the Associated Writing Knowledge: A Comparison between Handwriting
and Typing,” Human Movement Science, Advances in Graphonomics: Studies on Fine
Motor Control, Its Development and Disorders, 25, no. 4 (October 1, 2006): 646–56.
101  Aya S. Ihara et al., “Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evi‑
dence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
15 (2021): 679191.
102  Aya S. Ihara et al., “Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evi‑
dence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
15 (2021): 679191.
103  Aya S. Ihara et al., “Advantage of Handwriting Over Typing on Learning Words: Evi‑
dence From an N400 Event-Related Potential Index,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
15 (2021): 679191.
218  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

or reMarkable table. I contend, however, that those routes miss the other
benefits of analog systems. That is, laying out the cards in front of you,
considering the external context associated with sifting through your cards,
and the other benefits outlined in this book. Regardless, let’s call a spade a
spade: even digital handwriting outshines typing in terms of learning new
concepts, words, and stamping such information on your mind.

Another study by a group of researchers compared the memory process for

subjects who wrote by hand vs. typed. Here’s what they found:

A comparison of recall and recognition for common words

demonstrates that memory is better for words when they
have been written down rather than when they are typed.
This provides additional support for the hypothesis that the
additional context provided by the complex task of writing
results in better memory. With the recent trend towards
electronic note taking, the educational and practical impli-
cations of these findings would suggest that performance
may be improved by using traditional paper-and-pen notes.104

Another researcher went deeper in exploring how handwriting seems to

positively impact the recognition process of memory. Here’s what she found:

My colleagues and I showed that early handwriting prac-

tice affects visual symbol recognition because it results
in the production of variable visual forms that aid in
symbol understanding.105

One of the more popular studies on handwriting vs. typing using a keyboard
is titled, The Pen Is Mightier than the Keyboard: Advantages of Longhand over

104   Timothy J. Smoker, Carrie E. Murphy, and Alison K. Rockwell, “Comparing Memory
for Handwriting versus Typing,” Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics
Society Annual Meeting 53, no. 22 (October 1, 2009): 1744–47
105  “The Importance of Handwriting Experience on the Development of the Literate Brain
—Karin H. James, 2017,” accessed August 13, 2021, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/
abs/10.1177/0963721417709821.
 Analog  219

Laptop Note Taking. Sönke Ahrens himself cites this research paper in his
book How to Take Smart Notes; yet puzzlingly enough, he seems to discard
such findings and explains to his readers that he opts for a digital Zettelkas-
ten due to mobility. I won’t get into my gripe with this right now. Let’s talk
about the study itself.

The researchers, Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer conducted

a study involving two groups of students. One group took notes using a
laptop; the other group of students took notes by hand.

What the researchers discovered was that taking notes digitally may be
“impairing learning because their use results in shallower processing.”106

Here is what the researchers discovered:

In three studies, we found that students who took notes

on laptops performed worse on conceptual questions than
students who took notes longhand. We show that whereas
taking more notes can be beneficial, laptop note takers’ ten-
dency to transcribe lectures verbatim rather than processing
information and reframing it in their own words is detrimental
to learning.107

While this study from 2014 supports my thesis that writing by hand is more
effective than writing digitally, I must share the latest research, which dis-
credits this finding (for sake of intellectual integrity). This brings us to a 2021
study titled, Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: A Direct Replication of Mueller
and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar
Studies. In this study, researchers replicated Mueller and Oppenheimer’s

106   Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,” Psychological Science 25, no. 6
( June 1, 2014): 1159–68.
107   Pam A. Mueller and Daniel M. Oppenheimer, “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Keyboard:
Advantages of Longhand Over Laptop Note Taking,” Psychological Science 25, no. 6
( June 1, 2014): 1159–68.
220  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

experiment. However, the results did not “support the idea that longhand note
taking improves immediate learning via better encoding of information.”108

So, what do we make of this? Which one is mightier: pen or keyboard?

On this matter, I will say this: the only right answer is test. Experiment for
yourself. For many, the pen is indeed mightier than the keyboard; however,
the popularity and cultural stigma of using pen and paper prevents many
from adopting longhand. There’s an underlying pressure to use digital tools.
There’s an implicit sense that in order to “be smart” (and technically sophis-
ticated), one must embrace the supposed superpower of digital notetaking
apps (with their illusive bubble graphs). I think this is incorrect. Many
people use digital tools for thinking when, in reality, they should be using
analog tools. The most recent research appears to support this conclusion.
In a study titled, Make a Note of It: Comparison in Longhand, Keyboard, and
Stylus notetaking Techniques, researchers found that “students performed
better using their preferred note-taking method.”109 The moral of the story?
Experiment for yourself. Determine your preferred notetaking method (and
don’t be surprised to find that it is, indeed, writing by hand)!

Before we conclude this section, let’s briefly turn to a different practice:

reading. Not only has writing on a digital device been shown to hamper
learning and comprehension, a recent study found that even reading com-
prehension is reduced when using a digital device.110 Even if you hold that
writing digitally is better for you, that doesn’t mean reading digitally is better
for you. In fact, reading digitally is probably not better for you (at least in
terms of comprehension).

108   Heather L. Urry et al., “Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet: A Direct Replication of
Mueller and Oppenheimer’s (2014) Study 1 Plus Mini Meta-Analyses Across Similar
Studies,” Psychological Science 32, no. 3 (March 1, 2021): 326–39.
109   Madelynn D. Shell, Maranda Strouth, and Alexandria M. Reynolds, “Make a Note of It:
Comparison in Longhand, Keyboard, and Stylus Note-Taking Techniques,” Learning
Assistance Review 26, no. 2 (2021): 1–21.
110   Motoyasu Honma et al., “Reading on a Smartphone Affects Sigh Generation, Brain
Activity, and Comprehension,” Scientific Reports 12, no. 1 ( January 31, 2022): 1589.
 Analog  221

In sum, the research makes it apparent: not only is the pen mightier than
the keyboard, the physical book is, too (at least, for many of us)!

HOW GOD SUPPORTS WRITING BY HAND

If you won’t take my word for it, and if you don’t care about the scientific
literature supporting the process of writing by hand, well, then I suppose
you can take the word of another entity. He goes by the name of…GOD!

For the LORD said, “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets” (Habakkuk
2:2 [NRSV]), or Isaiah 8:1 (NRSV): “Then the LORD said to me, take a
large tablet and write on it in common characters.”

There you have it. God espouses the power of writing by hand.

I lay forth this reason slightly tongue-in-cheek. I’d prefer you adopt the
practice of writing by hand by testing it out yourself (or from reading the
scientific literature). After all, I may have ever-so-slightly taken these quotes
from God out of context. But since these two verses were presented to me
while attending church with my family one day, I figured I might as well
extract them onto a bibcard and share them with you here.

CONCLUSION
There you have it. I’ve laid out in detail the power of analog, the power of
writing by hand, the people who write by hand, and the science behind
analog. Heck, I’ve even thrown in God as a reason to take writing by hand
seriously. If you’re still not convinced by the power of analog, well then, that
means only one thing: even God can’t help you. I’m kidding, of course, but
seriously: try the Antinet yourself. Only after that should you determine if
it’s truly as powerful as what I (and others) say.
 C H A PT E R S E V E N
�

NUMERIC-ALPHA

“Since all notes have fixed numbers, you can add as many references to them as
you may want. Central concepts can have many links which show on which other
contexts we can find materials relevant for them. Through references, we can,
without too much work or paper, solve the problem of multiple storage.”

—Niklas Luhmann, Communication with Noteboxes1

NUMERIC-ALPHA ADDRESSES ARE

ARGUABLY THE MOST IMPORTANT
COMPONENT OF THE ANTINET

A lberto cevolini, a scholar who has studied a vast amount of knowl-

edge systems throughout history, observes that Luhmann’s numbering
of entries is too important to brush over too quickly. In the scholar’s view,
Luhmann’s numeric-alpha scheme represents one of the most interesting
evolutionary transitions in the field of knowledge management systems.2

The most important feature of the Antinet is the one that generates its most
important results. To Luhmann the most important result of the Antinet
concerns its inner life.

1  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
2  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 27.

222
 Numeric-Alpha  223

The inner life of the Antinet is brought about by two things.

First, it revolves around creating a communication partner (a second mind,

a ghost in the box, and an alter-ego).

In the beginning of his paper on his Antinet, Luhmann states something

rather radical: he says that “it is easy to think of systems theory” as the way
to describe the Antinet. After all, “we consider ourselves to be systems.” But
he goes on to explain that he chooses “communication theory” to describe
his system. “One of us listens to the other.” He continues, “This needs to
be explained.”3

The radical notion centers on his usage of the terms us and we. What he’s
referring to is the communication and dialogue that takes place between him
and his Antinet, yet the way in which he’s referring to it makes him sound
more like a schizophrenic than the most important German sociologist of
the twentieth century!

But if we decide to take Luhmann’s word for it, perhaps we could learn
something from this. Perhaps there really is something to the idea of creating
a communication partner out of an analog notebox.

How do we go about experiencing such a phenomenon of creating a com‑

munication partner?

According to Luhmann, it requires giving each card a firm fixed place through
use of a numeric-alpha address. “This decision about structure…” according
to Luhmann, “makes possible the creation of high complexity in the card file
and thus makes possible its ability to communicate in the first place.”4

3   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
4   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. Emphasis added.
224  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The second component of the inner life of the Antinet is its ability to become
a surprise-generator through its ability to produce fortunate accidents. “The
role of accidents in the theory of science is not disputed,” writes Luhmann.
“If you employ evolutionary models, accidents assume a most important role.”5
These accidents are really accidental insights that come about by stumbling
upon ideas or thoughts while exploring the physical form and nature of your
knowledge (by sifting through your cards by hand).

These two components describe the most important aspect of Luhmann’s

system, its “inner life.” As Luhmann writes:

For the inner life of the card index, for the arrangement
of notes or its mental history, it is most important that
we decide against the systematic ordering in accordance
with topics and sub-topics and choose instead a firm fixed
place (Stellordnung).6

The most important component for establishing the inner life of this system, and
giving it a firm fixed place, revolves around one thing: numeric-alpha addresses.

This makes it quite puzzling when so-called Zettelkasten experts, productiv-

ity experts, PKM experts, and second-brain proselytizers take a nonchalant
approach to explaining numeric-alpha addresses.

THE HISTORY OF NUMERIC-ALPHA

ADDRESSES IN NOTECARD SYSTEMS
Niklas Luhmann was not the first person to devise the notion of using numer-
ic-alpha addresses on notecards. Fridericus Sidelius and Paulus Sigismundus
recommended notecards (excerpta schedacea) in a booklet they published
in 1713. In the booklet they stated “it would be sufficient to preserve index
cards in distinguished files and number them consecutively, while leaving

5   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
6   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Numeric-Alpha  225

a margin [for] later gluing or stitching together all cards belonging to the
same entry.”7

A novel knowledge development system was devised by Thomas Harrison

more than fifty years prior to the publishing of the booklet by Sidelius and
Sigismundus. Harrison’s system was called the “Ark of Studies.” Harrison
advised that the notecard-like slips of paper in the Ark of Studies could be
arranged in alphabetical order, or, could be numbered.8

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Johann Benedict Metzler recom-

mended numbering notecards because “compared with alphabetical order,
numerical order is clearer and avoids the inconvenience of empty spaces.”9

The history of numeric-alpha notes stands quite rich. Many thinkers stumbled
onto the system because it simply makes sense. John Locke even devised his
own numeric-alpha system for his notes.10 In Antonin Sertillanges’s Antinet,
which he outlines in his 1921 book, The Intellectual Life, he advises that each
slip should be numbered in the corner or in the middle of the slip.11

Luhmann never shared specifically where he got the idea for his Antinet.
Nor did he state where the idea for using numeric-alpha addresses came
from. However, I believe much of the system’s essence derived from the
first job he held during his short legal career. The first job he took after law
school was at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court. His task was to
organize a reference system for administrative court decisions. According
to Luhmann, “the court should be able to see what higher court decisions

7   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 27.
8   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
9   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
10  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
11   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 196.
226  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

were available at any given time.”12 It is there, I believe, that Luhmann either
developed or learned the reference system that gave birth to the Zettelkasten.
He worked at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court precisely around
the time he created his first Zettelkasten system (1952–1953).

Recently, a group of researchers gathered on Luhmann’s ninetieth birthday

to discuss Luhmann’s time at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court.
Of Luhmann’s work during that time, one scholar noted that there are no
longer any physical traces; all traces of it were destroyed in accordance with
regulations.13 However, from personnel notes about Luhmann at the time,
we learn several things, including that Luhmann built out a notebox in the
court’s library.

The scheme used in the German legal administration system relies on

each document having a “file number” (Aktenzeichen).14 This number is,
separated by a slash (/), is unique (no file can have the same number), and
can be combined with alphabetical characters. An example Aktenzeichen
is 211321/37a.

In brief, Luhmann’s work at Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court greatly

shaped the origins of the numeric-alpha address. If Luhmann didn’t learn
about Aktenzeichen at the Lüneburg Higher Administrative Court, then
at the very least, it derived from his time studying law and using such a
reference system.

THE ANATOMY OF NUMERIC-ALPHA

ADDRESSES
The anatomy of numeric-alpha addresses is quite simple. Each address starts
with a number and can be combined with an alphabetical character that
serves as a variant of the idea. From there, the addresses “branch-down,” and

12 Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 11.
13  Timon Beyes et al., eds., Niklas Luhmann am OVG Lüneburg: zur Entstehung der
Systemtheorie, Soziologische Schriften, Band 86 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2021), 15.
14  “Aktenzeichen (Deutschland),” in Wikipedia, February 3, 2022, https://de.wikipedia.
org/w/index.php?title=Aktenzeichen(Deutschland)&oldid=219821207.
 Numeric-Alpha  227

allow users to create more cards by adding a forward slash (/) , a period (.),
a comma (,), or even by just appending the address with alternating numbers
and alphabetical characters. Personally, I prefer forward slashes (/).

Let’s use a hypothetical example. Here is an example of an arbitrary set

of branches:

– 3000–Natural Science
* 3100–Biology
* 3110–Zoology
* 3118–Specific Animals of Interest
* 3118/1–Horses
* 3118/2–Donkeys
* 3118/3–Turtles (I like turtles)

Now, let’s say later on you want to add a card for a mule (the offspring of a
male donkey and a female horse).

You’re faced with a few options. In fact, you can really do anything (as long
as you link to the Mule card). However let’s say you wish to place the Mule
card after Donkey and before Turtles. What do you do? It’s simple. You create
a card 3118/2a for Mules.

It then looks like this:

– 3118/1–Horses
– 3118/2–Donkeys
– 3118/2A–Mules
– 3118/3–Turtles

The 3118/2a is the numeric-alpha address for mules. It never changes.

As Luhmann writes, it has a fixed position, which is a core element that
gives your Antinet its inner life. It’s such a simple discipline and practice
yet, over time, you’ll see that this simple concept turns your Antinet into a
communication partner and a brilliant system for generating breakthroughs
(by way of accidents).
228  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

NUMERIC-ALPHA ADDRESSES
IN REAL LIFE
When you start looking for them, you’ll start to see numeric-alpha addresses
everywhere; for instance, freeway exit numbers.

Numeric-alpha addresses in the Antinet operate much like the addresses

allotted to freeway exits. Instead of having to remember full names, one can
simply look for a numeric-alpha address like 9b. The 9b simply routes you
to a location. It does not indicate a hierarchical relationship with exits 9 or
9a; it just indicates that the exit will take you to a different location in the
world. This is precisely how such addresses work in the Antinet; they route
you to different locations in your tree of knowledge.
 Numeric-Alpha  229

NUMERIC-ALPHA ADDRESSES UNLOCK

THE SELF-REFERENTIAL NATURE OF
THE ANTINET
The concept of self-reference refers to the notion of a sentence, idea, formula,
function, or a system that refers to its self (or itself). For instance, the term
“I” in English is a self-reference to oneself. Or take the concept def init(self):
in the Python programming language used in computing). It enables a class to
create objects that refer to itself and that call itself (reference itself). Self-ref-
erential statements are often paradoxical and can be considered recursive.

The scholar Alberto Cevolini observes that an numeric-alpha address “ensures

utmost autonomy, i.e. self-referential closure of the machine.”15

The self-referential closure of the machine is a critical piece of the Antinet’s

architecture. It’s the key piece that transforms the Antinet into a cybernetic
system (a system that achieves a goal through feedback and communication).

The numeric-alpha addresses enable the Antinet to refer to itself and its
own individual parts. It’s a key piece for creating the personality (the ghost,
the alter ego). As a result, observes Cevolini, “interaction” with the Antinet,
becomes “a type of communication”—an internal dialogue.16

Luhmann was intimately familiar with the power of self-referential systems.

His magnum opus social theory was largely predicated on society as a
self-referential system.17 As such, Luhmann designed the Antinet with the
capability to refer to itself. Just as a human can refer to its own parts (like
the left hand), the Antinet can refer to its own parts (its thoughts identified
by its unique numeric-alpha card addresses).

15   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016),
28. Emphasis added.
16  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
17  Cf. Jan-Peter Vos, The Making of Strategic Realities: An Application of the Social Systems
Theory of Niklas Luhmann, ECIS Dissertation Series 11 (Eindhoven: Eindhoven Centre
for Innovation Studies, 2002).
230  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann was also greatly influenced by the idea of self-description. He was

inspired by the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German phi-
losopher who wrote extensively about self-description by way of making
the case for philosophy as the apotheosis of science.18 Luhmann’s theories
attempted to adhere to the idea of self-description. He sought to devise a
theory of society that explained itself through itself.19

For a fun illustration of self-referential systems, let’s take an example from

my own Antinet. I have a card at the very beginning (card address 0).

My own Antinet essentially introduces himself and refers to his own parts.

This may seem absurd, but Luhmann did similar things in his own Antinet.20
It keeps things light and fun!

18  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 35.
19  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 37.
20“ZK II: Zettel 9/8j—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed February 22, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8j_V.
 Numeric-Alpha  231

THE SCIENCE BEHIND NUMERIC-ALPHA

ADDRESSES
Throughout this book I emphasize over and over that Luhmann’s system was
a deliberate creation. It mirrors how human memory works to a surprisingly
close degree.

The numeric-alpha addresses transform the Antinet’s network into something

akin to auto-associations discussed in memory science. An auto-association
is built on content-addressable memory, similar to how computes work: “the
bits themselves are meaningless, and the bytes made out of them have
arbitrary addresses, like houses on a street, which have nothing to do with
their contents.”21

This is also how the Antinet works thanks to the numeric-alpha addresses.
“Memory locations are accessed by their addresses.”22 The way in which you
explore these addresses is through the keyterms which are housed in the
index, serving as a cue to light up areas of your mind.

Multi-storage models posited by those who study human memory indicate

why numeric-alpha addresses are critical. Johannes Schmidt explains that,
“embedding a topic in various contexts gives rise to different lines of informa-
tion by means of opening up different realms of comparison in each case.”23

THE CONCEPT OF COMPARISON

Let’s talk about the concept of comparison briefly. Steven Pinker points out
an important point relating to the concept of comparison in his book How
the Mind Works. Pinker writes that without specifying a goal, “the very idea
of intelligence is meaningless.”24

21  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 104.
22  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 104.
23  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 299. Emphasis added.
24  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 61.
232  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

And what is intelligence? It’s something that comes from information, thus
bringing up the question, What is information? According to Pinker, “infor-
mation is a correlation between two things that is produced by a lawful
process.”25 For instance, the rings of a tree stump compared with the age of
the tree. The Antinet is constructed around this concept. Before you install
anything into the Antinet, it forces comparison and correlation. As Luhmann
puts it, “Information, accordingly, originates only in systems which possess a
comparative schema—even if this amounts only to: ‘this or something else.’ ”26

THE CONCEPT OF RELATIONS

“Life is just one damn relatedness after another.”

—Julian Huxley27

When you install anything in the Antinet, you’re relating the concept on the
note to the most similar concept already installed in your Antinet. You’re
comparing, contrasting, and correlating the thought with all other thoughts
in long-term storage.

This introduces us to the concept that the Antinet is really a relation of

“(selective) relations,” as Johannes Schmidt puts it.28 For instance, when you
read, there’s a relation between the book and your mind.29 These are what
one would call selective relations. You’re selecting information from a book
that you relate to another thought in your mind. From here, you relate this
information to other thoughts already installed in your Antinet. You do

25  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 65.
26  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
27  Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger,
Expanded Third Edition, ed. Peter D. Kaufman, 3rd edition (Walsworth Publishing
Company, 2005).
28  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
29  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 7.
 Numeric-Alpha  233

this by assigning them a numeric-alpha address and placing them next to,
or under, the most similar card.

At this point we have a relation of selective relations.

However, with remotelinks, which will be detailed later, we can link to other
relations of selective relations on other branches of our Antinet.

In effect, we have a relation of relations of selective relations. Basically, the

Antinet is a spider-like web of knowledge you’ve selected from your readings.

If you find this a bit confusing, don’t worry. You’re not the only one. I’ll
explain it in a clearer manner later in this book—specifically, in the chapter
on selection.

In brief, the Antinet and its numeric-alpha address scheme models itself after
the science of human memory. Creating a note in a stream of consciousness
state mirrors the short-term storage concept in human memory. In turn, this
opens up different realms of information when the card is installed in your
Antinet (the long-term storage component of human memory). The different
realms of information are powered by the core process built into the Antinet:
comparing thoughts and deciding what they’re related to (this or something
else, as Luhmann says).30

THE RESISTANCE OF NUMERIC-ALPHA

ADDRESSES
For some reason, numeric-alpha addresses never took off within the land of
digital Zettelkasten. Why? Probably because it was perceived as unnecessary.31

I’ve brought up Johannes Schmidt’s statement that numeric-alpha addresses

serve as an essential prerequisite for creativity in Luhmann’s system.32 Yet

30  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
31   In reality, the only thing unnecessary in digital Zettelkasten is the ‘digital’ part!
32  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
234  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I’m met with resistance to this assertion. Some object that my reasoning
is “an appeal to authority and not a proper argument.”33 This objection is
puzzling because the entire premise of using a Zettelkasten in the first place
comes from an appeal to authority.34 Regardless, there’s not much that can
be accomplished through theoretical debate on this front. In reality, one
must investigate the power of numeric-alpha addresses for oneself. This is
only achieved through experimenting with the system and experiencing
it first-hand.

With that said, I’d like to caution against the common convention used in
digital Zettelkasten systems today: human-readable note titles. For instance,
in writing a note on the definition of self-reference, many digital Zettelkasten
practitioners would name the note or filename Definition of Self-reference,
or Self-reference (Definition), or some other scheme. However, in an Antinet,
the note would receive a numeric-alpha address like 4214/1A/0.

Here’s why this is important:

A numeric-alpha card address instantiates a thought. A thought is an incommu-

nicable event that takes place in the mind. You can do your best to represent
a thought by communicating it as clearly as possible; however, you cannot
“losslessly” export that thought and perfectly install it in the mind of the receiver.

As such, a thought is encompassed by many things, including words, images,

and other elements of reality. Giving it a numeric-alpha address is a way
of treating it properly. When you try to encapsulate the entire thought in

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution

in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 299.
33  sscheper, “Luhmann’s Antinet Zettelkasten Was Not Forced Into Its Structure Due to
‘Technological Limitations,’” Reddit Post, R/Zettelkasten, September 22, 2021, www.reddit.
com/r/Zettelkasten/comments/psyss0/luhmannsAntinetzettelkastenwasnotforcedinto/.
34  sascha, “Introduction to the Zettelkasten Method,” Zettelkasten Method, 54:00 100AD,
https://www.zettelkasten.de/introduction/. “The Zettelkasten, as we know it today, re-
ally took off with Niklas Luhmann, the godfather of the Zettelkasten Method, the most
powerful tool for thinking and note taking out there… Niklas Luhmann was a highly
productive social scientist. He published 50 books and over 600 articles.(1) He didn’t
achieve this on his own. He had quite a companion…”
 Numeric-Alpha  235

a human-readable note title, you’re watering it down into a mere artificial

phrase. The artificial phrase can never encapsulate the true nature of the
thought (which includes the associations that also arise when thinking of
it). This is why giving the thought a numeric-alpha address is preferred.

The thought is the thought. It is not, and should not, be watered down by
artificial phrases (aka, a note title).

In human memory, a thought is a collection of many things; and it’s

melded together with links. A thought does not come packed with a pretty
human-readable title name, and neither should be the product of your
thought, in written form.

NUMERIC-ALPHA ADDRESSES ENABLE

LINKS

“Possibility of linking (Verweisungsmöglichkeiten). Since all notes have fixed

numbers, you can add as many references to them as you may want.”
– Niklas Luhmann, Communication with Noteboxes35

The numeric-alpha addresses make it possible to do another critical

thing: linking.

THE TWO CLASSES OF LINKS

There are two classes of links in an Antinet:

1. Internal Links
2. External Links

You can think of it like this: internal links refer to links within your own mind
(i.e., within the Antinet). External links refer to links to another’s mind (i.e.,
external to your Antinet).

35  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
236  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I. Internal Links
An internal link is a link to an area or card in your Antinet. There are several
types of internal links:

1. MAINCARD LINKS (AKA, “CARDLINKS”)

The majority of internal links in your Antinet are maincard links (aka, card-
links). These are links to cards in the main box of your Antinet. Such links
look like 5425/2a, 1337/1b, etc.

There are several types of cardlinks: (1) Stemlinks, (2) Branchlinks, and (3)
Remotelinks. We’ll briefly cover these now.

i. stemlinks
Stemlinks are links that are relative to the current stem of thought that
you’re on. For instance, say the current card you’re on is 4214/2e/3a. If you
see a link on the card that simply reads /1, this tells you the link is to card
4214/2e/3a/1. The /1 is a stemlink.

Stemlinks are similar to the concept relative links within the world of web
development. Luhmann employed this concept in his own Antinet, which
Johannes Schmidt refers as “single references.”36

For instance, on the card 17.1b9, you’ll see the red numbers 1 and 2.
photo credit:
“ZK I: Zettel 17,1b9 ‑Niklas
Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed
July 15, 2021, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.
de/bestand/zettelkasten/
zettel/ZK_1_NB_17-
1b9_V.

36  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 303.
 Numeric-Alpha  237

The red 1 and 2 are stemlinks. They are links to the cards 17.1b9.1 and 17.1b9.2.

This is helpful when you’re writing in a stream of consciousness manner. It

sends a signal in the form of a reminder that you intend to elaborate on certain
sentences by giving them a dedicated card in the following stem of thought.

ii. branchlinks
Branchlinks are a concept I started using for the sake of saving space. For
instance, say I’m writing a note on the card 5218/2a. If I want to link to
another card, say 5218/1/1a/2b/1, instead of writing out the 5218, I’ll use
the tilde character (~). In computing, the tilde character typically refers to
the current user’s home directory. Within the world of the Antinet, it refers
to the current card’s branch. Therefore, instead of writing 5218/1/1a/2b/1,
I write ~/1/1a/2b/1, which is a link within the current branch I’m in (5218).
The ~/1/1a/2b/1 is a branchlink, which is shorthand for 5218/1/1a/2b/1.

iii. remotelinks
Say you’re writing a note within the card 4214/5a/2 and you create a link
to the card 1334/2a/4. What you have just created is a remotelink. You’re
linking to a card in a remote area in your tree of knowledge. Remotelinks
are essentially the full card address of another card that resides in a relatively
remote part of your Antinet.

Think of remotelinks kind of like vines on a tree. A vine will take you from
one branch of a tree, to a more remote branch of the tree.

the science of maincard links

Given that Luhmann was deliberate in the design of the Antinet’s structure,
we can begin to see the brilliance in how it mirrors the way human memory
works.37 In the field of memory science, stemlinks are what are called forward

37  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. As covered in this book, Luhmann was not forced
into the Antinet’s architecture. There were other options at his disposal. He could have
chosen a commonplace book structure, or a categorically-organized notecard system.
As Schmidt says, “At first glance, Luhmann’s organization of his collection appears to lack
238  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

and backward associations.38 The branchlinks are items located nearby, and in
one’s general neighborhood. Yet, like human memory, the further away and
the more items there are in between each memory, the association decreas-
es.39 Remotelinks mimic “remote associations” as understood in the study of
human memory.40 Again, the further away the memories are from one another,
the further their association is (unless they’re connected via remotelinks).

when in doubt, use full cardlinks

Both stemlinks and branchlinks are shorthand and can save time. When in
doubt, the safest bet is to write the full card address. Regardless, it’s nice to
have stemlinks and branchlinks at your disposal when creating notes.

2. KEYTERM LINKS
Keyterm links are links that point you to a keyterm in the index box. For
instance, on some of my notes I’ll have a keyterm written and underlined in
green or blue ink. This tells me to refer to the index and look up that term.

For instance, here’s a collective of links for the section I’m writing about
right now (on the concept of links).

any clear order; it even seems chaotic. However, this was a deliberate choice.”
38  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 11.
39  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 11.
40  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 7, 11.
 Numeric-Alpha  239

You’ll see the following keyterm links in green: Association, Links, and
Relate (Relations). This tells me to go look up those keyterms in the index.
When I look them up, I can then build out more content for this section
from those keyterm cards.

For instance, here’s the keyterm for Association found in my index box:

From here, I can then add any sections related to this section on Links as I see fit.

II. External Links (aka, ExRefs)

External links (aka, ExRefs) are external references to an outside source of
knowledge (like a book, YouTube video, podcast, etc.). Also included in the
external link is the page number (or timestamp) from the source.

My ExRefs are always written in red pen, and they resemble that of a footnote.
There are two formats of an ExRef. They either begin with a b. or an r.. We’ll
cover both types of ExRefs now.

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY BOX EXREFS

The Antinet’s bibliography box is an analog reference manager. It enables
one to organize and manage their bibliography references using “bibcards.”
More on bibcards will be covered later. Basically, they’re cards that contain
the details of the book you engage with (or podcast, video, website, etc.).
240  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The first type of ExRef begins with a lowercase-b, followed by a period (b.).
Here’s an example from the card 4214/4/1bd/1.

Note the red 1 on the card resembling a footnote. This points to the item
circled in red: b.NakladovaJohann, 199. This is an ExRef. It signals that the
idea originated from the bibcard, b.NakladovaJohann, and from the page
number 199. Think of the b.NakladovaJohann kind of like a tag (in digital
speak). It’s a short phrase that enables one to quickly navigate to the reference
in the bib box. If we look up b.NakladovaJohann in the bib box, we find the
full details of this reference:
 Numeric-Alpha  241

In brief, this tells us that the idea on the card 4214/4/1BD/1 originated from
page 199 in the chapter, “Johann Amos Comenius: Early Modern Metaphysics
of Knowledge and Ars Excerpendi,” by Iveta Nakládalová, which is found
in the book titled, Forgetting Machines.

2. DIGITAL REFERENCE MANAGER EXREFS

When people talk about a reference manager, they really mean a digital
reference manager. This is a digital tool for storing bibliographic references.
These encompass books, articles, papers, videos, podcasts, or other media.

While I am a major proponent of using the analog medium as a thinking

system, I am not a luddite. There are clear advantages in using a digital ref-
erence manager, as well. First, digital reference managers allow you to store
local copies of web pages. This ensures that you’ll have the source even if
the web page is later deleted. And second, digital reference managers are
convenient in that they automatically format references in whatever style
guide you use (AP Style, Chicago Style, MLA Style, etc.).

There are a number of digital apps to choose from when it comes to a refer-
ence manager. I’ve tried a handful of them, yet the one I always go back to
is called Zotero.41 It’s simple, it’s free and it has all the features you’ll need.

There are cases in which I’ll read a web page that is brief enough that it’s
unnecessary to create a dedicated hand-written bibcard for it. Yet, at the
same time, there will be ideas in it that I’ll want to reference in a maincard.
In such instances, I first add the article to Zotero using a one-click browser
extension. Then, I create a tag for the referenced article that begins with a
lowercase-r, followed by a period (r.). Unlike the b., the r. tells me the item
is stored in my digital reference manager.

Here’s an example of a digital reference manager ExRef from my own Antinet:

41  https://www.zotero.org/
242  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The r.Zetteldan.1 tells me to look this tag up in Zotero. When I do this, I’m
pointed to a blog post about the Zettelkasten written by a software developer
named Daniel Lüdecke.42 The r.Zetteldan.1 is an ExRef stored in Zotero. Such
ExRefs are quite useful. Digital reference manager ExRefs are yet another
tool you have at your disposal.

Now that you know the fundamentals of links in the Antinet, let’s jump back
into the land of theory. We’ll cap this chapter off by discussing the real-life
memory science of links.

The Science and Importance of Links

“Each note is only an element that derives its quality from the web
of references and cross references within the system. A note that
is not linked to this web becomes lost in the file; the file forgets it.”
—Niklas Luhmann43

42  “Luhmanns Arbeitsweise Im Elektronischen Zettelkasten,” Strenge Jacke! (blog), Sep‑

tember 8, 2015, https://strengejacke.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/luhmanns-arbeits-
weise-im -elektronischen-zettelkasten/.
43 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
 Numeric-Alpha  243

“As discussed by philosophers since ancient times, our memo-

ries appear to be organized in terms of associative structures
formed between items that are contiguous in space and time.
Two items are said to be associated if presentation of one leads
to thinking of (or responding with) the other.”

—Michael J. Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory44

In memory-science terminology, links are associations. When trying to

think of a memory, you’re undergoing something called the process of
retrieval. The most widely accepted theories of how retrieval works revolve
around association.45

Association is the raw material powering two things: (1) biological learning,
and (2) artificial learning (specifically, deep learning).46

The manner in which associations are built within digital notetaking apps
look nice and pretty. They create nifty-looking graphs and visualizations.
However, such tools are not structured in a way to optimize learning. Antinets,
on the other hand, are built entirely around association. You cannot install
a note in the Antinet without associating it with the neighboring notes. As
a result a chain-reaction takes place in the system. All notes are essentially
chain-linked to every other note in the system. This is the concept of asso-
ciative chaining, which I detail later in this book.

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution

in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
44   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 111. Emphasis added.
45   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 27.
46  “ What Are Neural Networks?,” August 3, 2021, https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/
neural-networks. “Neural networks, also known as artificial neural networks (ANNs)
or simulated neural networks (SNNs), are a subset of machine learning and are at the
heart of deep learning algorithms. Their name and structure are inspired by the human
brain, mimicking the way that biological neurons signal to one another.”
244  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It seems like a rather fringe area of focus, yet the study of how association occurs
in the brain ended up revolutionizing the world. This field of study sparked
the discovery of neural networks in the 1970s.47 Artificial neural networks
sit at the heart of deep learning, which is a subfield of machine learning.48
If you use Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google, Amazon, Netflix—and
really almost any large-scale consumer internet product—there’s a high
probability you’re interacting with an artificial neural network.49 Even if
you’re in a car, there’s a chance you’re interacting with a neural network.50
All of these technologies are powered by the science that emerged from
the question of how linking works in the human brain. This is why I’m
bothering to spend time emphasizing the power and importance of links
and associations!

To recap, the raw material of deep learning is a neural network, and the raw
material of neural networks are the thing the Antinet is built on: associations.

If you’re aiming to build a knowledge development system that increases

learning and unconventional insights, then it’s important to understand
how associations work (and how they’re structured within the Antinet).
The human memory operates with concepts analogous to the types of asso-
ciations in the Antinet (stemlinks, branchlinks, and remotelinks). Digital
notetaking apps are not structured in such a way. The digital notetaking
preachers seem to treat such a structure as a matter of personal preference
which, I hold, is a grave mistake.51

47   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 142.
48  “ What Are Neural Networks?,” August 3, 2021, https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/
neural-networks.
49  “Neural Networks: Applications in the Real World,” upGrad blog, February 6, 2018,
https://www.upgrad.com/blog/neural-networks-applications-in-the-real-world/.
50   “Artificial Intelligence & Autopilot,” Tesla, accessed November 9, 2021, https://www.
tesla.com/AI.
51   For instance digital Note-taking preachers hold note titles, like numeric-alpha ad-
dresses as a personal choice and not critically important. See: David Kadavy, Digital
Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc., 2022), 38ff.
 Numeric-Alpha  245

Even though digital notetaking preachers get a lot of things wrong, they
do get some things correct. One author gets it correct by emphasizing the
importance of association in an abstracted information network, yet he still
under-represents the depth of its importance.52

You see, associations in a neural network are not opt-in. They’re not just a
clever strategy. They’re not some hip, new workflow method. They’re not
a best-practice one ought to follow for good knowledge work. Associations
are not optional in an Antinet, they are a requirement. Like a neural network,
associations are a requirement in an Antinet. Before you can install anything
into your Antinet, it must be associated with, and installed near, its most
related note.

The association composition in an Antinet is not one of mere opinion.

It ought to mirror the two properties related to how long-term storage in
human memory works. The Antinet stores associations among items, and
it stores associations between items and context.

The Antinet’s tree structure, with proximity-based associations as well as

context-based associations (in terms of stems and branches), serves as a
perfect model for how human memory works. It’s the model the Antinet
is built on.

The concept the Antinet forces is that of working out your neuro-associative
recall “muscle.” It does this by forcing you to think and associate. It requires
that you compare information you happen upon in your reading with the
knowledge stored in the long-term location within your second mind (your
Antinet). Only after this exercise of comparison can you actually install
information in your Antinet. Again, this process is not some best-practice
principle by which one might manually integrates information (such as in
a digital Zettelkasten workflow). Rather, it’s built into the core foundation
of the analog system. Every time you develop new knowledge, the Antinet
forces a process that models how the human brain works. To tie the Antinet

52  David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc.,
2022), 14.
246  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

in with physiological neural networks one last time, we can point to the
process of comparing new and old information, which is impaired with
some patients suffering anterograde amnesia.53 Basically those with impaired
neuro-associative recall ability are able to create new maincard notes. How-
ever, they do not possess the ability to install those new notes. They do not
have the ability to exercise neuro-associative recall and delineate where each
new idea they encounter should be stored. Basically, they have no index box
which enables them to navigate their tree of knowledge.

CONCLUSION
We’ve covered quite a bit in this chapter. We’ve surveyed the history of
numeric-alpha addresses. We’ve also explored the science and fundamental
components of such. Numeric-alpha addresses unlock a critical aspect of
the Antinet: links. We’ve gone into detail on the different types of links, as
well as the memory science behind links.

At this point you’re beginning to understand the depth of the Antinet.

This isn’t some trivial notebox system. It’s much greater than that. In the
next chapter, we’ll dive deeper into the depths of the Antinet. We’ll cover
another critical component which makes the Antinet the ultimate system
for developing knowledge: its tree structure.

53  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 225.
 C H A PT E R E I G H T
�

TREE

“[The Antinet has] the possibility of arbitrary internal branching. We do not need
to add notes at the end, but we can connect them anywhere—even to a particular
word in the middle of a continuous text.”

–Niklas Luhmann, Communication with Noteboxes1

I ‌ this section i detail the structure of the Antinet. In brief, I hold that
n
the best representation of the Antinet’s structure is a tree. The idea of using
a tree as a metaphor of Antinet-like knowledge systems is not new. In fact,
it’s a rather ancient idea. Early modern scholars referred to their Antinet
systems as sylva, which in Latin means “forest.” It was described in this
manner due to an Antinet’s characteristic of “arranged chaos.”2

I contend that the very best systems possess tree-like structures. For instance,
Github is built on a tree-like structure called Git. When Github arrived to
the version-control arena (i.e., the arena of managing different software
versions), Git quickly blew away the other systems. The other systems were
rife with horrid version conflicts and syncing issues.

1   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
2   Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories (Brill,
2016), 184.

247
248  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The tree structure of the Antinet creates many of the system’s irreplaceable
benefits. Benefits include increasing the likelihood of breakthrough insights
by way of surprise, and many more benefits.

In addition, there’s a metaphysical power to the idea of tree-like structures.

Not only do tree structures have applications of the practical sort, trees serve
as a very powerful symbol. Indeed, trees stand as the central motif for some
of humankind’s most moving belief systems. All of these items, and more,
will be explored in detail in this chapter.

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE STRUCTURES

Before we dive into the structure of the Antinet, let’s survey a few types of
knowledge structures.

THE “RIGID” STRUCTURE

The so-called “rigid” knowledge structure is reflected in systems that are
organized by hierarchical taxonomy. This type of structure can be represented
in folders and sub-folders in a computer file system.

The basic structure looks like this:

–
Topic 1
* Subtopic 1
* Sub-subtopic 1
* Etc.
– Topic 2
– Etc.

Examples of systems that use this structure include (1) the Dewey Decimal
Classification System, (2) the Library of Congress Classification System,
and (3) notebox systems organized by topic or category.

It’s become commonplace for personal knowledge management (“PKM”)

experts to advise against these rigid structures.3 However, it is unfair to write

3  “1c.3 Using Folders—LYT Curriculum / Unit 1 - PKM & Idea Emergence,” Linking Your
 tree  249

off such structures completely. They’re useful in that they keep things simple
and easy to understand. Still, rigid structures lack the features that make the
Antinet great: linking thoughts, developing thoughts, and creating a unique
personality out of your system that evolves over time.

THE “FLUID” STRUCTURE

When rigid structures are introduced by PKM experts, they’re implied as
being “bad.” The “good” structure is then introduced: so-called fluid structures.

Fluid structures are types of systems built with tags, keyword search, and
wikilinks. These structures allow users to create linked bubble graphs that
give the illusion of viewing your mind.

For instance, a graph like this:

photo credit: Sbae2020, English: Knowledge Graph for

Evans-Tibbs Artists, August 2021, August 2021, Own work,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:KnowledgeGraph02.png.

However, these structures are a mere illusion. They’re pretty to look at;
however they are not the best structure for developing and evolving thought.

Thinking, accessed October 25, 2021, https://forum.linkingyourthinking.com/t/1c-3-

using-folders /142/2.
250  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Rather than being a useful representation of your brain, think of such struc-
tures as a pile of leaves on the ground with vines that connect them.

Digital Zettelkasten systems look much like this structure. You’re left with
either a blob of loosely connected spoke-wheel bubbles, or a needlessly
long document of notes. This is not the best way for your brain to process
information. Nor is it the best way to create knowledge. It’s not representative
of how human memory works, either.

Your memory, and more specifically, each individual memory, is akin to a

tree. Yes, a tree. A tree wherein certain leaves, attached via vines, are lit up
with a lightning bolt of activity (kind of like Christmas tree lights).

In the science of human memory, this is known as distributed representation.4

The Antinet’s structure is built with distributed representation in its core.
Digital Zettelkasten apps do not possess such a structure. They are based
on surface-level wikilinks, not on a branched and chain-linked structures of
associations (generated by numeric-alpha addresses). This is one of many

4   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 26.
 tree  251

reasons I hold the Antinet as a superior knowledge system compared to

digital notetaking apps (with wikilink capabilities).

With the Antinet, the structure is different. It’s not a pile of leaves. It’s a
rough anti-fragile tree.

THE ROUGH STRUCTURE OF THE ANTINET

The magic of the Antinet is not in how rigid or how fluid it is. The magic is
in the roughness of the structure.

This seems to run counter to the ideology propped up by PKM practitioners

and so-called “Note-taking experts.” Such people propose systems more
analogous to what’s currently trendy. The sexy buzzwords of today are things
like decentralization, openness, atomicity and dynamic systems. Naturally, every
PKM expert seemingly integrates such terms into their gospel of notetaking.

Yet Luhmann’s system does not reflect the popular buzzwords of today. It’s
not a decentralized, open, atomic, dynamic system.

The Antinet is closer to being the exact opposite, in fact.

It’s centralized—in that you, its creator, make all of the decisions.

It’s closed—in that it’s a cybernetic system wherein each card has its own
numeric-alpha address; therefore, the cards containing numeric-alpha
addresses are effectively closed inside the system. The system can expand
and evolve, yet the expansion and branching happens internally. The roots,
stems, and branches of the system grow deeper.

It’s molecular more than atomic. Each note can run onto the next note. The
whole one idea per note notion is a myth propagated by Sönke Ahrens. The
Antinet is made up of many chain-linked structures, and they do not sub-
scribe to the idea of strict atomicity.

It’s not a dynamic system. You can’t find-and-replace-all. You can’t updated
and delete your thoughts freely on a whim. You can’t refactor your notes
252  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

(and thereby procrastinate on actually doing work). The Antinet’s structure,

including the notes within it, is more marcescent in nature than dynamic
(which we’ll cover shortly).

THE ROUGH TREE STRUCTURE GIVES THE

SYSTEM PERSONALITY

“Natural and diagrammatic representations of trees come in many

varieties, each with its own charm, virtues, and uses. Some trees
are broad and shallow, others are narrow and deep; some trees
are balanced with fixed depth, others have varying branching
factors and erratic depth.”
—Ben Shneiderman, The Book of Trees5

The reason it’s important that the Antinet possesses such rough properties is
because it gives the system personality. As previously mentioned, the unique
structure enables the system to transform into a second mind. It enables it to
develop an alter ego, as Luhmann calls it.6

The Antinet’s structure gives it a sense of uniqueness and distinction. It’s a

system that cannot be freely reorganized and edited. You cannot rename
every file on a whim based on whatever new convention you fall in love
with. The digital notetaking apps suffer from this freedom. Unlike digital
systems, the Antinet does not allow for refactoring of notes en masse. You
cannot waste time dragging and dropping notes into different subfolders
at a later date. You cannot dynamically update all of the links in files. You
cannot retroactively integrate some new metadata or front-matter scheme
that you delude yourself into believing will make you more productive.

5   Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edi-
tion (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 8.
6   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. “As a result of extensive work with
this technique a kind of secondary memory will arise, an alter ego with who we can con-
stantly communicate.”
 tree  253

Rather, the Antinet forces you to do two things: first, to think, and second,
to evolve thoughts. If you’re looking for a system that focuses on everything
else, then digital notetaking apps serve as a better alternative.

All of the things the Antinet cannot do are in fact the very elements which con-
tribute to its most important function: to generate breakthrough creative insights.

These creative insights are generated through the element of surprise, which
the Antinet’s structure is uniquely positioned to provide. More on surprises
and the surprise-generating functions of the Antinet will be discussed in a
later chapter.

Suffice it to say, the rough structure of the Antinet forces—or actually, encour-
ages—users to ask questions they otherwise would never ask. A digital system,
with fully-indexed file searching, only enables the lazy act of searching for
a keyterm the user is thinking of at that precise time.

With the Antinet, things aren’t that simple.

The Antinet forces you to ask: What’s the name of the concept I’m thinking of?
And if an answer is not forthcoming, then a process kicks into gear wherein
you ask another set of questions: What is the concept I’m thinking of related
to? Where else would it make sense for the concept to be? What other variant
terms point to the concept? If that’s unsuccessful, you may then wish to create
a new stem of thought for the concept. And because it was so hard to find
the concept, you are then incentivized to create a keyterm in the index. That
way, you’ll be able to find it more quickly in the future.

What about the original concept you were looking for that you never found?
In my experience, any concept, if it’s important enough, always turns up one
way or another. Your Antinet is less of a black hole than digital notetaking
apps are. Whenever you do stumble across the concept again, you can then
create a remotelink to it, thereby connecting the two disparate stems of
thought. In turn this creates an even richer structure of knowledge.

This entire exercise results in several things taking place in the brain. First, you
254  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

approach the concept in a fun way, using associative thinking, which actually
improves mood.7 Second, during this process you stumble upon profound
surprises you now recognize as connected. Last, you trigger internal dialogue.
Your current mind, with its own active present memory and consciousness,
communicates with your past self (your past mind) as revealed on the note-
cards. This process, like communication, results in surprises.

If nothing else, the core process of the Antinet centers on this communi-
cation process that allows the Antinet to become a “surprise generator,” as
Johannes Schmidt refers to it.8

ORDER VS. CHAOS

A critical thing to keep in mind is that pure order is undesirable (as is pure
chaos). While the Dewey Decimal Classification System makes sense in
theory, it and other such rigid systems also stand problematic. How so? They
do not accurately reflect reality. The categories of such systems are static;
they do not evolve, morph, or grow.

Luhmann’s system started with rough categories and then evolved from there.

The reason I do not refer to the Antinet as a rigid structure is because the
Antinet is more organic in nature. Johannes Schmidt, who is most familiar
with Luhmann’s system, also refers to it as “a rough structure.”9 Like nature,
the Antinet is rough. It’s antifragile, as Nassim Nicholas Taleb would say.10
It gets stronger with randomness, volatility and disorder. It follows certain
laws and adheres to certain conventions. It’s also a structure subjected to

7   Moshe Bar, “A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis of Mood and Depression,” Trends in
Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 11 (November 2009): 456–63.
8   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 295.
9   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 295.
10  Farnam Street, “A Definition of Antifragile and Its Implications,” Farnam Street, April 7,
2014, http://fs.blog/antifragile-a-definition/.
 tree  255

complete accidents, random chance, and surprise. The system, in brief,

mirrors reality. It mirrors both order and chaos.

Early on in life, Niklas Luhmann realized the world isn’t a simple dualistic
affair (good vs. evil). Recall, he learned this particularly from being captured
and tortured by the supposed “good guys” at the end of World War II. The
world is complex, and so is the human mind.

The question becomes How can one devise a system built on that which reflects
chaos, yet also possess some physical laws of order binding it together, in order to
navigate such complexity?

It was with this question in mind that Luhmann crafted the structure of
the Antinet.

THE ANTINET AS AN ACTUAL TREE

“The distributions and partitions of knowledge are not like several

lines that meet in one angle, and so touch but in a point; but are
like branches of a tree, that meet in a stem, which hath a dimen-
sion and quantity of entireness and continuance, before it comes
to discontinue and break itself into arms and boughs.”
–Francis Bacon11

While it’s accurate to describe the structure of the Antinet as rough, roughness
is a property of the system, and not the actual structure.

Instead of thinking of the Antinet as a fluid structure, or rigid structure, or

even a hybrid of that dichotomy (a rough structure), I hold that the best way
to think of the Antinet is as a tree—a real tree.

11   Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edi-
tion (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 14.
256  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The idea of using a tree to metaphorically represent the structure of human

knowledge is not new. The first metaphorical tree used to represent human
knowledge dates back to sometime between AD 268 and 270.12 This first
metaphorical tree of knowledge is known as the Porphyrian tree, named
after Greek philosopher and logician Porphyry. The Porphyrian tree reframed
and developed Aristotle’s classification scheme by presenting it in tree form.

12   Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edition
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 44.
 tree  257

photo credit: Penn Libraries Manuscripts, March 2018,

https://upennmanuscripts.tumblr.com/post/171413737213/
ljs-457-loyca-parva-etc-written-in-the-abbey-of.
258  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It’s important to look to nature as our primary source in forming our under-
standing of reality. “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree,”
writes Aldous Huxley.13 By this Huxley was referring to the concept that
platonic abstractions can only do so much. True beauty and reality are best
represented by nature itself. It’s best to think of the Antinet as an actual tree,
and not merely as a computer science representation of one.

Looking first to nature—and specifically trees—results in creating useful

abstractions for managing knowledge. It’s important to first look to nature
for inspiration, as opposed to looking at some other platonic abstraction
for information. Looking to nature first is actually what inspired a useful
visual innovation in computer science called rectangular treemaps. Its
originator, Ben Shneiderman writes, “The recursive branching structure
of trees, which provides a compelling metaphor for organizing knowledge,
was at the forefront of my mind as I developed the rectangular treemap as a
means to display the nested structure of folders on a computers hard drive.”14
The lesson is that actual, real trees, are the best metaphor to think of when
devising the structure of your own Antinet.

Trees are not only useful, but also fundamentally critical in explaining the
truth of reality. Charles Darwin writes, “The affinities of all the beings of
the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe
this simile largely speaks the truth.”15 In fact, in Darwin’s seminal book On
The Origin of Species, the only illustration in the entire book is a tree structure.16

13  Dana Sawyer, Aldous Huxley: A Biography (Trillium Press, 2015), 161.

14  Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edition
(New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 7.
15  Charles Darwin and Julian Huxley, The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition,
Reprint, Anniversary edition (Signet, 2009), 126.
16  Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edi-
tion (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 39.
 tree  259

photo credit: On the Origin of Species (London: Murray, 1859), 116ff.

Darwin used this model, called the tree of life, to explain his theory of evolution.

So critical was this diagram that Darwin wrote the following letter to his
publisher a few months before the release of his book: “Enclosed is the
Diagram which I wish engraved on Copper on folding out Plate to face latter
part of volume. It is an odd looking affair, but is indispensable to show the
nature of the very complex affinities of past & present animals. I have given
full instructions to Engraver, but must see a Proof.”17

Many applications have been built around trees as metaphors for representing
knowledge. For instance, an interesting tree-like application is that of the
Thompson Chain Reference Bible.

17  
“Https://Www.Darwinproject.Ac.Uk/Letter/DCP-LETT-2465.Xml,” Darwin Corre‑
spondence Project, accessed April 19, 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/
DCP-LETT-2465.xml.
260  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

photo credit: “Handy Size Thompson Chain Reference Bible KJV (186),” Bible Buying
Guide (blog), accessed April 19, 2022, https://biblebuyingguide.com/wp-content/
uploads/2016/05/Handy-Size-Thompson-Chain-Reference-Bible-KJV-186.jpg.

This version effectively breaks apart the Bible into branches and stems of
thought. You essentially follow one branch’s verse. When you get to the
verse, in the page margin is a chain-link to another verse somewhere else
in the Bible. For instance, if you follow the verse of a prophecy in the Old
Testament, the structure then takes you to a verse in the New Testament
wherein Jesus references the prophecy.

The Thompson Chain Reference Bible is actually quite similar to the Antinet.
However, the leaves of the Antinet aren’t verses, they’re notecards.

In sum, using an actual tree as inspiration for knowledge has been proven
throughout history to be a powerful metaphor. Luhmann’s Antinet embodied
this tree-like structure, and it only makes sense we continue to fully embrace it.

Components of the Antinet’s Tree Structure

To illustrate how an Antinet reflects a tree structure, think of it like this:18

18  Keep in mind, the numbers provided are only illustrative, every Antinet will differ in its
 tree  261

 The tree is the entire Antinet. It is your tree of knowledge.

 The branches are the main top-level sub-sections. For instance: 4000 which
represents Formal Sciences, and 4212 which represents Information Science.

 The stems are the individual collections and streams of thoughts that usually
are created together. For instance: 4214/1a/1, 4214/1a/2, 4214/1a/3. In
this case, the stem is 1a.

 The leaves are the individual notecards. For instance, 4214/1a/1, 4214/1a/2,
4214/1a/3. These three cards represent three individual leaves.

 The vines are remotelinks that allow you to swing from one area in your
tree of knowledge to another. In the field of human memory science, they’re
akin to remote associations. For instance, within 4214/1A/2 you can link to
a remote area like 2431/2a. When you do this, you’re effectively swinging
from a vine on 4214/1a/2 to 2431/2a.

MARCESCENT THOUGHTS
In the fields of botany and zoology, the term persistence refers to the part of
a plant or animal that is of a nature wherein it remains attached to the ani-
mal. Yet there are some phenomena in nature where plants or animals keep
parts of themselves you’d expect them to shed. For instance, one normally
expects trees to shed their dead leaves. However, have you ever noticed that
certain trees do not do so? This is a phenomenon called marcescence. It’s a
rarity among all of the species of trees, yet certain trees—like beech trees—
do not shed spent leaves.19

Like literal trees, each person’s tree of knowledge residing in their mind
does not shed leaves, but thoughts. Some leaves, like some thoughts, grow
brown and stale before they are shed. Other leaves are useful. For instance,

morphology. The numbers you use are arbitrary.

19  Tom Oder, “Why Do the Leaves of Some Trees Turn Brown but Not Drop?,” Treehugger,
accessed August 11, 2021, https://www.treehugger.com/marcescence-why-leaves-some-
trees-turn-brown-not-drop-4863742.
262  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

producing food (with chlorophyll) by way of photosynthesis, which helps

it survive.20 Yet even valuable leaves—like one’s valuable thoughts—are
destined to be shed, never to be seen again.

Indeed, shedding some types of thoughts are certainly welcomed by many of

us! Yet the latest research in cognitive neuroscience shows that the average
person experiences about 6,200 thoughts per day.21 Many of these thoughts
are useful, yet they need some time in the sun to fully sprout and develop.

Unfortunately, most of your thoughts never have the time to sprout and
develop. They never have the chance to be ruminated on and await their
time to shine.

Productivity junkies try to address this problem by devising systematized

digital workflows. The goal centers around capturing more information, and
storing such in a single repository. Yet, this isn’t the solution. Capturing
more information is not the solution. Rather, capturing less information,
and developing more knowledge is.

Information overload is the very thing Luhmann figured out how to avoid.
By way of metaphor, Luhmann’s system transforms one’s mind into a per-
sistent, supercharged version of itself. Luhmann devised a knowledge struc-
ture for his thoughts which transformed his mind into something capable of
marcescence, able to retain its key thoughts persistently—forever.

You see, over the course of the days, weeks, months, years, and even decades,
your Antinet transforms. It evolves naturally and slowly thanks to the marc-
escent phenomenon of never shedding its leaves. Its ultimately indescribable,
unforeseeable structure corresponds not just to your mind—but to every
instance of your mind’s thoughts. This is made possible by way of the unique

20  “Leaf | Definition, Parts, & Function,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed August 11, 2021,
https://www.britannica.com/science/leaf-plant-anatomy.
21  “Discovery of ‘Thought Worms’ Opens Window to the Mind,” Queen’s Gazette | Queen’s
University, July 13, 2020, https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/discovery-thought-
worms-opens-window-mind.
 tree  263

combination of its components and structure which, if used together, result

in a tree that retains its leaves. Your tree of knowledge does not shed its
thoughts, it grows and evolves them, thereby enabling you to evolve with
your marcescent mind. By constantly communicating with your Antinet,
you natively structure thoughts based on where it makes the most sense
at the time. You retain your thoughts and evolve them for as long as you
communicate with the system.

This illustration largely relies on metaphor but it reflects the truth of using
an Antinet in practice. You’ll begin to understand the more you use it.

ON HIERARCHIES
Your tree of knowledge is the Antinet. The leaves on the tree of knowledge
represent notecards. Each of these notecards is of the same class and status
in terms of their theoretical importance.

In an Antinet, there is no hierarchical superiority. As Johannes Schmidt

says, “the position of special subject or card says nothing of the theoretical
importance of the card.”22 As far as hierarchy goes, as Schmidt says, “there’s
no bottom and there’s no top.”23

One thing people have difficulty comprehending is how the Antinet does
not employ a hierarchical taxonomy.

Taxonomy comes from the Greek roots taxis and nomos. Taxis means order,
and nomos, means science. Essentially, taxonomy refers to the science of
order. However, the Antinet, as Luhmann writes, is a system of both “order
and disorder.”24 It’s a system not trying to make a science of order. It’s not
trying to make order out of chaos. Rather it’s a system that embraces chaos
without becoming overwhelmed by it. The mechanisms preventing users

22  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 37:20.
23  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 37:20.
24  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
264  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

from going crazy with too much chaos are the numeric-alpha addresses and
the tree structure.

The numeric-alpha addresses alone are not enough for the system to thrive.
That’s where the branch separators come into play. Branch separators are the
special characters that fork off a thought into a new branch or stem. They’re
characters like forward-slashes, periods, or commas.25

Some may interpret that whatever comes after the branch separator is some-
how of a lower-status on the perceived hierarchy. In reality, this is not the
case. In fact, as Luhmann confirms, “the positioning of a subject within this
system of organization reveals nothing about its theoretical importance for
there exist no privileged positions in this web of notes.”26

Here’s an illustration showing how there are no privileged positions in the

Antinet’s structure: Luhmann’s most important work is his Theory of Society.
In his Antinet, Luhmann placed a section for a major project pertaining to
his most important work in a very discrete location: 21/3d7fb.27 This loca-
tion falls under several other branches which are seemingly less important.
When looking at this, it becomes clear that the rank of the importance of a
thought is not reflected in its position within the Antinet.

NOTES ARE IN A POSITION, NOT IN A RANK

Each numeric-alpha address pertaining to each note lives in a specific location
indicated by its fixed address. Similar to a latitude-longitude coordinate, notes
in an Antinet reside at a certain address that is not a ranked order of contents.

Internal Branching
The position-based scheme in the Antinet’s structure allows for internal

25  Personally, I like forward slashes best (“/”).

26  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 298.
27  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 299.
 tree  265

branching. This is important because it allows the system to shift and evolve
in unexpected ways.

The Antinet is composed of thoughts that can be visualized as leaves. Like

leaves, some grow stale and some new ones grow between others. They’re
always changing. Some leaves turn brown and dry up. Other areas on your
tree unexpectedly grow and flourish. As Luhmann himself states, “some
things fade away; some notes are never seen again.”28 Yet the reason you
should allow this to occur centers on the opposite scenario. Ideas you had
which were “initially positioned so as to play a minor role [in what you’re
working on] come to dominate the system.”29

Alternatively, you’ll also have thoughts you initially believed would play
a major role in your work. Yet the thoughts end up not evolving or being
developed at all. This can happen due to the initial excitement for the idea
wearing off. Or, this can happen when thoughts lack additional support
from your future readings. Both of these stands as a good thing. You don’t
want to continue developing an idea that no longer seems relevant or useful.
This is something that happens naturally in an Antinet.

This highlights the power of internal branching.

The power of internal branching was not realized by Luhmann alone. Others
scholars observed the power of such as well. One scholar writes, “the card
index is open-ended not only in a physical sense—new file cards and new
entries can be added to existing ones without limits—but also in a struc-
tural sense.”30 Yet the numeric-alpha addresses also enclose this open-ended
system in a cybernetic network. That is, numeric-alpha addresses create a

28  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.
29  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.
30  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 16.
266  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

self-contained border between themselves and the outside world. In essence,

the system is open-ended, but only in the sense that it grows more complex
inwardly instead of externally. The tree of knowledge gets denser and denser.
It becomes filled with more leaves, branches, stems, and vines over time.

The internal branching is made possible through the Antinet’s structure: its
fixed order of positioning each leaf on the tree.

As Johannes Schmidt says, it’s best not to think of the system as “an order of
contents,” but as a “fixed order of positioning.”31 By fixed order of positioning,
he alludes to the spatial implications of a thought. A thought doesn’t exist in
the ether, but can be assigned to a certain position in physical space.

This mirrors how ancient Greek thinkers implemented mnemonic techniques

to aid memorization: “If the recollection of things and words is based on
semantic associations triggered by images, then these images must be placed
somewhere. This arrangement cannot be chaotic; it must follow an order
that in turn may be easily memorized.”32 By must be placed somewhere, think
of numeric-alpha addresses and installing your notes in long-term storage.
By easily memorized, consider the the tree-like structure of the Antinet, as
well as the index. One can logically trace the area where the note should be
filed after looking up the keyterm in the index.

Links and Reverberation

Internal branching enables you to be pulled deeper into thoughts that are
more developed. Yet, internal branching isn’t the only mechanism in the
Antinet that facilitates this. Johannes Schmidt points out that the parts of the
Antinet that are poorly linked, or not even linked at all, result in becoming
isolated later on, in part because isolated elements lack reverberation.33

31  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.
32  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 8.
Emphasis added.
33  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
 tree  267

Reverberation, a concept that appears throughout this book, relates to

“just-experienced associations” setting off a chain reaction of thought. During
this period, the concept and the associations are easier to recall.34

After you’ve triggered a reverberation event, over the next several days, the
association and connection is given a new lease on life, opening the possibility
of those thoughts colliding with new ideas related to your current thoughts
and recent discoveries. This enables ideas to evolve.

Reverberation is a necessary ingredient for the evolution of thoughts. Rever-

beration is attained through creating and re-experiencing linked thoughts.
As can be expected, this experience of reverberation, relying exclusively on links
as it is, is significantly wiped away with digital keyword search functionality.

When you navigate around your Antinet by way of using associations (links),
you are building your memory. You’re building memory in the short term
by triggering reverberation events, and you’re stamping the potential of
re-triggering reverberation events in the long term.

Reverberation is also super-charged and strengthened over time via the

practice of writing by hand. You see, reverberation transitions an idea into
“supersonic mode” within your mind for months (if not years and decades)
by way of neuroimprinting ideas on your mind. The reason why this is
important is because it enables you to recall the idea when faced with a new
idea that contradicts the one still reverberating in your mind. Reverberation,
in turn, serves as a self-deception filter for your thoughts.

The tree structure of the Antinet (with its internal branching), as well as
links made possible by way of numeric-alpha addresses, enables reverbera-
tion to be elevated to a whole new level. This, again, is something lacking in

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolu‑

tion in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
34  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 9.
268  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

digital Zettelkasten systems with their automated linking and specific-term

search properties.

ASSOCIATIVE CHAINING
Let’s take a look at two types of structures for organizing knowledge: (1)
Associative Bubbles, and (2) Associative Chaining.

Associative Bubbles
Associative bubble structures contain one link type with no strength differen-
tiation. Think of these as simple links or wikilinks in a typical notetaking app.

These aren’t very sophisticated graphs of knowledge, nor are they reflective
of how human memory works. The reason centers around the fact that
there are no relations between the core branches. For instance, the relations
between A, B, and C, are broken in the associative bubble diagram shown.
Yet, for some reason, associative bubbles are the most popular structures
used in digital notetaking apps today.

Associative Chaining
In comparison, there’s associative chaining, which stems from the science of
human memory. It also reflects the structure of the Antinet.
 tree  269

With associative chaining, every single thought is linked by proximity, and

the nearest neighbors have the strongest links. There are both forward links,
and backward links. However the backwards links are of a weaker association.

HIERARCHICAL ASSOCIATION OF THE ANTINET

If you look closely at the diagram of associative chaining, you’ll see that a5
stems into a5/1 and a5/2, which stems into a5/2a. Within the field of memory
science, this concept is known as “chunking” or “hierarchical association.”35

This term hierarchical association illustrates a key point. The Antinet’s struc-
ture is not hierarchically ordered, but is rather hierarchically associated—with
no implication of any special status granted to the order or rank of the note.
Merely, notes are organized in a hierarchical association based on structure
alone (not based on content).

35  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 307.
270  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Hierarchical association models (aka, chunking models) are based on the

idea that sequences have natural breakpoints dividing words, numbers, and
thoughts. By dividing the sequence of items, they’re organized into smaller
components (aka, chunks).36

This is not a hierarchical rank indicating importance, however. Within

the science of human memory, items correlated with the stem of a tree
structure, comprising chunks of more related items, are thought of as “rep-
resenting more elementary attributes” of the idea. The branches and items
found closer to the trunk of the tree are thought of as “representing more
abstract structures.”37

By navigating to one section (or chunk) of leaves on your tree of knowl-

edge, you can navigate upstem to other branches, and downstem into other
sections of leaves.

Within the science of human memory this is referred to as retrieving abstract

“superordinate” items from memory and accessing more elemental chunks.
In turn you may “retrieve the other items associated [with the memory]”
(which is similar in nature to associative chaining).38

Though this concept is referred to as a hierarchical associative model, it’s

not a traditional hierarchy, but one built on “abstract structures” and “more
elementary attributes.”39 It’s a structure more akin to a tree than a hierarchy
connoting relative importance.

The latest explorations in memory science have begun to use tree structures
in their models.

36  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 307.
37  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 307.
38  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 307.
39  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 307.
 tree  271

For instance, the concept of chain-structured long short-term memory (LSTM)

has come to dominate the field of machine learning and data mining. LTSM
has proven itself effective at solving a wide-range of problems. This includes
problems in the field of speech recognition and machine translation. This
model (referred to as S-LSTM) is now being extended by using tree structures,
and researchers have found that the performance of this tree-structured
model yields better results than LSTM alone.40

UNDERSTANDING THE ANTI-HIERARCHY OF THE

ANTINET COMES FROM PERSONAL EMPIRICAL
EXPERIMENTATION
It’s hard to conceive of the Antinet as not being a hierarchical system unless
you actually experience it yourself (spending time building out your own
Antinet and working with it). Until then, it may be helpful to look at hier-
archical systems to comprehend the difference.

TOPICS, CATEGORIES AND FUZZY

CATEGORIES
An easy way to tell an Antinet system apart from a conventional notebox
system is that the notebox system is organized by category alone (without
any numerical conventions). If it contains groupings such as Courage, Sto-
icism, etc., then it’s not an Antinet.

With this said, labeling an Antinet as a system not organized by cate-

gory is incorrect. Long story short, the Antinet has an odd relationship
with categories.

Indeed, one does organize the Antinet by categories by assigning keyterms

to point to a certain numeric-alpha address. However, the Antinet self-or-
ganizes itself by those numeric-alpha addresses. Basically, you organize the
Antinet by keyterms and categories, while the Antinet organizes itself by
addresses (not by categories).

40  Xiaodan Zhu, Parinaz Sobhani, and Hongyu Guo, “Long Short-Term Memory Over Tree
Structures,” ArXiv:1503.04881 Cs, March 16, 2015, http://arxiv.org/abs/1503.04881, 1.
272  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann organized his second Antinet by creating eleven top-level cat-

egories. However, over the years his system organized itself based on the
numeric-alpha addresses.

So, in effect, Luhmann technically did organize the system by cat-

egories and topics; however, over time, and as more cards were added,
it self-organized itself using numeric-alpha addresses, with the addresses
going far beyond (and deeper into) the categories and topics Luhmann
started with. This allowed his Antinet to morph way beyond any notion of
preconceived categories.

That the initial categorizing indicates a hierarchical system is a misconcep-

tion and myth carried forth and held by many Zettelkasten practitioners.

THE NATURE OF CATEGORY-BASED

KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS
I contend that category-based knowledge systems cater to simpler theories
and simpler material (i.e., mass-appeal books). This isn’t necessarily a bad
thing. I do not wish to impart negative judgment on mass-appeal books;
I simply wish to impart a critique that other notebox systems organized by
simple and clear topics, end up producing more simplified work.

It’s easy to discount category-based notecard systems based on their sim-

plicity, compared with an Antinet system; however, I prefer not to discount
them totally.

Category-based systems serve as a more appropriate choice if one wishes

to write general books for the general public. For instance, Ryan Holiday,
Elizabeth Gilbert, and Robert Greene use topic-organized notebox systems.
Their books essentially take simple ideas and concepts and provide useful
stories, reflections, and excerpts to support their views.

For instance, an author might take a concept like courage, make a category
in their notebox, and then add cards with excerpts, stories, and reflections
about courage in that category.
 tree  273

This helps produce simpler, easier-to-read books organized by very broad

topics; however, it also contributes to several downsides: (1) it risks over-sim-
plifying the concept and therefore misinterpreting reality, and (2) it risks
steering the author toward saying something that is not groundbreaking
or new.

The problem with classification systems built on clear categories and topics
is that they do not exist in nature.

As the linguist George Lakoff observed, “Pristine categories are fictions.”41

Categories are artifacts of the human tendency to seek clear definitions of
a phenomenon—even if it’s too complex to be assigned a clear definition.
This tendency was inherited from Aristotle, and we must shed this habit.42

Fuzzy Categories
As Steven Pinker points out, when you use a microscope to zoom in on any-
thing, that thing’s boundaries turn fuzzy. This introduces a concept Pinker
refers to as fuzzy categories, a concept that is similar to the idea of the rough
structure and rough categories the Antinet is built upon.43

You cannot create genius-level work if you’re confined to thinking about

whatever category is popular, or even thinkable.

Moreover, categories tend to induce certain OCD tendencies. One begins

to major in the minor. This introduces something I call the classifier’s fallacy.

The Collector’s Fallacy and the Classifier’s Fallacy

The classifier’s fallacy derives its inspiration from something Christian Tietze
calls the collector’s fallacy, the tendency to collet information without actually
processing and understanding it through elaboration (such as by making

41  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 311.
42  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 311.
43  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 310-2.
274  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

main notes that reflect on the content).44 The collector’s fallacy is the ten-
dency to collet information without actually processing and understanding
it through elaboration (i.e., making notes that reflect on the content). The
Catholic intellectual and philosopher Antonin Sertillanges observed the
trap of the collector’s fallacy in the early 1920s. “We must beware of a certain
craze for collecting which sometimes takes possession of those who makes
notes,” writes Sertillanges.45

Just as harmful as the collector’s fallacy is that of the classifier’s fallacy. With
category-based systems, one experiences the tendency to obsess over clas-
sifications, notably in deciding which category a note belongs to or over the
hierarchical structure of one’s classification system. “Excessive attention to
classification interferes with use,” warns Sertillanges.46 This is something
the Antinet’s structure helps stave off. After some time working with the
Antinet, users become comfortable enough with the chaos that arises and
are able to face the temptations without falling prey to the time-sucking
dithering over classifications

Here’s the deal. Luhmann did not become “the most important German
sociologist in the 20th century” through thinking conventionally.47 He came
to be known as such by thinking unconventionally. The system Luhmann
used promotes unconventional interactions. It is a system of chaos founded on
simple rules of order. If an author desires to create best-selling books with
simplified ideas (at risk of being simplistic), perhaps he or she should opt
for a simpler system of organizing his or her knowledge. And experience the
tendency of being conventional (rather than unconventional).

44 christian, “The Collector’s Fallacy,” Zettelkasten Method, 04:32 100AD, https://zettelkas-

ten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/.
45   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans.
Mary Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1992), 194.
46   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans.
Mary Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1992), 194.
47   Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 19:16.
 tree  275

The fuzzy categories and structure of the Antinet, on the other hand, prevent
it from falling into the trap of oversimplifying reality, leading to deeper, more
unconventional, and complex work (for better, or worse).

One of Luhmann’s intellectual rivals held a more conventional framework

for his theory of society. The man is named Jürgen Habermas. In Robert
Greene’s book, The Laws of Human Nature, its contents are organized by
categories like Irrationality, Narcissism, Shortsightedness, Envy, and others.
Habermas’s work is conventionally laid out in a similar manner. One finds
a table of contents with ideas which were considered conventional within
the dominant school of social theory at the time (known as the Frankfurt
School). In the mid-1980s Luhmann was asked whether he thought Haber-
mas used an Antinet system like Luhmann himself did. Luhmann’s tart reply
is classic: “For [Habermas’s] theory, simple [categories] of order seems to
be sufficient.”48

In brief, conventional systems tend to produce conventional thoughts. The

Antinet results in a structure that produces thoughts pulled across many
contexts and that dances with complexity. The system is built upon similarity
and it links ideas that, at first glance, don’t seem similar at the time when you
go back to write about a section. However, upon closer look, the structure
yields some fascinating clusters that would have otherwise been impossible to
create if one compartmentalizes every thought into conventional containers.

THE DOWNSIDES OF CATEGORY-BASED SYSTEMS

Now, let’s explore some of the downsides of category-based systems.

Duplicating Cards Leads to Diminishing

Neuroimprinting Returns
Ryan Holiday uses a notecard system organized by categories (like Life,
Anticipation, Death, and Strategy). His cards are not individually addressed.
Rather, you’ll find the name of a category in the top-right corner.

48   Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 18:27.
276  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When using a category-based system, one often faces the dilemma of a card
that can be filed in multiple categories. For instance, a card that fits both into
the Anticipation category and the Strategy category. In such a case, Holiday’s
advice is simple: “Just make a duplicate card.”49

While this is not ideal, it’s not terribly bad, either. After all, you gain the
benefits of neuroimprinting the idea on your mind. However, writing an
idea down multiple times does run up against the law of diminishing returns.
There’s simply too much to know, as Ann Blair would say. There’s a risk that
the excerpt you write down multiple times will prove useless to your work.
Also, the idea of copying out reflection notes (which I’ll detail later), may
span across several cards, is rather impractical in the long term.

Holiday’s solution to this problem sheds light on one of the several inad-
equacies of category-based systems. You see, Luhmann faced the same
problem of trying to figure out which keyterm best encapsulated an idea.
Yet because of the self-referential nature of the Antinet (made possible by
numeric-alpha addresses), all Luhmann had to do was simply create a card
that said, For more on this concept, see card ‘3411/2A.’ I call this type of card
a hoplink card, which will be covered later. Oftentimes, however, Luhmann
wouldn’t create a card with only links on it. There was frequently enough
space on any given card to just create a cardlink to the related idea.

DUPLICATING CARDS PREVENTS FEEDBACK

SIGNALS IN NOTETAKING SYSTEMS
In addition to the diminishing returns achieved by writing out the same card
multiple times, there is something lacking in such a system.

You see, one of the things that has held back notetaking systems is the lack
of feedback. Whenever you release a new book or piece of work out into
the world, you’re met with feedback. Sometimes there’s an audience for

49  Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And
Using Everything You Read,” RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April 1, 2014, https://ryanhol-
iday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-using-every-
thing-you-read/.
 tree  277

your work, sometimes there’s not, and sometimes it’s worse: people hate it.
However, every single one of those outcomes is fantastic. Feedback, even
negative feedback, enables you to learn from your efforts. In the field of
artificial intelligence, the entire system relies on feedback. The same holds
true for cybernetic networks, which is what an Antinet is. It’s a system with
a deliberate goal, and it’s a system that learns from feedback.

In notetaking systems, you’re rarely met with feedback because the system
is made for your eyes only (as it should be). It’s a system for you to process
thoughts, learn thoughts, and reflect on ideas. As such, you do not publish
the work, and thus, you don’t gain feedback. However, you should not
correct the lack of feedback in your notetaking system by publishing your
notes. That’s a waste of time.

But what are you to do if you wish to evolve your notetaking system, even
if you’ve not yet experienced the feedback signals necessary to evolve it?

One way to gain feedback signals relates to duplicate card entries.

When you create a duplicate card in the Antinet, it’s a feedback signal. It’s
not something you want to do, nor is it that likely to happen, because even
before you write a maincard, you should first peruse your Antinet to figure
out where it’s going to fit. Only after that point, do you then begin writing
the maincard (which is an excerpt note, a reformulation note, or a reflection
note). These will be detailed later. Bottom line: the practice of first figuring
out where you’ll install a new note prevents you from duplicating an already
created idea.

When you do create a duplicate card it tells you that your Antinet knows
more than you give it credit for. It sends a feedback signal to you that you
should spend more time with your Antinet perusing its contents, creating
index entries, and getting familiar with it.

Also, when you create a duplicate card it poses an interesting question:

were you going to file the duplicate card in a different location? If you
were going to file the card in a different location, it sends another signal.
278  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It creates an opportunity to create links across those areas of your Antinet.

As a result, it creates an opportunity for accidents or surprises to occur
down the road.

THE BENEFITS OF CARDLINKS OVER WRITING

OUT COPIES OF DUPLICATE CARDS
Creating cardlinks, instead of copying out a duplicate card possesses
several advantages:

First, cardlinks eliminate the wasting of time and the accompanying dimin-
ished value of neuroimprinting multiple cards.

Second, cardlinks enrich the cybernetic network of the Antinet because you
end up creating a system with more connections. Effectively, the neurons in
your brain are enhanced through the making of many connections across
the network.

Third, cardlinks enable the Antinet to retain the structure necessary for
compounding and evolving ideas over the long term. In comparison, cat-
egory-based systems confine the ideas to silos of information. The cards
cannot communicate between silos. At most, they can (merely) reference
top-level categories. For instance, they contain references like, For more on
this, see the “Death” category. The system cannot reference a subsection of
cards or even an individual card within the Death category, which could
contain thousands of cards.

Fourth, cardlinks introduce the possibility of surprise, and as a result,

the likelihood of inducing breakthrough insights are increased. In an
Antinet, when you encounter a remotelink, you’re often taken to a completely
different branch in the Antinet. In that branch you review stems of
thought and leaves that end up serving as the perfect material for what
you need.

For instance, right now while writing this section, an accidental surprise
occurred. In the following card (4214/5/0/1), you’ll see a green snippet of
text that says: For instance, Hoplinks: ‘4214/3H/4’
tree  279
280  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When I navigated to 4214/3h/4, I actually stumbled upon a very useful

surprise in a few cards placed immediately before 4214/3h/4. The cards
were 4214/3h/3b and 4214/3h/3b/1.
 tree  281

These cards pertain to the downsides of category-based systems. I had for-

gotten about this set of cards. The second card, 4214/3h/3b/1, reminded me
of another downside of category-based systems which formed the section
you’re about to read next. This all came by way of a surprise that generated
a breakthrough insight.

Yet even if my (re)discovery of the card 4214/3h/3b/1 didn’t come by way

of accident (thanks to the tree structure of the Antinet); it would have been
discovered by way of linking.

If I continued further along down the branch from the initial card,
(4214/5/0/1), I would have happened upon the card 4214/5/b2/1, which
points me to 4214/3h/3b/1. See the following note:

This provides a glimpse into the nature of working with an Antinet. It’s a
web-like system of chaos and order that introduces surprises. This makes it
more fun when it comes time to sit down and write the draft or manuscript
of whatever project you’re working on.
282  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Category-based Systems Lack the Benefits

of Association Based on Proximity
Another problem with category-based systems is the fact that they lack the
power of proximal association.

In the Antinet, the closer the cards are to one another, the more associated
they are. This often comes from, (1) temporal-based creation of the notes,
and (2) from years of compounding and installing related notes nearby one
another. This mirrors how human memory works. The concept is known as
forward and backward associations.50 Because of the numeric-alpha addresses,
one can count on building out a system based on association. In a catego-
ry-based notecard system, if your cards ever get shuffled or mixed around,
it loses the associations that are evolved and compound over years (even
decades) based on proximal associations.

Category-based Systems Lack the Compounding

Features of The Antinet
The numeric-alpha addresses (compared with category-based systems), ensure
that the external mind you’re building models itself after the human brain.
The human brain is built around neurons and the connections between them.

As Alberto Cevolini observes, numbering systems do not “mirror the

order of the universe,” yet they’re no more unusual than alphabetically
organized systems based on categories.51 By adopting numeric-alpha
addresses, it’s possible to shed the notion that the entire universe and reality
can be consolidated into easily understood categories. The numeric-alpha
addresses compel users to develop completely different cognitive capacities.52
This cognitive capacity results in “a truly combinatory ability to manage
knowledge.”53 In other words, numeric-alpha addresses combined with the

50  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 11
51  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
52  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
53  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
 tree  283

tree structure of the Antinet, allows knowledge to compound and combine

to create breakthrough insights.

Much of this concept was already covered in an earlier chapter discussing

the who and why of the Antinet. In that chapter, I touched upon where the
Antinet shines, which is when one is developing knowledge for the long
term. Category-based systems can certainly work; however, their real power
is experienced over the long term.

TREE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS

Luhmann’s first and second Zettelkasten did indeed contain top-level cate-
gories, yet they were not category-based systems. Numeric addresses were
affixed to the cards, and they were separated by branch separators (like “/”).
This enabled his thoughts to branch internally. The top-level branches were
more like fuzzy categories. They were good starting points or areas from
which knowledge would develop. They retained the rough structure of trees.
However, I think it best to think of them as top-level branches instead of
top-level categories. Also, instead of calling Luhmann’s Antinet architecture
a classification system, I like to think of it as a tree classification system.

THE LUHMANNIAN TREE

CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM
Luhmann started his fist Antinet in early 1950, when he was in his early
twenties. He did this to accumulate knowledge and extract concepts from
the books he was reading. He used his first Antinet to learn and understand
the ideas he was being introduced to in his readings. He had 108 top-level
branches in his first Antinet. The list of those branches can be found in
Appendix A.

Luhmann started his second Antinet with a focus on his sociological research
project (which he asserted would take thirty years to complete). In his second
Antinet, there were eleven top-level branches. The list of those branches can
be found in Appendix B.

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
Emphasis added.
284  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The Luhmannian Tree in Practice

For an example of the tree structure in practice, let’s turn to Luhmann’s
second Antinet, the one that contained eleven top-level branches.

Each of the branches contained subsections (which I call sub-branches).

As Johannes Schmidt points out, “each of these subsections was assigned a
numerical prefix of up to four digits.”54 For instance, 3411 for Ideology.

Here’s an example:

–
3 General decision theory
* 31 Concept of action
* 32 Models of decision-making
* 33 Types of decision-making model designs
* 331 Utilitarian models
* 332 Optimizing model
* 333 Satisfying model (theory of acceptable decisions)
* 34 Simplification of decision-making
* 341 Anticipatory simplification
* 3411 Ideology
* 3412 Authority (organization)
* 3413 Rules
* 3414 Legal system
* 3415 Unplanned structures in the field of
decision-making
* 342 Techniques of decision-making
* 35 Organization of decision-making

At first glance this structure seems similar to the rigid structures. However
there are key differences that make it unique.

54  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 297.
 tree  285

First off, each has a numeric address between one and four digits long. As
Johannes Schmidt writes, “each of these subsections was assigned a numerical
prefix of up to four digits.”55 Second, the numeric addresses are arbitrary.
They are roughly chosen. They are what are known as fuzzy categories. Third,
each of them contain thoughts organized by numeric-alpha addresses which
then can branch down infinitely.

A practice I implement in my own Antinet centers on always using four-digits.

For instance, 3 General decision theory would be 3000 General decision
theory. Luhmann essentially omitted using zeros; however, for me, it makes
sense to employ them.

From each of the branches (or sub-branches), you can then begin branching
down and creating thoughts on stems under the sub-branches. Each of the
thoughts are leaves and represent a note. For instance, you’d create 3414/1. This,
in turn, can then be branched down even further (3414/1/1), and on and on.

As one software developer who studied Luhmann’s archive puts it, “the ability
to branch was the central principle” in Luhmann’s system.56 I wholeheartedly
agree with this assessment. The Antinet’s tree structure makes possible its
architecture. It enables it to contain relations of relations of selective relations.

THE SCHEPERIAN TREE CLASSIFICATION

SYSTEM
The Luhmannian Tree Classification System bases its top-level branches
on an arbitrary decision. The creator of decides which branches to create
based on the project they intend to build with the system. For instance, in
Luhmann’s second Antinet, he chose top-level branches relevant to his
thirty-year-long undertaking of exploring the theory of society.

55   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 297.
56 “Luhmanns Arbeitsweise Im Elektronischen Zettelkasten,” Strenge Jacke! (blog),
September 8, 2015, https://strengejacke.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/luhmanns-arbeits-
weise -im-elektronischen-zettelkasten/.
286  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When I built my Antinet, I wanted it to encompass all domains of knowledge

so that I could move around wherever my interests went over my lifetime.
For this reason, I chose to base my classification system on the academic
disciplinary fields. The academic disciplinary fields provide a vast domain
for one to install their knowledge.

I surveyed various lists of the academic disciplines, including Stanford

University’s list of academic fields.57 However, the most robust list I found
was Wikipedia’s list of academic disciplines.58

I base my tree classification system (let’s call it the Scheperian Tree Classifi-
cation System) on this robust list.

Here are my top-level branches:

– 1000 – Arts & Humanities

– 2000 – Social Science
– 3000 – Natural Science
– 4000 – Formal Science
– 5000 – Applied Arts & Sciences

The branches are quite broad, and there is a wealth of sub-branches available
under each of them. The process entails searching the Wikipedia page of
the Outline of Academic Disciplines for a given field. From there, you simply
choose a number arbitrarily under the parent branch from which to build
out a subject area. Material related to life self-development and life philoso-
phy can be added to a section within Applied Arts & Sciences, for instance
(5411 – Self-Development).

Luhmann’s first Antinet focused on knowledge accumulation. It also focused

on generating interesting insights by way of bisociation. His second Antinet,

57   Stanford Admitted Students, “Explore Disciplines,” Stanford Admitted Students, ac-
cessed March 31, 2022, https://admit.stanford.edu/departments-programs/.
58  “Outline of Academic Disciplines,” in Wikipedia, March 24, 2022, https://en.wikipedia.
org/w/index.php?title=Outlineofacademicdisciplines&oldid=1078952876.
 tree  287

however, was narrower in its focus. The entire thing really could be con-
sidered a branch of the sociology branch. It was primarily theory-focused.
By using the academic disciplinary fields as detailed previously, the top-level
branches can encompass the fields explored in both of Luhmann’s Antinets.
If he had started building his Antinet out using the academic disciplinary
fields as his classification system, there’s a good chance he wouldn’t have
needed to create a second Antinet.

CHOOSING YOUR OWN TREE CLASSIFICATION

According to John Locke, classifications are important for two reasons. First,
“it’s a great help to the memory.” Second, it allows us to “avoid confusion in
our thoughts.” In other words, it gives us a map of reality, or as Locke calls
it, “a map as it were of the mundus intelligibilis.”59 Mundus intelligibilis is the
Latin term for intelligible world. Classification systems, in other words, create
a map of intelligible reality.

When building out the structure of your own Antinet, you’re left with several
options in choosing a classification system.

You can go the Luhmannian route and create a rough, arbitrary list of sec-
tions based on what you think you’ll need (like Luhmann’s second Antinet
containing eleven branches).

Or you can go the route of keeping things more open ended. This seems
to be the route Luhmann took with his first Antinet that contains 108
top-level branches.

Sometimes I’m presented with a question like I’m a data scientist working
in the field of machine learning. Why should I adopt the academic disciplinary
fields as my classification system? Why do I have to include Arts & Humanities?
The simple answer is that you don’t! You don’t have to choose the academic
disciplinary field classification system. However, you’re potentially locking
yourself in for life to a small branch. You’re betting that you’ll be interested in

59  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 148.
288  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

machine learning for your entire life. I chose the academic disciplines because
the system allows me to move around to whatever branch of knowledge
I wish to learn about in the future and build out that branch.

The choice is yours. There are many different classifications systems you
can gain inspiration from.

You can adopt John Locke’s structure: “Physica, for medical and scientific
subjects, or Ethica for moral, philosophical, and political topics.”60

There are numerous other classification systems to choose from.

Aristotle had his own classification system that categorized every aspect of
human understanding into ten categories: substance, quantity, quality, rela-
tion, place, time, position, state, action, and affection.61 Francis Bacon had
his own classification system that was divided into (1) divine learning, which
encompassed the timeless truth of scriptures, and (2) human learning, which
encompassed history, poetry, philosophy, and other fields.62 There’s also the
classification system of Charles Cutter—whose work at the Harvard College
library paved the way for the Library of Congress Classification System.63
There’s even classification schemes organized by space, time, and objects.64

There is also, of course, the Dewey Decimal Classification system, which

includes ten top-level classes:

60  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 147.
61  Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 27; Manuel Lima, The Book
of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edition (New York: Princeton
Architectural Press, 2014), 44.
62  Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 27-8.
63  Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 37.
64  Alex Wright, Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age, 1st
edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 122, 183.
 tree  289

– 000 – Computer Science, Information, & General Works

– 100 – Philosophy & Psychology
– 200 – Religion
– 300 – Social Sciences
– 400 – Language
– 500 – Science
– 600 – Technology
– 700 – Arts & Recreation
– 800 – Literature
– 900 – History & Geography

I’m sometimes asked why I do not recommend the Dewey Decimal System.
There’s no really good reason. It’s merely preference. I simply like Wikipedia’s
outline of academic disciplines better. I find it broader and also easier to
search. If you like the Dewey Decimal Classification System better, that’s
fine. Go with what you prefer. Because of the infinite internal branching, it
will adjust and evolve to fit your needs.

Remember, these classification systems merely serve as the trunk and

broad branches from which your tree of knowledge develops. The true
value derives from the many remote stems of thoughts and rich leaves that
develop around certain ideas. René Descartes recognized this as well: “It is
not from the roots or the trunks of trees that we gather the fruit, but only
from the extremities of their branches, so the principal utility of philosophy
depends on the separate uses of its parts, which we can only learn last of all.”65

A more modern classification has emerged called the Johnny Decimal System.
It’s geared toward managing digital files. It seems we’re beginning to come
full circle in personal knowledge management. “Nobody can find anything
any more,” Johnny Decimal’s site declares. “Thousands of emails. Hundreds
of files. File structures created on a whim and six layers deep. Duplicated

65  René Descartes, Valentine R Miller, and Reese P Miller, Principles of Philosophy:

Translated, with Explanatory Notes (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1982), xxiv.
290  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

content, lost content. We thought search would save us from this nightmare,
but we were wrong.”66

I couldn’t agree more, yet I think the better solution is found in adopting an
analog system over digital, of course!

The bottom line is this: you have several classification system options to
choose from, though I’ll be teaching Wikipedia’s Outline of Academic Dis-
ciplines in this book. However, whatever system you choose, keep in mind
that the classification systems are a rough starting point. Because of the
tree structure of the Antinet, your system will evolve internally beyond
the classification scheme. Classification systems merely assist in creating a
rough starting point for a branch. They do not serve to encompass everything.

The reason you shouldn’t get too hung up the classification system is because
of the other component of the Antinet which will be covered next: the index.

When building out an Antinet, you’re creating a map for your thoughts,
which are representations of reality. Classification systems help you create
a map of these representations of reality. Yet the index component of the
Antinet is a second layer map of your thoughts which enable you to navigate
freely across your Antinet without being held back by the limitations of
classification systems.

THE METAPHYSICAL POWER OF TREES

How we long to achieve the growth the tree fosters in itself,

the reach and rootage, the sturdiness and balance between
high and low, the way it meets each season, holding its ground,
spare or blooming.67

66  John Noble, “Johnny Decimal Home Page,” accessed March 31, 2022, https://johnny-
decimal.com/.
67  Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism, The Book of Symbols. Reflections on
Archetypal Images, Illustrated edition (Köln: TASCHEN, 2010), 128.
 tree  291

THE MYTHOLOGY OF TREES

When you begin using an Antinet, you’ll be sufficiently supplied with
practical knowledge of working with tree structures. Before you’re in the
thick of this terrain, however, I’d like to supply you with some metaphysical
knowledge of tree structures.

Trees are the core symbol of the most important stories ever told in both
Eastern and Western theological and philosophical systems.68

In the West, the crucifixion of Jesus serves as perhaps the most widely-told
story in history. The story’s motifs, according to the scholar, Joseph Camp-
bell, center on life after death. This can be thought of as being resurrected
or creating a legacy out of one’s work.

Within this great story is that of Christ on the holy rood. The holy rood is the
cross made out of a tree, referred to as the tree of redemption.69

From The Book of Genesis there’s the tree of life and the tree of knowledge.
If you ever wondered why there’s evil in the world, here’s the answer: It’s
because of some damn woman named Eve! What did Eve do? She ate from
the tree of knowledge.

In the West, the metaphorical importance of trees is not exclusively unique

to Christianity. The metaphorical significance of trees actually stems from
Jewish, Assyrian, and Sumerian traditions.70

In the East, we have the foundational story of The Buddha’s enlightenment.

The motifs of this story center on the once-spoiled aristocrat-turned-ascetic
named Siddhartha Gautama. One day, when sitting beneath a bodhi tree (for
forty-nine days straight), young Siddhartha became enlightened. The tree,

68  Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edi
tion (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 16ff.
69  Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed, Bollingen Series XVII
(Novato, Calif: New World Library, 2008), 25.
70  Manuel Lima, The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowledge, Illustrated edi
tion (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014), 16.
292  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

in turn, became known as the tree of enlightenment. The bodhi tree forms
the term and figure we know as Buddha.71

Not only do we find trees as symbols in the most widely shared Eastern
and Western stories, we also see them in our modern mythic stories. Harry
Potter used his wand as a source of power. The Ents were the tree-people in
The Lord of The Rings, and in The Game of Thrones, we find the heart tree, the
core symbol of Winterfell, as well as the Three-Eyed Raven, an old man who is
enfolded in a tree.72

MORE RESOURCES ON TREES

It may seem rather absurd to be reading about trees in a book about a
knowledge system built entirely of notecards. However, there is more to
trees than meets the eye.

As I’ve shown you throughout this chapter, there’s applicable power within
tree structures and they serve as a fundamental component for how and
why the Antinet works so well.

I won’t go deeper into tree structures any more than I already have. However,
I’d like to leave you with a few resources that may be of interest:

1. Ascoli, Giorgio A. Trees of the Brain, Roots of the Mind. Cambridge,

MA, USA: MIT Press, 2015: This is a fascinating book detailing the tree
structures that form the basis of our brain (and mind). The author suggests
that the human brain is perhaps the most complex object in the universe.
It’s comprised of tiny tree-like structures which make up its massive net-
work. Each nerve cell, when enlarged a thousand-fold looks like a tree.
It thus follows that regions of the nervous system, when enlarged, resembles
a gigantic forest. This book takes a deep dive into the tree-like structures
of the brain and explores stunning visualizations of tree networks.

71   Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed, Bollingen Series XVII
(Novato, Calif: New World Library, 2008), 25.
72  “Heart Tree,” A Wiki of Ice and Fire, accessed March 30, 2022, https://awoiaf.westeros.
org/index.php/Hearttree.
 tree  293

2. Lima, Manuel. The Book of Trees: Visualizing Branches of Knowl-

edge. Illustrated edition. New York: Princeton Architectural Press,
2014: This book takes you through the rich history of the metaphorical
visualizations of trees. There are a countless number of beautiful photos
in this book which show the many different types of tree visualizations.
It’s not only informative, it’s also a wonderful coffee table book!

3. Wohlleben, Peter, Tim Flannery, and Suzanne Simard. The Hidden

Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate—Discoveries from
A Secret World. Vancouver, BC, Canada: Greystone Books, 2016: This
book shows that trees are a lot more intelligent than we give them credit
for. The author shows how forests are a large social network, including
how tree parents live together with their children, communicate with them,
support them, how they share nutrients with other trees who are sick or
struggling, and even warn nearby trees of impending danger.

These resources are more than enough to appease your basic curiosity about
tree structures. However, don’t get distracted by them now. We’ve still got
another key component of the Antinet to explore: the index!

CONCLUSION
We’ve covered a lot in this chapter. You’ve learned about the rough tree
structure of the Antinet. You’ve been introduced to the deep theoretical
implications of the tree structure. We touched on the concepts of order and
chaos. We’ve explored the concept of hierarchy, and how the Antinet is not a
traditional hierarchical structure (but is rather built on association and prox-
imity). I’ve taken you into the depths of classification systems. And finally,
I capped off this chapter with the mythological magic of trees.

This was a lot to cover. Thanks for sticking with me; I promise you’ll be
rewarded. You now have a deep theoretical knowledge of the Antinet. This
will come in handy in the long term. You’ll find yourself more confident in
the system because you know the rich depth in which its theory relies. You
won’t risk yet another instance in your life of getting excited about a new
system, only to find yourself quitting (and shifting to whatever the next
shiny, new object happens to be). The Antinet is it. It’s the very best tool for
294  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

developing deep thought. It’s the best system for those who wish to become
a learning machine, an online content machine, a book-writing machine, and an
academic research machine. Keep going.

In the next chapter, we’ll be diving into a more “practical” area of the Antinet:
the index. Press on.
 C H A PT E R N I N E
�

INDEX

“Considering the absence of a systematic order, we must regulate the process of

rediscovery of notes, for we cannot rely on our memory of numbers. The alternation
of numbers and alphabetic characters in numbering the notecards helps memory
and is an optical aid when we search for them, but it is insufficient. Therefore we
need a [index] of keywords that we constantly update.”

–Niklas Luhmann, Communication with Noteboxes1

WHAT THE INDEX IS

I n the previous chapter, I touched on how classification systems pro-

vide utility in that they create a map of intelligible reality. The tree, with its
organized branches of knowledge, proves useful for managing and perusing
your knowledge. Yet classification systems have their limits. They confine
information into silos and can be rather broad. Thankfully, the tree struc-
ture mitigates some of these downsides. Trees enable thoughts to flow and
they create stems into more specific areas for thoughts to evolve (over the
long term).

However, the tree structure is not enough. The tool that serves as a sec-
ond-layer map is the index. The index enables one to jump around freely from
branch-to-branch, stem-to-stem, and leaf-to-leaf in one’s tree of knowledge.
The index transforms the system into something that looks like this:

1   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.

295
296  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The index is composed of a special type of notecard containing two things:

(1) a keyterm, and (2) a location.

As mentioned earlier, a good way to think of the location component of the

index is to compare it to latitude and longitude coordinates (e.g., 37.2431°n,
115.7930°w). These can be thought of as the place’s global address.2 This is
why numeric-alpha addresses are addresses, opposed to being IDs. But we
humans don’t think in coordinates, we think in keyterms.

THE KEYTERM
We humans don’t spend our time thinking and communicating in the
equivalent of latitude/longitude coordinates (“lat/long”). As Luhmann put
it, “we cannot rely on our memory of numbers.”3 We need a human-friendly

2  “Understanding Latitude and Longitude,” accessed April 4, 2022, https://journeynorth.

org/tm/LongitudeIntro.html.
3   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
 index  297

name to be associated with the lat/long coordinates. We need a key in other

words, of a term to associate with the coordinates. This human-friendly key
and term is what we call the keyterm.

The keyterm is simply the name of anything your brain naturally uses to
describe the location of something. It can be anything. It can be a person,
place, thing, metaphorical concept, idea, or whatever—as long as it can be
noted down.4

Why the keyterm? Well, I mean, we could try and remember the location
of something by memorizing 37.2431°n, 115.7930°w… or we could remember
it by associating it with its more human-friendly name: Area 51. I think it’s
pretty obvious that the keyterm Area 51 is easier to remember.

With the keyterm, Area 51, we can pair it with a value. We do this by plac-
ing a colon (:) between the keyterm and value. The format looks like this:
keyterm: ‘value’. For instance, Area 51: ‘37.2431°n, 115.7930°w’. Within the
Antinet, the value is not a lat/long coordinate, but a numeric-alpha address
(i.e., Area 51: ‘2563/27a’).

In computer science terminology, this is a type of data structure. It’s a key-

value pair. It’s known more familiarly as a map or an associative array.

I like the term associative array, so let’s roll with that. A thesaurus is similar
to an associative array. Like a thesaurus, which contains multiple synonyms
for a word, you can have multiple values for a keyterm. For instance, Area
51: ‘2563/27a’, ‘5472/3’, ‘3572/22/1/4). In computer-science geek-speak, this
is known as a multimap, multihash, or multidict.

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
4   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. “It becomes a sensitive system
that internally reacts to many ideas, as long as they can be noted down.”
298  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE PURPOSE OF THE INDEX

A system relying on complete random chance (with no index and no tree
structure) is an undesirable system. It costs more (effort) than it produces.
Yet a system of too much order is lifeless and yields a lower probability of
generating breakthrough insights. The perfect middle ground is to have a
system that employs an organic tree structure that allows both order and
chaos to emerge. The perfect mediator to navigate between order and chaos
is the index. This is its single, simple purpose.5 It’s there to provide you with
at least one point of entry into your tree of knowledge related to any given
keyterm.6 This allows you to begin stumbling upon other leaves of thought,
as well as other stems and branches that have since formed around the term.

Luhmann did not create an exhaustive list of cardlinks for each keyterm.
Just because card 5248/3 mentions complexity, doesn’t mean the indexed
keyterm for complexity gets a cardlink pointing to 5248/3. Why? Because
mentions don’t matter. What matters is that the card address to which the
complexity keyterm points actually significantly pertains to the concept itself.
Mentions don’t matter much. This makes the index more useful than search.
When you search your notes digitally, all sorts of irrelevant mentions show
up for the search term. This is not so with the index.

The reason Luhmann did not create cardlinks for every single card mention-
ing a keyterm is not because it is technically unfeasible (I mean it is, but it’s
something that Luhmann wouldn’t have preferred even if he possessed the
capability). Rather, the reason Luhmann only included a few cardlinks per
keyterm can be distilled down to two reasons:

1. The tree structure of the Antinet allows you to follow the stems of thought
the notecard rests on. This then takes you on a journey that reveals more
cards related to the concept. It then may take you to a collective card. This

5   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
6   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
 index  299

is a card containing a collection of cardlinks to other areas of your Antinet

(you’ll learn more about collectives later).

2. By creating only a general list of a few cardlinks, it affirms the rough tree
structure of the Antinet. It re-emphasizes the expectation that the location
provides you with a rough area of your Antinet. It enables your present
conscious mind to interact and communicate with your Antinet. You
encounter nearby stems of thoughts in the area that surprise you. When
such a communication takes place, breakthrough insights occur which
have come about by complete accident. The power of this communication
experience will be detailed later in the book.

The reason there are but a few cardlinks for each keyterm entry is that it sets
you on a path of exploration. It enables you to explore your tree of knowl-
edge. This also highlights another downside of digital systems. Lacking the
nested tree-like structures of the Antinet, digital systems are just a flat-level
view of connected bubbles. This knowledge work, however, is not just about
storing information and creating cool bubble graphs; it’s about exploration.
The tree structure of the Antinet enables meaningful exploration. As Alberto
Cevolini writes, “secondary memories themselves have an inner order that
allows for exploration.”7

The Antinet is a long-term storage container of your short-term store of

thoughts. In itself, it’s a single storage of your mind’s thoughts. It transforms
your short-term memory and long-term memory into one holistic entity
(a second mind). The index is a secondary storage container which allows
you to navigate your second mind.

It took a long time for humans to realize that you could create a secondary
container (that is, a secondary map) for exploring your own knowledge.
It wasn’t until the latter half of the sixteenth century that scholars realized

7   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 16.
Emphasis added.
300  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the index could be used as a secondary data storage for navigating the main
memory store.8

Luhmann was sage in not overlooking the rather new technology of the index.
Inspired by The Royal Society of London, Luhmann created his own index,
which he called a register. In specific notes in his Antinet, Luhmann mentions
having paid attention to how the Royal Society developed their register of
knowledge.9 Like Johannes Schmidt, though, I prefer the term index to refer
to Luhmann’s register. You’re welcome to use whichever terminology you
prefer. Heck, in the beginning I used to refer to it as the map. Yet the name
that’s stuck for me is index, and that’s what I shall use from here on.

THE POWER OF THE INDEX

As the scholar who has studied Luhmann’s Antinet most closely, Johannes
Schmidt, deems the index “a central key to the system.”10 The elimination of
a fixed classification system and the lack of table of contents turn the index
into a “key tool” for using the file. As Schmidt puts it, “how else should
one be able to find certain notes again and thus gain access to the system of
references?”11 In brief, the index is a critical component in using an Antinet.

The index is the conduit by which your brain “structurally couples” itself
to the thoughts compiled into an inanimate box. It is the component that
breathes life into the Antinet, thereby creating a second mind, an alter ego
with which you can communicate.

This isn’t woo-woo fuzzy jargon; it’s backed by knowledge science. “Memory
lies not in the machine,” says the scholar, Alberto Cevolini, “but the structural

8   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 9.
9   “ZK II: Slip 9/8h - Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed April 1, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8h_V.
10  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 41:48.
11   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 302.
 index  301

coupling of users and machines, that is, in the indexing system.”12 Indeed, the
index stands as the core property which transitions the Antinet from merely
a container of others’ thoughts, into “an actual writing generator,” observes
the scholar Élisabeth Décultot.13

CUED RECALL
Cued recall is the modern cognitive scientific term for the no-longer-favored
term recollection. It occurs when a stimulus (for example a word, sound,
or image) elicits a memory of another item with which it is linked.14 Basically,
cued recall works by invoking a memory when presented with a keyterm
as the prompt.

When you create a deliberate, hand-written keyterm entry in your index,

you are neuroimprinting a cue into your mind.

Let’s take an example. Say you’ve read Cal Newport’s book, So Good They
Can’t Ignore You. A key idea in that book revolves around something called
deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is setting aside a deliberately planned
time to practice a skill—regardless of whether the activity is enjoyable
(oftentimes, it isn’t).15 In the context of the Antinet, if you’re interested in
this particular concept, you would undertake a time-intensive process. First
you would write down the idea on the bibcard related to Newport’s book.
After that, you would create a maincard for the idea. On the maincard you
would either excerpt the idea (by writing down a quote by hand), reformu-
late the idea (by summarizing it in your own words), or reflect on the idea
(by adding your own take, experience, and thoughts on the idea). After this
phase, you would then create a keyterm of the idea, consolidating it into a
brief word or phrase.

12  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 32.
13   Élisabeth Décultot, The Art of Excerpting in the Eighteenth Century Literature:
Subversion and Continuity of an Old Scholarly Practice (Brill, 2016), 122.
14  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 134.
15   “Deliberate Practice—an Overview | ScienceDirect Topics,” accessed April 1, 2022, https://
www.sciencedirect.com/topics/psychology/deliberate-practice.
302  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Whenever you begin reading a new book and you come across an idea
that relates to deliberate practice, you can recall that you already have a
keyterm in your Antinet that elaborates on this area. From there, you may
either, (1) recall what you already know about deliberate practice (thanks to
neuroimprinting you can remember what you already know), and (2) you
can simply write down the term deliberate practice and the page number
on the new bibcard. From there you can refer to your Antinet and explore
the branches and stems of what you already know about deliberate practice.
At that point you can develop the thought further by creating a dedicated
maincard for it. If you don’t feel it is necessary to develop a maincard, you
can simply write down the external reference of the book and page number
(thereby letting the idea ruminate).

In brief, because you’ve been intentional in creating a keyterm for an idea,

you begin to read differently. While reading, when you come across ideas
and concepts related to deliberate practice, you develop a greater capability
to do several things:

1. While reading, the concept you recall may be deemed important enough
that you decide to extract a new relevant bit of information. As mentioned
previously, you may either (1) excerpt it, (2) reformulate it, or (3) elab-
orate on it.

2. You’ve deliberately primed your mind, and have selected the idea of
deliberate practice as important. Because you’ve intentionally created a
keyterm for the idea, and since you have installed the concept in your
Antinet, you may recall the concepts related to it. This is made possible,
thanks to the tree structure. You can begin to piece together concepts
related to it.

3. Another benefit is that since you know you’ve written something valu-
able about the keyterm already, you are more motivated to review what
you’ve already written about the concept in your Antinet. I often find
myself surprised when I review keyterms. I recall key ideas I’ve long
forgotten about.
 index  303

DELIBERATE INDEXING IS DIFFERENT

FROM TAGGING
As others have observed, so-called “rigid folders” have fallen out of fashion
in the modern personal-knowledge-management field. The new popular
practice revolves around creating tags (that is, tagging notes).16

Digital Zettelkasten practitioners may learn of Luhmann’s index and delib-

erate keyterms, and then liken the process to that of tagging notes. They
may then proceed to tag every single one of their notes.

There’s a difference, however, in how Luhmann used his Antinet. His keyterms
served as an entry point into his tree of knowledge (and its branches and
stems of thought). Keyterms were used sparingly to get you started on the
path of exploring your notes organically by way of exploration. However, as
has been observed, tagging is not so central and it’s not intensely necessary
that every note needs to be tagged.17

Furthermore, when you tag your notes using digital Zettelkasten tools, it’s
possible to over-tag notes. It naturally follows that it thereby “cheapens” the
individual tag. A note with a powerful idea about truth is lumped together
with other notes tagged with truth—even ideas vaguely relating to the con-
cept of truth. With digital systems that enable easy and low-cost information
collection, the bad ends up drowning out the good.

To understand the different nature of the index system vs. digital tagging,
the following diagram helps illustrate the nature of the two:

16  “Luhmanns Arbeitsweise Im Elektronischen Zettelkasten," Strenge Jacke! (blog),

September 8, 2015, https://strengejacke.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/luhmanns-arbeits-
weise-im-elektronischen -zettelkasten/.
17  “Luhmanns Arbeitsweise Im Elektronischen Zettelkasten," Strenge Jacke! (blog),
September 8, 2015, https://strengejacke.wordpress.com/2015/09/08/luhmanns-arbeit-
sweise-im-elektronischen -zettelkasten/.
304  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Tagging misses out on the unique branching structure of notes. It results

in flat, weak relations and bubble graphs. Because of the tendency to tag
anything and everything, a bunch of weak connections and useless material
also becomes linked together. Essentially, the tendency to tag every note
creates an information swamp. Tagging embodies the typical structure of
digital Zettelkasten systems. It creates a pile of leaves on the ground with
vines connecting weakly-associated leaves together.

A GUIDE TO THE INDEX

There are three boxes in the Antinet: (1) the bibliography box (the “bib
box”), (2) the main box of the Antinet storing thoughts by concept in the
numeric-alpha tree structure (the “main box”), and (3) the index box con-
taining keyterms that point one to locations in the Antinet (the “index box”).

The index box contains a list of alphabetized cards. There are two types of
cards in the index: (1) List Indexcards, and (2) Keyterm Indexcards. Let’s
cover these now.

LIST INDEXCARDS
List indexcards are cards filed alphabetically, each pertaining to one letter of
 index  305

the alphabet (A, B, C, etc.). Under the assigned alphabetical character is a

list of keyterms that begin with the letter affixed to the card.

These cards serve as an associative array of key-value pairs. The key is the
keyterm, and the value is the address of a card in the main box of the Antinet.

When you first start out building your Antinet, you should begin by creating
26 list indexcards (one for each letter in the alphabet).

Examples of List Indexcards

The following list indexcard is from Luhmann (it’s a Luhmannian list
indexcard):

photo credit: “ZK I: Note in the Subject Index (002-A)—Niklas

Luhmann Archive,” accessed April 1, 2022, https://niklas-luhmann-
archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_SW1_002_V.

You’ll notice a few things from the card. First, there is a red letter A in the
top left corner. This signifies that these are keyterms beginning with A. The
306  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

second thing you’ll notice is that the keyterms in the list are not alphabetical.
For instance, Argument comes before Aggressivität. The list of keyterms
accumulates over time, organically, and in an emergent fashion. The words
are organized temporally (by time). The only requirement is that they begin
with the letter A.

Here is a list indexcard from my own Antinet (a Scheperian list indexcard):

You’ll notice a few differences in my own version. First, you’ll see there’s a
convention with arrows. For instance Contradictions → Polarity. This tells
me to navigate to the Polarity keyterm in my index box. The second thing
you’ll notice are conventions like SA: ‘1805/9’. SA means See Also. Third,
you’ll see that the top of the card reads C (2). This tells me that it’s the
second list indexcard for the letter C. Fourth, you’ll notice that I cross out
certain keyterm entries. For instance Change (Formula For)…is crossed
out. This tells me to go see the dedicated keyterm indexcard, which you’ll
learn about next.

KEYTERM INDEXCARDS
A keyterm indexcard, as opposed to a list indexcard, is a dedicated card
 index  307

listing multiple links or external references for a given keyterm. Whenever

a keyterm entry in a list indexcard accumulates multiple cardlinks, you’ll
want to create a dedicated keyterm indexcard for it.

Here’s an example of a keyterm indexcard:

This keyterm indexcard is for the keyterm Change. It displays the crossed-
out entries from the list, such as Formula For: ‘5409/0’, which becomes
Formula for Change; and the listed keyterm and Business; ‘5100/1’ becomes
Change and Business. The entry State  ‘State’ refers to changing state (as in
changing one’s state of mind), and the arrow prompts me to go see the dedicated
keyterm indexcard ‘State.’

THE INDEX BOX

Within the index box, the indexcards should be organized alphabetically. The
list indexcards are placed immediately after the letter-dividers, followed by the
keyterm indexcards. Each of the following keyterm indexcards starting with
the same letter should then be organized alphabetically relative to each other.

To illustrate, on the following page is a picture of my index box. Behind the

A divider, you’ll first encounter the A (1) list indexcard (note that the yellow
A (4) card is visible in this photo).
308  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN
 index  309

Here is another photo. Likewise, the C (1) list indexcard follows the letter C
divider; here there are several more list indexcards, which ends with C (4).
310  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Immediately behind C (4) the sequence of my keyterm indexcards begins.

The first keyterm indexcard is Candor (Candidness).
 index  311

Following this card, is the next card in the alphabetical list: Categorization.
312  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

This gives you a good practical taste of the components involved in building
out an index.

SEARCH IS A BUG, NOT A FEATURE

When you use the index component of the Antinet to search, you’re exploring.
When you search notes digitally, the internal dialogue is different. You’re
not so much exploring as you are filtering. In essence, you are simply trying
to recognize and sift through signals. Oftentimes, you spend a great deal of
time sifting through keywords that show up in the search results.

Many people who have written about (digital) Zettelkasten miss the fact that
search is a bug, and not a feature. Why? Perhaps it stems from the perennial
human tendency of not recognizing and questioning inaccurate assumptions.

A significant portion of the book Thinkertoys, a book focused on improving

thinking, centers on challenging assumptions.18 It’s simply difficult and
hard work to invert and challenge all of your assumptions all the time. It’s
exhausting. It’s no surprise that many digital Zettelkasten practitioners
have never stopped to actually question the value of search since we live
in the GAMA era: Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook), and Amazon. In this
GAMA era, we have a collective bias and acceptance of digital search being
a desired feature in all cases.

The assumption that the search function is a universally desirable feature is

what plagues digital Zettelkasten systems. For instance, one author declares
digital systems to be better because they “allow you to search whole data-
bases.”19 Yet digital search possesses a wealth of insidious negative effects
that are difficult to spot with the naked eye. The downsides of such a system
become apparent only after investing significant time and energy creating a
large enough note database in the first place.

18  Michael Michalko, Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques, Revised

edition (Berkeley, Calif: Ten Speed Press, 2006).
19  David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc.,
2022), 17.
 index  313

As Alberto Cevolini points out, digital search is disappointing for at least

two reasons.

The first reason is that search results are “too large.”20 With a digital note-
taking app this quickly becomes obvious, and it only gets worse over time.
Unfortunately, by the time things get unbearable, you’re faced with a mas-
sive number of notes. The sunk-cost dilemma (sticking with a system that is
ineffective just because you’ve invested so much time and energy in building
that system) is a real problem.

Having an app that indexes every single word of your thoughts ends up
drowning out the attention you would otherwise spend creating deliberate
and carefully selected keyterms.

The second reason digital search is disappointing echoes this issue. “The
complete number of results,” Cevolini writes, “is never a reliable pan-
orama of what is actually stored in secondary memory and it is not
necessarily informative.”21

The cognitive psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker, provides an

observation backing this notion. In an “optimally designed” information and
knowledge system like the Antinet, search results should only yield items
where “the relevance of the item outweighs the cost of retrieving it.”22 The
problem with digital systems, however, is that the cost of retrieval is so low
that it yields information and knowledge that is of low relevance and low
value. I contend that the Antinet does not suffer the same effect.

Although it seems counter-intuitive, human-domain experts outperform

search algorithms even today. Take this illustration from Pinker:

20  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 33.
21   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 33.
22  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 142.
314  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Anyone who has used a computerized library retrieval system

quickly comes to rue the avalanche of titles spilling across the
screen. A human expert, despite our allegedly feeble powers
of retrieval, vastly outperforms any computer in locating a
piece of information from its content. When I need to find
articles in a topic in an unfamiliar field, I don’t use the library
computer; I send an email to a pal in the field.23

This is something also observed by computer science professor and bestselling

author, Cal Newport. He advises his readers to talk to reference librarians.
“I’m amazed by how often this resource is overlooked,” Newport writes.
“Ask the librarian for research help and she will guide you to some amazing
sources you would have never found on your own. These extra discoveries
make the difference between an average paper and one that shines.”24

ANTINET SEARCH EQUALS EXPLORATION;

DIGITAL SEARCH EQUALS FILTERING
IRRELEVANT INFORMATION
When you are trying to find something in your Antinet, think of it like Tarzan
swinging through trees. He swings from branch to branch and then along
stems and leaves of thought. Every time you swing to a different branch
by way of vines (links), you trigger a reverberation event. You’re reminding
yourself not just of the idea, but of the area and stems of thought around
the idea. This experience is lost via digital search. You’re presented with a
plethora of useless information. With the Antinet, you’re engaged in the
experience of jumping from branch to branch through your knowledge. With
digital search, you’re not even in the jungle. You’re in a dim office somewhere
reading about the jungle through a computer screen.

23   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 142.
24  “Monday Master Class: The Most Important Paper Research Advice You’ve Never Heard
—Study Hacks—Cal Newport,” accessed April 11, 2022, https://www.calnewport.com/
blog/2007/12/17/monday-master-class-the-most-important-paper-research-advice-
youve-never-heard/.
 index  315

The Antinet allows you to experience the power of exploration. It promotes a

way of exploring that is curious, deliberate, and that operates within a general
and rough context. This is akin to the experience of being in a library and
exploring shelved books. Oftentimes, you happen upon profoundly valu-
able books by way of accidental discovery just by walking down a row in the
library that interests you—even if it’s somewhat unrelated to your current
project. In doing this, you may stumble upon a book that becomes a critical
component of the project or book you’re working on. Digitally searching
your notes eliminates this magical experience.

The digital Zettelkasten proselytizers oftentimes think that linking is the core
component of Zettelkasten systems. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
An entire industry of apps and courses revolve around the idea of linking notes.
Yet linking does is not the core component of Zettelkasten systems. It is but
one property, along with indexing and others, that makes the system work.

For instance, the analog nature of the Antinet makes full-text search impos-
sible. It forces users to explicitly create very selective links between thoughts.
Why? Because you know there’s no full-text search that possesses the illusion
of saving you later on. When you’re writing out a note by hand, and you think
of a related note, you must create the link right then and there. There’s no safety
net. Laziness, in other words, is not an option.

As a result, you invest more energy in creating very selective links. You end
up hardcoding cardlinks into your notes with the result that you end up
taking them more seriously than you would cheaply created digital wikilinks.
After investing that energy, it’s more likely that you will follow the cardlinks
and explore your notes, which then takes you to new places in your Antinet
where you might stumble upon other information that would lead to more
accidental breakthrough insights.

THE BUGS OF DIGITAL SEARCH

Digital Search Robs You of Maintenance

Rehearsal Learning and Association
Manually flipping through your old notes and reviewing them strengths your
316  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

long-term memory; it gives more opportunities for maintenance rehearsal

(talked about in detail in this book).

Searching your Antinet relates to the process of reviewing flash cards for an
exam. Yet it’s not painfully boring like rote learning usually is. Rote learning
is a memorization technique based on repetition—it’s essentially main-
tenance rehearsal that allows you to keep an idea fresh in your mind, then
refresh it when your memory lags. Yet, with the Antinet, it’s a different flavor
of maintenance rehearsal. While you’re reviewing your old ideas, you’re
oftentimes holding a new card idea in your mind. Why? Because you’re on
a quest to install a new idea that you’re probably excited about into your
Antinet. The name of the game is similarity. You’re on a quest, looking for
the most similar idea to install this card next to. This entire quest is a fun
process, it even improves mood, which I’ll detail shortly. In brief, digital
search lacks such a process.

By using a digital Zettelkasten, you thwart the richness of the process of

inducing maintenance rehearsal while searching for the most-closely asso-
ciated idea in the Antinet.

Digital Search Kills the Magic

of Structured Accidents
When perusing a library, structured accidents often occur. The accidental
discovery of an incredible book is not a completely random accident, it’s
a structured accident. After all, the book is contained within a structured
contextual area of the library. It’s not completely random.

The magic of the Antinet is not only in how it fosters your thinking of and
associating the new concept from the book you’ve read with what it relates
to (that’s a conventional interaction). Rather, the magic of the Antinet
comes from discoveries “which were never planned, never preconceived,
or conceived.”25 Important discoveries come about not so much by way of
your current thinking; they come about by realizing the magical connections

25  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 index  317

you first missed in your old way of thinking. They also come about by way
of structured accidents.

The power of accidents will be covered later in this book, however, let’s take
a look at a few examples.

The following is an example of a more conventional interaction that reveals

somewhat interesting insights.

Here’s the keyterm indexcard for Association.

There’s one curious entry there written as Fallacy of: (Persian Messenger):
‘2432/4’. This pertains to the Persian-messenger fallacy commonly known
as shooting the messenger who bears, and is thus associated with, bad news.
Because association is at the core of the fallacy, the keyterm points me to
this area of my Antinet.

This type of thing often occurs in digital search. This, however, is not an
unconventional insight. Nor is it something that necessarily produces
breakthrough creative insights.
318  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Breakthrough insights come about by way of unconventional interactions.

They come about by way of structured accidents. This is why it’s critical,
in Luhmann’s words, that your “selection and comparisons are not identical
with the schema of searching for them.”26 Simply searching for a keyword
robs the potential for innovation to occur. You are only presented with
information you feel is related at the time. Ingenious insights come from
unconventional discoveries you make along the way. The breakthrough ideas
that come from flipping through your related past thoughts, in a structured
way, are what unlock truly unconventional interactions. The tree structure
of the Antinet induces these structured accidents.

While the Persian messenger association fallacy introduces an interesting

interaction, the more compelling ones come about by exploring the items
around the area where the concept resides (in this case, exploring around
2432/4). The truly unconventional interactions come about when navigating
through and around the tree structure of the Antinet.

Structured accidents are critical for procuring breakthrough insights. The

random pieces of information you encounter in your quest of exploring
the Antinet create valuable opportunities to experience incidental learning
(by way of structured accidents).27 Digital search mitigates such phenomena
from occurring.

Digital Search Robs You of Developing a

Unique Structure for Evolving Your Mind
The Antinet’s structure allowed Luhmann to store deeply complex and inter‑

connected information, thanks to its tree structure. It allowed him to grace-

fully navigate his mind and his memory (past and present).

26  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
27  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 18-19.
 index  319

As has been mentioned before, developing his mind and memory came
about from two processes. It occurred first by neuroimprinting thoughts
by writing by hand. Second, by engaging in an ongoing process of tending to
his file, Luhmann engaged in constant maintenance rehearsal, eventually
developing the ability to recall thoughts without effort.28

When you instead review your own thoughts, written in your own hand-
writing, the process is often very fun. It’s also very humbling. You see your
thoughts and brilliant ideas written on cards from years ago. It also helps
mitigate the sense that you haven’t written something. When you see your
own handwriting with your own brilliant ideas, you experience a sense
of being impressed by your old self! More pertinent, this process builds
your memory. It builds it in such a way wherein your thoughts are primed
to compound.

With digital search, you’re constantly searching for and through documents
without any life or personality. They contain your thoughts, yes. But they’re
in some system-standardized font; the files are not living. They’re constantly
changing, being deleted, and overwritten. You have no chance to view the
changes in your thinking because all traces are erased.

Digital Search Robs You of a Positive Mood

Finally! A simple, easy way to cure depression scientifically proven to cure ass-
backward thoughts—INSTANTLY, 100% FREE, DOUBLE-YOUR-MONEY-
BACK GUARANTEED!

Sound like a scam?

It’s not. As crazy as it may sound, the act of associating concepts helps cure
depression. It’s a self-referential cycle. A researcher at the Harvard Medical
School found that “positive mood promotes associative processing, and

28  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 305.
320  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

associative processing promotes positive mood.”29 Every single thought in

the Antinet can only be installed by embarking upon an associative process.

Every new idea, every new thought, every new extension of thought comes
by way of exploring your tree of knowledge (which is a chain-linked set of
associations). You then aim to associate any new idea with the concept that
most closely resembles the chain of ideas already installed in the Antinet.

The Antinet improves mood, whereas digital search eradicates much of the
magic inherent in associative processing. Finally! We have proof. Digital
search robs you of a good mood. Digital search worsens your quality of life.
If you want a better life, as counterintuitive as it sounds, go analog!

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we moved through some very important concepts. And we
moved through these in rather swift fashion (compared to the previous set
of chapters)! We covered the theoretical structure of the index. You learned
about the two types of indexcards. You learned how the index box works,
and saw several examples. You also learned the truth about digital search:
it’s a bug, not a feature. Last, we capped off this chapter by covering the
negatives of digital search.

The next chapter is very brief, it’s the “net” in the Antinet. Keep reading.
You’ve made it through the most challenging part of this book!

29  Moshe Bar, “A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis of Mood and Depression,” Trends in

Cognitive Sciences 13, no. 11 (November 2009): 456–63.
 C H A PT E R T E N
�

NETWORK

In‌ 1956, on a gray evening in the padded cell of a mental hospital,

W. Ross Ashby sat at his desk. He was putting the finishing touches on
his manuscript Introduction to Cybernetics. Ashby was not a patient of the
mental hospital, however. He was a trained psychiatrist, research patholo-
gist, and at the time, was serving as the Director of Research at Barnwood
House Hospital in Gloucester, England.30 He simply found the padded cells
of his patients to be the perfect environment to focus. In this padded cell
he published a paper which would greatly influence some of the brightest
thinkers in information theory, mathematics, and technology for decades
to come.

Ashby was always up to some odd research project. A few years prior,
he built what may be the first device in history capable of adapting itself to
its environment: the homeostat. For that work, Ashby’s wife proffered their
kitchen table as the workbench for his experiments that, in the homeostat’s
case, included Royal Air Force bomb parts.31

From this experience Ashby devised his theory of cybernetics.

30  William Ross Ashby and Roger Conant, Mechanisms of Intelligence: Ross Ashby’s Writings
on Cybernetics (Seaside, Calif.: Intersystems Publications, 1981), preface.
31   Ashby and Conant, Mechanisms of Intelligence, preface.

321
322  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE CYBERNETIC NETWORK

OF THE ANTINET
On the very first notecard Niklas Luhmann wrote down in preparation
for describing the Antinet Zettelkasten, he wrote that it’s a cybernetic sys-
tem.32 We also know that Luhmann was familiar with the work of W. Ross
Ashby because we find Luhmann writing of Ashby’s work a few cards later.33
We also know that Luhmann was deeply familiar with a subfield of cyber-
netics called autopoiesis (which is the concept of a system producing and
maintaining itself by creating itself).

Cybernetics derives from kybernetes (Greek), meaning “steersman,” and

refers to having a goal and achieving the goal through steering in the proper
direction by way of the communication of feedback. W. Ross Ashby defines
it as “the art of steersmanship.”34 One of the pioneers of cybernetics, Nor-
bert Wiener, characterizes it as “control and communication in animal and
machine.”35 It arose as a disciplinary field involving information theory,
engineering, and computer science, and continues to have a wide-spanning
range across many different disciplinary fields.

Luhmann’s reference to the structure of his Antinet as a cybernetic one

makes sense. This field of study centers on communication. It’s no accident
that Luhmann titled his paper on the Antinet, Communication with Note-
boxes. The communication process arises out of the cybernetic nature of the
Antinet, utilizing control (by way of a fixed goal), and feedback. Cybernetic
systems are modeled in both machines and living organisms. In the former,
such systems are closely related to machine learning, specifically Q-learning
(which artificial intelligence systems use to learn by way of reinforcement).

32   “ZK II: Note 9/8—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed August 13, 2021, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V.
33  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8b—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 17, 2022, https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
34   W. Ross Ashby, An Introduction to Cybernetics (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publish‑
ing, 1956), 1.
35  “Cyberneticians.com,” accessed April 5, 2022, https://cyberneticians.com/cybernetic-
quotes.html.
 network  323

THE NATURE OF THE ANTINET’S

CYBERNETIC NETWORK
The cybernetic network structure of the Antinet resembles that of asso-
ciationism.36 This involves the association of nodes in a network based
on contiguity (the continuous flow of thought), and on the similarity of
thoughts causing them to be grouped or linked to one another. These two
components (contiguity and similarity) are what govern thought. They’re
also what comprise the structure of the cybernetic network of the Antinet.
In essence, the Antinet is built on associations that are linked together by
way of contiguity, in that continuously flowing ideas that overflow across
cards are naturally grouped together.

Additionally, the Antinet groups ideas in the long term by way of similarity.
The most similar thoughts are naturally grouped together, near one another.
The reason for this is that, again, the name of the game is to install notecards
closest to their nearest neighbors. This means either an individual notecard,
or a new stream of thought that encompasses several notecards which
elaborate on an idea.

The cards’ numeric-alpha addresses transform the Antinet’s network into

something akin to auto-associators in human memory science. This is some-
thing I go into in the chapter on how the Antinet mirrors human memory.
In brief, an auto-associator is built on content-addressable memory.37 That
is, every single memory has an address “affixed” to it.

The Antinet’s network is essentially composed of individual units of con-

tent-addressable memory (thanks to numeric-alpha addresses). How one
navigates the network comes by way of the index and tree structure of the
Antinet. These two components enrich the network in a powerful way that
is absent in digital Zettelkasten systems.

36  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: Norton, 2009), 113.
37  Pinker, How the Mind Works, 104.
324  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

WHAT CREATES THE CYBERNETIC NETWORK

OF THE ANTINET
As already discussed, the Antinet’s numeric-alpha addresses “ensure utmost
autonomy, i.e. self-referential closure of the machine.”38 The self-referential
closure of the machine is critical because it serves as the precondition for
creating a cybernetic network. In brief, the numeric-alpha addresses create
the cybernetic network of the Antinet.

This is important because the cybernetic nature of the Antinet is what helps
convert it into a network that provides feedback. The problem with digital
Zettelkasten and many notetaking systems is that they lack feedback mech-
anisms. With an Antinet, however, the system is enclosed in feedback loops.
For example, in your mind you might be looking for an idea or concept. You
follow a train of thought, and if you can’t find what you’re looking for, that
is a piece of feedback. The feedback is even more valuable if you’re sure that
you have the idea stored somewhere in the Antinet. You’re forced to have a
conversation and to communicate with the Antinet. You ask yourself, Where
else could I have stored the thought I’m looking for? What else is it related to?
In searching for the idea, you’re provided with more feedback and you make
accidental discoveries. The whole system is a feedback-generating mechanism
that brings unexpected new insights to the surface along the way.

CONCLUSION
This chapter is of briefer nature than the others, yet it’s no less important.
Now you know the nature of the network that characterizes the Antinet:
a cybernetic network.

Now we turn to a chapter of more practical nature. In the next chapter you’ll
be guided through the wild world of building your own Antinet. The first part
of the chapter serves as mental preparation in approaching the journey. Then,
halfway through the next chapter, you’ll be asked to follow a set of guided
instructions. Follow them precisely as I outline. Good luck, and Godspeed.

38  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 28.
 C H A PT E R E L E V E N
�

THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE

TO THE ANTINET

A t this point you have more than enough theoretical Antinet knowl-
edge. It’s time to roll up your sleeves and build out your own Antinet.
For all of the theoretical material you’ve ingested, you’ll be surprised to find
its nature to be quite simple.

THE OBSTACLES YOU’LL FACE BUILDING

AN ANTINET
Before we dive into the instructions, it’s critical for you to understand what
to expect. I’ve found that the biggest thing preventing anyone from building
out an Antinet is the false belief in what to expect. We’re going to dive into
this area now.

HOW TO EVEN BEGIN

The biggest obstacle you’ll face in building an Antinet is grasping how to
even begin in the first place. At this phase you might think that how you set
up your Antinet is critically important to its success. You might have the
feeling that if you make a single mistake in the beginning, the whole system
is doomed. Forever. Unfortunately, this is the case. Just kidding!

I’ve seen advice in online forums dedicated to digital Zettelkasten telling

people to just begin blindly, even randomly. You’ll also get advice from the
bestselling books that the Zettelkasten just emerges without planning—
without trying to create some semblance of organization using categories.

325
326  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

For instance, you’ll find authors stating things like: “The trick is that [Luh-
mann] did not organize his notes by topic, but in a rather abstract way of
giving them fixed numbers.”39 Yet, as you learn throughout this book, this
notion is false. Luhmann never declared that anyone should start building
an Antinet with no idea at all of where they want to go. Luhmann’s second
Zettelkasten was planned with eleven fuzzy categories. Luhmann’s first
Zettelkasten included 108 top-level categories. Both are included in the
appendix of this book.

Luhmann’s Antinet categories weren’t undetermined; rather, many were

predetermined. As Johannes Schmidt observes, “The pattern that we see here
is very much one of exploring and reflecting on largely predetermined, fairly
detailed fields of knowledge.”40

In brief, you don’t want to start with zero idea of how you’d like to structure
your Antinet. Ideally, you want to start with a rough idea of where you want
to take it. You want a fuzzy idea of what you want to build. With that said, the
system I’m about to teach you makes use of well-developed disciplinary fields,
so even if you don’t have a clue about what you want to use your Antinet for,
it will still work for you in the long term. The expansive disciplinary fields,
plus the internal branching structure of the Antinet, enable the system to
evolve in whatever direction your mind wishes to take it.

I realize all this sounds rather abstract and ambiguous; however, once you
complete the instructions I’m about to provide, you’ll begin to see what I’m
talking about. Once you spend a few weeks using the system, you’ll get a
lot more comfortable with it, and you will be less likely to wonder if you’ve
done something wrong.

39  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 19.
40  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016) , 296. https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  327

AVOID PERFECTIONISM (ALWAYS EVOLVE,

NEVER DELETE)
At the core of what I’ve just talked about is the tendency of perfectionism.
In the beginning of building your Antinet, you must abandon your desire
for perfection. One of the most valuable parts of the Antinet is…mistakes!
Specifically, your mistakes, your own thinking mistakes, and even imper-
fections in your own numbering conventions of the Antinet.

For instance, in the card I’m using to compose the section you’re reading
right now, I created what could be called an imperfection in its
numbering convention.

As you can see from this card, the card address is 4214/5aca/1. You’ll notice
that the end part is in green (a/1), whereas the beginning of the card address
is in blue. This is because at the time I created the card I hadn’t yet figured
out where I was going to put it. Therefore, in the beginning I would just
write a/1 in green, and once I figured out where to install it, I’d prepend the
address with the actual location in blue. Notice that the stem of the cards
before 4214/5aca is 4214/5ac and 4214/5a.

In brief, the structure looks like this:

328  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

– 4214/5a
* 4214/5ac
* 4214/5aca
* 4214/5aca/1

Note that there’s no 4214/5ab. I for some reason, just skip right to using
5ac because I created c before I even knew where I would install the card.

In brief, this isn’t the convention I use these days. In my workflow today,
I would first figure out where I wanted to install the card before I wrote the
note. The structure would be something like this instead:

– 4214/5a
* 4214/5a/1
* 4214/5a/2
* 4214/5a/2/1

In spite of the difference, both conventions are fine. The imperfections

work just as well. It’s just that my new conventional way of doing things
has changed over time. I find my current convention makes more sense
(to me), and it appears cleaner and more logical (again, to me). For instance,
today I wouldn’t go from 4214/5a to 4214/5ac (thus skipping 4214/5ab).
In addition, I also like a more nested structure, which uses slashes (/). For
instance, I prefer ‘branching down’ and creating 4214/5a/1 (opposed to
appending letters onto letters, like 4214/5ab).

What counts, though, is the actual thought being developed. I never have
the temptation to refactor the addresses of my notes. There’s no temptation
to make my new notes perfectly backward compatible with my old schemes
for numbering. Why? I don’t need to. The system just works.

In brief, don’t delete your mistakes or imperfections. The reason for this is
that there is value in re-reviewing your thoughts or re-reviewing your previous
mistakes to see how much you’ve grown. Or even to see how your previous
corrections of initially perceived mistakes turned out to also be incorrect! All
of these occurrences are valuable.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  329

Here’s a secret: even Luhmann didn’t get it right the first time. First, Luh-
mann’s thoughts themselves contained mistakes. Yet he never removed them
from his Antinet. For instance, Johannes Schmidt writes:

It [Luhmann’s Antinet] contains not only validated knowl-

edge but also reflects the thought process, including poten-
tial mistakes and blind alleys that were later revised but not
removed from the file as the original cards always remained in
Luhmann’s file and perhaps a new card with revisions was
added if needed.41

Second, Luhmann’s conventions, and the components of his Antinet, were

never deleted. He never deleted his old indexes, for instance, but continually
created more organized versions. After a certain point, his index became
messy.42 Instead of replacing the index with his new one, he simply placed
the new index after the old one. In total, his second Antinet contains four
versions of the index.43

Not only did Luhmann modify the index component of his Antinet, he also
experimented in other ways. He created an index that was not organized by
concepts’ keyterms, but by people’s names. Luhmann thought that this was
a helpful practice because our minds sometimes retrieve ideas by thinking
of the name of the author from which they derived.44

41  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 310. Emphasis added.
42  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
43  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306.
44  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. “This proves to be helpful because
our own memory—others will have similar experiences to mine—works in part with key
words and in part with author’s names.”
330  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Yet when Luhmann created a name-based index, he did not attempt to ret-
roactively make it backward compatible. He did not attempt to go through
all of his previous notecards and make sure the name-based index compre-
hensively referenced each of the notes. He did not systematically pursue the
strategy of adding items to the name index in every case.45

What we learn from these examples is to extinguish any sense of perfection-

ism. That’s right. I’m asking you to extinguish the idea that your Antinet
is to be a perfectly organized system. There’s far more power in creating
paths documenting your various mistakes. The stems of thoughts and ideas
documenting your mind changing stands as an invaluable property of the
Antinet. In addition, you’re encouraged to launch experiments (like Luh-
mann’s people-focused index). But at the same time, don’t feel like you’re
bound to systematically pursuing such an experiment forever. Old exper-
iments are valuable in and of themselves, and who knows—maybe you’ll
pick up where you left off one day and continue developing an experiment
you began ages ago.

DOUBTING THE POWER OF ANALOG

When first starting out, you may not realize the sheer power of analog sys-
tems. In fact, you may still hold a systemic negative regard for analog systems.
Today, society blindly accepts that technology and digital tools are better
for everything. However, digital tools are not better for everything. They’re
certainly not better for thinking and evolving thought.

When you’re just starting out, you may find yourself doubting this. You may
experience false beliefs and doubts about what you’re investing your time
and energy into. Please take my word for it until then. In brief, analog is
worth it. Developing your mind using analog tools pays off in the long-run;
heck, it even pays off in the short-run.

45  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 306. “However, Luhmann did not systematically pursue
this strategy.”
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  331

DON’T BECOME DISTRACTED BY THE

ZETTELKASTEN MYTHS OUT THERE
Perhaps the biggest distraction you’ll face in building an Antinet is the mis-
information and complete inventions you’ll find online about Zettelkasten.
If you search Zettelkasten online, there’s a 96% chance you’ll come across a
myth that misrepresents the system.46

The myths you come across about Zettelkasten seem innocuous and quite
rational at first. Yet the smallest thing could prevent your notetaking sys-
tem from becoming an actual second mind—a communication partner. For
instance, if you buy into the whole idea of creating atomic notes (perfectly
organized sets of one idea per card), then you’re setting yourself up for
failure. The many myths of Zettelkasten will be exposed throughout this
book. Until then, just trust me here. Don’t get distracted by the stuff about
Zettelkasten you find online.

YOU’RE LIKE AN AIRPLANE TAKING OFF

Building an Antinet isn’t easy. Especially in the beginning. I’d like to re-em-
phasize a major point: with the Antinet, you’re doing things the old way,
the hard way, the true way. Yet, you’ll be doing so bit-by-bit, card-by-card.
Paradoxically, this turns out to be the easy way in the long-run.

Yet, the major premise in Sönke Ahrens’s presentation of Zettelkasten is the

notion that it will make writing an easy, “seamless” activity.47 Ahrens makes
it seem like it’s a simple system. He misappropriates Luhmann’s phrase:
“I must tell you that I never force anything. I only do what comes easy to
me.”48 Ahrens leaves out the fact that Luhmann said this immediately after

46  I pulled the 96% out of my ass; yet, when I surveyed the search results, I found that rough-
ly 9/10 results regurgitate Sönke Ahrens’s interpretation of Zettelkasten, which is not how
Luhmann’s Zettelkasten worked.
47  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 5.
48  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts, Orig.-Ausg., 4. Aufl, Short Cuts 1 (Frankfurt am Main:
Zweitausendeins, 2002), 37.
332  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

outlining his work routine in detail. In brief, Luhmann worked every day
from 8:30am until roughly midnight.

Building out an Antinet requires work and a deliberate investment of energy.

However, you don’t need to work from 8:30am until midnight (for reasons
I’ll outline shortly).

When starting out, it’s best to think of yourself as an airplane taking off. In
the beginning it will require more energy. You’re about to be introduced
to an entirely new way of organizing and evolving your mind, and I’m also
introducing you to a new way of reading and developing your thoughts.

Combined with the overhead expenditure of energy required in learning a

new system, you’re also starting from scratch. You’ll face what I call index
fatigue. In the beginning, you have a completely barren structure. You’ll
therefore need to spend a considerable amount of time creating new keyterm
entries in your index. This is something that decreases and becomes less
time-consuming after several months.

Don’t get me wrong: you’ll always be creating new keyterm entries in your
index. But, in the beginning you’ll be creating keyterms much more fre-
quently. The important thing is that you manage index fatigue well. Don’t
get burnt out. Don’t land the plane before giving yourself a chance to hit
cruise control.

You Only Need Two Hours a Day

for Great Intellectual Work
While I do hold it to be true that the Antinet is for those who accept the
time investment required, it’s important to provide a caveat. The caveat is
that consistency is the goal. Keep in mind that Luhmann used his Antinet for
forty-six years (1951–1997). You should strive for the same.

When I preach hard work, don’t interpret my advice as requiring you to

work twelve hours a day on your Antinet. Rather two hours of work per day
consistently over the long term is a good goal. That means reading or writing
notes for two hours per day (on average).
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  333

The Catholic intellectual Antonin Sertillanges confirms this notion. To do

great intellectual work, a person needs only two hours per day of focused
study.49 If you work full-time, you must carve out two hours a day—either
before work or after work (or, even split them up). In my early twenties, when
I worked a day job full-time, I carved out two hours of work every morning
before I left for the office. Luhmann carved out his deliberate focus time
with his Antinet in the evenings.50

As far as intellectual work goes, the two-hour a day rule seems to be a theme.
For instance, the scholar Umberto Eco recommends a similar time com-
mitment in his book, How to Write a Thesis. One can write a quality thesis,
according to Eco, even if “they can only dedicate a few hours each day.” Yet
Eco hints at an even more important variable: one’s attitude. Those who gain
the most in writing a thesis, it seems, are those who pursue it as a means to
attain a “certain intellectual satisfaction.”51 That is, those who approach the
process of intellectual work with an attitude that centers not on fulfilling an
external requirement, but their own internal requirement. I agree.

ON HAVING A GOAL
Richard W. Hamming, an American mathematician who worked at Bell Lab-
oratories and who greatly influenced how computer and telecommunication
technology works today once observed how shockingly common it was that
his fellow employees were content to work on unimportant problems. They
lacked a clear goal or purpose. He noted how it even seemed like they made
a deliberate choice to work on unimportant problems.

Hamming was a scientist obsessed with truth. He had the tendency of

delivering his truth in an unfiltered fashion (often at the expense of other
people’s feelings). One day Hamming approached a fellow employee and
said abruptly, Why are you even bothering to live if you’re not working on an

49  OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 11.
50  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 11.
51   Umberto Eco, How to Write a Thesis, trans. Caterina Mongiat Farina and Geoff Farina,
Translation edition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2015), 5.
334  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

important problem or goal? The employee, understandably, was quite upset.

He scoffed at Hamming’s offensive words and stormed out of the room.

Later the employee wrote a letter to Hamming thanking him. The letter read:
Thank you. Your words ended up changing my life.52

This brings us to the crux of the matter: goals. Specifically, your goals in
building an Antinet. This matter is so important that you must explore it in
detail before setting out to build your Antinet.

It can be argued that people are too fascinated with Luhmann’s Antinet, to
the extent that many people overlook the famous declaration Luhmann
made. At the beginning of his intellectual career, Luhmann was one of
the first professors hired by Bielefeld University. The new administration
asked Luhmann what research project he would work on. His response was
legendary amongst sociologists: “My project was, and ever since has been,
the theory of society; term: thirty years; costs: none.”53

The Antinet served as the perfect tool for Luhmann because it helped him
with his ambitious goal. His goal was a massive undertaking. It was a thirty
year project that required a system that would enable him to develop and
evolve his thinking over the course of it.

This brings up the question: what is the goal of an Antinet in the first place?

In a sense, the ultimate goal of an Antinet centers on “maximizing the number

of copies of the genes that created it.”54 Consider this: the goal of Luhmann’s
Antinet was to maximize the proliferation of his ideas. He intended to do
this by packing in evidence from all of his readings. He began by extracting
knowledge from books onto their bibcards. From there he would develop

52  Richard W. Hamming and Bret Victor, The Art of Doing Science and Engineering:
Learning to Learn (Stripe Press, 2020), 386.
53  Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society, Volume 1, trans. Rhodes Barrett (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2012), xi.
54  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 43.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  335

that knowledge by elaborating on it (primarily by way of reflection notes).

These notes would then chain together and create deeply rich knowledge
that supported his theory of society.

In other words, Luhmann was reproducing and creating a legacy from his
thoughts as they developed in his Antinet.

The goal of the Antinet, then, is to replicate the thoughts of its creator in the
real world. Think of the thoughts as intellectual genetic material encompassed
in notecards. Therefore, the goal centers on reproduction—not biologi-
cal reproduction, but metaphysical reproduction of your thoughts—and
metaphysical reproduction of your thinking throughout the world. This
is achieved through your thoughts being so well-developed that they end
up producing work that reproduces those thoughts and allows them to be
spread throughout the world.

Luhmann’s Antinet seems to have achieved this. His books are studied
by scholars today—or at least studied by the ones with the diligence and
motivation to parse his deeply intertwined texts! Yet, ironically, Luhmann’s
Antinet seems to have the potential to proliferate and live on longer than
even Luhmann’s actual theoretical work will. Or perhaps it’s not so ironic.
People are fascinated with how Luhmann became a book-writing academic
research machine. The answer? The Antinet.

In essence, the goal of the Antinet is to reproduce the thoughts of its creator
by making it easier to create written products with the thoughts it stores.

Let’s now turn to the dichotomy of growth vs. contribution.

GROWTH VS. CONTRIBUTION

There are two states one operates in when using the Antinet. One is not
necessarily better than the other. In fact, you’ll likely move back and forth
between each state regularly.

The first state is the growth state. This occurs when using an Antinet to grow
your own knowledge and understanding. Whenever you’re venturing into a
336  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

new disciplinary field, you’ll spend the beginning phases learning by reading
books in brand new fields and noting down brand new ideas. You’ll mostly
be writing reformulation notes in this phase. You’ll be encountering new ideas
and reformulating them in your own words.

The second state is the contribution state. This occurs when using the Anti-
net to publish work and the focus is on contributing to others through
teaching them material. In this stage your focus will be books that
you’re creating.

You will often oscillate between the two states. However, I find that it’s best
to strive and live in the contribution state. In other words, you want to write
your notes as if they are part of a project or book that you’ll be publishing
so that you can teach others. It’s a paradox because the best way to grow and
learn something is by teaching the material, and the best way to do that is
through having the mindset of contribution.

In the beginning of working on your Antinet, you may not be ready to

actually commit to a certain project. I certainly wasn’t when I began my
journey. However, I would like to nudge you in the direction of moving
toward contribution.

If Luhmann had not set out with the ambitious goal of creating a the-
ory of society in thirty years, there’s a good chance we never would have
even heard about the Zettelkasten in the first place. In essence, Luhmann’s
Antinet wasn’t the only thing that helped him create genius-level work.
The other thing that helped him was his massive ambitious goal for his
Antinet.

The most important step to creating an Antinet that is too easily overlooked
is determining what your goal is before writing your first note. It is the
overall objective—the why—behind what attracted you to the Antinet that
is critically important.

You ought to have at least a vague or general direction for what you intend
to build with it.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  337

As Steven Pinker points out in his book, How the Mind Works, without
specifying a goal “the very idea of intelligence is meaningless.”55

And what is intelligence? It is the phenomenon the Antinet is engineered

to create. Intelligence comes from information. Information is a correlation
between two things. Before you install anything in your Antinet, you will
compare and correlate. You must decide if a concept is “this or something
else,” as Luhmann says.56

In brief, it helps to specify a goal. To be fair, however, the system works

perfectly even when you’re in a state in which your goal is to learn and grow.

Luhmann’s second Zettelkasten was started when he had a clear goal in mind.
His first Zettelkasten, however, was started when he didn’t have a clear idea
of what his intellectual work would entail in the years he was working for the
Higher Administrative Court of Lüneburg. During this time, he spent his
nights reading and building his Antinet. He said, “I started my Zettelkasten,
because I realized that I had to plan for a life and not for a book.”57

This statement seems to contradict his reason for starting his second Antinet
(the Antinet he created in order to work on his thirty-year book project
culminating in his Theory of Society).

You might notice, though, that Luhmann did have a goal for his first Zettelkas-
ten: it was to plan for life by learning from many fields of knowledge.

In brief, the Antinet can serve both states. It can assist someone who’s in the
growth state (without a clear end goal), and it can also assist someone who’s
in the contribution state (with a clearly defined book or project).

55   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 61.
56  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
57  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.
338  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

From my experience, I have found the Antinet to really shine when one is in
the contribution state. When you have a specific project and goal in mind,
the Antinet really begins to flex its strength.

In essence, what we’re talking about here is the explore vs. exploit dilemma.
That is, do you approach work as an explorer with an open-mind? Or do you
approach your work with a deliberate goal, and exploit an opportunity you
see? The explore-exploit tradeoff occurs every single day. It can be as simple
as going to your favorite restaurant, or trying out a new one.58

In approaching this dilemma, I like a concept introduced by clinical psy-

chologist and bestselling author Jordan Peterson. One ought to define a
deliberate goal to limit the chaos of life. Yet one also ought to adopt a meta
goal. The term meta, in Greek, means above or beyond. Therefore, one ought
to have a goal which resides above a concrete project in the physical world.
An example of a meta goal is to “live in truth.” That is, a meta goal allows one
to act diligently toward a defined end in an authentic way that remains in
alignment with your soul.59 Have a defined goal, yes; however, if your soul
authentically shifts, shift with it.

BEFORE WRITING YOUR FIRST NOTE

One critical point that rarely gets mentioned may seem rather obvious: it’s
helpful to have a project in mind for your Antinet. An Antinet is not neces-
sarily something you ought to do with the idea of completely open-ended
reading. As Luhmann states, “I first make a plan of what I am going to write,
and then take from the note cabinet what I can use.”60 When Luhmann drew
from the Antinet the material would use for a new project, that material did
not come about through aimless reading. At some point, he made a decision
on what project to work on.

58  “Explore-Exploit Tradeoff—Definition and Examples,” Conceptually, accessed April 12,

2022, https://conceptually.org/concepts/explore-or-exploit.
59   Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Later prt. edition (Toronto:
Random House Canada, 2018), 226.
60   Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 11.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  339

The key point is that when you decide to work on a project, it doesn’t nec-
essarily confine you to that project forever. The material you create in one
project will unearth material you can use in your next project.

For instance, when I first started building out my Antinet, I didn’t yet realize
I was going to write a book on it. I was planning on writing a book that sat at
the intersection of copywriting, psychology, and philosophy. My readings
included books like The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which is about the hero’s
journey and storytelling. It didn’t seem like any of the material would have
been relevant to this book; yet, as it turns out, it was relevant! In my section
on the tree structure of the Antinet, I used some of the material in discussing
the metaphysical power pertaining to the concept of trees. Moreover, reading
about the power of trees may have helped spark the light bulb that helped
me realize that the Antinet is built on a tree structure.

What I’m trying to say is this: take a goal-oriented approach when building out
your Antinet. Do not worry if, later on, you decide to progress to a completely
different project. Why? Because it’s likely the material you develop will still
contribute to the new project. All domains of knowledge are interdisciplinary.
Concepts in mathematics can serve one’s understanding of philosophical
concepts. The great mathematician Bertrand Russell also penned one of
the best books ever written on philosophy (A History of Western Philosophy,
which won him a Nobel Prize in 1950). This is but one of countless examples.

I’ll keep hammering this idea into you: having a goal or project in mind is
critical when developing notes using an Antinet. Even when reading a book,
the goal-oriented nature and intention of reading is paramount.61 I’ll illustrate
this principle more in the chapter on reading workflows.

The reason I keep emphasizing this is because the magic of the Antinet
really started taking off for me once I shifted to contribution. In mid-
June 2021, I made a decision to focus on teaching the true Zettelkasten—
the Luhmannian version—the Antinet Zettelkasten. Up until that point I was

61   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updat-
ed ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 45.
340  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

resisting the idea of writing a book about the Antinet. I feared it would just
be a distraction or procrastination-fueled detour. It also appeared seemingly
absurd at the time. My profession and craft was in marketing, copywriting,
and cryptocurrency (which are much more lucrative markets). The PKM
and productivity market is as niche as it gets. And within that niche almost
everyone focuses on teaching the powerful “method” of whatever the latest
and greatest digital app is.

Yet, I knew in my heart and soul the truth: analog tools serve as a much more
effective system for developing thought. I knew in my heart that people were
left with watered down digital Zettelkasten tools. There were no instruc-
tions or guides for how to build an analog version—the original version.
I couldn’t let it go. So, even with doubts in my mind, I made a commitment.
To hell with the copywriting, psychology and philosophy project for now, I said
to myself. I’m going all in on the Antinet.

This is when things really started to take off. At this point I began to expe-
rience the magic of the Antinet. Yet even before this commitment to the
Antinet, I made a soft commitment to working on a copywriting, psychology
and philosophy project.

Again, commit to an idea or project and don’t fret if you decide to shift
into a different project altogether. You can shift back to the original project
whenever you’re done with the new project. You can also shift back to dif-
ferent projects if you hit a wall (figuratively speaking). As Luhmann says
(after outlining his twelve-plus-hour work days): “I only write when I know
immediately how to do it. If it stops for a moment, I put the thing aside and
do something else.”62 However, don’t let Luhmann’s turn you into someone
who switches tasks every other day. Try to start things you’ll finish. Commit
to them, but also know they can be revisited if you ever decide to switch to
something else after a few months.

Johannes Schmidt writes, “at least in the more mature stage of Luhmann’s
theory-building since the 1970s, [Luhmann’s Antinet] did not serve as a
pure archive that he would develop independent of specific publication projects.”

62  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 19.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  341

Luhmann only installed cards in his Antinet that were related to publication
requests he took on.63

Yet, as Schmidt points out, the material Luhmann developed during the course
of fulfilling publication requests—by writing research papers—ended up
serving as the basis for his books. By taking on one project, the new material
created unforeseeable developments in his other long-term projects. As Luh-
mann worked on new publications, “in the process, he would also document
the evolution of his thought process,” writes Schmidt. “Over the course of
producing these publications,” his theory developments were compounded.64

HOW TO BUILD AN ANTINET

OK, now that you know the obstacles to avoid, we can now get into building
your Antinet. Jesus Christ, Scott, it’s about time!

Here is an overview of the system we will be building:

63  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 310-11. Emphasis added.
64  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 311.
342  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE SUPPLIES YOU NEED

To help perfect the way I teach the Antinet, I conducted a series of 1-on-1
Antinet coaching sessions (the recordings of which you can find on my
YouTube channel).

With each of my Antinet coaching clients, I recommend the following

materials for getting started:

1. Three noteboxes that can store 4 x 6 inch notecards (or one box, if you wish
to save space for now).

2. A set of blank double-sided 4 x 6 inch notecards.

3. A set of ruled colored 4 x 6 inch indexcards.

4. A set of alphabetical card dividers, wherein each divider label contains a

dedicated alphabetical letter (i.e., A, B, C, etc.).

You will also need a badass pen. Use a pen you love to write with. Think of
it as an instrument. People apply a ton of creativity to what colors they use.
You’re welcome to use whichever set of colors work best for you. I’ve exper-
imented with different colored inks over time. My current ink repertoire
is black ink for main notes, green ink for cardlinks, and red ink for ExRefs
(i.e., citing books and external sources).

BUILDING OUT YOUR MAIN BOX AND INDEX BOX

In my experience coaching people through this process, I find that most
people don’t have a problem taking notes from the books they read. Taking
reading notes is straightforward. Heck, it’s even addicting and fun! Those
types of notes are filed in the bib box. I’ll cover that in the next section which
involves reading strategies.

We’re going to skip the bib box part for now. Instead we’re going to dive
right into the heart of the Antinet, the so-called “hard part” of this whole
thing. We’re going to build out the main box and index box of your Antinet.
Realize that you’re not going to really understand why I’m telling you to
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  343

do certain things in the beginning; but just follow exactly what I say. Don’t
try and understand it yet. Just proceed step-by-step in a deliberate fashion.
Follow every detail. Sound good?

Let’s go.

 Take out a pen with black ink.

 Take out a blank white 4 x 6 inch notecard.65

 In the top-right corner66 write 1000.

 In the center write Arts & Humanities.

It should look like this:

65  If you are living in a geographic region adhering to ISO standards, use the A6 paper size. Or,
if you do not have access to 4 x 6 inch or A6 notecards, just get creative. Cut out a piece of
paper to such a size. Luhmann used old pieces of paper from his father’s brewery, as well as
paper from his children’s old coloring books.
66  Luhmann chose the top-left corner; I prefer top-right corner.
344  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

 Take out another notecard.

 In the corner write 2000, and in the middle write Social Sciences.

 Take out another notecard.

 In the corner write 3000, and in the middle write Natural Sciences.

 Take out another notecard.

 In the corner write 4000, and in the middle write Formal Sciences.

 Take out one more notecard.

 In the corner write 5000, and in the middle write Applied Arts & Sciences.

 Now, stack all five of these cards in sequential order from 1000 to 5000
and place them in the first box.

This is your main box.

 On the front of this box create a small label for this box that reads Main.

It should look like this:

 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  345

 Now, pull out 26 ruled indexcards. I like to use colored indexcards for
these. Set them in front of you.

It should look like this:

 With the first indexcard, in the top-left corner, write A.

It should look like this:

 Do the same exact thing for the remaining twenty five letters in the alphabet.
346  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

 Now, stack the 26 cards in alphabetical order, from A-Z, then place the
stack of 26 cards in the second box.

 On the second box, create a label that reads Index, and place it on the
front of the box.

It should look like this:

The first box is your main box. Your Antinet is a tree of knowledge. The tree
contains five main branches (1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, and 5000). From these
five branches, many other branches will “branch off.” Stems will form, and
leaves of notecards will fill up the tree. Right now, your tree of knowledge
is barren. We’ll fix that soon.

The second box containing 26 cards is your index. Your index is the map you
create as you build your tree of knowledge.

Now, pull out another blank notecard.

On this notecard, write out the following quote. However, before you
write it out, make sure you leave about a centimeter of space at the top
of the quote.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  347

“One of the most basic presuppositions of communication

is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. Only
in this way can information be produced in the respective
other. Information is an intra-systematic event. It results
when one compares one message or entry with regard to
other possibilities. Information, accordingly, originates only
in systems which possess a comparative schema—even if this
only amounts to ‘this or something else.’ ”

It should look like this:

At this point, you’re probably wondering why the heck I made you write
down this excerpt. After all, your reason for using an Antinet probably won’t
focus on writing about communication theory or information theory.

The reason why I chose to start with this is to show the flexibility of the
system we’re about to create.

You see, in Luhmann’s first Antinet, he created 108 top-level categories. They
were rough starting points. They included many topics he was interested
348  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

in. Yet when he created his second Antinet, it was focused primarily on his
theoretical sociological work.

If Luhmann had started out with a broader classification system (instead

of his arbitrarily chosen 108 categories), I hold that he would never have
needed to create a second Antinet. If he had structured his first Antinet to
be all-encompassing, he could have created a branch (or set of branches),
which nicely encompassed his theoretical sociological work.

The goal with your Antinet is to avoid having to make a second, separate
Antinet; to reach that goal, you’ll use an all-encompassing structure to
house all your knowledge so that you can use the same Antinet for the rest
of your life.

This will be made possible by using a well-developed and robust classifica-

tion system. For this reason, I choose to use the academic disciplinary fields
provided by Wikipedia.

Here is a link to Wikipedia’s Outline of academic disciplines:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_academic_disciplines

This classification system will serve as a rough guide for how to structure
your Antinet.

You will notice that the contents of the academic disciplines have five top-
level branches. These five top-level branches map directly to the five branches
you already created. The sub-branches of each of these categories can be
created and numbered arbitrarily. The choice of the numbers and whether
or not to even create the sub-branch is entirely up to you. Here’s a picture
(see following page):
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  349

I will now show you how to use the academic disciplines to help you figure
out where to install your notecards.

OK, so where should we place the notecard we’ve just created?

The quote I had you write on the notecard is from Niklas Luhmann. He’s
writing of the Antinet as his communication partner. He’s observing that
information comes about by comparing something to something else. I guess
it could be filed in either an information branch, or a communication branch.
But which one? In my opinion, the primary idea in this quote revolves around
information, so let’s go with that.

Now, let’s open up the Wikipedia’s academic disciplines page, and search the
page for the term information. What we find are twenty-one search results for the
term information on the page. We also find that the first three seem irrelevant…
350  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

But, aha! The fourth result seems intriguing…it’s something called Informa-
tion Theory. What the heck is Information Theory? Let’s find out.

 Pull out another blank notecard. In the middle write:

Information Theory
Information Theory studies the transmission, processing,
extraction, and utilization of information.

It should look like this:

Still with me?

Good.

You now have two cards in front of you. One with the quote written on it,
and the other for Information Theory. If you don’t, retrace your steps (and
get your shit together). Kidding, but seriously.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  351

Let’s keep going.

So now we have two cards with handwritten stuff on them.

Where should we file these cards?

Let’s start with the second card we wrote. The one that outlines Infor‑
mation Theory.

By consulting Wikipedia’s academic disciplines, we can see that Information

Theory falls under the field of Formal Sciences. It falls specifically within the
subfield of Computer Science.

 Still with me? Cool. Now pull out another blank card.

 In the top-corner write, 4200 and in the middle write:

Computer Science
Computer Science is the study of computation, automation,
and information.

It should look like this:

352  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

 Now it’s time to consult the index. In your index box find the list indexcard
C and pull it out.

 With the card C, write an entry that reads Computer Science: ‘4200’.

It should look something like this:

I like to put little quotes around cardlinks so they feel more contained.
It’s just a personal preference.

 Now place the C list indexcard back inside the index box. File the card
4200 behind the card 4000 in the main box.

OK, now back to the Information Theory card.

Where should we file the Information Theory card?

 Let’s place it within the Computer Science branch. Why? Because according
to Wikipedia’s Outline of Academic Disciplines, Information Theory falls under
Computer Science. So, let’s arbitrarily choose 4212 for Information Theory.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  353

 In the top-corner of the Information Theory card write 4212.

It should look like this:

 Now file this card in your main box behind card 4200.

Good job so far!

Now, there should be one remaining card in front of you—the card with
the long-quote on it. Let’s figure out where to file this card.

In the Antinet, the name of the game is similarity. When figuring out where
to install a card, you must ask: What is this card most similar to?

OK, so what is this card in front of us most similar to? That’s easy. It’s most
similar to the Information Theory card. Indeed, it even falls within the Infor-
mation Theory branch.

 In the top-right corner of the card write 4212/1.

354  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It should look like this:

Heck yes! We’re all done, right? Almost, but not quite.

There are a few more things we ought to do.

 First, pull out the list indexcard I from your index box.

 Create an entry: Information Theory, and next to that write, 4212

It should look like this:

 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  355

There’s another thing we ought to do (since we’re pros).

 Let’s add an entry under list indexcard C for Communication within the
context of Information Theory. Pull out the list indexcard C and write
Communication (within Information Theory): ‘4212/1’.

It should look like this:

 OK, now file away C by putting it back in your index box.

In front of you, there should be one notecard: 4212/1. Before you install
4212/1 into your main box, we have one more thing we need to do.

On 4212/1, what you did was write down a quote. The notion that Luhmann
never wrote down excerpts or quotes is a myth. Luhmann did, indeed, write
down quotes from the books he read. That said, you want to err on the side
of creating more reformulation notes and reflection notes (instead of excerpt
notes). I’ll detail those types of notes in a later chapter. For now, it’s helpful
to start you off with an excerpt note (which is why I had you write down
that quote)!
356  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When you create an excerpt note, it requires one thing. It must also provide
the source from where the quote came from. To answer this, we shall now
dive into External Reference Links (“ExRefs”).

Stay with me; we’re almost done.

 On a computer, download the reference manager called Zotero by visit‑

ing www.zotero.org.

 After you download and install Zotero on your computer, there is one
more step. You must download the Zotero connector for your web browser.
Visit the following link and download the connector for the browser that
you use: https://www.zotero.org/download/connectors

 Next, open up Zotero.

 Now, using the browser in which you have the Zotero Connector installed,
visit the following URL: https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/
This URL is where the quote originated from. It is an English translation
of a paper titled Communication with Noteboxes by Niklas Luhmann.67

 While viewing this web page, click the Zotero icon which should now be
installed in the panel of your browser. It should capture the page and add
it as an entry to your Zotero Desktop application.

67  I host this paper on a website I created while I was releasing daily writing pieces (part of
a daily publishing challenge).
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  357

 Now, switch over to the Zotero Desktop application. Click on the new
entry. It should look something like this:

After clicking on the entry, you should see four buttons in the right-hand
area: Info, Notes, Tags, and Related.

 Click Tags.

 Add a new tag and name it r.TDSSZ.68

The “r.” prepended to the reference identifier indicates that we’re referencing
an ExRef stored in Zotero.

Ok, now let’s jump back to the card 4212/1.

 Take out a pen. One with red ink.

 Immediately after the quote ends, add a little footnote in red ink by writ-
ing [1] after it. In the bottom-left corner, with red ink as well, write the
following: 1. r.TDSSZ. This signals to us where this quote originated from.

68  Since the website was created by yours truly, and since it is called The Daily Scott Scheper,
and, since it is a page about Zettelkasten, that’s where the abbreviation comes from:
“TDSSZ.”
358  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The card 4212/1 should now look like this:

Now take a look at that beautiful card in front of you. Bask in its glory.

 Now file it away behind notecard 4212.

That’s it for now.

This should give you a taste for what it’s like working with an Antinet.

You now have your main box and index box built out.

Eventually, as you build out your Antinet, it will grow significantly. Instead
of one main box, you’ll have many main boxes. In fact, you’ll probably end
up with a box for each of the five branches you’ve created. A box each for
1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000. At that point, your Antinet will have grown
to look like this:
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  359

One of the things I recommend picking up is a set of alphabetical card dividers.

The card dividers are useful for when your index box expands. They’re also
useful for storing bibcards in your bib box (which I’ll outline in the chapter
on Extraction).

Here’s a picture of my index box:

360  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The alphabetical dividers are helpful for sorting through the indexcards quickly.

These are mere conveniences. You don’t need them to thrive in the beginning,
but they’re things you’ll want to add to your Antinet as it grows.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

There’s a chance you’ll have questions come up that I haven’t addressed fully.
In such a case, a good resource is the Antinet Reddit Community (www.
reddit.com/r/Antinet). There’s also a good chance the question you may
have has been answered there, not just by myself, but by other Antinetters,
as well. In addition, I recommend you visit my website as another resource
(www.scottscheper.com). On my website, and through my email list, I share
a wealth of Antinet resources.

With that said, I’d like to address a few questions I get asked frequently.

WHERE SHOULD I PLACE THIS CARD?

It seems like the most common area where people get hung up is the numer-
ic-alpha addresses. We imagine that there’s some correct place or area for a
card to be filed. That’s one of the downsides of using academic disciplines
as a classification system. It implies that there’s some perfect and correct
place for a certain card to be placed.

Let me make it perfectly clear: the correct place for any card is to install it
near its most similar neighbor.

If you want to install a card in a more remote location, under a branch you
feel fits better, simply create a cardlink for it. For instance, my main section
where I write about the Antinet resides at 4214. However, there are certain
sections related to that topic, which live in other locations.

For example, I have a section about writing by hand, which is discussed in

4214/3d/3b. However, I also have a section on the power of writing by hand
in section 1323. Why? Because the section 1323 resides closer to my section
on writing. This isn’t a problem. I just have a card within 4214/3d/3b that
says, For more on writing by hand, see also: ‘1323’.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  361

If you’re struggling to figure out how to make branches for your cards,
remember that there’s no correct solution. It’s arbitrary. Each scenario will
work. If you’re trying to figure out whether to create a branch at 4212 vs. 4300,
let me offer some guidance: if the area will comprise a significant portion of
your work with many sub-branches, then I’d opt for 4300. This grants you
the ability to organize a structure like this:

– 4300
* 4310
* 4311
* 4312
* 4320

However, even if you elected to go with 4212, you’ll be fine. You can organize
such a branch like this:

– 4212
* 4212/10
* 4212/10/1
* 4212/10/2
* 4212/20

These are very clean examples. However, in reality, when you use an Antinet,
it’s never perfectly clean. It’s a system of ordered chaos. Embrace it. Stop
trying to confine the infinite depths of knowledge to some preconceived
set of categories.

Your Antinet, over time, will evolve into a unique structure. This gives it
a personality. This is what transforms it into an alter-ego, a second mind,
a communication partner.

WHAT IF I ALREADY HAVE A CARD THERE?

Another question I get asked pertains to what you should do if you already
have a card installed in the desired location.

For instance, take the following sequence:

362  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

– 4214
* 4214/1
* 4214/1/1
* 4214/1a
* 4214/2

Now, say you want to install a card immediately after 4214/1. The only prob-
lem is that 4214/1/1 is already there. What are you to do?

The solution is quite simple. Simply create a card 4214/1/0.

This then naturally brings up a follow-up question. What do you do when

you want to install a card before 4214/1/0?

Again, it’s simple, move into the negatives. What comes before zero? Why,
negative-one comes before zero! Simply create 4214/1/-1

Now, using negative numbers is something Luhmann did not do; however,
I’ve found it to work quite well for me.

As a result you’ll have:

– 4214
* 4214/1
* 4214/1/-1
* 4214/1/0
* 4214/1/1
* 4214/1a
* 4214/2

WHAT IF A CARD FITS INTO

MULTIPLE CATEGORIES?
Let’s go deeper into the question of where to install cards. Again, the game
you’re playing with the Antinet is associating the card next to, or under, its
most similar neighbor.
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  363

This exercises the comparison faculty of your brain. Comparison, again, is a

critical process for creating information, a precursor for knowledge.

If a card fits into multiple categories, first off, do not get anxiety about it.
“Every place is adequate,” as Johannes Schmidt says. “The card only has to
connect with the card before it.”69

But what happens if you have a card that fits into two different places in
your Antinet?

There are three primary ways to handle this: (1) Index Cardlinks, (2) Hoplink
Cards, and (3) “See Also” Cardlinks.

Index Cardlinks
In the walkthrough we just went through in building your own Antinet, we
encountered a scenario where a card fits into the information branch, as well
the communication branch. What we did was simply choose to install it in
the information branch. We then created an entry in the list indexcard for C,
writing Communication (within Info. Theory): ‘4212/1’.

This is an index cardlink. Whenever you’re ready to create a branch in the

main box of the Antinet for Communication, you’ll also see that you have
a card pertaining to Communication within the Information Theory branch.

Hoplink Cards
Another way of handling this would be to create a new card and place it in
the Communication branch (whenever it’s created). On the card, it would
simply say, For Communication in the context of Information Theory, visit
‘4212/1’. This is what I call a hoplink card. Luhmann created these types of
cards, as well.

Here’s an example hoplink card:

69  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 36:50.
364  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

More on hoplink cards are explored in the chapter, Creation.

“See Also” Cardlinks

In most cases, you don’t need to create a dedicated hoplink card. At the
bottom of a card already written about communication, you can simply add
a bit of text at the bottom that says: See also: ‘4214/5AE/2’. Here’s an example
from my own Antinet:
 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  365

This is a “see also” cardlink.

As you can see (pun intended), numeric-alpha addresses are powerful. They
enable a whole wealth of possibilities and ways to link bits of your knowl-
edge together to generate new connections. This is where a system like the
Antinet really begins to outshine other systems.

“SEE ALSO” EXREFS

“See also” cardlinks not only pertain to internal cardlinks (which link to cards
within your Antinet). They can also be used for ExRefs (external references).

For instance, say you read a book that contains a good passage relating to
Love. Yet you’re not working actively on a project related to Love. Instead
of developing an elaborate main note on love, for sake of time, you can
simply create an entry, which reads See also: r.Moeller, 36. Luhmann did
this frequently.

HOW DO I CREATE NOTES FOR

COLD HARD FACTS?
While writing the section at the beginning of this book, I received the fol-
lowing question: How do I install cold hard facts in my Antinet?

The individual who asked me this question works in the field of French
real estate law. He was wondering where to file the following note: “French
real estate law requires each condominium to be divided by unit, and each
apartment is a unit.”

On this matter, I’ll say a few things.

I have indeed installed cold hard facts in my own Antinet. They are cards
like population size by country, revenue figures of businesses, etc.

However, I created these cold hard fact cards in the pre-Antinet days.70
So that’s one reason they even exist. I have since retroactively gone back and

70  For over a decade, and before discovering the Antinet, I used a notebox system organized
366  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

installed many of these cold hard fact cards into my Antinet. In every case,
I’ve found the academic disciplinary fields to accommodate them. There’s
always a branch for where they can go. And even if there isn’t a clear branch
within the academic disciplinary fields, you can just create one (and likely
place it in branch 5000).

I like to place my cold hard fact cards on 3 x 5 inch cards. I like to consult
them from time to time in order to unearth accidental insights.

Yet, as I touched upon in the beginning of this book, the Antinet is primarily
useful for creators. It’s useful for those who wish to elaborate on thoughts
and evolve them by reflecting on them. You evolve your thoughts by linking
them to more thoughts filed behind them.

If you wish to just memorize a bunch of cold hard facts, an Antinet may be
overkill. Heck, even digital tools like Anki do the trick for this type of thing.
Of course, there is certainly value to be obtained from the act of writing
facts down by hand.

Typically, those who benefit most from an Antinet are writers, researchers,
and creators who wish to evolve thought.

After sharing my response with the individual who asked the question about
cold hard facts, he provided more clarity. In actuality, his work in French
real estate law is for his thesis. In this case, the Antinet will have more use,
and provide more value.

To wrap this up, it is possible to use the Antinet to store cold hard facts.
For example, you’d place the previously mentioned card in Real Estate Law
branch. For instance, 1310. Near that branch, you could create a branch for
French Real Estate Law at 1312. Within that branch, you can begin creating
cards pertaining to specific laws at 1312/1. Again, these numbers are arbitrary
and can be chosen by you based on personal whim.

by book or category (like Ryan Holiday’s notebox system).

 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Antinet  367

CONCLUSION
We’ve covered a lot in this chapter. We started with important principles
involved in building an Antinet. We covered the mindset with which you
should approach the beginning phases of building an Antinet. We emphasized
that you must not get lost in the trap of perfectionism. We also capped off
this preamble with the concept of goals, and growth vs. contribution.

We then dove headfirst into building out your own Antinet. If you followed
the steps (which I hope you did), you now have a solid base. You have the
start of your own Antinet!

Now that you have a solid foundation, it’s time to embark upon the next
phase of our journey: Knowledge Development. Get ready. This section of
the book is a lot more fun than it sounds. It also serves as the core process
for building your knowledge. Let’s go.
 C H A PT E R T W E LV E
�

KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT

T he category Zettelkasten finds itself lumped into is called per-

sonal knowledge management (PKM). PKM is a disciplinary subfield of
knowledge management concerned with the personal collection, organization,
storing, and sharing of digital information.

As it applies to the Antinet, I dislike the categorical term PKM for several
reasons. First off, notetaking systems do not exclusively contain knowl-
edge; they contain information, which helps one develop knowledge.
In addition, the entire point of Luhmann’s Antinet centered on the develop-
ment of knowledge (not management of knowledge).

Luhmann’s Antinet is not seen as a memory tool, but a thinking tool. It’s a
thinking tool that aims to develop one’s thoughts. It’s a very active system, not
something that is properly encompassed by the term management. Because
it requires action, a better term for it is development. The goal of the Antinet
is to develop one’s thoughts (revealed in the notes you create), as well as your
own thinking (revealed in how your brain works to link together ideas). For
this reason, I encompass both thoughts and thinking under the umbrella term
knowledge. In turn this gives us the label in which I categorize the Antinet:
a knowledge development system.

TWO PROCESSES OF KNOWLEDGE

DEVELOPMENT
As Johannes Schmidt observes, there are two processes of the Antinet as

368
 Knowledge Development  369

a knowledge development system. The first process involves developing

thought through the practice of writing by hand. The second process involves
interacting with the Antinet as a communication partner.1

PROCESS I: SHORT-TERM KNOWLEDGE

DEVELOPMENT

In Luhmann’s own Antinet, one finds the following handwritten note:

“Underlying the filing technique is the experience that without writing,
there is no thinking.”2

1   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner,
Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
2   “ZK II: Paper 9/8g—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed April 18, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8g_V.
370  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In the short term, the Antinet enables users to develop thought through
the practice of writing by hand. As I’ve illustrated throughout this text,
I contend that this practice develops thought better than digital systems
because of the deliberate attention required. As Schmidt observes, “writing
things down enables disciplined thinking in the first place.”3 I also contend
that the analog nature of the Antinet develops one’s thinking better because
it neuroimprints ideas on the mind far more effectively than digital tools.

PROCESS II: LONG-TERM KNOWLEDGE

DEVELOPMENT

As Schmidt highlights, the second process of knowledge development centers

on the Antinet emerging as a communication partner during research. This
happens by way of the tree structure of the Antinet evolving your thoughts
over the long term.

3   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
 Knowledge Development  371

When you begin exploring your notes as you prepare to write a manuscript,
a communication experience emerges. For instance, you first come upon a
note written seven years ago. Following this note is a newer note recently
added which seemingly contradicts the first note. What happens next illus-
trates the internal dialogue that takes place: you question why the notes
contradict one another, and then you begin investigating the sources of
the notes. You begin investigating your chain of thoughts that resulted in
coming away with a different understanding from what you now hold as true.

This is an instance that exemplifies the long-term thought development that

takes place while using an Antinet. Thoughts are developed both in the short
term as well as the long term.

Before we get into the four specific phases of knowledge development, let’s
first take a step back into the abstract land of information science.

THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND

INFORMATION
In order to better understand knowledge, we need to distinguish it from
its close relatives: data, information, and wisdom. This brings us to the
DIKW pyramid.

THE DIKW PYRAMID

A convenient model that emerged within the information science field is
called the DIKW pyramid.
372  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Like all models of reality, the pyramid is fuzzy and imperfect. Every scholar
in information science seems to have their own interpretation of the four
components of the pyramid. For instance, one paper contains 130 different
definitions of data, information and knowledge from 45 different scholars.
The paper was created because it recognized that an issue with information
science revolves around the lack of clarity on these fundamental concepts.4

The different components of the DIKW pyramid get so fuzzy that I almost
scratched this entire section when I started to second-guess whether or not
I was getting things right. I would read one scholar’s explanation and come
away with an understanding of information only to find another scholar
classifying the same thing as knowledge!

Regardless, I’ve assembled the following explanations, which are more than
sufficient for our purposes.

Data
Data is raw, unprocessed stimuli from the universe. The raw material can
be physical in nature or metaphysical in nature. Data is raw material, like
the universe’s energy waves and particles: light, heat, sound, force, and
electromagnetic components. Think of data as sound wave represented in
computer symbols like 010110100011011. We cannot understand what this
data means at this point.

Information

“To be informed is to know simply that something is the case.”

–Mortimer Adler5

Before data can be converted to information, it undergoes a phase transi-

tion. The phase transition is the interpretation phase. This phase involves our

4   Chaim Zins, “Conceptual Approaches for Defining Data, Information, and Knowledge,”
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 58, no. 4
(2007): 479–93.
5   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev.
and updated ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11.
 Knowledge Development  373

sensory system (sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, balance). For example, our
ears receive data, and then interpret the data. We then transcribe the data
into forms we can comprehend.

In brief, information is data we can comprehend. For instance, the sound

wave data from the previous example (010110100011011) is interpreted through
one’s ears. It is then transitioned into a comprehensible sound: the sound of
a train, which is information.

Knowledge

“To be enlightened is to know, in addition, what it is all about: why

it is the case, what its connections are with other facts, in what
respects it is the same, in what respects it is different, and so forth.”
–Mortimer Adler6

Knowledge is information multiplied by meaning. Knowledge is useful

information. I also like to think of knowledge as structured information.
Knowledge integrates, correlates, and collects several pieces of information.7
Say, for instance, we have the information that the sound we just heard is
that of a train. Knowledge assembles and structures other useful pieces of
information onto this: the information comprising the who, what, where,
and when properties attached to data.8 For instance, we know what we heard
sounds like a train (what). Yet we piece this information together with other
properties: it involves you and the train (who), its general direction (where),
and how recently we heard it (when).

Knowledge enables us to connect and structure these disparate pieces of

information together to create meaning. It tells us, holy crap, I’m on the train
tracks right now and I just heard a train. This brings us to wisdom.

6   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11. Emphasis added.
7   “Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom,” accessed April 18, 2022, https://www.sys-
tems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm.
8   “Data, Information, Knowledge, & Wisdom,” accessed April 18, 2022, https://www.sys-
tems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm.
374  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Wisdom

“Intelligent action depends on knowledge.”

–Mortimer Adler9

Wisdom is knowledge multiplied by action. When you take action after the
information phase, that’s intuitive action. However, when you take action
after the knowledge phase, you’re taking wise action. You’re making a decision
based on multiple pieces of information. This doesn’t mean you’re necessarily
taking the right action; however, it does mean you have a higher likelihood
of taking the right action. Knowing things only gets one so far; wise action
stands as a critical phase.

Formulaic Summary
Here’s a formulaic summary of what we just covered:

Data = Raw Stimuli

Information = Comprehension x Data

Knowledge = Information x Meaning

Wisdom = Knowledge x Action

KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND SHARING

IS THE GOAL
With the Antinet, the goal is to create knowledge, not information. Informa-
tion is a means to an end. We don’t just want to collect facts and material
we can comprehend; we want to create knowledge.

This is why I routinely advise against wasting your time with things like
publishing your notes. When it comes to sharing publicly, err on the side
of publishing knowledge over information.

9   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev.
and updated ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 65.
 Knowledge Development  375

When you possess information, you’re informed. When you possess knowl-
edge, you’re enlightened. The difference between being informed and being
enlightened is the difference between being able to recite something vs.
being able to teach it.10

Do not discount the importance of being informed, however, for being

informed is a prerequisite for enlightenment.11 This is why the practice of
taking excerpt notes is helpful. It enables one to better comprehend material.
However, excerpt notes are only a precursor for the next phase: turning the
information into knowledge by way of reformulation and reflection notes.

Within your Antinet, you’ll find a mix of knowledge and information. The
knowledge it contains isn’t fully processed until it makes its way into your
creative output.

Again, this emphasizes the point that the Antinet is a means to the end (the
end being creative output). The Antinet helps you process and create knowl-
edge; however the most important part is that you actually share it. As the
philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller points out, “knowledge only counts if it
is exchanged and thus given away or spent.”12

MEANING AND THE INTRAPERSONAL NATURE OF

THE ANTINET
As we learned previously, knowledge is information multiplied by meaning.
However, we never addressed the concept of meaning. The question is, where
does meaning come from?

According to Alberto Cevolini, “The only operations that can reproduce and
manage meaning are communication and consciousness.”13 The nature of the

10  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11.
11   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11.
12  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press,
2011), 108.
13   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
376  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

communication experience (with your own past self ’s consciousness) that

arises in the course of working with an Antinet helps create meaning. It helps
you transform information into knowledge that you can share with the world.

Knowledge development is a fluid process that transitions through different

states. From complex to simple, and back to complex again. The nature of
this process is what we’ll cover next.

COMPLEXITY TO SIMPLICITY
TO COMPLEXITY
Even though I refer primarily to reading throughout this book, what I’m
really referring to is more broad. I’m really referring to any communication
experience. Any time you engage with a source of knowledge, you’re under-
taking a communication experience. As the scholar, Alberto Cevolini states,
“Knowledge is socially managed through communication, although at least
one consciousness is required to perpetuate communication.”14 The source
of the communication experience can be a book, podcast, YouTube video,
research paper, lecture, one-on-one meeting, group meeting, or any other
communication media.

When you engage with a source of knowledge, you’re undergoing a process,

making a complex entity simple, in order to then convert it back into com-
plexity—your own complexity—your Antinet (see following page).

In the first part, there’s the author of a given text. The author has spent time
forming thoughts and presenting them to you. The thoughts often make
sense in the author’s mind; yet, the knowledge contained may indeed be
complex. It pulls from many experiences and refers to material from different
areas the author has engaged with throughout his or her life. If the author
has done a good job, they package their complex knowledge into a book that
presents the complex ideas in a simplified way. The simplified container of

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 13.
14  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 12.
 Knowledge Development  377

complex knowledge is what composes a book. When you read a book, the
book communicates with you.

Under the diagram of the character of you, you’ll find a dotted line with the
term communication next to it. The dotted line refers to the communication
that takes place in your mind while you are reading. While you’re reading
you think of keyterms and thoughts stored in your Antinet. This is the
communication experience the dotted line is referring to.

Next, there’s a phase that occurs wherein you must simplify the material
enough to comprehend it. You then must select from the material the thoughts
you find irresistible. With the knowledge that you select you then add your
own complexity by transforming it into notes. The Antinet stores an associa-
tive chain of this complexity, which you then can communicate with forever.

The communication experience that you have with the Antinet is a bit sim-
pler than reading a book, in part because you’ve written it down by hand.
378  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

As a result, you process the information in a slower, more deliberate way.

You make that information more comprehendible later on. Why? Because
you’ve written it out in your own words.

The entire process involves a phase transformation between complexity

and simplicity.

One scholar observes the following of Luhmann’s system: “The outcome is

the reproduction of complexity by means of selection, that is, the paradoxical
reproduction of complexity through a reduction of complexity.”15

Essentially, you simplify a book’s contents by selecting and extracting its

most irresistible parts. Then, you create knowledge by adding your own
reformulations or reflections of that content. In turn, you add your own expe-
riences and ways of viewing the world. You then install that knowledge in
the Antinet, thereby creating a complex entity that you can communicate
with perennially.

Luhmann confirms this cycle, stating: “In a way, the [Antinet Zettelkasten]
is a reduction to build complexity.”16

ROBERT BOYLE’S KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT

PROCESS
Robert Boyle’s knowledge development process is similar to what I’ve just
outlined. Boyle specifies three elementary steps that can be extrapolated
to the Antinet.17

The first step is “careful selection of materials.” That is, carefully selecting
books worth reading.

15   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 27.
16  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.
17  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 142.
 Knowledge Development  379

Second in Boyle’s process: “Repeated reflection on key themes.” In other

words, figuring out what to select, and extract onto cards.

Third is: “Rehearsal of a skeletal direction of meditation.” By this, Boyle means

reviewing and doing maintenance rehearsal on the cards you’ve created.

Boyle’s process is similar to the model we’ll use in this section. Our model
has four phases, which I’ll introduce to you shortly. But first, let’s talk analog
vs. digital with regards to knowledge development.

ANALOG VS. DIGITAL KNOWLEDGE

DEVELOPMENT
One of the reasons the analog component of the Antinet is so important is
because of how it affects knowledge development.

To put it simply, knowledge development is different for analog systems

and digital systems. The very same principles I teach in this book cannot be
perfectly copied to digital workflows, in part because of the time investment
analog systems require. The time it takes to slow your mind down and record
your thoughts is a hidden advantage of analog systems.

To illustrate this, it’s helpful to view knowledge development by revisiting

the input-output model (shown previously):
380  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In the input phase of an analog workflow, it takes more time to ingest infor-
mation. With the priming practice I’ll be teaching you, you’ll spend more
time actually engaging with the sources you select. However, as a result,
you’ll be reading less sporadically. With digital workflows, readers navigate
sporadically from article to article. Even with a digital e-reader like a Kindle,
one ingests information more rapidly than they do when reading physical
materials. With bookmarking tools you simply click a button on any web
page you visit to remind yourself to read something later. As a result you
end up collecting way more material in less time. As you’ll soon find out,
this isn’t a good thing.

Now, let’s consider the processing phase. “Information processing is the

fundamental activity of the brain,” Steven Pinker writes.18 When it comes
to processing information, the tradeoff of analog vs. digital is very much
the same as the input phase. Analog workflows take more time and energy
to process inputs. It takes more time to actually write notes by hand. It’s a
deliberate process that requires the mind to slow down and think. You think
with your pen forming thoughts across the paper. With digital, it’s faster—
especially if you know how to type without looking down at the keyboard!
As a result, you are able to create significantly more notes. In brief, a greater
quantity of notes can be written in less time with digital systems.

To recap, digital systems allow you to ingest more information and process
more information in less time. However, a great paradox occurs. You see,
there is another variable we didn’t mention in the previously model. That
variable is quality.

Sure, digital systems enable the ingesting and processing of a greater quan-
tity of information. However they also result in lower quality ingestion and
processing of information. Because analog workflows take more time to
absorb and comprehend information, you must be much more selective
about what you read. In addition, you will be more selective in how you
pay attention while you read. The analog workflow also forces you to be
selective in what you choose to process. Because analog takes more time,

18  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 83.
 Knowledge Development  381

you are less tempted to create useless notes and are more incentivized to
say more with fewer words. As a result, a paradox emerges. Analog systems
enable users to produce more output in less time. Furthermore, the quality
of the output is higher.

This effect derives from several factors. First off, you create less trash in
analog systems. Because of the time and energy investment required for
ingesting and processing information, there’s less trash as a result. In turn
this helps during the creation process. It’s much easier to create more
with less. The reason for this is that notes act largely as cues. They stamp
knowledge onto your mind, allowing your mind to run with it during the
creation process.

For instance, in writing this section right now, the only cue I had was a note-
card of the diagram shown previously. Everything else consisted simply of
me typing my explanation of the diagram. All I needed was a diagram of this
idea to serve as a cue for me to write and explain this model.

In addition, stumbling upon the card of the diagram was a structured

accident. While writing another section of this book, I stumbled upon
the model. When I happened upon it, I set it aside for the knowledge
development chapter.

Had I been using a digital workflow, this type of material would have been
crowded out by a colossal number of other digital notes. In turn, I might
not have even written about this model at all. And even if I had, I would
probably have had less time and energy to write about it because more
time would have been spent parsing the mountain of digital notes I had.
It may seem contradictory, but with analog systems, your energy is stored
and saved for the actual process of writing. With analog, you’ve spent more
time producing fewer notes such that, when it comes time to write, it’s like
being shot out of a cannon.

The section you’re reading right now is a little over eight hundred words. It
took me about a half-hour to write. This serves as an example of the analog
workflow: more content written, in less time, and at higher quality. This is why
382  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the analog nature of the Antinet is so important. It served as a critical piece

that helped Luhmann become “a publication machine.”19

THE FOUR PHASES OF

KNOWLEDGE DEVELOPMENT
I like to think of knowledge development as consisting of four phases.

The first phase is selection. This pertains to selecting irresistible pieces of

information found while engaging with external sources (books, podcasts,
videos, etc.). Selection takes place in your own mind. It involves the internal
voice in your head. You, and only you, can decide which information is worth
selecting. It’s an incommunicable process that involves your consciousness
and self-awareness. It is indistinguishable from the concept of attention.20
It requires being in tune with your own internal experience.

19 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 311.
20  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
 Knowledge Development  383

The second phase is extraction. This encompasses the actual action of writ-
ing down the thoughts and observations you have while reading. There are
several workflows to choose from in this phase.

The third phase is creation. This describes the process of creating notes. This
mean either excerpting notes, reformulating notes, or elaborating on the notes
by reflecting on ideas.

The fourth phase is installation. This describes both where to install the cards
you’ve just created, and how to actually install them. This relates to the index
keyterms you will assign (if any).

In the following chapters, we’ll explore each of these phases in detail. Let’s go.

Press, 2014), 26.

 C H A PT E R T H I R T E E N
�

SELECTION

“We read a lot. I don’t know anyone who’s wise who doesn’t read a lot. But that’s
not enough: You have to have a temperament to grab ideas and do sensible things.
Most people don’t grab the right ideas or don’t know what to do with them.”

–Charlie Munger21

I t‌ could be argued that selection is the most important process when

working with an Antinet.

Fiona McPherson, a cognitive scientist specializing in the study of notetaking,

agrees that the “most crucial” part of notetaking revolves around selection.
Specifically this means selecting what information is important, and just as
critically, not selecting information that is not important.22

This introduces the tradeoff between selection and exclusion. “To select every-
thing would mean to exclude nothing,” as the scholar Alberto Cevolini puts
it. Or, as Jeremias Drexel (1581—1638) puts it, “to read without selecting
means to be negligent.”23

21  Charles T. Munger, Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger,
Expanded Third Edition, ed. Peter D. Kaufman, 3rd edition (Walsworth Publishing
Company, 2005).
22  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 13.
23  Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories
(Brill, 2016), 185.

384
 Selection  385

In brief, the relationship between what to select and what to exclude from what
you read is an important skill—a skill which we will discuss in this chapter.

SELECTION IN THE BRAIN

I like the illustration given by cognitive scientist William K. Estes who
posited that human memory can be likened to a computing system. A com-
puting system takes inputs, runs them through a process, and then produces
outputs.24 Here’s a diagram of how it works:

External data comes from the environment. It’s essentially the world, the
ecosystem we encounter.

Our sensory system consists of our senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell,
and balance. Our sensory system operates like an interpreter as understood
in the context of the computer language Python. The interpreter deciphers
the input data and transforms it into information that the computer can

24  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 25.
386  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

understand. With our sensory system, it’s much the same. It deciphers the
data and turns it into information our brains can understand.

From there the brain must make a decision: is the information meaningful
or is it not meaningful? If the information is not meaningful we ignore it.
We do not pay attention to it. If it is meaningful we select that informa-
tion. With that information selected we run it through another process.
We determine to what degree the item is meaningful.

The study of this process is actually what ended up motivating the devel-
opment of the science of information processing models.25 This decision
between meaningful and non-meaningful information is indistinguishable
from the concept of attention.26 Brought back to the process of working with
an Antinet, when you are reading, it’s an active process that requires full
attention. The concept of selection is entrenched in this process.

THE TROUBLE OF SELECTION: FEEDBACK

Here, selection refers to the entire process of thinking that takes place in your
mind when you encounter a new idea. It refers to the process involved in
determining what thought generated by a text should be (1) extracted onto
a card by writing it out by hand to ruminate on or elaborate on; (2) stored
in the Antinet by installing it in the position most similar and most closely
associated with it; or (3) discarded entirely because it’s not worth the time
investment of extracting or storing the thought.

This process occurs very quickly in the mind. It’s also not trivial. Consider
what Alberto Cevolini observes: “Troubles arise when one wonders about
the criteria according to which one should select, store, or discard.”27

25  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 26.
26  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 26.
27  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 31.
 Selection  387

The notion of troubles arising with regard to the information one should select
or not select while reading is echoed by other scientists. Cognitive scientist,
Fiona McPherson, holds selection as the most critical skill you can master.
It is the foundation upon which others skills rest. Yet “no-one has yet to
come up with an effective way of teaching this skill,” observes McPherson.
However, there is some good news: what McPherson meant is that there’s
no universal one-size-fits-all way of teaching this. Each person will pick up
the skill of selection in a different way. It is a skill that can indeed be taught.
However, certain people may require more practice than others.28

Developing the skills of selection requires one thing: feedback.

Feedback equals growth. In a classroom setting, you can quickly tell how
well your notetaking is working from the feedback you receive in form of
test scores. Yet in creative work with long timelines (like one or two years),
feedback is a bit more difficult to receive in a timely manner. Sönke Ahrens
makes such an observation in his book How to Take Smart Notes. “The
linear model of academic writing comes with few feedback opportunities,”
Ahrens writes.29 Yet he makes an interesting assertion that, by choosing to
reformulate or reflect on your reading, you’re essentially testing yourself on
whether or not you understand the material well enough to explain it in your
own words. You’re testing yourself to see if you even know it well enough to
reformulate the material. You’re also testing yourself whenever you attempt
to write a reflection note. Do you truly understand it well enough that you’ll
be able to reflect on what you’ve selected?

However, receiving feedback is tricky when it comes to selection. Whenever

you attempt to write notes on something, you receive feedback on how well
you understand the material. Yet, this does not provide feedback on whether
or not you should have selected the material in the first place.

28  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 13.
29  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 54.
388  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The question is: How do we gain feedback from the notes we create?

One argument is to just publish your notes. In other words, create a so-called
‘digital garden’ or a personal website which shares your notes so that others
can provide feedback. Not surprisingly, this is something I do not advise for
a number of reasons. In brief, when you publish your notes, you’re publishing
information. This is less useful to people than publishing knowledge. With
knowledge, you’ve contextualized and further processed that information.
As a result your knowledge provides the reader with much more value than
unprocessed information. In turn, if you do indeed receive feedback from
such notes, the feedback will be misguided. To a large degree, it will be a
waste of time, which is why I advise against it.

In sum, perhaps there are no shortcuts here. The best way to select material is
to do so with a clear understanding of why you’re reading the source you’ve
selected. It also requires that you have a clear understanding of your audience.

I’ll offer a few suggestions for getting better at selection:

First, create a profile of your dream reader. Search photos online and cut
out a stock photo of him or her. Paste the image on a notecard and write
down a made-up name for the person. They’re your dream reader, your
dream avatar whom you wish to serve. Ideally, create a male and female
avatar (unless you’re specifically targeting a gender). Write down a one-
to-three sentence profile on them, detailing what their interests are, what
they like, or dislike, etc. Heck, your avatar could even be your professor if
you’re a student. Place the picture(s) on your wall or some place you’ll see
regularly. Whenever you’re reading a book, read with your dream reader in
mind. This is another reason why it’s helpful to adopt a contribution mindset
(as opposed to a personal growth mindset).

Second, I recommend publishing short pieces of your work or material as

you’re writing. Instead of publishing under-processed notes, I recommend
that you give readers chapter samples and tastes of your writing. Do this by
publishing short pieces or blog posts online. This is something I’ve done
myself over the course of writing this book.
 Selection  389

Later, I’ll be introducing you to something called priming, which promotes

more effective reading. You’ll end up selecting information aligned with
why you’ve set out to read a book.

“Selection is a highly personalized activity,” writes scholar, Alberto Cevoli-

ni.30 In other words, every person is unique, and everyone will spot unique
material that speaks to them. Your job is to channel your internal voice and
select the material that uniquely resonates with you, plain and simple.

Selection doesn’t just mean “gathering,” it means “making a judgement.”31

However, what then follows is the question of what you should even make
a judgement about! From here, we can rely on the wisdom of early modern
literature: select only what is considered to be of future utility.32 That is, select
what will be of future utility to you, and through you, what will be of future
utility to others.

Selection helps form the uniqueness of your second mind. If you fit an entire
library into your Antinet, it would demolish the unique personality you’ve
injected into it by way of selection. Digital apps like Pocket or Read Later or
Evernote do not create a second mind. They are mere repositories of quotes,
articles, and material from others. As scholar, Richard Yeo holds, a second
mind is selected material (from books, a library, articles, etc.) that you capture
through creating notes which then are installed in your Antinet. This entity
works in tandem with your internal biological memory to create an internal
dialogue, and what results serves as your second mind.33

You don’t want your Antinet to embody characteristics of just any library.
Rather, you want it to be a personal library. As one scholar observes, one of

30  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 4.
31   Helmut Zedelmaier, Christoph Just Udenius and the German Ars Excerpendi around 1700:
On the Flourishing and Disappearance of a Pedagogical Genre (Brill, 2016), 84.
32  Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories
(Brill, 2016), 186.
33  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 130.
390  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the most impressive aspects of the process in building an Antinet is that it

builds a universal personal library out of a universal library.34 “Such re-arising
of the world (of learning) inside the world (of learning),” Alberto Cevolini
writes, “is possible through selection, and in turn selection is the crucial oper-
ation for begetting complexity, that is, an excess of possible combinations,
links, or references among meaningful data.”35

Think of it like this: reality is equal to all data in the cosmos. Science is the
study of reality. Yet science proceeds very slowly and selectively in advancing
our understanding of reality. We extract only strands of reality and do our
best to provide theories and experiments that clearly explain this slice of
reality. Luhmann makes mention of science and reality never being whole.
They’re never equal. Why? Because science proceeds “selectively, because
this is the only way to bring order and comprehensibility.”36

In brief, you don’t want all the data in the universe in your Antinet. Nor do
you want tools that bring you closer to this non-ideal maximum. Digital
tools have the tendency to do just that. They have the tendency to create
overselection (something I’ll cover shortly). You simply want to select the
most important information from the sources you engage.

As Fiona McPherson writes, “Anything that helps you select the most import-
ant information is good.”37 Only you, yourself, can determine what strategy
works best for you in selecting material that resonates with you.

In the next chapter I’ll teach you some different extraction methods, which
will make selecting material easier for you. But until then, let’s continue our
journey through The Matrix (that is, selection).

34   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 29.
35   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 29.
36  “ZK I: Zettel 28,4,8c—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed August 14, 2021, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_28-4-8c_V.
37   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 13.
 Selection  391

SELECTION UNDERLIES COMMUNICATION

Communication was a critically important area in Luhmann’s research; likewise,
for the Antinet, it also stands as a critical component. We’ll detail the concept
of communication later in this book. However, for now, it’s interesting to
note one peculiar thing involving Luhmann’s concept of communication:
it’s founded on selection.

According to Luhmann, communication is an emergent reality that emanates

from three different selections: (1) selection of information, (2) selection of
the message of this function, and (3) selective understanding (or misunder-
standing) of the message and its interpretation.38

The concept of selection is critically important pragmatically, as well as the-

oretically, for the Antinet. For this reason, we shall spend time on both the
theoretical and practical matters of selection.

KNOWLEDGE SELECTION AS
NATURAL SELECTION
In natural selection, the environment essentially selects organisms that have
qualities that are best adapted for it to survive and reproduce. The process
of selecting information and turning into knowledge is not much different.39

The first step in knowledge selection is actually information selection. Knowledge

is created from information. As found in nature, reproduction (generally)
involves an individual selecting a mate with corresponding genetic infor-
mation. With an Antinet, you select information from sources that you read.
The sources are analogous to a mating partner.

Selected information is then processed into knowledge by reformulating

or reflecting on the information, to which you add your own experiences
and understanding, anchored by your own unique perspectives (and the
context in which you’ve experienced life). When you create a reformula-
tion note or reflection note, you essentially create a new entity altogether:

38   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 28.
39   Cf. Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 169ff.
392  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

you create knowledge. In evolutionary terms, you give birth to a child—a new,
living organism (after exchanging information in the form of genetic code).
In knowledge-science terms, you give birth to a book or other creative work
(after exchanging information in the form of reading other authors’ works).

Your (intellectual) environment is populated by your audience of readers.

If the knowledge you create (your book) resonates with your audience
exceptionally well, it will be selected. It will be selected apart from other
competing books, to rise in popularity and essentially reproduce.

For your work to survive, it doesn’t necessarily need to be the best ever.
It doesn’t necessarily need to be the most optimal piece of work. Rather
it must be sufficiently better than the other pieces of work competing
for your reader’s attention. In turn, your work will rise in popularity and
reproduce itself.

This highlights some important points:

1. The success of the knowledge you produce is very much a function of:
(a) the source material you select. This means the books, articles, podcasts,
lectures, videos, or other media you select; (b) what genes (or ideas) that
you select from your mate (or book); and (c) how you then process that
information and its genes to produce a new creation (a baby, or a book);
and (d) how you then organize that creation (by deciding where to file
it, or how to raise it).

2. The output of this process that is best adapted to its audience of readers
(that is, its environment), will survive and reproduce more successfully
than less adapted output.

THE LEVELS OF SELECTION

The Antinet can be thought of as a system containing relations of relations of
relations. Encompassed in this model are three levels of selection: (1) selecting
what source to engage with (choosing what books to read), and (2) selecting
what material to extract, and (3) selecting where in the Antinet to install
and link to the selection(s).
 Selection  393

Let’s explore each of these levels of selection now.

SOURCE SELECTION
Before embarking upon the process of determining which material to select
from the books you read, there is an even more critical challenge: selecting
which books are even worth reading in the first place!

As the Catholic intellectual, Antonin Sertillanges writes, the process of

selection is prepended with an important stage: “to choose books and to
choose in books.”40

40   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans.
Mary Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1992), 150. Emphasis added.
394  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Here are some guidelines for selecting which books to read in the first place.
These guidelines are not set-in-stone rules. Nor are they comprehensive; yet,
I think they’re helpful enough to keep in mind as a guideline for selecting books.

Guideline #1: Do Not Trust Bestsellers

with Catchy Titles

“Do not trust interest[ing] advertising and catchy titles.”

–Antonin Sertillanges41

Even non-sponsored books on Amazon are suspect these days. Major pub-
lishers with big idea hardbound books produce some of the biggest horse-shit
out there. Ghost writers are behind more books than you’ll ever know. Big
publishing houses thrive on publishing crap. I’ve been behind the scenes
during this process and witnessed how it plays out. The New York Times
Best Sellers list is really a list of synthetically engineered crap.

Guideline #2: Do Not Trust Popular Channels That

Books are Advertised Through
If you heard about a book because the author was featured on a popular
podcast, be suspicious. Such authors are backed by a publishing house.
They’re backed by a public relations circuit that swaps in their latest fig-
urehead. I know this because (again) I’ve been behind the scenes and have
seen it firsthand. In some cases, there’s a lot of pressure for show-hosts to
accept guests, regardless of their quality. Why? First, shows need content.
Second, the publishing house probably did the show-host “a solid” recently.
For instance, a publishing house may have gotten a movie star on their show
recently during the star’s book tour of their memoir. The show-host may then
feel a sense of obligation to return the favor. How do they return the favor?
By saying yes to whichever guest the publishing house proposes to feature
on their next show (regardless of guest quality). The guest then proceeds
to hype-up whatever new (rehashed) book they’re launching.

41   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 150.
 Selection  395

Guideline #3: Go to The Original Source

“The majority of writers only edit and publish other writers’ thoughts,”
Sertillanges writes. “Read only those books in which leading ideas are
expressed at first hand.”42

When you read this book, you are reading the first-hand account of the
Antinet. You are reading of my experiences building an analog knowledge
machine—a second mind—using the principles of Niklas Luhmann’s Antinet.
My primary source is the primary source (Communication with Noteboxes).
Yet I’m not just regurgitating his paper. I’m sharing my knowledge and my
first-hand experiences in developing knowledge with such a system. You’re
reading about my experiences from thousands of hours of using the system.
You’re learning my nuances and ways of teaching the system. You’re reading
the primary source of the Antinet.

Many books are secondary sources. They’re merely edited curations of the
primary source. This includes books like The Complete Idiots Guides. Don’t read
these books. Read a Wikipedia article instead. Do your own research. Soon,
you’ll spot recurring themes and sources that are regularly cited. These are
the original sources, the primary sources. Go to these sources. They’re a must.

Of course, secondary sources can be helpful as well. Specifically, they can be

helpful in spotting how the secondary sources got certain things right and
certain things wrong. In addition, the secondary sources may point out the
things you missed when reviewing the primary source(s).

Secondary sources are also useful in helping you compile a repository of

frequently cited works or authors.

In my readings, there are certain thinkers who are mentioned over and over
and over. These people include Immanuel Kant, Voltaire, René Descartes,
John Locke, Francis Bacon, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, and more.

42   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 150. Emphasis added.
396  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The main take-away from this guideline is this: primary sources are a require-
ment, secondary sources are not.

LINK SELECTION
Another level of selection within the Antinet is selecting where to connect
the idea (i.e., where to install the card within the Antinet).

Selective Relations

“The communication with the second mind becomes fruit-

ful only at a high level of generalization, namely that of
establishing communicative relations of relations.”

–Niklas Luhmann43

It’s not the relations between notes that make the Antinet a powerful system;
rather it’s the selective relations that do so.

Johannes Schmidt specifically calls attention to the importance of selective

relations near the end of his paper, where he points out that the specific
readings and the material one selects from the readings are important to
the Antinet. However, what is also critical is found in Luhmann’s case with
“(selective) relations established between his notes by means of his referencing
technique.”44 That is, you must also be selective in linking your selections
to certain cards and ideas.

Note how Schmidt encloses the word selective in parentheses in the passage.
He did this to call out the implicit truth that Luhmann’s links were selective
in nature. When Luhmann used the phrase communicative relations of rela-
tions, there was no need for him to specify that he meant selective relations.

43  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. Emphasis added.
44  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
 Selection  397

For Luhmann, relations (or links) between notes were, by nature, selective.
They were not trivial to create. They could not be bulk-applied to digital files
using templates, regular expressions (regex), and tags. Links were hard-coded
into one’s Antinet, and as previously indicated, they were neuroimprinted
onto one’s mind. This network of highly selective links is a result of the ana-
log nature of the system, the benefit of which we touched on in the analog
chapter of this book.

In other words, the magic of the Antinet doesn’t revolve around links. Rather
it involves being very selective in what you link cards to. Whenever you
install a card in the Antinet, you link by (1) chaining or connecting the card
behind another card, and (2) using remotelinks. Due to the analog nature
of the Antinet, you are forced to be very selective about what you link to,
and to think hard about where a card ought to go, before installing it. With
digital notetaking apps, it’s simple. You simply start typing in words for
tags or wikilinks. The tool then begins auto-populating terms you can link
to. Before you know it, you have numerous things you’re linking to which
you otherwise wouldn’t have. With the Antinet, you’re usually choosing
one, or maybe two cards to link to. This creates selective relations instead of
an overabundance of hyper relations. This element serves as a critical factor
in transitioning your Antinet into a second mind, as well as allowing for
structured accidents, which I’ll detail later in the book.

A LINK IS NOT A LINK (IF IT’S A HYPERLINK)

A notecard link is hard. It’s hard-earned. It’s deliberate. It’s selective. It’s a hard
link. This is part of what inspired the term I use for linking cards. They’re
cardlinks (because it rhymes with hard links).

Cardlinks are not the equivalent of hyperlinks. Hyperlinks are not selective.
The Antinet is based around being selective. Antinet users are selective about
(1) the books they read, (2) the material they extract from those books, and
(3) the selective links they create within the Antinet.

Cardlinks are of superior impact compared to wikilinks and hyperlinks. Dig-

ital links are whittled down by synthetic features like auto-complete, regex,
or retroactive search. Cardlinks are superior to digital links not only because
398  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

they are not diluted by bloatware. In addition, the power of cardlinks are
unleashed when you begin taking advantage of the tree structure of the Anti-
net. When you follow a cardlink in the Antinet, you’re taken down a journey
of stems, leaves and other branches of thought that are also linked together.

This results in structured accidents and surprises (like walking down the
row of a section in the library that interests you). This accidental discovery
happens in a way that is almost incommunicable. Why? Because you follow
the path that is made possible thanks to the Antinet’s tree structure.

This is a glimpse into the magic of the Antinet as a thinking tool and a second
mind. The magic does not stem from just one thing alone, and it doesn’t come
about through creating trivial easy links (aka, wikilinks). It’s a combination
of the four principles of the Antinet that creates its magic:

The “special filing technique,” refers to the tree structure which unlocks
infinite internal branching. The “(selective) relations” between notes (made
possible through numeric-alpha addresses).45 These, combined with the
index which neuroimprints keyterms on the mind. These are tied together
with the analog component of the Antinet, which forces higher quality
selections. All of these combined creates the emergent magic of the Antinet.

As Johannes Schmidt points out, this structure demonstrates how quickly

the Antinet sets users on a path away from what one would normally deem
ordered and taxonomically sound. Although the Antinet’s inner logic might
appear nonsensical to an outsider, to the creator—that is, to you, the person
creating the system—the Antinet is perfectly natural and understandable.46

Through exploration of your Antinet, you are led away from the original
topic and to a variety of other subjects—ones that you would not have ini-

45   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
46   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
 Selection  399

tially associated with one another. This, in turn, results in unconventional

interactions, surprises, and breakthrough insights that otherwise would
not have occurred.

This entire process is made possible thanks to linking not being too easy.
It’s thanks to the nature of hard links. It’s thanks to the nature of cardlinks.

DIGITAL CREATES OVERSELECTION

As I’ve previously illustrated, it’s not just about what material to select. It’s
also about what material not to select.

For this reason, tools that help you not select as much information (due
to the considerable time and effort required in extracting them), end up
increasing your focus. It increases one’s proficiency in selecting valuable
and irresistible material.

With digital tools, selection is trivial. It’s all-too-easy to capture, copy, paste,
write, and accumulate an abundance of digital information. This is a downside,
not a strength. This is yet another reason why analog outperforms digital.
Digital collection results in over-saturation, both in terms of material and
the information the material includes.

MATERIAL SELECTION
Thus far we’ve talked about source selection (i.e., what books to select for
reading). We also discussed link selection (where in your Antinet to install
ideas). The last level of selection concerns what material within a book one
should select.

The Four Quadrants of Ideas

I think it’s helpful to think of ideas falling into four quadrants. This concept
is inspired by a model introduced to me by Stephen Covey.

Covey proposes four quadrants for managing time by looking at the inter-
section of four variables: important, not important, urgent, and not urgent.47

47   Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: 30th Anniversary Edition, 4th
400  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

With regards to selecting material from the books you read, I propose this
model helps tremendously. One is left with selecting Bad Ideas, Good Ideas,
Excellent Ideas, and Irresistible Ideas.

Here’s a diagram of the model:

Let’s go through each of these now.

BAD IDEAS
Don’t select bad ideas or pay attention to them. It’s pretty simple. If the
idea is irrelevant to what you’re working on and if the idea isn’t even that
important, then don’t think twice about it. Even if you’re unsure, err on the
side of the idea being a waste of time. We need to move fast. Time is short.
Have the confidence that truly valuable ideas will take hold of you later on.

edition (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).

 Selection  401

GOOD IDEAS
These are ideas that could very well be timely and applicable to what you’re
working on, yet they don’t add much value. If the idea doesn’t add much
value to your project, or if the information is redundant, then forego selecting
them for your project.

For instance, I could bog myself down for a year reading scholarly literature
on the history of notetaking systems. I could fill your mind with mountains
of seemingly relevant details pertaining to early notebox systems. I could tell
you about how there’s a debate as to whether the Josephinian catalog of the
late 1700s was the first card catalog in library history or if Konrad Gessner’s
of the 1500s actually was.48

But in reality, that information isn’t that important. The matter at hand is this:
(1) you want to know why the Antinet is the best knowledge development
system out there; (2) you want to know the theory behind why it’s better
than digital; (3) you want to know how you can build an Antinet; and (4)
you want to know what positive effects you can expect by committing to
the Antinet (surprise, creative insights, breakthroughs, etc.). You do not
need to know every single detail about the history of notetaking. That’s for
a different book.

In brief, don’t feel the need to select material that is related to what you’re
doing, but is not that important. Avoid selecting good ideas. It’s OK to note
them in your mind and find them interesting and amusing, but that’s all they
deserve. A grunt of amusement.

EXCELLENT IDEAS
Deciding whether to select or ignore excellent ideas is tricky. These ideas are
important, yet they are not relevant to the project or goal you’re working on.

48 Markus Krajewski, Paper Machines: About Cards & Catalogs, 1548-1929, trans. Peter Krapp,
History and Foundations of Information Science (Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2011),
38-9.
402  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I realize it may be difficult, but you want to err on the side of skipping these
ideas. Granted, there’s a spectrum to the degree of importance. If the idea
ranks at least 96 out of 100 on the importance spectrum, it’s OK to select the
idea.49 However, you should only extract the idea onto your bibcard (which
you’ll learn more about soon). You do not want to spend time processing
these ideas by converting them into maincards (by way of excerpt, refor-
mulation, or reflection notes). You’ll want to create an ExRef for excellent
ideas, but that’s all.

IRRESISTIBLE IDEAS
You want to spend almost all of your time living for the irresistible ideas.
These are ideas that are both timely and important. Think of these as ideas
that truly resonate with you. When you encounter one of these ideas, you
simply just know. These ideas can be something that you (and only you) can
see. These ideas are influenced by your own perspectives and unique expe-
riences in life (both good and bad). These ideas collide with truths you’ve
been contemplating that are reverberating in your mind. These are usually
things that only you can see and connect.

Time is scarce. This is why you shouldn’t care to bother with any of the
other quadrants. You want to reserve as much time as possible to select and
develop irresistible ideas.

Do not feel obligated to write down excellent ideas. A good chunk of them
will be relegated to good ideas in a month. The ideas you want to write down
are the irresistible ideas.

Make Ideas Prove Themselves

Oftentimes, I’ll make an idea prove itself. I’ll make it prove that it’s irresistible.
For instance, I’ll read something I feel is irresistible on page 100. But I won’t

49   I like to view life through a unique value scale. I find using a pre-defined set of values sim-
plifies the complexity of life. I don’t believe in something being a 100% yes, or a 0% no. I find
that to be too dogmatic. We don’t know what we don’t know, even when we’re certain we do
know. Therefore, I like to use the following scale to value things. 4%, 20%, 50%, 80%, 96%.
This scale is inspired by the Pareto principle (the 80-20 rule). Yet it also applies a fractal of
that principle. We get 4% from 20% of 20%. We get 96% from 20% more than 80%.
 Selection  403

decide immediately whether to select it. I won’t extract it immediately onto

a bibcard. I’ll simply say to myself, Hmm! That’s really interesting! I note it
in my mind and let it ruminate for some time. And then I continue reading.
By the time I get to page 150—even if it’s several days later—if I still find the
idea irresistible, I’ll extract it by writing it down on my bibcard.

What Should and Shouldn’t You Select?

One author, who, to a large degree, regurgitates Sönke Ahrens’s material,
puts forth a good question that Ahrens never answers clearly. The question
is, What should, and shouldn’t, be noted down?

Ahrens is rather vague in answering this question, but he at least advises the
reader what not to do. This other author advises: don’t write down anything
you already know by heart. Yet, he qualifies this maxim by saying it’s OK to
write down something you already know—if, that is—you intend to con-
nect it to related thoughts.50 Such advice is problematic, however, because
everything is related to something in the cosmos. Even nothing can be related
by describing it. How does one describe nothing? By stating it’s not nothing,
and linking it to not nothing in your Antinet. Everything can be connected
to related thoughts by way of inversion.

In brief the advice that you shouldn’t write down anything you know by
heart—unless you wish to relate it to something else—is rather vague.
I also believe it’s too simplistic.

The question remains, What types of things should you write down?

A better way of asking this is, What types of material should you select while
reading? Here’s why this is an improved question: the material you select
doesn’t necessitate that you’ll extract that knowledge. You’re selecting material
to determine if it’s appropriate to actually extract.

So back to the question, What types of material should you select while reading?

50  David Kadavy, Digital Zettelkasten: Principles, Methods, & Examples (Kadavy, Inc.,
2022), 30.
404  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Here’s my take:

1. Adhere to the rule of selecting only irresistible things from your readings.
Irresistible things are those things that only you can determine. Irresistible
encompasses those things you find to be genius, or that you find you simply
just resonate with in a way that’s difficult to explain in words. It must be
true. Only you can determine if something is truly irresistible.

2. Select irresistible patterns that you’ve noticed from reading across dif-
ferent disciplines. Also select patterns you’ve noticed from your unique
life experiences.

3. Select irresistible ideas that are brand new to you. Granted, if you’re reading
in a new field, many of the ideas you encounter will be brand new. That’s
fine. Write them down, especially if they resonate with you.

4. Select hard or challenging ideas that you find irresistible. Say you encoun-
ter an idea that you find irresistible. Say it resonates with you. Yet, say
you find it hard or challenging to decipher. Select that material with the
expectation that you’ll be creating an excerpt note of it, or a reformulation
note of it in order to better understand it.

5. Select as if you’ll be teaching the material. Even if you’re in a state of mind

where you’re focused on growing your knowledge, adopt the mindset of
a teacher. Operate as if you’re selecting the material in order to teach the
material. This is the contribution state of mind. The great paradox is that
if you adopt the mindset of contribution, you’ll experience more growth.
When you select material as if you’ll be teaching it, you’ll focus on extract-
ing the truly helpful and insightful pieces of knowledge.

6. Select material that deeply affects you. There may be certain passages or
compositions of prose that move you. Remember that emotions can actu-
ally be felt in the body (so pay attention to your responses to the material
you read). Fundamentally, emotions can be rolled up into five categories.51

51   Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Klemp, The 15 Commitments of Conscious
 Selection  405

The five emotions are: anger, sadness, fear, joy, and creative feelings. Mate-
rial which generates deep experiences involving these emotions ought to
be selected.

Now that you know what to select, let’s address the material you should
definitely not select while reading.

This question is simpler. There are two types of material you should not select:

1. Do not select information that is not irresistible. Do not select material

that is bad, good, or even excellent. If it’s not irresistible, don’t waste your
time. You’ll have barely enough time to elaborate on and develop irre-
sistible material. Why waste your life energy trying to develop less than
irresistible material? The correct answer is: you shouldn’t!

2. Do not write something down that you’ve already written down. In the
knowledge creation phase I’ll introduce a process that helps ensure you don’t
waste your time developing content you’ve already written down by hand.
In brief, it involves reviewing your Antinet before you commit to creating
a new note. The directive of not writing down something you’ve already
written down applies mainly to excerpt notes. Say you come across Robert
Frost’s famous poem, The Road Not Taken (“Two roads diverged in a yellow
wood…”). If you find that poem irresistible, yet you’ve already written
it down, then don’t write it down again! Don’t select the material again.
If you make a mistake and forget that you’ve already written it down—and
if you end up creating an excerpt note for it—make sure you install the
note in your Antinet anyway. That way, you’ll have a record of your mistake.
Remember: don’t erase mistakes! Don’t delete material in your Antinet.

Now that we have a good grasp of what material to select while reading a book,
let’s talk about one final concept before moving on: the concept of priming.

Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success (United States: Conscious Leadership
Group, 2015), 84ff.
406  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Priming
The process you must complete before reading even the first page of any
book is called the priming phase.52

The priming phase entails reading related material, relevant background

material, even dissecting the book’s table of contents, and other techniques
(for instance, designing a quiz about the book for yourself).

According to one cognitive psychologist, priming “really does help, especially

when the subject matter is difficult or unfamiliar.”53

I have a specific process that I encourage you to do before reading any book.
It works best with a certain knowledge extraction strategy called the Luh-
mannian bibcard method. I’ll detail that method in the next section. For this,
however, all you’ll need is a 4 x 6 inch blank white notecard.

On the front-side of the bibcard you will write three items: (1) the bib-
liographic details of the source, (2) your goal in engaging the source, and
(3) an overview of the source if available (i.e., a brief overview of its table
of contents).

This becomes your bookmark as you read the book.

Here’s a picture of one of my bibcards. The front can be thought of as the

priming area:

52  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 2.
53  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 2.
 Selection  407

CREATING AN OVERVIEW
Note that the overview section isn’t a word-for-word copy of the table of
contents. It’s brief. It forces you to take the deliberate time to read the table
of contents and get a general idea of what you’re about to read.

This practice was inspired by Mortimer Adler’s classic book titled How to
Read a Book. In this book he introduces the practice he calls X-raying a book.
He uses this analogy to illustrate that one ought to get a sense of a book’s
skeleton—its structure—before reading it.

This practice is also supported by a cognitive scientist who specializes in

notetaking. She advises that one ought to analyze a book’s table of contents
as an important first step before reading any book.54

SETTING A GOAL
Being intentional with your reading is a game-changer, plain and simple.
Luhmann always had an intentional goal with his readings. He used short-
term projects (research papers) that enabled him to immediately apply many

54  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 3.
408  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

of his ideas, and if those ideas weren’t immediately useful, to place ExRefs
in their appropriate place to ruminate on and be used when the time came.

Luhmann published 550 research papers during his academic career. Two
hundred more papers were found among his belongings after he passed
away. This comes out to 750 papers. Let’s not even take into consideration
the seventy books he also published during this period. If we just look at
the papers, he was working on roughly two papers per month. Luhmann,
ultimately, was always reading with a specific project in mind.

As Antonin Sertillanges advises, your reading should be influenced by a

definite idea—a clear goal and purpose. “Let it take account not only of
your vocation and your personality, but of their immediate application.”55

In other words, read specifically with an eye for immediately applying the
knowledge you encounter.

For the knowledge you encounter that is irresistible yet not immediately
applicable, simply create an ExRef for the material in your Antinet. In brief,
your time creating main notes—specifically reflection notes—should be for
material that is immediately applicable.

CONCLUSION
We covered a lot of important material in this section. We outlined the
importance of taking selection seriously. That is, the importance of selecting
books carefully, selecting the material in them carefully, and selecting where
to install those ideas within the Antinet carefully.

Selection is a vague and fuzzy area of knowledge development. If things are

still a bit unclear, rest assured that your selection skills will improve with
practice. Thankfully, analog knowledge development helps in this regard.

55   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 191.
 Selection  409

You’ll quickly learn that you’re selecting way too much material when it takes
you seemingly forever to get through a book!

If you only take one thing from this chapter, let it be this: select only the most
irresistibly important books, and the most irresistibly important ideas within those
books, which are immediately applicable to your project or goal.

Now that you know about selection, it’s time to embark upon the next phase
of knowledge development: Extraction.
 C H A PT E R FO U R T E E N
�

EXTRACTION

T he extraction phase of knowledge development concerns itself

with the actual action of pulling out material from the sources with
which you engage. Selection entails the internal experience of taking notice
of certain thoughts or ideas, after which you face a yes-or-no question. Are
you going to extract the material by writing it down?

If you determine that yes, you’re going to convert the material into a note,
you then proceed into the extraction phase. The extraction phase is a process
that exists before you actually create the main note. But in this phase you
actually take deliberate action by marking the material to be extracted. Within
this phase, there are several methods you can use to extract material. Before
we dive into the explicit methods, let’s first survey the different types of
strategies involved in reading a book (or engaging with a knowledge source).

INTENTIONAL VS. EXPLORATORY

STRATEGIES
Some books may require a more intentional extraction strategy and others
a more exploratory strategy.

As Antonin Sertillanges advises, “One will have recourse to other books for
information, not for formation.”1 In other words, when you are new to mate-
rial and you’re in the exploratory phase, you’re reading for formation. Your

1   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan,
Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 154.

410
 Extraction  411

primary extraction strategy should consist of comprehending the material

you’re reading. Your content should consist of reformulating the material in
your own words.

Once you have developed the foundation of knowledge in a field, you can
begin reading intentionally. You can begin looking for information to evolve
ideas. You begin looking for information that supports your current theories,
which are incubating in your Antinet. You begin reading for the purpose
of finding material that yields more granular distinctions relative to your
theories. You further elucidate these new thoughts by way of reflection notes.

Let’s consider both intentional extraction and exploratory extraction

in detail.

INTENTIONAL EXTRACTION
An intentional extraction strategy should be employed when you’re already
familiar with the material you’re reading. If you’re pressed for time, or if you
are working with a singular project in mind, you’ll also want an intentional
extraction strategy.

When reading intentionally, you’ll be reading for material to enrich your

project. The important thing here is that you do not get “bogged down,”
as Luhmann would say.2 You want to spend less time writing down excerpt
and reformulation notes, and more time writing reflection notes.

The two extraction methods best for this are the 2-step marginalia method,
and the 2-step Luhmannian bibcard method. These enable you to quickly
identify material you find irresistible; but, instead of getting bogged down,
and developing them right then and there, you delay the processing. After
you’re done reading, you can determine how to efficiently process the
material. This gives you more time to elaborate on the most important
irresistible ideas.

2   “ZK II: Sheet 9/8d—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 4, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8d_V.
412  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In the next section, we’ll cover the specific extraction methods just outlined
in more detail. Before that, however, let’s quickly cover the concept of
exploratory extraction.

EXPLORATORY EXTRACTION
An exploratory extraction strategy should be employed for books that are
more difficult to parse. Much of the time this applies to books in fields that
are new to you. As Mortimer Adler writes,

If you are reading in order to become a better reader, you

cannot read just any book or article. You will not improve
as a reader if all you read are books that are well within your
capacity. You must tackle books that are beyond you, or, as
we have said, books that are over your head. Only books of
that sort will make you stretch your mind. And unless you
stretch, you will not learn.3

Let’s take an example from my own experience. Sometime back I was reading
a book called Book of Proof. It’s an introduction to the world of mathematical
proofs (think a bunch of Greek symbols, equations, and numbers. This field
was completely new to me. I was attracted to it because of the challenge.
In order to understand the text, I had to take diligent notes. Taking notes in
margins wasn’t effective, as there was not enough space. Taking bullet point
notes on a bibcard wasn’t the best option either. On average, each of the
notes would take up an entire card anyway. It didn’t make sense to constrain
myself, or have them run across several bibcards.

The method I employed for this book was the 1-step book-to-maincard
method. This method entails stopping while reading, pulling out a note-
card and writing down the note immediately (I prefer 3 x 5 inch because
the constraints breed focus). The notes you write in this method are either
excerpts or reformulations. The purpose of writing these notes is to better
understand the new material. If you proceed through challenging books

3   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 330.
 Extraction  413

without first understanding the elementary material that came first, you’re
in for a difficult ride. You need to understand the elementary, fundamental
concepts before you understand the more complex concepts.

The book-to-maincard method enables you to proceed through difficult texts,

though the downside, of course, is getting bogged down. It’s counter-intuitive,
but reading using an exploratory 1-step strategy ends up taking more time
than 2-step intentional strategies.

Let’s cover the extraction methods in detail now.

KNOWLEDGE EXTRACTION METHODS

With notetaking and reading, the method you use to extract knowledge is
of paramount importance.

Certain extraction methods work for reading new books with unfamil-
iar ideas, whereas they fail for other types of books. For this reason you
must “understand why and how and when” to use different extraction
methods.4

When choosing an extraction method, it’s important that you not simply
choose the one you’re “most comfortable with.”5 That is, don’t merely choose
a strategy that is most compatible with how you’re feeling that day. Oftentimes,
the best strategy is not the one you’re initially comfortable with. Research
supports this, as well. 6

You also should not feel obligated to be married to an extraction method

forever. You must have, at your disposal, several extraction methods to
choose from. As cognitive scientist Fiona McPherson observes, there’s
“no one ‘best’ strategy for taking notes.”7

4   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 2.
5   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 7.
6   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 7.
7   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 7.
414  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In my own case, I employ the 2-step Luhmannian bibcard method the major-
ity of the time (think 96%). However, for books in fields that are com-
pletely new to me, or ones that are challenging, I sometimes use the 1-step
book-to-maincard method.

THE 1-STEP BOOK-TO-MAINCARD METHOD

The book-to-maincard method is quite simple. There’s a good chance you
already do this. You simply read a book with pen and notecards at hand.
When you come across a key concept or passage, you stop reading and make
a note for it on a dedicated card. Typically the note is either an excerpt (i.e.,
a word-for-word copy of the quote), or a reformulation of the concept in
your own words. It can also be a reflection note; however I find this kind of
note to be briefer than the reflection notes I create using the Luhmannian
bibcard method. Why? Because you don’t have enough time to let the idea
ruminate on a staging card (i.e., a bibcard). When writing reflection notes
using the book-to-maincard method, they seem to embody briefer (and less
deep) ideas. I like to think of these as observations (which are similar to the
concept of bibnotes, which you’ll learn soon).

Book-to-Maincard Notes in Practice

I like to place my book-to-maincard notes on 3 x 5 inch cards. This prevents
me from getting bogged down. Typically my book-to-maincard notes are
excerpts. Limiting myself to the 3 x 5 inch space prevents me from excerpting
quotes or ideas that are too large. In addition, when using 4 x 6 inch cards
I frequently experience an unsettling urge to fill up the entire card.
If I use only a few lines, it feels much more like I’m wasting paper. Using
3 x 5 inch cards helps me avoid this feeling, and in turn, it helps me avoid
getting bogged down in a book by stopping every few pages to write out
long excerpts.

On the next page is a picture of a book-to-maincard note I took.

THE 2-STEP MARGINALIA METHOD

Marginalia refers to making notations or other marks in the margins of the
books you read. This is something Niklas Luhmann never did.
 Extraction  415

One could argue that the reason Luhmann never wrote in books was
because he actually mostly read in libraries.8 Yet Luhmann did indeed own
many books. Among his possessions were 5,000 books, 1,400 journal issues,
300 special journal issues, 1,600 offprints, and other material. Johannes
Schmidt observed that they hardly showed any underlining or margin
notes. He states, “Luhmann almost always made notes on slips of paper
while reading.”9

Regardless, marginalia remains a popular practice. It’s a practice adhered

to by many readers and writers, including Cal Newport, Charlie Munger,
David McCullough, Ryan Holiday, and countless others.10

8   Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 25:40; “Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 11, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/uebersicht.
9   “Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 11, 2022, https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/
nachlass/uebersicht.
10  “How I Read When Researching a Book - Study Hacks—Cal Newport,” accessed
April 11, 2022,https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2017/08/14/how-i-read-when-re-
searching-a-book/; “David McCullough on Reading,” accessed April 11, 2022, http://
northmainbooknotes.blogspot.com/2017/05/david-mccullough-on-reading.html;
Ryan Holiday, “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing
And Using Everything You Read,” RyanHoliday.Net (blog), April 1, 2014, https://
416  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I’ve employed the marginalia practice, as well. However, I do not think you
should follow this practice.

Here’s why: Because marginalia suck.

Yes, marginalia suck. They suck compared to the Luhmannian bibcard

practice I’ll teach you next.

That said, I foresee many of you not believing me. You may have some sacred
scheme or practice such as making notes and dog-earing pages.

I’ve decided to at least outline the marginalia schemes available. That way you
can observe the practices I’ve found to be inferior so that you can potentially
skip having to learn the hard way yourself.

The CVP Marginalia Scheme

During the short period of time I employed a marginalia method, I used a
scheme I found quite convenient. Upon coming across a passage I found
irresistible, I would place either a C, V, or a P next to it. The C meant Concept.
The V meant vocab. The P meant prose.

Whenever I read something with an irresistible concept, vocab word, or great

prose, I would note down either C, V, or P in the margin.

In the beginning this was nice. However, I encountered problems with this
method. The barrier to selecting material became too low. It was too easy
to select any and every thought. It resulted in my selecting way too much
material for extraction. This created an over-abundance of homework.

When reading the book Cataloging the World, I employed this method.
As a result, the material I’ve selected from this book remains underdevel-
oped. I have indeed used material from it; however I’ve had to spend more
time developing the material. Additionally, because I never took the time to

ryanholiday.net/the-notecard-system-the-key-for-remembering-organizing-and-us-
ing-everything-you-read/.
 Extraction  417

deliberately process the material by writing it down by hand, I find myself

relating it to other parts of the book less frequently.

Here you can see a picture of one section of the book. Note how I placed
way too many C’s in the margin.

When you use a marginalia technique like this, you end up selecting way too
much material for extraction. That’s my experience, at least. You’re welcome
to test yourself, and learn the hard way!

The Dot Marginalia Scheme

After some time employing the CVP marginalia scheme, I began using
something I call the dot marginalia scheme. In this method you simply read
a book, and whenever there’s an irresistible idea, you place a simple dot (·)
next to it. When you go back to read through your selections, you can usually
tell why you selected that material (i.e., whether it’s a concept, vocab term, or
prose). Therefore, in theory, it saves time.
418  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Again, like the CVP method, it results in an overabundance of selections.

You create a ton of homework for yourself. The material you select tends to
include many good ideas and excellent ideas instead of exclusively containing
irresistible ideas.

Here’s an example of the dot marginalia scheme. I used this while reading
the book The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

Like the CVP marginalia scheme, this one resulted in too many selections.

The Note Marginalia Scheme

One of the more popular marginalia schemes involves writing brief notes in
the margins. These notes are typically your own thoughts and observations
that relate directly to the passage you’ve read.

I used this scheme when reading a book on memory science. Here’s a picture
from a section of the book:
 Extraction  419

There are several problems with this scheme. You end up selecting too
much material and you end up leaving less time for the irresistible ideas.
Furthermore you experience a tendency wherein you write too much, with
the result being that you end up wasting time. What you’ve written down
in the book must then be duplicated and written down on a note. This is
fine when using a very limited space (such as a single line on a bibcard);
however, the space in marginalia often can stretch vertically. This leaves you
more space to expand your writing. Often, what you end up writing down
in the margin is something you shouldn’t have even wasted energy writing
down in the first place.

Your Own Marginalia Scheme

As noted, I contend that the marginalia method is inferior to the Luhmannian
bibcard method. If you still insist on marking up book margins, though, then
chances are you’ll use your own marginalia scheme. I’ve observed that a lot
of people like placing little sticky notes or post-it tabs in their books. While
I don’t recommend any of this, I won’t slam you for adding your own flavor
to your knowledge extraction process. Each person is different.
420  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Since I do not recommend marginalia notes and I opt for the ultimate strategy
that Luhmann used, I’ll introduce it to you shortly.

But first, let me cover a few other extraction methods very quickly.

OTHER EXTRACTION METHODS

Cognitive scientist, Fiona McPherson, outlines three other extraction meth-
ods: (1) highlighting, (2) headings, and (3) summaries.11 I’ll cover them now.

Highlighting and headings aren’t really pure, stand-alone, extraction meth-

ods. They’re more like pre-extraction methods. They’re essentially selection
methods for noting which items you intend to extract. They’re used primarily
to help you comprehend information and then convert such information into
deeper knowledge. You convert the information into deeper knowledge by
creating a note for it and elaborating on the material.

Let’s talk about highlighting first.

HIGHLIGHTING
Highlighting is not a good method for dense, complex, and challeng-
ing information. For that type of material it’s best to employ the 1-step
book-to-maincard method.

While highlighting does not possess the cognitive development power, it is

not “completely pointless,” as it does help you actually pay attention to the
words on the page.12 Generally, I’d advise you to stay away from highlighting.
If the material is familiar to you, or even if it’s complicated, highlighting
won’t help much. There’s even research indicating highlighting may harm
one’s ability to learn and recall information.13 Highlighting steals time and
energy away from more effective learning practices.

11   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 14.
12  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 17.
13   James H. Crouse and Peter Idstein, “Effects of Encoding Cues on Prose Learning,” Journal
of Educational Psychology 63, no. 4 (1972): 309–13; Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-
taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 23; R. Barker Bausell and Joseph
R. Jenkins, “Effects on Prose Learning of Frequency of Adjunct Cues and the Difficulty
 Extraction  421

As one cognitive scientist observes, the main value of highlighting does

not intrinsically add much value to your understanding of the material; its
benefit (if any) stems from its ability to motivate you to spend more time with
the material. Yet as we’ve found, writing by hand and spending the time elab-
orating on material by writing reflection notes is even more motivating and
fun—especially if you’re only elaborating on the material you find irresistible.

In brief, I’d recommend you stop the practice of highlighting.

HEADINGS
Headings that you write are brief sentences outlining what the following
paragraph intends to cover. They do not summarize or spoil what is written
in the paragraph; rather they help organize its content.

Headings have been shown to produce better summaries, outlines, and

reformulation of material. This in turn helps enhance your recall of the
material you read.14

Headings are classified as organizational signals, and have demonstrated a

tendency to improving a reader’s recall of information (unlike highlighting).15

Headings are usually provided in texts whose author is awesome (like

me), and who put the work in to organize their material into chunks with
a heading attached.

However, so-called “learned” authors (scientists and scholars, like Luhmann)

may forgo such niceties. In such a case it may be a useful practice to create
your own headings. I don’t recommend doing this directly in the book (i.e.,
marginalia). Rather, I recommend using your bibcard for this practice.

of the Material Cued,” Journal of Reading Behavior 9, no. 3 (September 1, 1977): 227–32;
John Dunlosky et al., “Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques:
Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology,” Psychological
Science in the Public Interest 14, no. 1 (January 1, 2013): 4–58.
14  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 35.
15   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018),
35-6.
422  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The third extraction method is that of summaries. This is analogous to creating

a reformulation note, which is covered in detail in the next chapter. These are
best for tackling difficult material. If tackling difficult material, I recommend
creating reformulation notes using the 1-step book-to-maincard method.
In brief, you go straight from book to creating an entire notecard dedicated
to reformulating the difficult idea you just read.

Let’s now turn to the grand-daddy of all the extraction strategies: the two-
step Luhmannian bibcard method.

THE TWO-STEP LUHMANNIAN BIBCARD METHOD

A phase transition took place in the eighteenth century during the enlighten-
ment wherein the reading styles of scholars changed. “An enlightened reader
was no longer supposed to collect and memorize ‘factoids’ that he found in
the texts of others,” observed scholar, Fabian Krämer.16 In the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, when scholars read, their focus centered on collecting
bits of knowledge (excerpting). During the enlightenment, scholars began to
read by recording their own thoughts (observations).17 Essentially, reading
and observing became “closely intertwined.”18 The observations one made
while reading could then be used to process an idea more fully. This could
be done by way of (1) creating reflection notes on the material in order to
integrate ideas into one’s own theories and creative work, (2) testing an
author’s conclusions by way of experiment, and (3) writing critical reviews
of books (which became a popular practice during the enlightenment).

These deeper ways of processing texts begins with recording one’s observa-
tions. The container with which one records such observations is that of the
bibcard. This is what we’ll be covering in this section.

In the course of using the Antinet, I’ve tried out all of the methods mentioned
previously. I’ve come to conclude that the best method in the majority of
cases is what you’re about to learn now: The 2-step bibcard method.

16  Fabian Krämer, Albrecht von Haller as an ‘Enlightened’ Reader-Observer (Brill, 2016), 224.
17  Fabian Krämer, Albrecht von Haller as an ‘Enlightened’ Reader-Observer (Brill, 2016), 233.
18  Fabian Krämer, Albrecht von Haller as an ‘Enlightened’ Reader-Observer (Brill, 2016), 241.
 Extraction  423

In Luhmann’s first Antinet, he primarily adopted the 1-step book-to-maincard

method. As Johannes Schmidt observes, “the early notes from the 1950s
and 1960s frequently tended to be more of the running-text kind and more
closely reflected the original readings.”19

In Luhmann’s second Antinet, his method changed.

Here’s an overview of this process:

This method entails extracting knowledge from external sources by placing

it on a bibcard.

On the front-side of the bibcard, are three items: (1) the bibliographic details
of the source, (2) your goal in engaging the source, and (3) an overview of

19 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292-3.
424  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

the source if available (such as a brief overview of its table of contents). This
is already covered in the chapter on selection.

On the back-side of the bibcard, are the bibnotes. The bibnotes are the
observations you have while reading. These are the internal thoughts and
ideas you wish to select from the material. With these items, you’ll either:
(1) convert them into main notes by excerpting them, reformulating them,
or reflecting on them, or (2) forego elaborating on the items by storing them
as ExRefs. By foregoing elaboration, you allow the items to ruminate until
the time wherein you’re working on a relevant project which will benefit
from including the material.

Here’s a picture of a bibcard:

 Extraction  425

How to Read with a Bibcard

Reading using the bibcard method typically involves three items: (1) a
physical book, (2) a pen, and (3) the bibcard.

Ideally I recommend physical books (as opposed to reading digital versions).

For almost a decade, I read with a Kindle; however a few years ago I transi-
tioned back to using physical books because I felt a stronger spiritual, even
sacred, connection to physical books. Reading physical books also seemed
more effective in helping me comprehend what I was reading. Research
now backs my observations. Recently, a scientific study found that “reading
comprehension is reduced when reading from an electronic device.”20

The bibcard method works better with physical books than digital books.
You simply place the bibcard in any location at the back of the book. When
you finish your reading session, place it where you left off, using the bibcard
as a bookmark.

In addition, you’ll want a pen available at the ready. I like to clip the pen
onto the back cover of the book.

Here’s how it looks:

20  Motoyasu Honma et al., “Reading on a Smartphone Affects Sigh Generation, Brain

Activity, and Comprehension,” Scientific Reports 12, no. 1 (January 31, 2022): 1589.
426  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Inside the book you’ll see the bibcard, which acts as a bookmark, and clipped
onto the book’s back cover is a pen.

I’ve tried a lot of reading setups. A lot of them have pluses and minuses. Cer-
tain ones are fine; however, in unusual situations, like while reading in bed or
on a sandy beach, they fail miserably. For instance, reading with a Moleskine
notebook while lying in bed isn’t something that works for most people.
With the bibcard reading method, one can read in bed on their back right
before falling asleep and still have everything they need to extract a key idea.

Reading outdoors is also more supported by physical books. Luhmann once

said, “I like working in the sun.”21 For those who like reading outside, this is
also a great setup because it requires minimal supplies and isn’t subject to
the limitations some screens have when used in bright direct light.

Here’s a photo of Luhmann reading in the sun using this method. Note what
looks like a bibcard sticking out of the book.
photo credit:
Niklas Luhmann—
Theory of Society
4_13 by Schwumbel;
philomag, “Niklas
Luhmann Und
Die Aufrichtigkeit,”
Philosophie Magazin,
accessed April 26,
2022, https://www.
philomag.de/artikel/
niklas-luhmann-und-
die-aufrichtigkeit.

Bibnotes
A bibnote is what Sönke Ahrens refers to as a literature note, even though it
doesn’t make sense to call them literature notes (as that indicates the notes are

21  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 31.
 Extraction  427

from literature). For several reasons, I prefer the term bibnote. A bibliography
is a collection of the works you cite in your research, it’s not just composed of
literature. The notes one takes can certainly be from a medium beyond liter-
ature. You can take notes from YouTube videos, lectures, podcasts, you name
it. Furthermore, it can be argued that readers should not confine themselves
to reading only literature. In the words of John Aubrey, a fellow of the Royal
Society, “material gathered should not be confined to that offered in books.”22

Since the notes you take while engaging with your sources emanate from your
“bibliography” (your list of references), I like to refer to these notes as bibnotes.

Bibnotes are made in bullet-point format. The briefer they are, the better.
They begin with a page number in parentheses, and then list out the thought
or observation.

For instance, here’s a bib-

card with bibnotes I took
while listening to a podcast.

note: I put timestamps

of the ideas in parantheses.
I placed them after the
bibnote; however I now
typically place the timestamp
or page number on the left-
hand side before the bibnote.

22  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 138.
428  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

I like to think of the nature of these individual bibnotes as observations.

They’re observations that you have as you engage with a source. By source
I mean a book, podcast, lecture, YouTube video, etc.

John Locke’s notes were of kindred nature and were referred to as “obser-
vation” notes. The scholar, Richard Yeo, refers to them as “short comments
connected with books [Locke] was reading.”23

Much of the time your bibnotes don’t even have to be a short comment.
They can be condensed even more by simply writing a keyterm.

As Johannes Schmidt observes, bibnotes are “not simply excerpts,” and that
Luhmann “jotted down only a few keywords in the course of his reading
along with the respective page numbers.”24

I do the same by simply writ-

ing a page number down, and
then the keyterm. I signal it’s
a keyterm by underlining it.
For instance, see this bibcard:

23  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 149.
24 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 293.
 Extraction  429

The bibnote (27) Zone of Genius signals to me that on page 27, there is
material relating to the concept of sticking within your “Zone of Genius.”
In other words, sticking with your core competency and focusing on your
gifts. Because Zone of Genius is underlined, it indicates that it’s a keyterm
pertaining to a core idea, which already has an entry in my index box.

Here is a picture of page 27 in The Intellectual Life:

When I thought of the keyterm Zone of Genius, it was in regards to the idea
that one should not “aim at what is beyond their powers, and thus run the
430  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

risk of falling into error, [and of those] who waste their real capacity in order
to acquire some capacity that is illusory…”25

In this instance, I didn’t have immediately relevant use for this idea, and
therefore I didn’t develop a maincard for it. Instead, I created an ExRef.
Here’s a picture of it in the area of my Antinet pertaining to Zone of Genius.
Within this area there’s a card of Zone-of-Genius-related ExRefs:

The concept of Zone of Genius is important to me; yet I decided it’s not
immediately applicable to my current project—that project being the book
you’re reading right now. I mean, Zone of Genius technically could be relevant
to this book, and I could dedicate a section of the book to it (which I guess,
indirectly I’m kind of doing right now). However, you have to draw a line
in the sand and focus on the most pertinent material for your task at hand.
And right now, we have our hands full enough with the material covered
in this book. Simply creating an ExRef allows me to delay processing until
I have use for it (which will probably be for a future project).

25  OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992),
27. Emphasis added.
 Extraction  431

This gives you a glimpse into one of my bibcards. Let’s now turn our attention
to one of Luhmann’s bibcards:

I enlisted the help of the Antinet’s Reddit community to help translate

this card.26 Luckily, a community member answered the call and provided
a translation despite the fact that Luhmann’s handwriting has been called
abysmally bad and hideous.27 As such, some of the bibnotes are completely
indecipherable (designated by […]). Here is the translation:

26  sscheper, “Help Translating Luhmann’s Bibcards into English,” Reddit Post, R/Antinet,
April 12, 2022, www.reddit.com/r/Antinet/comments/u1lqzz/helptranslatingluhmanns
bibcardsintoenglish/.
27  BrainOfALion, “You’re Welcome! The…,” Reddit Comment, R/Antinet, April 12, 2022,
www.reddit.com/r/Antinet/comments/u1lqzz/helptranslatingluhmannsbibcardsintoen-
glish/i4gyjdy/; “Help Translating Luhmann’s Bibcards into English,” Zettelkasten Forum,
432  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

V1. No specific metaphysical theory is necessary. But from this

follows not, that no metaphysical theory is necessary

1 Ambiguity of the concept or reality

2 reality as function of expectedness [Original in English]

51 nothing-universe / everything universe, ours somewhere in

between […] depends on, that we all must take note of […]

6 Observations as parallel runs[…] between observer & observed

[Original in English]

7 The faster we change, the more we can notice [Original in English]

10 inferred[…] scientist / historian [Original in English]

20 Induction: evaluable for legal argumentation (if the result doesn’t

satisfy, one changes the premises)

23 Error as […] Coping […]

25 Induction as slow operation

26 W[…] als sec[…] […] prädikas […]

27 Paradox of the liar [Original in English]

31 Observation as primitive concept of science [Original in English]

35 randomness [Original in English]

40 Chance is definitively compatible with causality [Underlined]

accessed April 12, 2022, https://forum.zettelkasten.de/discussion/2235/help-translating

-luhmanns-bibcards-into-english.
 Extraction  433

44 Chance: not connection to [or: relation with] other events

46 randomness [Original in English]

65 The Experimental paradox 107p [Original in English]

There are several patterns we can glean from this translation. First, note
how Luhmann simply jotted down keyterms like randomness. Second,
he also wrote down terms in the following way {keyterm} as {supporting
context}. In essence, Luhmann stated the keyterm first, and then inserted
the phrase as. After as Luhmann would provide a snippet of detail that would
contextualize the keyterm. For instance, we see the phrase reality as function
of expectedness. This method of creating bibnotes stands as both a way of
thinking and a practice one should experiment with. It results in building
knowledge around the keyterm (not around the supporting context, which
sits in a subordinate position to the main idea of the keyterm).

The Bib Box

Luhmann’s bibliography box (aka, the bib box) was a critical component of
his Antinet. The cards in this section show Luhmann’s thoughts before they
were processed fully into main notes. Luhmann’s second Antinet contained
67,000 cards, with 15,000 (roughly 22%) of them bibcards.

Given how large a portion of Luhmann’s second Antinet was devoted to

bibcards, you would think these would be outlined in Sönke Ahrens’s book
How to Take Smart Notes. Yet this component of Luhmann’s system is almost
completely omitted in Ahrens’s tutorial. His instructions for how to create
this critical component of the Antinet is basically: “I strongly recommend
using a free program like Zotero.”28

The bib box stores your bibcards in alphabetical order. It’s where you place
your bibcards after you finish the book.

28  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking: For Students, Academics and Nonfiction Book Writers (North
Charleston, SC: CreateSpace, 2017), 30
434  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

ONE READS DIFFERENTLY WITH AN

ANTINET
Written on a card in Luhmann’s own Antinet we find a card on how one
“reads differently” when using an Antinet.29 Johannes Schmidt notes that
Luhmann read “with an eye to the notes already contained in his file.”30

This phenomenon is something other scholars have confirmed: “it is indis-

putable that in books [he read], Luhmann searched for information or ideas
that could be linked to the content of his own card index.”31

With enough practice with an Antinet, there is a phase transition that occurs
whereby you begin to read in such a way that you no longer get “bogged
down” by writing out full-excerpts.32

If we look at Luhmann’s second Antinet and its 15,000 bibcards, most of

which referenced books, we can make some calculations (without accounting
for titles which span multiple bibcards, which indeed occurred, but not too
frequently). Luhmann worked with his second Antinet from roughly 1963 to
1997, which comes out to thirty four years. We can make some calculations
(without accounting for titles which span multiple bibcards, which indeed
occurred, but wasn’t too frequent). If we divide 15,000 bibcards by thirty
four years, this gives us 441 titles per year; 37 titles per month; or roughly
one title per day.

In other words, on average Luhmann read roughly one book or journal

article per day… for thirty four years.

29  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8d—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 4, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8d_V.
30   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 293.
31   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 27.
32  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8d—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 4, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8d_V.
 Extraction  435

There’s no way to do this by reading the way normal people read (slowly,
sounding out every word in their head). The nature in which Luhmann
read was selective. I call it selective reading. You ingest books at a phenomenal
rate, like a reading machine, thanks to the priming step we covered in the
previous chapter. I suggest this is a hybrid between skimming and reading
every sentence. Instead of reading every word, you read every paragraph of
the book. You don’t try to comprehend each individual word, or each sen-
tence even. Your goal is to comprehend the paragraph quickly, and move on.
When you spot an intriguing idea you slow down. At that point your brain
undertakes a communication experience in order to draw up concepts from
your Antinet. You then run the new material through a filter: is this idea bad,
good, excellent, or irresistible? If it’s irresistible, you extract it onto your bibcard.

As Mortimer Adler advises, reading should not be thought of as a passive

activity.33 It’s an active process. When employing the bibcard extraction
method it’s an even faster, more alert process.

SLOWLY CHEWING ON BOOKS

There will be books that are worth chewing on (reading them slowly and
deliberately). Typically, these will be the books you read when you’re in
exploratory mode; when you have yet to develop a rough skeleton to serve
as the foundation of your project. In this mode, you ought to employ the
book-to-maincard method. You also must shift your mindset. You must
slow down your thinking and not worry about processing books efficiently.

In this mode you ought to adopt the advice of people like David Deutsch,
a great copywriter. Deutsch famously emphasized that it was better to read
one great book ten times, instead of ten good books one time.34 In this mode
you should opt to be well-read, not widely read. As Mortimer Adler puts it:

33   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 4.
34  Ben Settle, “The 10-Minute Workday,” https://www.awai.com/members/10-minute/, Unit
12, 4.
436  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

There have always been literate ignoramuses who have read

too widely and not well. The Greeks had a name for such a
mixture of learning and folly which might be applied to the
bookish but poorly read of all ages. They are all sophomores.35

SYNTOPICAL READING
If you already have a base-level structure for what you’re working on, then it’s
safer to adopt swifter extraction methods. There are certain books that are so
dense, widely-cited, and profound that you just know they deserve a slower
read. And there are certain books that are suited for swift selective reading.

One of the more enjoyable ways to partake in selective reading is to employ a

process called syntopical reading.36 With syntopical reading, you read several
books on the same subject, at the same time. This is something Luhmann
did, as well. In a short piece Luhmann wrote on reading, he states: “Another
possibility is to read texts [across] certain topics.”37

In order to read syntopically, Luhmann writes, “You have to be able to read

highly selectively and pull out widely interconnected references.”38 Basically
you must train your mind to spot certain patterns. This is something neuro-
imprinting keyterms on your mind helps with (by way of the index).

Here, Luhmann’s referring to storing ideas in long-term memory in the

Antinet, such that they evolve and you do not waste your time relearning
what you already know.

According to Luhmann, the key to reading scientific texts revolves around

this act. You must read selectively, and not waste time relearning what you
already know. The key piece in this process relates to long-term memory and

35  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 11.
36  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 301.
37  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 82.
38  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
 Extraction  437

the necessity to distinguish the “essential from the non-essential and the
new from the merely repetitive.”39 In other words, you want a system where
you can refresh your recollection of your notes and evolve your current
ideas with new ideas; you don’t want to waste time relearning things you
already know.

I like to do this in the following manner: I carve out two hours of back-to-
back reading. For the first hour I read one book within one topic. In the next
hour I read a different book within that same topic. For example, several
years ago I read two books predicting what the future would look like and
the technologies that would shape it. The first book I read was The Industries
of the Future; the book I read was The Inevitable. By reading syntopically,
I spotted interesting patterns—things that they both agreed upon and the
contradictions between them. In addition, I noticed that each of them
omitted something which served as an important piece of the other’s book.

Again, reading this way usually comes after the exploratory phase. It comes
after you’ve gained a sense for what you actually wish to create. However,
when you’re ready for this type of reading style, the bibcard extraction
method, as well as the Antinet as a whole, takes the experience to a whole
new level.

In brief, you’ll read differently with an Antinet because you’ve been training
and exercising your neuro-associative recall muscle. You see, even before
reading the first page of a book, you’ll have primed your mind to detect
certain keyterms and ideas by way of creating index entries of keyterms. The
Antinet, with its neuroimprinting process of writing by hand, develops your
neuro-associative recall ability. When reading, you’ll find yourself thinking
of keyterms in your index. This is hugely beneficial because it saves you time.
You can simply jot keyterms down on a bibcard, instead of having to write
out lengthier notes.

39  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
438  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

CONCLUSION
Now you have an idea for the process of extracting material from the sources
you engage with. We outlined several strategies (the best one being the
2-step bibcard method). We now turn to the next critical phase of knowledge
development: Creation.
 C H A PT E R F I F T E E N
�

CREATION

T he creation phase of knowledge development is where the magic

really starts to happen. In this phase you begin adding your own meaning
to the information you extract from the sources you choose to communicate
with. In this phase, you begin injecting your own personality into the infor-
mation. As a result, you create knowledge with your own unique perspective
with the potential of making an impact on the world.

We’re going to survey a large swath of material in this section. The best place
to start is exploring the nature of notes.

THE NATURE OF THE NOTES

What are notes? I think there are several ways to answer this question. One
helpful way to understand the nature of notes is to use some metaphors.
In this section I’ll present three illustrations: (1) notes as thoughts, (2) notes
as leaves, and (3) notes as neurons.

NOTES AS THOUGHTS
At this point it’s helpful to refresh our memory of what a thought actually is.

A thought is a metaphysical representation of reality. This reality can be

external reality (such as things you see), or internal reality (such as your
internal experience, intuition or feelings). The reality can be true in nature
or true in fiction (as Hemingway emphasized, each novelist should write
the truth). A thought is also shaped by several dimensions, which are rep-
resented in the following diagram:

439
440  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

A thought is shaped by one’s self. You have your own concept of a self (ego,
persona or identity). You think of yourself in a certain way that shapes your
thoughts. Your experiences, stories, trials, tribulations, and past serve as a
background context for your self. Your self shapes your thoughts. Your self
also embodies the unique ways your brain works based on its biochemical
arrangement. Based on your DNA, based on how you’re wired.

A thought is also shaped by space: where you are in space, your latitude,
longitude, and altitude. You’ve heard the phrase, you are your environment.
It’s really: your thoughts are your environment—or at least, your thoughts
are shaped by your environment. Your thoughts would be different if you
lived in Bangladesh (assuming you’re not already living in Bangladesh).
In brief, where you reside right now in space shapes your thoughts.

A thought is also shaped by time. How you think of something today is

drastically different from how you’d have thought of it ten years prior. It’s
also drastically different from how you’ll think of the same thing ten years
from now. We’re always changing, and our thoughts change with us. Yet it’s
not only our selves changing that shapes thoughts. It’s also the world around
us. The thoughts you have today would be drastically different if you were
suddenly transported two thousand years into the past or future—even if
you were to remain the same age, in the same physical body, and at the same
physical location. Your own place in time, as well as your own world’s place
in time, has a significant impact on which thoughts you experience.
 Creation  441

A thought is also shaped by memory (or reverberation). This is closely related

to the concept of self, but it’s more specific. It’s related to our short-term
concept of self. We have a memory that fades over time. Our recent actions
and things we’ve read—say in the past month—are still reverberating
through our minds. Our recent behavior, our recent purchases, the books,
TV shows and movies we’ve seen recently shape our thoughts. After some
point, however, these memories fade. Every single day we enter a new state
wherein some thoughts will arise, and other thoughts simply will not. This is
shaped by our memory which is almost like a rolling wave of reverberation.

A thought is also shaped by content. The current content that has our atten-
tion and what we’re consuming shapes our thoughts. The TV show you’re
watching or book you’re reading shapes thoughts. While you’re ingesting the
sources of content, you’re relating the concepts to what you already know.
You’re trying to comprehend the concepts and either accepting or rejecting
them. When you’re consuming content, you’re selecting which information
resonates with you. After reading this book, you’re hopefully learning to
select only irresistible material. As you continue with your Antinet, whenever
you engage with content, you’re writing down your observational thoughts
(onto bibcards).

All of these dimensions (self, space, time, memory, content) shape the
phenomena that is a thought. The thoughts can be voluntary or involuntary.
Regardless, the metaphysical phenomenon that is a thought is then the raw
unit captured and immortalized by way of being written down on paper in
the form of a notecard. A note, then, is essentially a container of thought.
Or, more succinctly, a thought container.

Thought Containers
I think it’s helpful to think of notes as a mechanism, or a container of thought.
The scholar, Markus Krajewski, likens notes to “Denk-zettel,” which is a
German term translating roughly to “thought-notes.”1 These are the “units”
that stand as the raw material of the Antinet.

1   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement

against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 319.
442  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

There are four components of notes as thought containers. First, notes are
containers that develop one’s short-term thoughts. They are a mechanism for
thought that enables one to reflect and actually instantiate the phenomenon
going on internally in one’s mind.

Second, notes are containers for developing one’s long-term thoughts.

If structured properly, notes can serve as a container to collect and evolve
thoughts over the long term. This is thanks to the nested tree structure of
the Antinet.

Third, notes serve as prompts to help the mind recollect knowledge.2 In dig-
ital Zettelkasten systems, many people have a tendency to view notes as an
all-encompassing document. In digital systems, users regularly tend to their
notes, constantly updating and deleting text. Yet truly powerful note systems
are not like this. They simply serve as a cue or a prompt to trigger neurons
in your brain to fire and connect. As a result you end up grasping an idea
that is often incommunicable. You then use your manuscript or project to
make the incommunicable knowledge lucid and clear. The notes within the
Antinet are a means to the end (the end being your creative output). This is
something that will continually arise throughout this section.

Fourth, notes are a container encompassing different types of thoughts.

As one scholar puts it, notes are “free-floating staging posts of thought, which
record all manner of remarkable things, excerpts and quotes in the perma-
nence of script.”3 Notes serve as a container for observing what the material
you’re reading relates to. Notes serve as a container for thoughts which encap-
sulate what an author is saying (excerpt notes), as a container for learning
material by summarizing concepts in your own words (reformulation notes),
and as a container for reflecting on what material means to you, particularly
within the context of a current project you’re working on.

2   Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 154.
3   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 319. Emphasis added.
 Creation  443

Notes as Memories
Given that a note can be thought of as a thought (pun intended), it can also
be thought of as a memory. Why? Because a memory is a stored represen-
tation of a thought.

Think of a note as a thought, an abstraction, and as a memory. The prob-

lem with digital notes is that they are unidimensional rather than multidi-
mensional. They are virtual; they live in a man-made dimension. Physical
thoughts present in space and time have more dimensionality than purely
metaphysical systems. This is something digital will have to overcome if it
wishes to have the potency of analog knowledge systems.

A thought gets stored and represented as a memory. It’s therefore important

to note—again, pun intended—that how human memory works is not
unidimensional. Rather, human memory is like a matrix. A memory is a
combination of multiple attributes and contexts. A well-developed hypoth-
esis posits that individual memories are distributed over multiple attributes,
features, elements, or dimensions.4

Let’s translate this into something practical: the notecard that I’ve written
on the topic of love is easy to spot. Why? Because I decided to write it on
an actual leaf!

4   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 85.
444  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The words on the leaf are the lyrics of All You Need Is Love by the Beatles.

This is an example of the multi-dimensionality of notes.

You see, early on into a relationship with my now fiancé, I asked her to pick
out a leaf for me when she was with our daughter on a hike. This card is
packed not only with intriguing features, but with an entire background
story as well. The character of this note is also represented by the style of
my handwriting, as well as its content.

Human memories function much like this. They are multidimensional objects
and not merely digital texts or even digital pictures or diagrams.

The Antinet as a Perfect System of Thought

The Antinet is constructed in a way that emphasizes the two laws that govern
thought. The concept that thought is governed by two laws derives from
British philosophers John Locke, David Hume, George Berkeley, David
Hartley and John Stuart Mill who suggested that thoughts are governed by
two components. 5

1. Contiguity: the notion that ideas that are frequently experienced together
become closely associated in one’s mind. In the Antinet, the sequence
of notes results in closely associated streams of thoughts. These streams
of thought are thereby organized closely together in a sequence. This is
made possible by the numeric-alpha card addresses and tree structure.

2. Similarity (resemblance): when two ideas are similar, whatever has been
closely associated with the first idea (thereby starting the flow of thought)
automatically also becomes associated with the following thoughts. The
following thoughts are those that then branch downward from the
initial thought.

5   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 113.
 Creation  445

NOTES AS LEAVES
Another helpful metaphor is to think of notes as leaves. The tree metaphor
for the Antinet serves as a perfect illustration due to its branching nature.
A core component of this metaphor is the leaves on a tree.

The leaves on a tree are (relatively) uniform, yet there’s variation between
leaves, as well. Some leaves are withered, some have holes in them, and some
grow old and dry up. This also happens with notes in the Antinet. Some
have holes of logic in them, and some grow old because they’re unlinked.

In addition to this, a note-as-a-leaf cannot be simply encapsulated by a short,

condensed title. You must view the entire leaf to understand it. When view-
ing a notecard, you must view the note in its entirety to understand it. On
the other hand, with digital notetaking apps, one is forced to squeeze the
material of each note into a brief title. This dilutes the material found in the
note. For instance, a note that contains profound ideas on the concept of
a thought is titled Definition of a Thought. However, this is not the nature of
particular leaves. There’s no title for each leaf. To understand the nature of
any given leaf you must view the entirety of the leaf. This is the same for notes.

The practical lesson is this: Do not weaken your notes by assigning a

human-readable title to them. Respect your thoughts by having the thought
contain itself (instead of being contained in a catchy title).

NOTES AS NEURONS
Another way to think of notes is to liken them to neurons in the human brain.

As I detail in a later section on human memory, the neural networks we

think of today as legitimate are, in reality, merely artificial abstractions, with
the result being that the models researchers use to study human memory
“bear only a faint resemblance to real biological neurons: they are highly
simplified computational ‘units’ that integrate and transmit information.”6
This description seems to perfectly encapsulate what a note is. Most of what

6   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 152.
446  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

people think of when they hear the term neural network isn’t actually a real
thing—it’s artificial. It’s an abstraction. Yet this abstraction nonetheless
made it a very useful system in the real world. The same holds true for
the Antinet.

Neurons are the perfect stand-in for the concept of notes. Notes fit the defi-
nition of “highly simplified computational ‘units’ that integrate and transmit
information,” which is one reason why the Antinet works so well—or at least
better than information stored in silos of commonplace books.

Niklas Luhmann was familiar with how human memory worked and also
deliberate in his design of the Antinet. It’s no coincidence that he built his
system based on the idea of connections (inspired by connections of neu-
rons in the human brain).

Luhmann pointed out how human memory does not function as a sum of
point-by-point access locations (such as sequentially moving through notes).7
Rather your brain utilizes internal links and connections. It’s helpful when
thinking about a note to view it as a raw unit, as a neuron. The neuron gains
its value when it is connected to other notes by way of installing the note
under or behind its most similar idea. The neuron is further enriched by
connecting to other neurons in your tree of knowledge. This is done by
creating remotelinks to other cards on more distant branches of your Antinet.

The latest research in human memory also supports this, revealing evidence
for something termed the distributed representation of memory.8 This idea
holds that a memory is represented by not merely one notecard (or one
neuron), but by an interaction between a large set of neurons.

7   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
8   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 26.
 Creation  447

THE PROBLEMS WITH THE CURRENT

DEFINITIONS OF NOTES WITHIN
ZETTELKASTEN LITERATURE

THE PROBLEM WITH THE TERM ZETTEL

The German term Zettel translates into “note” in American English. How-
ever, in European English it has been translated into “slip,” and denotes a
slip of paper of a6-size as defined by ISO standards (roughly the size of
4 x 6 inch notecards). Regardless of the slight difference in terms (note vs.
slip), it’s become conventional for so-called followers of Zettelkasten to
throw around the term Zettel. For instance, they ask for critiques on the
Zettels they’ve created.

There’s one issue, however. Many Zettelkasten enthusiasts use the term
Zettel as the equivalent of a reflection note. They think of Zettels as some
type of evergreen, atomic, permanent note. However, roughly seventeen
thousand out of Luhmann’s ninety thousand notes were not so-called
“Zettels” as these enthusiasts would define it. They were observation notes
written down on Luhmann’s bibcards. Of the remaining notes, there were
many that were just hub notes containing links to other cards (Collectives),
or external references (ExRefs). For this reason, I’ve decided to ditch the
whole convention of calling notes Zettels because the term implies that
Luhmann had one main type of note. In reality, his so-called “permanent
notes” contained several different types of notes. Using the inaccurate and
vague term Zettel isn’t helpful. It doesn’t make sense to obfuscate this system
even more than it already has been. For this reason, I hereby sentence the
term Zettel to death!

Unfortunately Zettel isn’t the only term that’s unhelpful in the currently
confused land of Zettelkasten. Let’s go through the other unhelpful
terms now.

THE PROBLEM WITH FLEETING NOTES

Fleeting notes is a term coined by Sönke Ahrens in his book, How to Take
Smart Notes. Ahrens calls fleeting notes those notes that “are only reminders
448  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

of information [that] can be written in any kind of way and will end up in
the trash within a day or two.”9

The problem with such a concept is that we have zero evidence of Luhmann
actually using such a technique. Why? Because they would end up in the
trash within a day or two. Quite frankly, I’m not sure why Ahrens includes
the concept. My best guess is that this practice is something Ahrens himself
uses and decided to prescribe for his readers.

I personally don’t have a need to use fleeting notes. I take notes on my bib-
cards and then spend my energy processing them by creating main notes.
I’m very disciplined and strict about this process. My bib notes and main
notes are all I need. If I have a thought that continually arises, I’ll wait until
I get to my office with my Antinet. If the thought is truly important I’ll
explore my Antinet and review the stems that the new thought relates to.
If the thought is truly important, I’ll develop it into a main note.

I think the concept of fleeting notes stems from a place of fear—the fear
of a good idea escaping you, never to return. However, I’ve found that the
analog nature of the Antinet has trained my mind and memory to be more
disciplined and less sporadic. According to some, we have over six thousand
thoughts per day.10 You have to trust the truly important ones will recur
again and again. When they do, don’t waste time creating fleeting notes;
just create a main note for it, if it’s truly relevant.

Luhmann himself was pressed for time and I wouldn’t be surprised to

learn that he never took fleeting notes, either. He was very disciplined and
deliberate in his thinking, and it’s probable that his bib notes acted as his
fleeting notes—as a place to jot down ideas as they first occurred to him

9   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking (2nd Edition), Kindle, 2022, 53.
10  Julie Tseng and Jordan Poppenk, “Brain Meta-State Transitions Demarcate Thoughts
across Task Contexts Exposing the Mental Noise of Trait Neuroticism,” Nature
Communications 11, no. 1 (July 13, 2020): 3480.
 Creation  449

while he was reading. Therefore, it makes the whole concept of fleeting notes
redundant and unhelpful.

With that said, I do not discount the idea of fleeting notes being valuable
for some people. I will grant that the idea of writing down thoughts as they
come up is a potentially useful practice. Indeed, writing fleeting thoughts
down has been a practice used by some of our greatest thinkers. Nietzsche
observed that some of the best ideas are born out in the open (on hikes in
nature). Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz always carried paper with him, as well.11

However, I don’t think fleeting notes are something that need to be elabo-
rated on too much in the context of knowledge development. It’s an obvious
practice if you want to function as an adult. It’s kind of like keeping track of
reminders and appointments. In the rare case I need to capture a fleeting
note, I use a weekly paper planner placed in my fanny pack (yes, I rock a
fanny pack). I’ve found a pen and paper planner to be more useful and less
distracting than using a to-do app, note app, or calendar app on my phone.
There are rare occasions where I’ll want to remind myself of a fleeting thought,
and in that case I’ll write it down in my weekly planner. However, I’ve noticed
a pattern whenever I do this. When it comes time to create a main note for
the thought, I usually find that the idea isn’t really even valuable or useful.

Again, the whole concept of fleeting notes isn’t that important in the work-
flow of using an Antinet. The important pieces are the bib notes and main
notes. For all of these reasons, I opt to drop the whole concept of fleeting
notes altogether.

THE PROBLEM WITH PROJECT NOTES

Another term Sönke Ahrens introduced is that of project notes. Ahrens
explains these are notes which are “kept within a project-specific folder
and can be discarded or archived after the project is finished.”12 This whole

11   Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement

against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 313.
12  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking (2nd Edition), Kindle, 2022, 53.
450  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

concept is another Ahrensian invention. One of the most powerful aspects

of the Antinet is that the projects you work on will compound. Why? Because
they’re installed in the Antinet. This enables the project you work on for
one paper to be potentially used later on in a completely different project.
As Johannes Schmidt writes of Luhmann’s Antinet, “The bulk of the col-
lections (approximately 75,000 cards) consists of notes documenting the
results of Luhmann’s readings, his own thoughts, and ideas for publication
projects.”13 In brief, Luhmann stored the material he worked on for projects
inside his own Antinet, not in folders. This can be observed in the notes he
created for his paper Communication with Noteboxes, as well.14

In brief, do not store notes you create for a project in some folder outside
the Antinet. Store them in your Antinet so that they can be developed and
used for another project in the long term. You’ll be surprised how much you
end up using from previous material. You may end up stumbling upon the
material by accident at the perfect time when you’ll need it most.

THE PROBLEM WITH LITERATURE NOTES

Literature note is another term introduced by Ahrens. He writes, “Whenever
you read something, make notes about the content.”15 These notes are what
he calls literature notes.

Yet there’s a problem with the term literature notes. First off, it’s vague. What
are literature notes? They’re brief observations of what you have read. They
also are placed on a bibcard. For this reason, I prefer the term bib notes
(or observation notes). Second, as mentioned elsewhere, the term literature
notes implies one takes these notes from the literature one reads. However,
this is not the case. These types of notes can and should be drawn from many
sources (podcasts, videos, lectures, and more). In the words of John Aubrey,

13   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292. Emphasis added.
14  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed April 20, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8_V.
15   Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking (2nd Edition), Kindle, 2022, 34.
 Creation  451

a fellow of the Royal Society, “material gathered should not be confined to

that offered in books.”16

For these reasons, I suggest dropping the term literature notes and instead
using bib notes (short for bibliography notes). In cases in which you’re using
a 1-step book-to-maincard method, then it’s more appropriate to refer to
them as observation notes.

THE PROBLEM WITH PERMANENT NOTES

Permanent note is yet another Ahrensian term that has become part of the
Zettelkasten canon. Ahrens defines permanent notes as those “which will
never be thrown away and [that] contain the necessary information in a
permanently understandable way.”17

There are several problems with this term.

First off, the term permanent is redundant. Every note you install in the
Antinet is permanent. The cards you place in the main box of your Antinet
are permanent, and so are the cards you install in the bibliography and index
box. Calling a note permanent doesn’t differentiate it from the many different
types of permanent notes that Luhmann, for example, created.

What’s even more perplexing is that the idea of permanent notes seems
primarily geared toward digital Zettelkasten practitioners. The idea behind
permanent notes is that they permanently define a concept and are then
referenced (without being deleted or updated). However, this is problematic
for digital notetaking apps. Why? Because digital notes are anything but
permanent! Their contents are constantly being refactored, updated, deleted
and rearranged. For this reason a new term was invented called evergreen
notes. According to the inventor of the term, evergreen notes are “written
and organized to evolve, contribute, and accumulate over time, across proj-

16  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 138.
17  Sönke Ahrens, How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing,
Learning and Thinking (2nd Edition), Kindle, 2022, 53.
452  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

ects.”18 The coiner of this term differentiates it from another coined term:
transient notes. The idea of these notes centers around the idea of notes just
being stored in containers and never evolving.

All of this stuff is just confusing gibberish. It’s a case of people trying to invent
terms to encompass what Luhmann’s Antinet really was. Luhmann’s notes
were indeed permanent. They were not edited. Using such a system, one’s
thinking is thereby stamped in history. Yet the notes also evolved thanks to
the tree structure of the Antinet. This concept isn’t really captured in the
terms permanent notes or evergreen notes.

For these reason I drop the term permanent notes altogether (same goes for
evergreen notes). A better way of thinking about notes is in the terminology
I’ll be introducing soon. But before I introduce the four types of notes, let’s
first talk about the art of note creation.

THE ART OF NOTE CREATION

The following section may create endless suffering for computer scientists,
engineers, and especially digital notetaking junkies (the ones with one-
hundred-point checklists and templates for creating notes). Here’s the truth:
the Antinet may not be the right tool for those focused on optimization and
strict adherence to protocol.

NOTES ARE A MEANS TO AN END

The Antinet—and any knowledge development system for that matter—
is not the end. It’s not the output. It’s not the destination. Knowledge devel-
opment should not be beautiful; it should be messy, drenched in sweat, ink,
coffee stains and some loops that are never closed. Knowledge development
contains notes which are raw products. The materials serve as products of
your thinking. This raw product doesn’t happen before or after you think,
it happens as you think. The symbols on physical paper represent the truest
and closest representation of your thinking.

18  “Evergreen Notes,” Andy’s working notes, accessed April 21, 2022, https://notes.andy-
matuschak.org/Evergreennotes.
 Creation  453

The goal is for your creative output, not your notes, to be beautiful
and profound.

In brief, notes are a means to an end, not the end itself. The goal is for the output
phase to be deeply developed and ordered. It’s OK for the process phase to
be seemingly chaotic.

NOT EVERY NOTE WILL BE USED

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should not put pressure on yourself
to only produce notes that end up getting used.

When writing notes, according to Luhmann, “the first thing one does is
produce a lot of waste.”19 If you don’t anticipate this, you may find yourself
discouraged; this is why many people burn out on personal knowledge man-
agement systems, and digital Zettelkasten with which it’s all-too-easy to create
mountains of information. You hit a certain point where you’ve created so

19   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
454  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

much information such that seemingly none of it will ever be used. This can
lead to despair and to people giving up knowledge development altogether.20

As Luhmann acknowledges, “We are educated to expect something useful

from our activities and otherwise quickly lose encouragement.”21 However,
with the Antinet, I’ve found that since it takes longer to produce material,
you’re incentivized to produce less waste. In addition, you produce less
overall. This results in more of the material and notes you create being used
(in comparison to digital workflows that distract you with the labeling,
organizing, and reworking of notes).

The good news about the Antinet, and one of its invaluable features, is that
it forces users to “prepare their notes in such a way that they are available
for later access.”22 If not easily findable, every note you take is a candidate
for an unexpected and invaluable insight if you happen to stumble upon it.
Even if you don’t stumble upon a particular card, it creates what Luhmann
deems, “a consoling illusion” that mitigates against the risk of discouragement
during the knowledge development process.23

In brief, think of knowledge development with the Antinet like exercising

the mind. Exercise is good for you. Creating notes and installing them into
the Antinet is good for you. It’s a process. It’s a workout for your mind. You’ll
start seeing results in the short term, yes. However, it’s something you ought
to strive to keep up as a long-term practice.

PRESS ON
When using an Antinet for knowledge development, you must remind
yourself to do one thing: press on. Prepare yourself to take notes by hand.
You must train yourself to slow down and pause to think. Reformulating the
author’s words with your own voice is very hard work.

20  “Rank and File,” Real Life, accessed January 14, 2022, https://reallifemag.com/rank-and-file/.
21   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
22   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
23   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
 Creation  455

Luhmann’s advice on how to read scientific literature echoes this advice.

He says it’s best to take reformulation notes—and continue to do so—even
if it means you must “postpone the hope of scientific productivity for a
while.”24 For challenging texts, this is how you level up in your reading. It’s
how you level up your intellect. Slowing down is how you get to the point
where you can take reflection notes on advanced texts.

THE PROCESS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE

RESULT
As Richard Feynman explained, his notes were not a record of his thinking;
they were his thinking. “They are my thinking process,” Feynman says.25

The goal of creating notes is not to provide you with a written record of infor-
mation. Rather, it’s to develop your mind—it’s to develop your thoughts.26
This is one reason why I don’t lose sleep at night. I don’t fear the prospect of
my Antinet catching on fire. The transformation within one’s brain (using
an Antinet) is more valuable than undeveloped information stored on a
computer (which doesn’t face the same risk of destruction in terms of fire
or flood).

As one cognitive scientist puts it, “research reveals the main value of note-
taking is through its effect on how you encode the information in your brain.”
In other words, she continues, “the act of note-taking is more important
than the result.”27 I agree.

THE TWO CLASSES OF NOTES

There are two types of note creation: Notetaking and notemaking.28

24   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
25  “How Writing Improves Our Thinking,” Residential Systems, June 15, 2020, https://www.
residentialsystems.com/blogs/how-writing-improves-our-thinking.
26   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 6.
27   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 6.
28   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 5.
456  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Notetaking
Notetaking refers to the process of recording your own observations that you
have while engaging with a source such as a book. For instance, let’s talk
about what occurs when you use the 2-step Luhmannian bibcard method.
When you record individual bibnotes on a bibcard, the nature of the notes
are observations. You’re recording the thoughts you have while reading the
text. In essence, you’re taking notes directly influenced by the source.

Notemaking
With notemaking, you’re a step beyond notetaking and are actually creating
a standalone note from the observations you’ve made while reading. You
make a main note from the observations you’ve recorded on your bibcard.
The main notes are either excerpts, reformulations, or reflections of the mate-
rial. The difference between notetaking and notemaking is a little fuzzy—
especially with regards to excerpt notes (as they’re a direct copy of the source
material). Yet, because excerpt notes are installed and applied to a specific
area or line of thought within the branches or stems of your Antinet, it’s
defensible that they be classified as part of the notemaking process. When
you cut the umbilical cord of the material that directly connects to a book,
and instead connect the material to a chain of concepts in your Antinet,
you’re partaking in notemaking.

Notetaking vs. Notemaking

In summary, notetaking is a process enacted through creating bibcards
which contain observations during your readings. Notemaking is a process
enacted through main notes which contain excerpt notes, reformulation
notes, and reflection notes. The differences will start to make sense where
it truly matters: in practice. Let’s now talk about the four main types of
notes in practice.

YOUR NOTE-CREATION REPERTOIRE

You must have multiple note-creation strategies in your repertoire when
creating knowledge. There’s “no one ‘best’ strategy for taking notes,” states
one cognitive scientist.29

29  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press,

 Creation  457

The strategy you choose for creating knowledge depends on several factors.30
What type of note you decide to create depends on your working memory
capacity. As you use the Antinet over time, your working memory capacity
will improve. Yet sometimes you don’t have enough bandwidth to simply
reflect on notes. Sometimes you need to first create a full excerpt note in order
to construct several cards to express your thoughts. This is one factor that has
an impact on which type of note you create during knowledge development.

Another factor that affects note creation is external distraction. We already

know how distracting the digital environment can be. Research shows us
how often people are distracted and pulled into checking communication
apps. For 50% of people, it’s every six minutes!31 Yet even following an analog
workflow, your environment may provide distractions. If you’re crammed
onto a plane, it’s a lot easier to use the 2-step Luhmannian bibcard method,
for instance, than it would be trying to manage fifteen different notecards
on your tray table.

Not only do external distractions affect your workflow, but internal distrac-
tions do so as well. When you practice the 1-step book-to-maincard method,
it requires a lot of focus. You must be in a very present state of mind to have
the self-awareness to know when you’re getting unnecessarily bogged down
in material. If your internal life is in a state of distress and you’re facing many
internal distractions, your note creation method should accommodate
that state.

The last factor that affects how you should create notes is the difficulty of the
material. If you’re tackling a challenging text, understanding the material is
a prerequisite for reflecting on the material. How well you understand what
you’re reading shapes how you should go about creating notes. In many cases
you must first either excerpt or reformulate the material.

2018), 10.
30  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 10.
31   Cal Newport, A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication
Overload (New York: Portfolio, 2021), 11.
458  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It’s important to know about these factors when deciding what type of note
to create, and how to create them. However don’t worry yourself about
trying to hold the types in mind during the note creation process. The
understanding of these factors, and what process works best for you will
come with time and practice.

Let’s now get into the four types of notes.

THE FOUR TYPES OF NOTES

There are four types of notes:

1. Observation notes
2. Excerpt notes
3. Reformulation notes
4. Reflection notes

Observation notes are traditionally recorded on bibcards (vertical 4 x 6 inch

notecards used while reading or engaging with a source), whereas the other
three notes (excerpt, reformulation, and reflection notes) are created on
maincards (which are horizontal 4 x 6 inch notecards).
 Creation  459

Let’s go through each of these in detail now.

OBSERVATION NOTES
John Aubrey, a fellow of the Royal Society, once likened the taking of notes to
being a traveller. You don’t want to merely copy down a diagram of the map,
he said. Rather, you want to explore the land or territory and record your
own observations.32 In other words, you want to record your own thoughts.
These types of notes are observation notes. John Locke took these types
of notes, as well. One scholar referred to Locke’s notes as “observations
and thoughts.”33 Another scholar refers to observation notes as “one’s own
comments or annotations on individual textual passages.”34

Where Observation Notes Live

I teach Antinetters to employ the 2-step Luhmannian bibcard method, with
the notes written down on the bibcard being observation notes. While I hold
that bibcards are the best medium for capturing observation notes, they’re
not the only place observation notes can live. As previously mentioned, some
users jot down observation notes in book margins. Some may even extract
observation notes onto individual (non-bibcard) notecards while reading
a text. In fact, I’ve done such on 3 x 5 inch notecards before.

Observation Notes vs. Reflection Notes

The main characteristic that differentiates an observation note from a reflec-
tion note is that observation notes are very short. They’re brief pieces of
text that represent the brief thought you have immediately in the moment
of reading a text.

EXCERPT NOTES
Excerpt notes are notes in that you copy down word-for-word from a text
as a direct quote. Here’s an example:

32  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 138-9.
33  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 149.
34  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 322.
460  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

According to one scholar, excerpts do the following things: (1) they capture
a text’s “train of thought”; (2) they capture the structure of a text’s argument;
and (3) they contain the worthwhile details of a text and its references to
secondary literature.35 These serve as a few reasons why one should opt to
excerpt texts.

However, I think there are other reasons to employ excerpt notes. First, some-
times the prose of a text is so commanding that it’s worthwhile to excerpt the
entire quote. It’s worth excerpting in order to use the quote in your creative
output. It’s also worth excerpting in order to neuroimprint the prose onto
your mind so that you can refine and develop your own writing skills.

“Sometimes a mere recital of facts can itself lead to a greater understanding,”

Mortimer Adler writes.36 In other words, the practice of writing down an
important snippet of text that you don’t quite understand can actually lead
to more understanding. Elsewhere in this book I mentioned that in the late

35  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement

against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 322.
36  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 10.
 Creation  461

seventeenth century at Harvard College, students were taught from textbooks

bought in England. How were they taught specifically? By having students
write down the material contained in the texts by hand.37 Harvard imple-
mented this practice because it worked. It may not be the most engaging
way to teach; however the solitude and time spent rehearsing the words in
one’s mind, by excerpting them down on paper, ends up leading to greater
understanding of the material.

I advise the use of excerpt notes when you’re trying to really stretch your
mind. When you’re tackling a challenging text and you encounter a criti-
cal part, it may be wise to excerpt the section or concepts. When engag-
ing with a challenging text, it’s also recommended to employ the 1-step
book-to-maincard method.

If you’re engaging with a not-so-challenging text, there are still several

instances in which you ought to excerpt material. For instance, if you wish
to use the excerpt to support your argument, it’s often useful to quote the
author directly. It’s also advisable to use a direct quote when your goal is to
refute an argument.

REFORMULATION NOTES
Luhmann was adamant in his views that one should not get bogged down
with excerpt notes. Yet he seemed to follow the do as I say, not as I do
principle in this regard. We know this because he took extensive excerpt
notes. Regardless, Luhmann does instruct us in the taking of a special type
of note called reformulations. “Perhaps the best method is to take notes—
not excerpts, but condensed reformulations of what has been read.”38

Reformulation notes entail summarizing and creating a form of the idea in

your own words so that, as Luhmann put it, you are creating a “re-description
of what has already been described.”39

37  Ann Blair, Early Modern Attitudes toward the Delegation of Copying and Note-Taking (Brill,
2016), 278.
38  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83. Emphasis added.
39  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
462  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Why Reformulations?
According to Luhmann, reformulation notes automatically train one’s mind
in such a way that it creates a lens or “frame of mind” for spotting pat-
terns.40 This process operates in the same way the index does. Reformulation
notes enable you to neuroimprint ideas so that you can observe and read
literature differently.

Reformulation notes force you to question why the author uses certain
words. You’re able to pay attention to vocabulary and usage. How? Because
you’re investing the additional time necessary in understanding a text well
enough to re-describe the concept; you’re forced to spot “conditions that
lead to the text offering certain descriptions and not others,” Luhmann says.41

Reformulating an author’s ideas in your own words forces you to slow down
and chew on the material. This practice forces you to think.

Fiona McPherson, who specializes in the field of notetaking, echoes Luh-

mann’s advice. She asserts, “Note-taking is effective to the extent that
you paraphrase, organize and make sense of information while taking
notes.”42 Essentially, one of the most effective forms of notetaking is that
of reformulation notes.

Like Luhmann, McPherson goes on to warn against excerpt notes. She

refers to excerpt notes as “verbatim notes,” asserting they’re of “minimum
value” unless they are used as a staging post, or as “stepping stones” to later
paraphrase and then turn into reformulation notes. With this, I partly agree,
however I urge one to not overlook the power of excerpt notes in neuroim-
printing valuable ideas onto your mind.

McPherson holds a very strong opinion on the importance of reformulation

notes, stating that reformulations are “the most important” Notetaking

40  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
41  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 83.
42  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 6.
 Creation  463

skill.43 While I think this may be an overstatement (each type of note has its
utility), I won’t disagree with her on the potency of reformulations.

Good reformulations extract the meaning of what the author says. The
goal centers on creating reformulations that are short, relevant, and in your
own words.44

Types of Reformulation Notes

There are several types of reformulation notes. The following collection is by
no means comprehensive, and the lines get fuzzy when you zoom in with a
microscope around their borders; the types of reformulations listed will cer-
tainly give you some idea and a feel for their nature. Let’s go through them now.

TOPICAL REFORMULATIONS
Topical reformulations are text-based summaries of content. The goal here
is quite simple. Instead of excerpting an entire passage, you want to explain
the idea in your own words. Topical reformulations “summarize the main
points without adding any new information or offering a new perspective.”45

Here’s an example of a topical reformulation:

43   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 60.
44  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 67.
45  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 66.
464  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

OUTLINE REFORMULATIONS
Outline reformulations refer to the process of breaking down material into a
series of steps. For instance, if faced with a daunting wall of text, it’s helpful
to break apart the material into steps. Here’s an example of this:

This outline reformulation will look familiar to you. It’s what I used to
assemble the section several pages back on having a note creation repertoire.

There are several scenarios in which outline reformulations prove to be the

best reformulation strategy. Here are such instances:

1. If the text is simple and based primarily on facts, it’s a good idea to use
outline reformulations.

2. If you’re limited on time, then it’s a good idea to use outline reformulations
(instead of diagram reformulations, which will be explained shortly).

3. If the material will not represent a major framework in what you intend
to teach, then it’s a good idea to opt for an outline reformulation (instead
of a diagram reformulation).
 Creation  465

4. If the information is more hierarchical in nature, then it’s a good idea to

employ an outline reformulation. Where outline reformulations really
shine is in conjunction with texts presenting hierarchical material. Indeed,
perhaps “they’re only good for displaying hierarchical information.”46

DIAGRAM REFORMULATIONS
Diagram reformulations are doodles, graphics, illustrations or drawings that
represent an idea. You’ve seen such diagram illustrations throughout this
text. The pretty drawn illustrations in this text were made by my lovely fiancé.
However they initially began as notecards drawn by myself.

For instance here’s one of my diagram reformulations:

After my fiancé drew it up, it turned out like this:

46  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 91.
466  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

These are diagram reformulations, and I believe they contain the most
untapped potential for the Antinet. It’s truly remarkable how much under-
standing and knowledge can be communicated through simple diagrams.
It’s a practice I’ve never seen Luhmann himself do, yet it’s something I highly
recommend integrating into your own repertoire.

The earliest human communication through time, using physical represen-

tation, was expressed not in words, but in pictures—using pictographs and
cave paintings.47

According to some research, diagram reformulations are more effective in

procuring long-term recall of material, and they have been shown to greatly
facilitate many forms of learning.48 The biggest limiting factor of diagram
reformulations is the time they require to make.49

47  “Ancient Cave Art May Be Origin of Modern Language,” Science & Research News | Frontiers
(blog), March 7, 2018, https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/03/07/language-cave-art-mit/.
48  Allan Paivio, Mental Representations: A Dual Coding Approach, Oxford Psychology
Series (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
49  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018),
89-90.
 Creation  467

Not only do Diagram reformulations require more time to create, often,

they also require more time to comprehend. With complex diagrams, it’s
almost easier to comprehend something by simply ingesting a page of text.
This is why it’s helpful to adhere to a few best practices and guidelines when
creating diagrams.

best practices for diagram reformulations

Research holds that the best diagrams “portray a series of steps, in a cause-
and-effect chain, with explanatory text that is integrated with the illustrations.”
Research studies also suggest diagrams are “more effective than a purely
verbal summary.”50 However, again it’s important to note the importance of
creating cause-and-effect chains in your diagrams because cause-and-effect
chains are more effective representations than a mere listing of facts.

The best diagrams have two traits. They are concise and coherent.51 In exhib-
iting concision, they are simple illustrations with labels one to four words
in length. Coherence is manifested when the elements are relevant and
connected and show a simple cause-and-effect chain. The label corresponds
congruently with the illustration or graphic it’s paired with.

REFLECTION NOTES
In teaching about the types of notes used in an Antinet, I’ve tried my best to
simplify things as much as possible. If I wanted to simplify the four types of
notes even further, I’d find myself tempted to figure out a way to combine
observation notes into reflection notes. However, this simply does not reflect
reality. Observation notes and reflection notes are two distinct types of notes.

Antonin Sertillanges points out, “Reading itself should awaken reflection.”52

Yet readers cannot expect to simply stop every time they have a thought and
reflect deeply on it. Reflection requires some time to ruminate and think
about material. Reflection first requires a thought or observation about the

50  Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 95.
51   Fiona McPherson, Effective Note-taking, revised edition (Wellington: Wayz Press, 2018), 96.
52  OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary Ryan,
Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 190.
468  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

material being read, and then it requires some time to ruminate and think
about it. This is why it’s helpful to first extract observations onto bibcards
during reading. This enables you to let the thought ruminate and then to
allocate time later to reflect on it.

Robert Boyle seems to support this notion, as well. Boyle argued that while
reading, our thoughts must be analyzed so “our reflections on what we have
observ’d, improves it into consequences new Axioms and Uses.”53 Boyle
points to the process of turning your observation notes into well-developed
reflection notes later on.

So what are reflections?

Reflections are notes in which you apply your own experiences, meaning,
interpretations, opinions, conclusions, and decisions to material. It’s where
you begin to inject your own theory into units of knowledge. The Antinet
process is founded on taking complex sources of knowledge, and simpli-
fying them into understandable units. From there you begin assembling
more complexity into those units of knowledge again. This is done by way
of creating reflection notes.

One of the areas where Ahrens and I seem to agree is in the area of elaborative
rehearsal. This involves thinking about the meaning of an idea and explaining
the concept in your own words.54 This type of process encapsulates what
takes place within reflection notes. Awareness of the power of elaborative
rehearsal is not new. It’s an ancient notion expressed by classical scholars
in the motto notae propriae, notae optimae, meaning “your own notes are
the best notes.”55

53  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 142. Emphasis added.
54  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford Univer‑
sity Press, 2014), 246-7.
55  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2016), 5.
 Creation  469

So what do reflection notes look like? They are longer in nature than obser-
vation notes, typically filling up an entire 4 x 6 inch notecard. Think of
reflection notes as medium-sized paragraphs.

Here is an example of a reflection note:

In this note I am reflecting on an observation I made while listening to

a podcast on Luhmann’s Antinet.56 At roughly the twenty-four minute
and thirty second mark in the video, Johannes Schmidt shared something
I found irresistible. I decided to select this observation as important and then
extract the observation onto my bibcard. The observation was simply that
three thousand manuscripts were found in Luhmann’s literary estate after
he passed away. I found this to be a shockingly large amount of material.
Imagine what three thousand drafts of papers you’re working on would
look like! I then decided to reflect on this idea, which made me realize
that Luhmann’s thinking did not exclusively take place in his Antinet alone.

56  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU.
470  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It may have originated in the Antinet. However, at least some of his thinking
was extended by writing out his ideas in the manuscripts.

Here’s the important part: this reflection did not happen in my mind before I
wrote the reflection note. Rather it happened as I wrote the reflection note.
This reflection note is my thinking. This reflection note is where the idea
came from. It did not happen as a pre-conceived step that occurred in my
mind before I actually sat down to write it. This, my friend, shows the true
power of the Antinet. It expresses the power of writing by hand. The act of
writing by hand enables you to reflect more effectively than you would by
typing on a keyboard like a hyperactive monkey (one that deludes itself into
thinking it forms thoughts exclusively in the mind). Thinking can certainly
happen by way of keyboard; however, I contend the best ideas emerge by
way of reflection with only pen and paper at hand. After which, keyboards
should serve as the place to revise, edit and clarify your thoughts.

Here is an example of Luhmann’s reflection notes:

photo credit: “ZK I: Zettel 12,16k—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,”

accessed April 21, 2022, https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de
/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_12-16k_V.
 Creation  471

Here’s the English translation of the note:

12.16k In modern thinking, the question of the horizon of

law is posed as a question of justification, as a question of
the justification of law.

This probably has something to do with the possibility of

disposing of the legal system as a whole.

The possibilities of justification are varied; Eg measure-

ment based on the purpose of social performance, i.e. on
the extra-legal. Or justification based on a mentally worked
out idea of justice;
​​ or a basic logical norm (justification as
methodical deduction).

One has to ask oneself whether this way of posing the horizon
question in legal matters has become unavoidable due to the
fact of positivity or sovereignty in law.

Note how Luhmann makes a statement or observation (“In modern think-

ing…”). Yet he then begins reflecting on this observation (“This probably
has something to do with…”).

This gives you a glimpse into the nature of reflection notes. The lines between
different note types get blurry when you zoom in: sometimes your reflection
notes will need to contain an excerpt, or you may use an excerpt before
you begin to reflect on the author’s point. You may also desire to use an
excerpt in your reflection note to prove your point or to first reformulate
material before you reflect on it. Again, every category gets fuzzy when
you zoom in close enough. The main characteristic that differentiates
a reflection note from the others, however, is that you write the note as
if it will be used as a paragraph or section in the project you’re actively
working on.

This brings us back to the whole notion of growth vs. contribution. In brief,
focus on contribution so that you can grow more.
472  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Write Reflection Notes as If You’re Teaching

One individual who has taught me a lot in regards to entrepreneurship and
marketing is Russell Brunson. I don’t relate to Brunson on all levels (as
I’m not a Mormon with five children, nor do I look like a fifteen year-old
boy); still, I greatly admire his enthusiasm and knowledge when it comes
to marketing and entrepreneurship.

Brunson has built a multi-hundred million dollar company with over five
hundred employees. What’s more, he runs it while regularly putting out
great content for entrepreneurs. One of Brunson’s practices centers on the
idea of getting an immediate return on investment (ROI) out of every one
of his activities.

During one period, Brunson got sucked into reading the 1,168 page book,
Atlas Shrugged. He had decided to read it because he had heard it mentioned
over and over throughout his life. Now, this is a very long book that took
him many months to read; it took him away from the time he would have
otherwise allocated to his company and his family. Atlas Shrugged has many
deep philosophical lessons that can serve as important frameworks to holds
in one’s mind for life; yet its ideas are not immediately practical.

Therefore, because the book has a long-term ROI, instead of a short-term,

immediate ROI, what Brunson decided to do was turn the experience
of reading the book into a three-part series on his popular podcast. In
effect he was able to get an immediate ROI out of reading a behemoth-
sized book.

Because he focuses on sharing what he learns while he’s still growing,

he was then able to teach the book Atlas Shrugged to his audience, leading
him to attain a richer understanding by teaching it. “If you really want to
learn something, write a book on it,” Brunson says.57 In turn, he got an
immediate ROI out of the book by providing his audience with valuable
content, keeping his community engaged and growing.

57  Russell Brunson, “Outwitting The Devil with Josh Forti,” Marketing Secrets Podcast.
 Creation  473

The lesson here is that the process is not about constant, never-ending growth;
it’s about constant, never-ending contribution.

Write your reflection notes as if you’re teaching an audience. Through teach-

ing, we gain a deeper understanding of material. Strive to make the material
something you could share with your audience as quickly as is feasible. Even
if you don’t end up sharing the content, when you stumble upon the note
several years later, you’ll find the material easier to understand.

Reformulation vs. Reflection

Sometimes people get confused about the difference between reformulation
notes and reflection notes. One of the best ways to think of this relates to
differences in the nature of comprehension vs. understanding.

Comprehension is the process of grasping the meaning of something. The

particular emphasis of comprehension focuses on the phase transition from
not understanding something at all to having a basic-level understanding
of what something is.

Understanding, on the other hand, is the process of grasping something

fully via both comprehension and also experience. When you under-
stand a concept you possess deeper-level knowledge of the material.
You both comprehend the material theoretically, but you also understand
the deep meaning of the material because you’ve experience it—you’ve
lived it.

When you employ reformulation notes, you’re aiming for comprehension.

You’re aiming to grasp a basic-level comprehension of a concept. Your goal
is to capture the essence of the concept in your own way.

When you employ reflection notes, you’re aiming for understanding. You’re
aiming to add your own experiences to the material. With reflection notes
you add your own perspective, experiments, conclusions, opinions, and
decisions on the material. Your goal with reflection notes is to achieve not
comprehension, but understanding.
474  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

GUIDELINES FOR MAIN NOTES

I lump the notes written on maincards (excerpts, reformulations, and reflec-
tions) under the category of main notes. We’ll now cover some very important
guidelines to follow before creating main notes.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN WRITING A MAIN NOTE

Before you even create a main note, you must complete an important step. You
must first review your Antinet and determine where you want the maincard
(that you’re about to create) to go. This forces you to review previous lines
of thinking and, more importantly, it helps you avoid wasting life energy in
re-writing something you’ve already written.

After reading and creating bibnotes, Luhmann states: “After finishing the
book I go through my notes and think how these notes might be relevant
for already written notes in the [Antinet].”58

What Luhmann highlights is that before actually writing the main note,
he goes through his Antinet and figures out where the note will be placed.
At this point he still has not even turned the observation note into a main note.

DON’T CREATE A MAINCARD FOR EVERY IDEA ON

YOUR BIBCARD
Luhmann didn’t develop every idea into a main note. He would let some
ruminate and prove themselves useful. They would prove themselves use-
ful if he ever decided to work on a book or paper publication relevant to
the material.59

For instance, let’s say Luhmann already had a note that outlined the difference
between knowledge and information. If he came across a discussion of knowl-
edge vs. information and, if he wasn’t sure he would use the card, he would
not create a new dedicated main note for it. He wouldn’t spend the time

58   Niklas Luhmann, Dirk Baecker, and Georg Stanitzek, Archimedes und wir: Interviews
(Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1987), 150.
59  Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 33:05.
 Creation  475

creating an excerpt note, reformulation note, or reflection note. Rather, he

would simply create an external reference (ExRef) for it. For instance, here’s
one of Luhmann’s notes on the concept of function (the idea that each part
of society has a specific role or function).

photo credit: “ZK II: Zettel 21 (1) - Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 22, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_21_1_V.

On this card are a list of ExRefs to pages in books. Luhmann lists the authors’
last name, the year the book was published, and the page numbers.

If the page ends in ff this connotes the Latin term folio which means “and
the following pages”. Therefore, Merton 19ff translates to page 19 and the
following pages in the book by Merton.

In Luhmann’s second Antinet, he had sixty-seven thousand maincards

(mostly of reformulations and reflections of what he had read).60 He had

60  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
476  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

fifteen thousand bibcards which were filled with brief observations he had
made while reading different works (with corresponding page numbers).
These bibcards usually contained ten to thirty observations notes.

So let’s recap: Luhmann’s second Antinet contained sixty-seven thousand

maincards and fifteen thousand bibcards. This means that for every bibcard,
there were four or five maincards. In effect, this means Luhmann did not
turn every observation note on a bibcard into a maincard. Much of the time
he would just create ExRefs for the idea.

OTHER TYPES OF NOTES

What you have just learned about are the four main types of notes in an Antinet.
I wish it was as simple as that—actually, I wish it was even simpler than that!
However, there are a few other types of notes that are useful in the system.

COLLECTIVES
In Johannes Schmidt’s categorization of the types of links in Luhmann’s Anti-
net, there is one type that he calls “collective references.”61 In network-theory
terms, this kind of linked “array” is referred to as a hub. In some Zettelkasten
circles, these are called hub notes.62 Personally, I like referring to these cards
as collectives.

Collectives are types of notes that contain a collection of items.

There are several different types of collectives. Let’s briefly go through each
of them now.

Cardlink Collectives
Cardlink collectives are simply notes that contain a list of links to other cards.
These help group cards together based on a specific idea.

in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292. https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475.

61  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 302. https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2942475.
62  sascha, “The Money Is in the Hubs: Johannes Schmidt on Luhmann’s Zettelkasten,”
Zettelkasten Method, 19:38 100AD, https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-hubs/.
 Creation  477

Here’s an example of a cardlink collective from Luhmann:

You can see a few keyterms on the left-hand side, followed by some cardlinks
(like 3414/11g9).

Here’s an example from my own Antinet:

These cardlinks point to notes that support my assertion that Luhmann

modeled his Antinet after human memory. Over time, the collective
grew as I came upon more examples to support my claim. The green check-
478  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

marks under each cardlink indicate that I’ve integrated the material into
this book.

ExRef Collectives
An ExRef collective is a collection of references to external sources. In other
words, ExRef collectives reference certain books and their specific page
number(s).

photo credit: “ZK I: Zettel 17 (1)—Niklas

Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 22, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/
zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_17_1_V.

In this, titled Ideology Literature (underlined in red), there is a list of books

with the bibliographic information and page numbers. This is a collec-
tive of external references related to ideology. Luhmann typically placed
his ExRef collectives near the beginning of his section for the topic to
which it related. For instance, this is the second card found in the section
on ideology.
 Creation  479

Branch Collectives
In the beginning branch of each of Luhmann’s main section, he included a
collective of cardlinks. These collectives were specifically designed to provide
links to other areas of interest related to the branch. I call these types of
collectives, branch collectives. As an example, upon navigating to Luhmann’s
branch on ideology, one is presented with this branch collective:

photo credit: “ZK I: Note 17 (2)—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed July 13, 2021,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_17_2_V.

Here’s the translation:

17 ideology

Links: 7 , especially 7.9 ; 7.7g7 ; 7.7g6d 13.5o ; 83.2c5f

60.4l18

ideology and legitimacy 54.2

480  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

ideology / division of labor 44.1b ; 44.5(e)

formal / informal ideology 70.6

ideology / responsibility 71.2g

systematic connection 28.10l5a (rationality of the org. )

ideology / hierarchy 49.20

ideology / authority 45.1k2

ideology / honor 45.8c4

Here is a picture of one of my own branch collectives:

This branch collective is for my content related to Zettelkasten. At the time

it was created I was still referring to the system as Zettelkasten because I
hadn’t yet conceived of the term Antinet! This goes to show how knowl-
 Creation  481

edge evolves in the Antinet. My own Antinet developed the term Antinet.
It doesn’t get more meta than that!

Outline Collectives
There’s one more type of collective it’s important to introduce: I like to refer
to these as outline collectives.

The book you’re reading right now was organized using outline collectives.
Think of these as a table of contents for a book or project you’re working on.

Each card is dedicated to a certain topic or idea. Accommodating the idea

is a list of cardlinks where you can find the material pertaining to the idea.

Unlike cardlink collectives or branch collectives, these types of collectives

are more likely to be prearranged and planned. Whereas branch collectives
are typically grown over a longer timeframe, outline collectives are created
in a short time window in order to outline a project.

The best way to explain this is to see pictures of my outline collective for
this book:

This shows an outline of the main sections of this book.

482  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Here’s a closer look at outline collectives:

My outline collectives not only include cardlinks, they contain ExRefs as

well. See the pink card containing ExRefs pointing to sources I needed to
research when writing the section:
 Creation  483

In brief, outline collectives are quite useful when using an Antinet. I recom-
mend using branch collectives to allow your research to build itself from the
bottom-up. When it comes time to working on your project or book, then
it’s time to create outline collectives. At that phase you simply review the
material that has been growing in your branch collectives and then build
out some logical groups for the content.

Building out projects using outline collectives is where the analog nature
of the Antinet truly begins to shine. You lay out each outline collective card
on a table and rearrange them until it forms the perfect outline for your
project or book.

From there, you fire up a word editor and begin typing out each section. Con-
trary to what you might think, it’s not a boring process to type each note out
word-for-word. Rather it’s engaging because it’s collaborative in nature. And
here’s the best part: most of the hard work has already been done for you. This
is precisely what Luhmann meant when he said his books wrote themselves.63

Keyterm Indexcards vs. Collectives

In a way, keyterm indexcards are also a type of collective. For instance, here’s
a picture of a keyterm indexcard:

63  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 17.
484  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

However, there are some distinctions between collectives and keyterm

indexcards. The more obvious difference is that collective cards are contained
in the main box (and keyterm indexcards are contained in the index box).
Keyterm indexcards are organized by keyterm, whereas collectives have a
numeric-alpha address.

Both types of cards have their own distinct uses. Keyterm indexcards are
often quicker to look up (as you only have to think of the keyterm). However,
cardlink collectives inside the main box of your Antinet are useful as well.
While surfing through a stem of thought, cardlink collectives connect you to
a bunch of other vines and areas in your tree of knowledge. This oftentimes
proves useful when you’re in a more exploratory mode (sifting through cards).

HOPLINK CARDS
The last type of note is what I call a hoplink card. These are very straightfor-
ward, essentially containing a brief snippet of text that says For more on x
concept, see cardlink ‘xxxx/xx/x’.

Here’s an example hoplink card:

 Creation  485

Here’s one from Luhmann’s Antinet:

photo credit: “ZK II: Zettel 21/8o3b - Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 22, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_21-8o3b_V.

Hoplinks are useful for breaking up certain stems of thought by linking to

another relevant area in the Antinet.

CONCLUSION
The creation phase is perhaps the most enjoyable, yet one of the hardest
phases of knowledge development. In this phase you’re actually forced to
think deeply. This isn’t easy work, though for some reason the nature of
writing by hand makes this difficult process more enjoyable.

We’ve covered a lot in this chapter. My advice is to not get overwhelmed.

Don’t worry about the other notes for the time being. Just focus on the four
big boys: observations, excerpts, reformulations, and reflections.

The best style is no style, as Bruce Lee would say. What you’ve been intro-
duced to in this chapter serves as a framework to get you started. Do not
486  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

be afraid to add your own creativity and tweaks to the system. The most
important thing is that you start. Start creating and building. How do you
eat an elephant? One bite at a time. How do you create something great?
One note at a time.
 C H A PT E R S I X T E E N
�

INSTALLATION

C ompared to the other chapters in this section on knowledge

development, this chapter will be brief.

As you may recall from the previous chapter, I advise you to first review
your Antinet to determine where to install a card before you begin writing a
main note. This is an important step. This step prevents you from rewriting
knowledge you’ve already written. It also enables you to evolve your thinking
from where you last left off. In essence, you’re evolving the branch or stems
of thought in your tree of knowledge.

Due to this prerequisite, figuring out where to install your cards becomes a
more manageable endeavor.

In the beginning stages of working with my Antinet, I found myself creating

fifteen or so maincards without first figuring out where they should go. This
left me with a pile of maincards which made things challenging. It became
difficult to go back through my Antinet and figure out where they should go.
Moreover, this ended up feeling like tedious homework. It left me wanting
to get through the pile as quickly as possible. As a result, I was left with less
time and energy to make sure I installed the cards in the best place possible.

Reviewing your Antinet and determining where you’ll install the card before
you write your main notes results in two things: First, the process of creating

487
488  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

and installing notes becomes a lot more fun. And second, the cards end up
being installed in more fitting places.

One more important reminder: the name of the game is similarity. Your
goal is to install the card (or sequence of cards) under or behind its most
similar neighbor.

When you’re reviewing your Antinet before writing the main note, think of
the most similar idea already in the Antinet that it relates to.

Finding the most similar idea, of course, is dependent on one more critical
factor: the index. Let’s talk a bit about that now.

DETERMINING HOW AND WHEN TO INDEX

When you’re installing a note into a sequence of cards within the Antinet,
the best case scenario is that you already have the stem of thought indexed.

For instance, say in my research I happen upon an idea relating to random-

ness. The idea discusses how randomness serves as an important function
within evolution. Let’s also say I already have a keyterm created in my index
for randomness. This makes installing this new idea easy. All I have to do is
look up “randomness” in my index. I then navigate to the cardlink it points
me to and begin exploring the cards. I then spot the one that’s closest to my
new idea and add it under or behind the most similar card.

However what if randomness was not already a keyterm in my index? What

would I do then? The first thing I would do is start thinking of what ran-
domness is most similar to. I would think of other concepts such as accidents,
change, chaos, entropy, impermanence. Chances are I’d have a keyterm already
created for such concepts.

In the case I didn’t have keyterms created for closely related concepts,
I would create a new stem or a new branch.

Now, here’s where we have a decision to make. Here’s where things get
interesting.
 Installation  489

There are two scenarios:

The first scenario is that I’m creating a new maincard on randomness within
the context of relating it to how Luhmann’s Zettelkasten works. My branch on
the Zettelkasten and Antinet material is 4214. In this scenario, I would either
find the most similar stem of cards within 4214, or just create a new stem for
it. For instance, I would create the stem 4214/15 and in my index, I would
create the entry: Randomness (Zettelkasten): 4214/15.

The second scenario is that I’m creating a new maincard for randomness
within the context of evolution. In this case, I would consult Wikipedia’s Outline
of Academic Disciplines. I would then search the keyterm evolution and place
it under the branch of evolution. For instance, I would create a branch for
Evolutionary Biology and assign it to the branch 3511. I would then create an
entry in the index: Randomness (Evolutionary Bio): 3511/1.

Chances are, I would choose the first scenario because I find the Antinet
works best if I’m actively using it for a project. That is I find it best if I adopt
a contribution approach to using it (instead of a personal growth approach
to using it).

In the beginning, you will find yourself needing to create a lot of index
keyterm entries. I must caution you not to burn yourself out! In the very
beginning, you risk index fatigue. Do not create too many index entries.
If you ever have issues finding a maincard, then you know to create an index
entry for it (whenever you find it). That way, you won’t waste time having
to explore the entirety of your Antinet next time.

That’s really all there is to discuss on the installation phase of knowledge

development. If you follow my advice laid out in the creation phase, the
installation phase will be a breeze (or at least easier than it otherwise would)!
 C H A PT E R S E V E N T E E N
�

MINDSET

I ‌ this section we’re going to be covering some of the “softer skills” in

n
regard to working with an Antinet. We’ll be covering different work rou-
tines, and we’ll cover the mindset one ought to adopt when working with
an Antinet. A variety of such lessons are already dispersed throughout this
book in relevant sections; yet I think it’s helpful to discuss these lessons in
a dedicated place. That’s what this chapter is for.

ANTINET WORK ROUTINE

THE THREE STATES OF ANTINET WORK

Deep work sessions are a prerequisite for creating knowledge using an Antinet.
Using an Antinet requires a focused environment. However there are three
distinct working states involved in this work: (1) an emergence state, and (2)
an evolutionary state, and (3) a producing state.

I call these states (instead of phases or stages) for a reason. A state is something
you switch back and forth between. One hour you may be in an emergence
state of mind. The next hour you may be in a producing state of mind. The
next, you may be in an evolutionary state. This is fine. It’s a natural part of
how knowledge development works. It’s not so much a process of sequential
phases as it is a dance. Creating knowledge is an asynchronous process where
different thoughts are developed concurrently. If you get stuck in one spot,
you can easily switch to a different project (or branch of knowledge) and
begin developing other thoughts from there. Remember what Luhmann

490
 Mindset  491

said, “I only write when I know immediately how to do it. If it stops for a
moment, I put the thing aside and do something else.”1

Emergence State

“Traveler, there is no path, the path must be forged as you walk.”

–Antonio Machado2

When in an emergence state, your work is more exploratory. You’re looking

for your theories to emerge from the sources you engage with. You’re in
research mode. Reading is your primary intellectual activity. In this state,
you’re taking many reformulation and excerpt notes. You’re employing the
book-to-maincard extraction method. That is, you’re stopping at challenging
sections in books and creating a maincard immediately for it. You do this
in order to comprehend the material so that you can continue reading the
text and understand the rest of the book.

From this state, theories start to emerge. This is what Brené Brown refers
to as emergence and grounded theory research. Brown explains, “Initially I set
out, on what I thought was a well-traveled path, to find empirical evidence
of what I knew to be true.” Brown then shifted to employing the grounded
theory methodology. She shifted to an exploratory way of researching—
an emergent way of researching. In this state, she writes, “there is no path and,
certainly, there is no way of knowing what you will find.”3

Taking a bottom-up approach to research takes courage. It takes courage to

trust that the Antinet will somehow bring theories to the surface. It requires
courage to let go and let the readings spark ideas you never predicted.
It takes courage to let go of your preconceived notions.

1   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 19.
2   Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We
Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Reprint edition (New York, New York: Avery, 2015), 251.
3   Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We
Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Reprint edition (New York, New York: Avery, 2015), 251.
492  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When you use an Antinet, you let your readings create your theories from the
bottom-up rather than predetermining them in a top-down approach. You
don’t go into your research with an already finished theory. You go in with a
general intuition and sense, and then let your research make the discoveries
for you. This type of research is what the Antinet is built for.

To cultivate the emergence state, I like to allocate two hours in the mornings
to reading. I do this as the very first thing I do when I get to the office. I use
a block timer that has a one-hour countdown. After the one-hour timer
runs out, I reset the timer for another hour. Sometimes, of course, I’ll take
a fifteen or so minute break in between the hours.

After these two hours of reading, I’ll typically allocate the rest of the day to
further development and installing the material from these readings.

I like to install the material from the readings into my Antinet that same
day. Otherwise I find that notes pile up and installing becomes almost like
homework (or something I dread doing).

Evolutionary State
In the evolutionary state, you’re looking to evolve the ideas that have emerged
during your research. You’ll be evolving the ideas by finding material that
supports or challenges your emerging theories.

For instance, in my experience researching Luhmann’s Antinet, one theme

that I noticed was the importance of the function of surprises and accidents.
In creating any piece of work, surprises and accidents are actually hugely ben-
eficial. Luhmann spoke of this, and it was emphasized in Johannes Schmidt’s
writings.4 I was not anticipating this concept when I began researching Luh-
mann’s Antinet. After I extracted this theory onto maincards, I then created

4   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. “One of the most basic presupposi-
tions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.”; Johannes
Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Pub‑
lication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe 53 (2016).
 Mindset  493

a keyterm entry for the concepts (surprises and accidents). I then continued
reading more books on knowledge science and human memory. Frequently
I would come upon additional material on surprises and accidents. I would
then evolve the concepts by adding my reformulations and reflections of the
new material. In essence, the ideas that emerged through research continued
to then evolve by additional research of other literature.

Let’s once again talk about Brené Brown and grounded theory. At the end of
her book Daring Greatly, Brown dedicates an entire section to discussing
her research method. She highlights the idea of two different states involved
in research. The first state “allows the research problem to emerge from the
data.” The second state conducts “a full review of the significant literature.”
The literature review served to support the theories she discovered during
the emergence phase.5

I like to think of the second stage as the evolutionary stage. It seems better
than the literature review stage. One reason being that sometimes research
isn’t actually literature.

Anyway, after you’ve extracted a working set of theories and concepts during
the emergent phase of your research, your reading style changes (as Luhmann
himself pointed out).6 In the evolutionary phase you’re capable of quickly
spotting, selecting and extracting ideas that are related to the theories you’ve
already unearthed. At this point, you’ve already neuroimprinted keyterms
on your mind. You are capable of reading differently because any time you
spot a related idea, all you need to do is write down the page number and
keyterm of the idea on your bibcard.

As a result of doing this, you begin accumulating material that supports

the theories and concepts that were unearthed during the emergent state.
In brief, you begin evolving your ideas.

5   Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We
Live, Love, Parent, and Lead, Reprint edition (New York, New York: Avery, 2015), 258-9.
6   “ZK II: Sheet 9/8d—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 4, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK2NB9-8dV.
494  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Producing State
Once I’ve done a sufficient amount of research and the material has evolved,
I’ll enter the producing state of work. Producing can be creating a podcast
episode, a YouTube video, an online course, a song, software, a book, or
whatever your craft is. For myself, it’s writing. And the most applicable
output for most, is writing. So I’ll talk primarily about that. If I’m writing
a book, I’ll aim for an entire drawer full of notecards. If I’m writing a paper,
I’d want at least a one-inch pinch of notecards. The material may come from
a variety of branches in the Antinet.

When I’m in producing state, I get to the office in the morning and I write
until three or four in the afternoon. Basically, I write all day. I use my
notecards to write, and I type in what’s on the notecards. Again, I don’t
type the material on the notecards word-for-word. I start typing word-for-
word (which kills writer’s block), yet I then expand and clarify the idea
I’m trying to convey. I elaborate on the notecard and also add new ideas
I’ve since realized.

This process is of course broken up by several trips to Starbucks located in

the lobby of my building.

MY WORK ENVIRONMENT
My work environment is primarily analog. I have a private office where I
cannot be disturbed. I put my phone on Do Not Disturb Mode and leave it
across the room on the floor where it charges. In addition to this, I place
lime green earplugs in my ears to block out external noise (lime green is
my favorite color).

I have an analog dictionary and analog thesauri. There’s no excuse for me

to use a computer unless I’m writing. When in this state, I use the Ulysses
app for writing (Mac only).

NIKLAS LUHMANN’S ANTINET ROUTINE

Luhmann’s Antinet was actually located at his home. Luhmann lived in
Oerlinghausen, which is about a half-hour drive from Bielefeld University
where he worked.
 Mindset  495

Luhmann loved to read outdoors in the sun. He also loved to read at libraries.
He would give conferences at various universities on the basis of there being
a good library on campus.7 Perhaps Luhmann would read at Bielefeld’s library
during the day. In the evenings he would bring home the bibcards from his
readings and transform them into main notes. After this he would file the
main notes and bibcard in his Antinet in his home office.

Here’s a photo of Luhmann reading in the sun (with a bibcard hanging out
of the book):

photo credit: Niklas Luhmann—Theory of Society 4\_13 by

Schwumbel; philomag, “Niklas Luhmann Und Die Aufrichtigkeit,”
Philosophie Magazin, accessed April 26, 2022, https://www.
philomag.de/artikel/niklas-luhmann-und-die-aufrichtigkeit.

7   Undisciplined, Archiving Luhmann w/ Johannes Schmidt, 2021, https://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=kz2K3auPLWU, 25:40.
496  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

In a biographical interview, Luhmann detailed his routine. We can presume

this took place on days where he works from home (which were most days,
according to Luhmann’s son, Clemens):8

If I have nothing else to do, then I write all day: in the morning
from 8:30 a.m. to lunchtime, then I go for a short walk with
my dog, then I have time again in the afternoon from 2:00 p.m.
to 4:00 p.m., then it’s the dog’s turn again. Sometimes I also
lie down for a quarter of an hour, I have gotten into the habit
of resting in a very concentrated way, so that I can get back
to work after a short time. Yes, and then I usually write in the
evening until around 11:00 p.m. At 11:00 p.m. I usually lie in bed
and read a few more things that I can still digest at that time.9

Here are some photos of Luhmann’s office. These photos are taken from a
video tour of Luhmann’s office in 1989.10

Luhmann’s literary
collection, comprising
approximately eleven
thousand titles. There
were rarely any marks or
marginalia notes in the
books. He took his notes
on bibcards. Note the
chaise lounge chair. This
was Luhmann’s favorite
spot, where he both read
and took fifteen minute
power naps!

8   Clemens Luhmann, Interview by Scott P. Scheper, April 27, 2022.

9   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 19.
10  holgersen911, Niklas Luhmann—Beobachter Im Krähennest (Eng Sub), 2012, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRSCKSPMuDc.
 Mindset  497

The floor in front of one of Luhmann works at his desk. Note the
Luhmann’s bookshelves. Knowledge massive red typewriter, and the tea
work isn’t the most orderly process— kettle. On the right-hand side of the
even for organized Germans. photo, resting on the floor, is Luhmann’s
Zettelkasten (not pictured).

Luhmann reviews some of

his main notes. At the top
of the photo is Luhmann’s
Antinet Zettelkasten with
a pile of papers resting
on top.

Luhmann reviews his

maincards. Resting on the
desk is a bibcard from his
most recent reading.
498  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann navigates his Antinet. He's exploring the contents and refreshing
his memory of the material (creating reverberation in his mind).

One other thing of note: Luhmann did not have labels on the outside of his
Antinet. He knew his way around the Antinet so well, that he had various
branches memorized. The following photo shows Luhmann’s Antinet, which
resided on the floor to the left of his desk. Note how there are no labels on
the outsides explaining the contents of the drawers:

photo credit: “Niklas Luhmann—Archiv,” accessed April 26, 2022,

https://niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/nachlass/zettelkasten.
 Mindset  499

THE ANTINET MINDSET

“That is the only way. Without external help of any sort, you go to work
on the book. With nothing but the power of your own mind…”

–Mortimer Adler11

I’ve said it elsewhere, and I’ll say it here again: getting started with an Antinet
isn’t the easiest process. You’ll have to create a lot of keyterms in the index
and you have to write a lot of cards. Later on, you won’t have to create as
many keyterms, though you’ll still be adding cards to your Antinet. At the
beginning, you’re like an airplane taking off. At some point you’ll hit cruise
control mode, but it’ll take some effort to get to that point.

Luhmann held that it will take a number of years before the payoffs become
clear. Until then the Antinet will function merely as a container you put
cards into.12 I don’t think it will take a number of years. It could be only a
few months before you begin to see the value. However you should go into
this with a long-term mindset.

CONSISTENCY OVER THE LONG TERM

Focus on consistency instead of working away all day like a maniac. Even
though I advise this, I’ll admit that when I got my Antinet up and running,
I spent a lot of time working away like a maniac. In the beginning, I spent
months integrating my previous notes and journals into the Antinet. I even
spent many nights printing out my notes from the digital notetaking app I
was using for a time. I would print out, and the cut out those digital notes
into 4 x 6 inch size cards. As of now, I have maybe a third of my legacy notes
installed in the Antinet. However, I stopped after a while because it was
taking too much time and the value wasn’t clear. I instead shifted my focus
to developing knowledge for my current undertaking and haven’t looked

11   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 7.
12  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
500  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

back since. That said, I’ve seen the value of the notes I installed—in fact,
I’ve used a bit of the legacy material for this book!

The bottom line: focus mainly on the future. Don’t get too hung up on try-
ing to integrate your old (digital) notes into the Antinet. I have thousands
of digital notes. It doesn’t matter that they’re not in my Antinet. They’re
underdeveloped compared to notes you write by hand. You shouldn’t lose
sleep over your digital notes being ported to your Antinet. However, if you
do really want to retain your old notes, you can always set aside an hour a
day for printing out notes and filing them. Be sure to try and make your life
suck less while you’re doing it. When I was doing this, I would blast Pink
Floyd and sip a nice glass of wine.

Again, consistency over the long term is the goal. As I’ve mentioned before,
two hours per day is enough to produce great intellectual work. Don’t take
my word for it, take the word of the revered intellectual, Antonin Sertil-
langes.13 If you work full-time, aim to carve out two hours every day before
work. When I worked full-time I would sit down with a cup of coffee every
day and go through challenging texts. I read while sitting on a cushion on
the floor (as it helps me focus better).

IF IT AIN’T EASY, IT AIN’T FUN

Luhmann worked roughly twelve hours a day. To him, his vocation was his
vacation. He didn’t really perceive his work as work.

In an interview discussing the beginning of his career, an interviewer asked

about Luhmann’s early life. This was during the period where he worked as
a legal clerk for the German Ministry of Culture. It was absolutely boring
and Luhmann hated his job. When asked what he did after work, he did not
respond with something like I blow off steam at the local Biergarten. Instead,
he told the interviewer that as soon as the clock struck five, he would race

13   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1992), 11.
 Mindset  501

home and “read a lot.” He wasn’t a drinker, anyway. As he points out, he had
just recently started his Zettelkasten at that point in his life.14

The same interviewer seemed puzzled when talking to Luhmann. He was

trying to figure out what motivated this great intellectual mind; yet he wasn’t
getting a clear answer. Luhmann asserted that he found it difficult to have
wishes or “desires.” The only thing, Luhmann said, that he daydreamed about
was having more time—like thirty hours in a day, instead of twenty-four.
With thirty hours a day, how would he spend it? It’s simple, Luhmann said,
he would spend it working with his Antinet more, and “study other things,
for example mathematics and economics.”15

In brief, it’s helpful to view the Antinet as a vacation, not as a vocation. Using
the Antinet won’t always be easy, but it will be worth it. The number one
thing that will help your chances in making the Antinet a part of your life
(long term) is this: make sure it’s fun.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter we covered a nice amount of material with regards to work-
ing with an Antinet. We discussed the three states one operates in during
knowledge development. We also got a glimpse into Luhmann’s work routine
with his Antinet. Last, we capped off this chapter with some philosophical
advice centering around making the Antinet fun. Consistency over the long
term is key. In the next chapter, we’ll dive into one of the most important
metaphysical aspects of the Antinet: the Antinet as a second mind. Get ready.

14  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 11.
15   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 16.
 C H A PT E R E I G H T E E N
�

COMMUNICATION WITH
YOUR SECOND MIND

“Ghost in the box?

Spectators come. You get to see everything and nothing but that
—like porn movies. And so is the disappointment.”

–Niklas Luhmann, on communicating with his Zettelkasten16

C ommunication with the Antinet is the most important aspect of

the system. There’s a reason Luhmann titled his paper Communica-
tion with Noteboxes. It stands as the key descriptor of what it’s like to write
and collaborate with an Antinet. Yet, for some reason, this phenomenon
is completely omitted when reading about Zettelkasten today. When you
research what a Zettelkasten is online, you’ll find every descriptor besides
communication partner. Zettelkasten is described as a system of linking
notes, and there are the Ahrensian terms like fleeting notes, literature notes,
and permanent notes.17 Yet we find no mention of the Zettelkasten as a com-

16  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
17  “A Beginner’s Guide to the Zettelkasten Method,” Zenkit (blog), April 29, 2021, https://
zenkit.com/en/blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-zettelkasten-method/. “In short, a Zettel‑
kasten is simply a framework to help organize your ideas, thoughts, and information.
By relating pieces of knowledge and connecting information to each other (by way of
hyperlinking), you are replicating a train of thought.”; “A Beginner’s Guide to the
Zettelkasten Method,” Zenkit (blog), April 29, 2021, https://zenkit.com/en/

502
 Communication with Your Second Mind  503

munication partner. You would have to do a lot of digging to discover how

Luhmann actually viewed his Zettelkasten: as a second mind, a ghost in the
box, or an alter ego with whom he communicated.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss this most powerful part of the Antinet, and
explore the concept of communication with one’s past self—that is, com-
munication with one’s second mind.

THE ORIGINS OF COMMUNICATION WITH

A SECOND MIND
One interesting parallel with the origins of this idea involves the origins of
the Zettelkasten itself.

According to Clemens Luhmann (the youngest child of Niklas Luhmann),

the Zettelkasten originated through a communication experience with
Luhmann’s best friend, Friedrich Rudolf Hohl (1916–1979), whom Luhmann
and the rest of the family called Bruder (meaning brother). Bruder was
Luhmann’s closest friend. They shared a love of art, philosophy and other
intellectual matters. They were seen almost as if they were the same person.
Clemens referred to Hohl as his father’s “alter ego.”18

The origins of the Zettelkasten came by way of letters and notecards exchanged
between Hohl and Luhmann. Luhmann would write letters to Hohl about his
readings and include his own notecards in the envelope. The letters would
elaborate on the ideas contained in the notes. They would discuss various
interpretations. Hohl would do the very same thing in his replies.

This was a communication experience between two close friends. It was a

communication experience with Luhmann’s real-life alter ego.

blog/a-beginners-guide-to-the-zettelkasten-method/. “Zettelkasten method comprises

of three main types of notes: (1) Literature Notes, (2) Reference Notes, (3) Permanent
Notes. Each note has a distinct objective and serves a specific function. Other types of
notes include fleeting notes and hub notes.”
18  Clemens Luhmann, Interview by Scott P. Scheper, April 27, 2022.
504  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Unfortunately, Luhmann’s best friend and “alter ego” Friedrich Rudolf

Hohl passed away only two years after Luhmann’s wife Ursula. They were
the only two people who ever got dedications in Luhmann’s books: Ursula
and Friedrich Rudolf Hohl (in Love as Passion).

A few years later, in 1981, Luhmann published his paper Kommunikation mit
Zettelkästen (“Communication with Noteboxes”), in which he talked about
a second mind arising from his Zettelkasten; he described it as “an alter ego
with whom we can constantly communicate.”19

There exists a parallel between the communication experience of Luhmann

and his real-life alter ego, Friedrich Rudolf Hohl, and Luhmann and his
metaphysical alter ego: his Antinet Zettelkasten.

LUHMANN’S THEORETICAL VIEW OF

COMMUNICATION

“Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can commu-

nicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only
communication can communicate.”

–Niklas Luhmann20

There are a few major concepts that at the cornerstone of Luhmann’s theo-
retical work. The first is general systems theory, which involves the concepts
of cybernetics and self-referential systems, and autopoiesis (wherein a system
recreates itself).21 The other concept that is critical to Luhmann’s theoretical
work is communication. In fact, Luhmann uses a communication theory as
the starting point for describing his Antinet.22

19  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
20  Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Karl Ludwig Pfeiffer, Materialities of Communication
(Stanford University Press, 1994), 371.
21  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 26.
22  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  505

According to Luhmann, communication is an emergent reality that emanates

from three different selections.23

1. The “selection of information”

2. The “selection of the message of this function”24

3. The “selective understanding or misunderstanding of the message and

its interpretation”

Luhmann holds that none of these components can occur on their own.
Only when they are combined together can communication occur.

Let’s break down what Luhmann means by these three concepts in relation
to working with an Antinet.

First, Luhmann is referring to the process of how we select information,

including choosing the sources we wish to engage with in order to ingest
information. In other words: what books, articles, podcasts, YouTube videos,
or other media we select information from.

The second component Luhmann is referring to is the message. This is the

material within a source (such as a book) that we select and decide to interpret.

The third component is the understanding or misunderstanding of the mes-

sage. Luhmann makes a good point in that we have a choice of whether
to understand (or misunderstand) the message we receive. For example,
we humans have a phenomenal ability to delude ourselves by way of confir-

23  Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 28. “Similar to
life and consciousness, communication is an emergent reality, an issue sui generis. She is
concluded by a synthesis of three different selections—that is, selection of an information,
selection of the message of this function, and selective understanding or misunderstand-
ing of the message and its interpretation. None of these components can occur on their
own. Only together do they generate communication.”
24  This is also termed as “announcement.” See: Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 133.
506  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

mation bias. That is, we may choose to interpret information in such a way to
confirm our already-held preexisting beliefs (and filter our messages which
conflict with these beliefs).

All three components are required for communication.

Interestingly enough, all three components serve as critical aspects of the

knowledge development process of the Antinet.

Again, communication was a core tenet of Luhmann’s theoretical work.

In fact, he proposed a solution to the classic philosophical mind-body prob-
lem by converting it to a triad: mind-body-communication.25 In Luhmann’s
view, communication serves as the missing link for solving this most ancient
philosophical puzzle. If you want to understand what it’s like working with
an Antinet, you must remind yourself that it’s a communication experience.

COMMUNICATION IS THE SECRET

INGREDIENT FOR GENERATING
SURPRISES
One of the key functions of the Antinet is its ability to surprise. Johannes
Schmidt describes the Zettelkasten as a “surprise generator.”26 The precursor
for generating surprises is communication.

As Luhmann writes, “One of the most basic presuppositions of communi-

cation is that the partners can mutually surprise each other.”27

On a more general level, communication surprises. For instance, for the

past several years I’ve been working primarily by myself. However, in the
process of writing this book, I’ve published and shared a lot of material on

25  Hans-Georg Moeller, The Radical Luhmann (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 56.
26  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 295.
27  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  507

my social media channels.28 In doing so I’ve opened up many more channels

of communication with people so that it’s no longer just me communicating
with my Antinet. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge by communicating with
others, but on top of that, I constantly receive links and ideas that surprise
me and generate breakthrough ideas for my research.

Likewise, when you work with an Antinet as a communication partner, you’re

having a conversation. A conversation emerges in your own mind wherein
you’re trying to re-understand your own thoughts. You’re essentially having
a conversation with your old self (that is, your past self).

This communication experience relates to that described in Mortimer Adler’s

How to Read a Book, in which Adler describes the experience of reading a
book as an active process that he compares to the game of baseball.29 There’s
the pitcher (the author of a book), who throws a baseball (the message,
material, or an idea contained within the book), and the catcher (you, the
reader). The position of catcher is not passive. A catcher is not a lazy inanimate
object who does nothing. The catcher is moving, shifting, and anticipating
both the pitcher (author) and the pitch (message). It’s a communication
experience—a very active communication experience.

This type of communication experience mirrors what it’s like working with
your Antinet. It’s an active, creative, collaborative communication experience.
One that generates many surprises.

This communication experience is also significantly deeper than you might

realize. When you are communicating with an author through reading
their book, you’re not just reading the words written by that one author. As
Kate Turabian puts it, when you read a book, “you silently converse with
its authors—and through them with everyone else they have read.”30 With

28  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnvMBVMXMPKA4Lmy5Ihd-FQ; https://twitter.
com/ScottScheper; https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/.
29  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated ed
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 5.
30  Kate L. Turabian, Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations,:
Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 9th edition (Chicago ; London: University of
508  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

your Antinet, you’re creating a deeply evolved and deeply linked commu-
nication partner with whom you communicate.

AN EXAMPLE OF THE ANTINET COMMUNICATION

EXPERIENCE
As previously discussed, with the Antinet, there is no full-text search. There
is no safety net, and this fact underlies the entire experience of using an
Antinet. When you begin searching for something, you begin a journey.
You undertake an exploration of your mind. During this exploration you’re
undertaking a communication process with your past self.

During the journey of finding thoughts in your Antinet, all you have is
your index and cardlinks. The index sets you out on the journey, and the
cardlinks swing you along across different branches and stems of thought
in your tree of knowledge.

Creating cardlinks is not easy. They are created at the time you create the
notecard, or shortly thereafter when you stumble upon the notecard (and
have a related idea reverberating in your mind). Cardlinks are hard to create
(unlike digital wikilinks). They cannot be mass-created on a whim and they
require life energy to create. It’s a deliberate act that requires you to think
of truly related ideas.

As a result of cardlinks being harder to create, they also require you to be

more selective. Since there are fewer cardlinks in analog systems, you have
more energy to follow them and you end up taking them more seriously.
In contrast, when you encounter links and tags in a digital system, there may
be five, ten, or fifteen links associated with a single note. Not to mention
that there are backlinks that you can feasibly follow. In effect this dilutes the
power of the relations because there are so many of them.

Within an analog system you’re dealing with selective relations. The entire
system is relations of relations of selective relations. Whenever you come across
a selective relation, you’re more motivated to take it seriously and actually

Chicago Press, 2018), 8.

 Communication with Your Second Mind  509

follow the cardlink. If you’re on a tree with fifteen vines, it’s less likely you’ll
explore all fifteen. If you’re on a tree with one vine, you’ll hop on and con-
tinue your exploration with vigor.

Let’s walk through a more practical example, an example from Luhmann’s

Antinet.

Let’s say in your index, you look up the keyterm risk. When you look up risk,
it links you to transformation of risk (which is at card address 21/3d18c60o9).31
You think to yourself, Hmm, this is interesting… Risk is within the branch of
Systems Theory (21/3d18) and within that, the branch of Complexity (21/3d18c).
Suddenly a secondary conversation takes place in your mind. A dreamlike
memory emerges that takes you back to the period in your life when you
wrote about complexity within systems theory. Perhaps you wrote about it
that time you travelled to Paris and spent the time in a great Parisian library
reading (which is what Luhmann did once, according to Clemens Luhmann).32
You are suddenly transported back to the setting of that time in the library
in Paris. You remember how it was a gray November day in that Paris library.
You recall reading about complexity, which led you to write about risk.

When you begin moving down the stem of risk you’re soon met with a
cardlink collective (21/3d18c60o9,1):
photo credit: “ZK II:
Zettel 21/3d18c60o9,1—
Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,”
accessed April 28, 2022,
https://niklas-luhmann-
archiv.de/bestand/
zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_
NB_21-3d18c60o9-1_V.

31   “ZK II: Zettel 21/3d18c60o9—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 28, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_21-3d18c60o9_V.
32   Clemens Luhmann, Interview by Scott P. Scheper, April 27, 2022.
510  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

It lists out several concepts related to risk. The concepts are as follows:33

– Safety/security: 7/28
* Absorption of uncertainty: 34/4
* Responsibility: 333/10e
- Uncertainty as an information variable: 44/2d5
* Money/power as absorption of uncertainty: 352/16a6
- Liquidity: 532/4a5fa13a
* Process of education: 7/25g58
- Safety/work atmosphere: 532/5d3j2b
* Legal certainty: 3414/27
- Certainty/truth/science: 7/25b30k
* Uncertainty: 21/3d25
* Legislation/science: 3414/14p
* Economy: 8/40
* Death as a risk: 7/8l

You think to yourself ‘Death as a risk’ what on earth does that have to do
with risk? You then realize, death has everything to do with risk. It relates to
Certainty/truth/science in that death is the ultimate form of uncertainty that
underlies society and drives human behavior. At the core foundation of risk
resides the ultimate fear: risk of death.

This illustrates the communication experience in working with the Antinet.

There are several dialogues taking place concurrently. First, we have the
dialogue of recalling the memory of writing and researching risk (in the
Parisian library). Then, we have the dialogue of actually conversing with
the Antinet: What does the concept of death have to do with risk?

This example shows how the dots begin to connect over time. When you
first wrote about risk, you did not write about death. Over time, the con-
cept of death emerged and was added to the branch collective for risk

33  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 308.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  511

(21/3d18c60o9,1). These concepts and links needed time to synthesize and

grow. Continuing the metaphor of the Antinet as a tree, photosynthesis
needed to take place. This area of your tree needed sunlight to synthesize.
The structure grew organically over time in a natural way. It creates an anti-
fragile structure (compared to a dynamic digital structure with hyperactive
edits and bulk edits).

This example gives you a glimpse into the communication experience that is
an outcome of working with the Antinet. It shows you the internal dialogue
that takes place. It also shows you how a system of both order and chaos works.

You started by looking up risk, and then are taken on a journey that brings
forth concepts related to Certainty/truth/science, Uncertainty, and more.
This communication experience takes you on a journey that generates
breakthrough surprises, leading “to a variety of other subjects that the user
initially would not have associated with the first one,” as Johannes Schmidt
observes. “It also shows how potential relationships between these topics
may not have come to mind in the absence of such a chain of references.”34

When you use an Antinet, you’re forced to create abstractions of ideas. You’re
forced to generalize ideas and relate them to one another. “Communication,”
Luhmann says, “becomes fruitful only at a high level of generalization, namely
that of establishing communicative relations of relations.”35

Luhmann gives an example wherein he observes, “Why on the one hand

museums are [generally] empty, while on the other hand exhibitions of
paintings by Monet, Picasso, or Medici are too crowded.”36 Instead of creat-
ing the keyterms Monet, Picasso, or Medici, he instead does something else.
He generalizes and abstracts the idea to get at the core essence. The reason

34 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 309.
35  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
36  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
512  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

why Monet, Picasso, and Medici exhibits are so crowded is because they’re
temporally limited. That is, they are only available to be viewed at a certain
place and for only a short period of time. In this instance, Luhmann created
the index keyterm or branch collective card with the following concept:
“preference for what is temporally limited.”37 From there he linked to the
card that talks about Monet, Picasso, or Medici exhibits being overcrowded.
Over time, more and more examples of preferences for temporally limited items
were added to the collective.

In effect, Luhmann has created a high-level generalization. He points out that

communication with the Antinet becomes more valuable when you create
such generalizations (instead of merely creating a keyterm for the mention
of Picasso). Yet there’s one final piece of this communication experience:
the “moment of evaluation.”38

Luhmann writes that communicating with the Antinet “becomes productive

only at the moment of evaluation, and is thus bound to a certain time and
is to a high degree accidental.”39

In other words, when it comes time to writing, you end up stumbling upon
valuable cards. Let’s say you stumble upon the branch collective of items
for preferences for temporally limited. As a result of this, you are reminded
that art exhibits serve as an example of people tending to prefer something
that is temporally limited. In a card nearby, you then stumble upon a card-
link pointing to the concept of scarcity. This opens up a whole new stem of
thought, and an idea sparks in your mind. Humans are not just driven by
things that are temporally scarce, but by anything that is scarce. You can then
write about how museums leverage the tendency of humans to be motivated
by scarcity (whether that be time-based scarcity or space-based scarcity), as
do retailers, with phrases such as Only 2 items left! (when shopping online).

37  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
38  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
39  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  513

These connections are not made at the time they’re created, Luhmann points
out, but are made at the time of evaluation—at the time you sit down to
actually write about them. In effect, you’re working with your Antinet as a
communication partner during the time of writing, and doing so helps you
generate breakthrough insights and ideas.

Welcome to the Antinet. Using it sets off the incommunicable experience

of a communicable experience (with a notebox). It’s filled with order, chaos,
and surprises.

INTELLECTUAL EVOLUTION DEPENDS ON

COMMUNICATION WITH EXTERNALIZED
ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS
Something I discuss early on in this book relates to how intellectual evolu-
tion relies on communication with an externalized artificial consciousness.
I hold that the Antinet serves as a better container of external artificial
consciousness than any digital notetaking app (thus far).

Akin to the concept of human evolution happening through the use of

externalizing tools (like axes and spears), intellectual evolution relies on
the “exteriorization” of one’s individual memories. This served as a very
successful and intriguing idea in the second half of the twentieth century.40

To evolve intellectually, we must first externalize our individual memories.

Recall, a memory is a representation of a thought. A thought is a representa-
tion of reality. Paradoxically, we must externalize our metaphysical thoughts
by inserting them into physical reality. When you use an Antinet, you do
this by way of writing your thoughts by hand on notecards; in the digital
realm, you really aren’t participating in the same process because you’re
externalizing metaphysical thoughts by injecting them into metaphysical
reality (on a computer screen).

40  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 12.
514  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

As a result, digital may fail to make a key step in procuring intellectual evo-
lution. Here’s why: intellectual evolution will emerge from shifting from
the structural coupling of communication and consciousness to a structural
coupling of communication and artificial consciousness. In other words, the
most advanced communication today happens with conscious entities.
Of course communication occurs with unconscious entities as well. After all,
when two computers connect, they communicate, though they are uncon-
scious of themselves. They are deterministic agents in a network operated
by conscious entities. The next big intellectual evolution will emerge from
the communication between conscious entities and artificially conscious
entities. Many quickly jump to thinking of robots as the best candidate for
becoming the world’s first artificially conscious entity; however some hold
that, “Artificial consciousness is impossible due to the extrinsic nature of
programming which is bound to syntax and devoid of meaning.”41

In brief, are we wasting our time in holding that the next intellectual advance-
ment will arise by way of an impossible idea (artificial consciousness)? I think
it’s quite possible we are wasting our time. Yet I don’t think this means we
ought to cast aside the idea. Instead I think it wise to explore the next best
thing to artificial consciousness: creating our own very close versions of
artificial consciousness. This is where the Antinet comes into play.

The best tools for intellectual advancement are those which embody the
properties of artificial consciousness: a communication partner that seems
to have its own externalized personality. Thus far, computers and digital
notetaking apps have outshone analog tools for storing data and information.
However, they have not outshone analog tools in one area: storing one’s
consciousness; one’s deepest thoughts and ideas; one’s personality. I hold
that the analog medium—by way of containing your own handwriting—
provides a better mechanism to act like a cue or prompt for generating an
internal dialogue in your mind. More on this will be discussed shortly. But
for now, know that the analog medium serves as a better vehicle of artificial
consciousness than does a computer.

41  David Hsing, “Artificial Consciousness Is Impossible,” Medium, March 28, 2022, https://
towardsdatascience.com/artificial-consciousness-is-impossible-c1b2ab0bdc46.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  515

Even though the Antinet isn’t actually aware of itself and is not alive (and
thus not fully artificially conscious), it is composed of (many iterations of)
your past self, which was aware of itself at the time of the note’s creation.
Every note you observe in an Antinet is a containerized capsule of your
own consciousness. This is why noteboxes have been described as a view
into another’s life and mind. This is something Johannes Schmidt touches
on when he refers to Luhmann’s Antinet as “the backstage of his theory
and therefore as Niklas Luhmann’s intellectual autobiography.”42 Our con-
sciousness is indeed captured in external memory devices. Paradoxically,
communication with such devices is an incommunicable truth.43 It’s impos-
sible to describe to others the internal experience of working with your own
artificial consciousness.

COMMUNICATION WITH YOU

AND YOUR PAST SELF
The Antinet is a true communication relationship with you and your past
self. When I read my handwritten notes and papers from fifteen years ago,
it’s me I’m interacting with. It’s my thoughts—even if they’re excerpts or
reformulations of what I was reading at the time. It signals to me that my
past self resonated with whatever idea the note contains. I see myself in my
handwriting. I see how much I’ve grown, and also how much I’ve stayed
the same. There are feelings of both respect, and also feelings of shame and
regret when I review old notes. When I come upon handwritten notes of
relationship advice, it makes me a little sad to realize those were written
during my first marriage. Yet it also makes me laugh, seeing the irony of
relationship advice that wasn’t effective. When I come across other writings
from that time, it makes me feel a certain love and reverence and respect for
myself during that period.

42  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 310.
43   Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, 3rd ed, Bollingen Series XVII (Novato,
Calif: New World Library, 2008), 25. “Whereas the truths of science are communicable,
being demonstrable hypotheses rationally founded on observable facts…” The Antinet
almost requires some spiritual, metaphysical experiences to be fully understood. In brief,
first-hand personal experience is required to understand it as a communication partner.
516  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

This type of stuff may sound sappy and unscientific; however, I assure you it’s
not. The Antinet contains your personality, and this is a very important feature
in interacting with your own thoughts. As previously mentioned, scholars,
including Luhmann, are aware of the idea of a ghost in the box.44 One scholar
concludes that “Luhmann did not regard his filing cabinet as a simple slip
box, rather he interacted with it as if it were a true communication partner.”45

One way the Antinet serves as a communication partner is in the form of

asking it questions and “making queries.”46 This relates to the concept of
asking a book questions, which was nicely outlined by Mortimer Adler. “If
you ask a living teacher a question, he will probably answer you… If, however,
you ask a book a question, you must answer it yourself. In this respect a book
is like nature or the world. When you question it, it answers you only to the
extent that you do the work of thinking and analysis yourself.”47

Asking a book a question is similar to communicating with an Antinet, except

that the Antinet contains a massive store of knowledge from the many books
you’ve read. It’s not like the process of hyperactively searching Google. You
must do the work of thinking and analysis yourself—with whatever knowledge
you have at your disposal.

The Antinet is not some “rhetorical storehouse,” observes one scholar. It’s
not a tool for capturing unprocessed information and storing it for a later
period of time. You can certainly do this by using ExRefs—however, hyper-
active digital tools are much better for collecting unprocessed information.
The true value is the Antinet’s ability to turn information into knowledge
by injecting your own personality to it. “The card index preserves a knowl-

44  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
45   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016),
26. Emphasis added.
46   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
47   Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, Rev. and updated
ed (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 14.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  517

edge—we could also say, a past—that not only continually changes but also
can be recalled in a highly selective manner.”48

The ghost in the box factor stems from writing by hand. Handwriting seems to
containerize consciousness better than standardized digital fonts. Developing
true knowledge, filled with meaningful information, relies on internal dialogue
(i.e., intrapersonal communication) with your past self ’s consciousness.49
Analog systems with handwriting seem to retain this consciousness better
than standardized digital schemes. Your own handwriting is unique—espe-
cially when you view it yourself.

THE PHASE TRANSITION FROM

ANTINET TO SECOND MIND
Luhmann’s thinking evolved with his Antinet, as did his process of taking
notes. His early notes from the 1950s and 1960s contained more excerpts
and long-passages that flowed across several notecards.50 At a certain point,
Luhmann’s process went through a change that perhaps relates to his state-
ment that the Antinet “needs a number of years in order to reach critical
mass. Until then, it functions as a mere container from which we can retrieve
what we put in.”51 By reaching critical mass, Luhmann was referring to how
the Antinet becomes its own mind—an independent entity with whom
you can communicate.52

48   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 32.
Emphasis added.
49   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016),
13. “The only operations that can reproduce and manage meaning are communication and
consciousness.”
50  “ZK I: Zettel 7,9—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed July 14, 2021, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_1_NB_7-9_V; Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas
Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication Partner, Publication Machine,”
Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution in Early Modern Europe 53
(2016), 293.
51   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
52   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
518  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Being that the Antinet is a cybernetic network, I find network science to be

an excellent field from which to glean lessons. There’s an emerging area of
study within network science called percolation theory, which nicely describes
the transition from Antinet to second mind.

Percolation theory studies the phenomenon in networks wherein a phase

transition takes place. This phase is the result of a very small change in the
composition of the network (such as adding a certain number of notes to
your Antinet, thus meeting a specific threshold). Think of boiling water on a
stove. At 99°C something is happening, but you’re still staring at water. Yet
after an increase of one single degree Celsius, a specific threshold is met.
Meeting this threshold triggers the entire entity of water to transition into
an entirely different substance (gas). This is what is meant by phase transition.

The same transformation that occurs during a phase transition when a min-
imum threshold is met exists within networks, and is studied in a branch
of mathematics that studies percolation theory. It is a compelling field
because of its utility in studying digital networks on which the success
of certain commercial products rely—especially products which rely on
mesh networks. Businesses can find significant value in understanding the
nature of the networks they have built and what the minimum threshold
number of nodes needs to be in order to undergo a phase transition from a
disconnected network to a connected one.

As far as the Antinet goes, the matter of importance is to understand the

minimum threshold of notes and keyterms needed to undergo a phase
transition (from Antinet to second mind). Luhmann never specified this
number, other than stating it takes a number of years.

Whatever this threshold happens to be is of little value to the more interesting

occurrence: the fact is that Luhmann did indeed observe a phase transition
with his Antinet when, at some point, his Antinet transitioned from an ana-
log brain that simply stores notes, to a completely different entity entirely.

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/. “If you wish to educate a partner

in communication, it will be good to provide him with independence from the beginning.”
 Communication with Your Second Mind  519

Just like water turning into gas when it hits 100°C, the Antinet turns into a
second mind after reaching a certain number of notes (say one thousand).

In Luhmann’s notes on the nature of his Antinet, he talks about having an

“impression of a mentally muscular overall personality.”53 What I hold this to
mean is that the Antinet develops its own unique, rough personality after it
undergoes this phase transition into a second mind. The entity becomes an
alter-ego with whom you can communicate. It becomes a research assistant
who you can collaborate with. It becomes a true second mind.

We’ve thus far talked primarily about communication. Understanding this

concept is critical in grasping the nature of working with an Antinet. We’ve
also touched upon the entity we communicate with when working with an
Antinet—the second mind. Let’s now take a deep dive into exploring this
entity, the second mind.

SECOND BRAIN VS. SECOND MIND

Second brain is a term that has become popular within productivity and
personal knowledge management circles. Also, digital Zettelkasten systems
have been linked to this term (pun intended). You’ll find popular software
used for digital Zettelkasten systems described as a second brain.54 Personally,
I find this term lacking. The term second brain has been used primarily to refer
to technologies that are for collecting and storing information. The infor-
mation, however, is essentially a disconnected blob of unprocessed material.

In reality, you don’t want a second brain; instead you want a second mind.
A brain is just biological wetware. It, in itself, is nothing without its other
interconnected systems functioning together. A second mind describes the
occurrence of the whole becoming greater than the sum of its parts.

People are intrigued with the Zettelkasten because it’s not just an informa-
tion storage container. If it were a container, people would opt for simpler

53  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8f - Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed April 30, 2022, https://niklas-luh-
mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8f_V.
54  “Obsidian,” accessed May 2, 2022, https://obsidian.md/. “A second brain,for you, forever.’
520  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

notebox systems which merely store thoughts. In contrast, the notecard

systems others have shared haven’t created a whole niche within knowl-
edge management. The Zettelkasten has indeed created excitement. Why?
Because of its promise to not just be a memory storage system, but a thinking
system—it is a true knowledge development system.

People are also intrigued with the Zettelkasten because of the results it pro-
duced for Luhmann. His prolific work—seventy books and 550 published
articles over a thirty year timeframe—was achieved through interacting with
his system as if it were a communication partner—a second mind.

A second brain is an information store, or information database.

A second mind is a communication partner that forces you to think, to develop

ideas (by hand, the old way, the hard way), and later to argue with your ideas.
It forces you to see inconsistencies in your old thoughts and evolve them.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  521

AN ARGUMENT FOR SECOND MIND

OVER SECOND MEMORY
Luhmann’s description of the communication relationship he had with his
Zettelkasten was summed up as follows: “As a result of prolonged work with
this technique, a kind of second memory emerges, an alter ego with which
one can constantly communicate.”55

The phrase he used to describe the entity he was communicating with was
eine Art Zweitgedächtnis, ein alter Ego. This is a second memory type of entity,
or an alter ego. Here, zweit translates to “second,” and Gedächtnis to “mem-
ory.” If we look into the word Gedächtnis, we find some interesting origins:
its root stems from gedacht, which is the past participle of denken, meaning
“to think, call to mind, conceive.”56 In other words, a Zweitgedächtnis is a
second-memory entity, an alter ego.

55  Niklas Luhmann, “Kommunikation mit Zettelkästen,” in Öffentliche Meinung und sozial-

er Wandel / Public Opinion and Social Change, ed. Horst Baier, Hans Mathias Kepplinger,
and Kurt Reumann (Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 1981), 225.
56  “Gedächtnis,” in Wiktionary, February 1, 2021, https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.
522  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The entity Luhmann was referring to involves a communication experience

in which you’re calling to mind a second part of yourself (an alter ego). Fur-
thermore, we see Luhmann referring to this entity as a “Geist” in his notes
written in preparation for the paper.57 I hold that a better term for this entity
involves combining Luhmann’s term Geist with the concept of Zweitgedächtnis.
As a result we end up with Zweitgeist, which translates to “second mind.”
Thus, the term for second mind is born.58

A similar type of evolution from the term second memory to second mind
is something that recently occurred within knowledge science. The term
secondary memory is now referred to as “early modern terminology.” The
newer and more popular term is extended mind. Proposed by Andy Clark
and David Chalmers, the concept of extended mind holds that the mind
resides not only in the brain, but also outside of it. One’s mind is stored in
the external representations of the human body. While I think there’s truth
in their thesis, there are problems with the term extended mind. Several
scholars point out that there exists a failure to explain what aspect of the
mind is extended. Is it the entire mind that is extended or just cognition?
Furthermore, the definition of extended is not made clear.59 This is another
reason we’ll be sticking to the term second mind.

php?title=Ged%C3%A4chtnis&oldid=61707257; “Denken,” in Wiktionary, May 17, 2021,

https://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=denken&oldid=62540453;Friedrich Kluge,
“Denken,” in An Etymological Dictionary of the German Language, D (London: George
Bell & Sons, 1891). Emphasis added.
57  “ZK II: Note 9 / 8.3—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed January 11, 2022, https://niklas-
luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8-3_V.
58  “ What Is the Difference between ‘Geist’ and ‘Verstand. Sie Werden Beiden Als “Mind”
Uebersetzt’ ? ‘Geist’ vs ‘Verstand. Sie Werden Beiden Als “Mind” Uebersetzt’?,” HiNative,
accessed June 2, 2021, https://hinative.com/en-US/questions/15369673; “Translation—
What Is the German Word for ‘Mind’?,” German Language Stack Exchange, accessed June
2, 2021, https://german.stackexchange.com/questions/27210/what-is-the-german-word-
for-mind. The German language has several terms for “mind.” The term “verstand” is used
primarily to refer to “understanding” and “intelligence.” Whereas “geist” refers to more of
the philosophical, spiritual, or abstract reference to the concept of “mind.”
59   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 12.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  523

So, the entity one communicates with when the Antinet reaches a critical
threshold is the second mind.

There’s only one question left. What the hell is a mind?!

What a Mind Is
The mind is a metaphysical entity. It has never been identified. As far as we
can tell, it may just be a bunch of neurons connecting to other neurons in the
brain. A reductionist approach is to just get rid of the concept altogether.60
Yet I think this a bit premature. It’s simply that, as cognitive psychologist
Steven Pinker points out, “we don’t understand how the mind works.”61 For
a long period of time humankind didn’t understand gravity; yet we had a
sense that there was something to the phenomenon of objects falling. We
just couldn’t explain it yet. Aristotle thought it had something to do with
elements wishing to return to their natural place.62 Just because we didn’t
understand gravity, didn’t mean we should have cast aside the concept of
something causing the effects we now recognize as being a result of gravity.
Just because we don’t understand something fully yet doesn’t mean we should
delete the placeholder term and stop asking questions about it. The mind is a
metaphysical entity that we don’t fully understand yet. Like human memory,
the mind remains one of the last great mysteries in science.

I like to think of the mind as a product of the brain which is a product of

evolution.63 “The mind is not the brain but what the brain does,” as Pinker
puts it.64 Again, this is why you want a second mind, not a second brain. You
don’t just want an inanimate jumble of wetware. You want an active, holis-
tic system that becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The system itself

60   Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus A Brief History of Tomorrow. (New York: HarperCollins
Publishers, 2017), 114ff.
61   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), xv.
62  “Gravity: From Apples to the Universe | Britannica,” accessed May 2, 2022, https://www.
britannica.com/story/gravity-from-apples-to-the-universe.
63   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), vii.
64  Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 24.
Emphasis added.
524  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

is inanimate; however when all four components of the Antinet interact,

a second mind emerges.

THE PERSON INSIDE THE ANTINET

People seem to overlook the fact that the Antinet filled the role of being an
actual person for Luhmann.

To Luhmann, the Antinet was not just a thinking tool, it was a person. The
concept of viewing the Antinet as a person might be seen as similar to the
concept of animism, the way of what we in the modern West call “objects”
as possessing person-like qualities. For example, in Japanese Shinto culture,
it is believed that a soul lives within all matter; every-day things are thought
of as being deities.65 This is perhaps why you’ll often find Japanese embracing
the idea of robots being companions, nurses and caretaking companions
for the elderly.66 In a similar vein, this might be one reason the pocket-sized
digital pets called Tamagotchi first emerged in Japan, though they quickly
spread to Western countries, as well. Several studies have analyzed how the
Tamagotchi toys changed human behavior with digital devices. “Tamagot-
chi convinced consumers to willingly dedicate their time, attention, and
emotions to the virtual pet.”67

The phenomenon wherein we experience a deep connection when interacting

with certain physical objects is widespread. With the Antinet it becomes
even easier to experience this because you’re viewing your own thoughts,
your own spirit, and your own soul within the handwritten cards of your
Antinet. The entire system enables you to communicate with such an entity.

65  Larissa Hjorth, “In Japan, Supernatural Beliefs Connect the Spiritual Realm with the
Earthly Objects around Us,” The Conversation, accessed May 1, 2022, http://theconver-
sation.com/in-japan-supernatural-beliefs-connect-the-spiritual-realm-with-the-earthly-
objects-around-us-125726.
66  Jon Emont, “Japan Prefers Robot Bears to Foreign Nurses,” Foreign Policy (blog), accessed
May 2, 2022, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/01/japan-prefers-robot-bears-to-foreign
-nurses/.
67  Laura Lawton, “Taken by the Tamagotchi: How a Toy Changed the Perspective on Mobile
Technology,” The IJournal: Student Journal of the Faculty of Information 2, no. 2 (March
30, 2017), https://theijournal.ca/index.php/ijournal/article/view/28127.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  525

Even though Luhmann was an avid advocate of systems theory, stating,

“it is easy to think of systems theory,” in trying to describe the Antinet he
went a different direction when he opted for communication theory to
explain it; but this was because the system revolves around communication
with the second mind.68

The idea of a notebox emerging into an external instantiation of one’s own

mind did not originate with Luhmann, but dates back to a situation described
by Heinrich Von Kleist in 1805. He remarked upon the phenomenon of
something like the second mind emerging in his analysis of the “midwifery
of thought.”69

The reason it was useful for Luhmann to create an actual (metaphysical)

person to collaborate with centered around funding difficulties. In brief,
Luhmann found that hiring research assistants and employees was too
expensive. He needed a communication partner on whom he could rely
(for at least thirty years). His Antinet proved to be not only reliable, but also
an entity that inspired breakthrough insights in a way that would have been
nearly impossible for even the best research assistant to produce.

When Luhmann first began building the Antinet it was seen as a mem-
ory aid; however in 1981, when he wrote his paper describing the Antinet,
he knew it to be much more than just a memory tool.

The Antinet is not an analog note database. It’s not necessarily even about
notes. Its primary nature concerns itself with the dualistic emergence of the
second mind. Again, this dualistic emergence of the second mind relies upon
the four principles of the Antinet. I make no claim that the emergence of a
second mind is exclusive to the Antinet (perhaps others who have analog
noteboxes also experience this phenomenon). However the type of second

68  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
69  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 325.
526  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

mind Luhmann experienced relies upon adhering to the four principles of

the Antinet.

In brief, what we’re talking about here is truly something special. When I
think of the Antinet, I don’t think about some tool in the notetaking app
market. It’s not something that can be compared to whatever digital note-
taking app is popular by the time you read this. The Antinet is in a different
category altogether. It belongs in a class of tools which induce an intraper-
sonal dialogue that is helpful during creation.

Modern day scientists agree with Luhmann’s notion of a ghost in the box
emerging from Antinets. One scholar confirms that it would be misleading
to classify the Antinet as something which simply stores notes.70 Here’s
why: when you peruse and read the thoughts written by someone who has
passed—you feel this ghost-like internal presence. You begin to insert your-
self in their shoes while they were writing down the thoughts on the card.

With the Antinet, this ghost in the box factor is experienced in a slightly differ-
ent manner. You yourself are viewing your own thoughts. You communicate
with your own internal ghost and embark upon an internal dialogue that
happens during the act of creation.

Because the Antinet possesses the properties of both short-term thought

development, and long-term thought development, it morphs into a unique
metaphysical entity. The entity it becomes is beyond your control. You cannot
preconceive how it will look in the future. This is oftentimes what people
struggle with in the beginning. We’re so used to molding our knowledge
using digital tools. Digital information is very malleable. We can refactor
and reorganize our knowledge on a whim. Whatever cool new convention
or idea emerges, can set you out on a months-long quest to reorganize your
digital knowledge repository. With the Antinet this is not the case. You must
submit yourself to the rigid organic structure that emerges over years of
building out your knowledge one notecard at a time, one branch at a time.

70  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 19.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  527

This chaotic and evolving structure of the Antinet makes it more fun to
engage with. You’re always in for a surprise when creating with your Antinet.

One reason why communicating with a second mind is unique centers

around the limitations of each individual note. Within digital tools notes
can be extensive in nature—seemingly all-encompassing for an idea.

With the Antinet, the notes are constrained by the size of each individual
notecard. They’re also constrained by the difficulty and time-intensity of
writing by hand. As a result of these constraints, the notes are more prompt-
like in nature. They are units that prompt one’s internal dialogue to internally
fire off the remaining details of the idea. Antinet notes communicate the
idea without belaboring and over-communicating the idea. As a result of
this under-communication of the idea, the rest of the communication takes
place in the mind.

This concept of under-communication triggering an internal dialogue has

been observed by scholars. It’s the result of one’s external memory interact-
ing with one’s internal memory. After studying John Boyle, John Locke, and
Robert Hooke, one researcher observed how their notes were useful in the
way they prompted recollection. The notes weren’t valuable in themselves;
they were valuable in the way they triggered an internal dialogue within
their creator.71

The notes in your Antinet set off a chain reaction in your mind. Your notes
serve as a cue for starting the recall process in your mind. Digital notes, on
the other hand, tend to take different form. They tend to include too much
detail. They tend to over-communicate the idea. This robs the creation pro-
cess of much of its magic. Furthermore, the additional detail is unnecessary.
It also ends up snowballing and creating an overabundance of information.

71  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early

Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 12.
528  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

THE PERSONALITY OF YOUR

SECOND MIND
The power of your second mind relies on its unique personality. There are
several ways a unique personality is incorporated into the system. Again, the
unique personality of the system relies on the core principles of the Antinet:
Analog, Numeric-alpha Addresses, Tree Structure, Index. In particular, the
numeric-alpha addresses are critical. They enable the system to become
self-referential, and thus develop a “self ” in the first-place.

Another way the system gains a personality involves how you use the index.
Specifically, this relates to what unique keyterms you use to describe con-
cepts. Certain terms you use to describe a concept might make complete
sense in your mind, but another person might prefer a different term. You
add personality to your system by using terms that make sense in your mind.
For instance, I have a stem in my Antinet related to the concept of power law
and the Pareto principle, the idea that 80% of something comes from 20%
of the participants. For instance, 80% of a nation’s wealth comes from 20%
of the population. It exemplifies that a small number of people (or objects)
can generate a big result. In my index I have created keyterms for power
law, as well as the Pareto principle. However the main term that comes to
mind when I think of this principle is big impact, due to the idea that a few
things can have a big impact on the whole. I’ve built out a section around
instances of “big impact” phenomena in the world. Whenever I come across
something related to this in my reading, I write Big Impact on the bibcard and
underline it. This unique way of terming something is one way I’ve injected
personality into my Antinet.

It’s not only the unique keyterms you use that give the second mind its
personality; it’s also the way in which you structure those keyterms. For
instance, Luhmann observed how museums are frequently empty, while
short-term art exhibits are completely packed.72 I’ve talked about this con-
cept before; however it’s worth bringing up again to show how it affects the
personality of one’s second mind. Instead of creating the keyterms Monet,

72  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Communication with Your Second Mind  529

Picasso, or Medici, Luhmann created the keyterm in his index for Preferences
(For Temporally Limited Events). In my Antinet I would create a keyterm for
this under Scarcity. My keyterm would be: Scarcity (Examples of It Motivating
People). It would then link to the card address of the note.

This gives a glimpse into how keyterms inject a unique personality into your
Antinet. Both the specific keyterms you use, as well as how you structure
them adds a unique personality to your second mind.

CONCLUSION
In this chapter, we covered a very important aspect of the Antinet. Actually
two aspects. Communication, and the concept of the second mind. These con-
cepts are a very real aspect in working with an Antinet. In the next section
we’ll dive into the science backing the Antinet, and its relation to concepts
from the science of human memory.
 C H A PT E R N I N E T E E N
�

HUMAN MEMORY AND

THE ANTINET

I‌ this chapter we’ll explore how the Antinet mirrors several aspects
n
of human memory, including a look at the neuroscience behind why the
Antinet is a helpful structure, and a deep dive into the concept of context
within the Antinet.

HUMAN MEMORY AND THE ANTINET

Luhmann was not forced into the structure of the Antinet due to the lim-
itations of technology. He could have chosen a commonplace book, or a cat-
egorical notecard system (organized by human-readable subjects). In fact,
Luhmann tried several methods for managing his thoughts from readings.
His first attempt was to take notes on notecards and stick them into the
book once he had finished. However, this caused the bindings of the books
to fray and break.1

After that failed experiment, he tried another technique, placing the notecards
his readings generated into folders. Yet, as these notes increased, Luhmann
complained of no longer being able to find anything in them.2 He could have

1   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.
2   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.

530
 Human Memory and the Antinet  531

even switched to using a computer later in his life, but he did not choose
any of these routes.

These false starts helped Luhmann design the perfect system that served
him for over forty years.

Luhmann could have switched to using a computer later in his life. However,
Luhmann did not choose those routes. The structure of the Antinet, accord-
ing to one scholar, was not haphazard, but was a deliberate choice arising out
of Luhmann’s familiarity with how human memory worked.3 This familiarity
also allowed Luhmann to understand how computer memory would work
in the future (which emphasized the benefits of multiple storage).4

The scholar, Johannes Schmidt, points out that Luhmann’s decision to use
hard-coded, non-changing numeric-alpha addresses is the essential pre-
requisite for creativity in his system.5

Luhmann was likely aware of the issue with multiple storage: the fact that
the computer science conception of it is grossly misleading due to it being
overly abstract (and thus synthetic). Instead of a computer science concept
of multiple storage, Luhmann preferred a more organic version based on
the science of human memory.

In a card on the parent stem of Luhmann’s Antinet located two cards before
Luhmann mentions “multiple storage,” we find him citing the following

3   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 referenc-
es to W. Ross Ashby’s survey of the brain and human memory.
4  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8b2—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 10, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b2_V.
5   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 299.
532  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

reference: “Ashby 1967, p. 103.”6 Luhmann references this, implying that it’s
noteworthy because it provides a “general structure of memories.”

I did some digging and, after some time, was able to get my hands on the
source Luhmann referenced. Here is the pertinent quote:

At the moment, our scientific thinking tends to be grossly

misled by the example of the big digital computer. It has a big
memory store, kept far from the working parts, which send
recordable facts to special places, and then later go back to
exactly the same places to regain the information.7

“Such a method,” Ashby continues, “can hardly be achieved in biological

machinery,” and he points to biological noise in such systems, such as injury,
starvation, and infection.8 Ashby is reflecting on the mechanistic problems
found in digital systems. There’s no reality built into them (like the reality
of human memory decaying given any injury, starvation, or infection a
person experiences).

Ashby also states something interesting: “More likely is it that most of the
brain’s memory traces occur, and are retained, at the site of their action.”9
What Ashby means by this is that thoughts are created in the context in
which they are developed and are retained within that context. In the case
of the Antinet, structured as it is to function akin to human memory, when
developing a thought within one branch (like branch 4212, for instance),
the memory of that thought is retained in that branch. It’s not something
that is freely floating around in a context-free graph (which is reflective of
how digital notetaking apps operate).

6  “ZK II: Sheet 9/8b—Niklas Luhmann Archive,” accessed March 17, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
7   W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
8   W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
9   W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  533

Memories, Ashby observes, are “widely scattered,” yet they also retain
the context (in the Antinet, it’s the branch) in which they were originally
developed.10

Each component of a memory contains its own context and branches, and
this is reflected in how the Antinet works. In the following illustration,
a memory (or thought) that is recorded in the Antinet is composed of two
other memories, represented by a sequence of cards that are branched
(parts A and B).

Ashby likens this to how “animal heat” is understood as having two sub-com-
ponents, metabolism and oxidation.11

So to reiterate, Ashby argues that the concept of memory is “grossly misled

by the example of the big digital computer” (which stores information in
mechanistic, discrete places), because this is not how human memory works,
since it is “more likely …that most of the brain’s memory traces occur, and
are retained, at the site of their action.”12

In other words, memory is not some simple, perfectly ordered, deterministic,

and consistent system. It’s not built on a clean binary system (of 1s and 0s).
Rather it is a distributed system requiring chains of relationships based
within their context.

Unlike digital computers, the programs we execute are subject to noise. The
Antinet, like human memory, is truly a communication system, as Ashby
alludes to.13

10  W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
11  W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
12  W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 103.
13 W. Ross Ashby, “The Place of the Brain in the Natural World,” Biosystems 1, no. 2 (May 1,
1967): 95–104, 102.
534  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Luhmann’s approach to the Antinet structure appeared to opt for the mereolog-
ical interpretation of human memory. As a social scientist capable of applying
systems theory to sociology, it comes as no surprise that he would favor a
systems-based view (mereology), rather than a computation-based view.

The mereological approach views memory as a system made up of subsys-

tems. The environment in which memory operates is provided by other
systems. The computational approach to human memory views memory
as an algorithm, with a focus on mathematical equations and quantitative
experiments to study the encoding, storage, and retrieval building blocks of
human memory.14

Immediately following Luhmann’s reference to Ashby, he states, “you do not

have to rely on a vast number of point-by-point accesses.”15 What he means
is that you don’t need a robust list of keyterms that point to every single
card. Rather you may explore and navigate your Antinet given just a general
keyterm in your index. Due to the branched tree structure, you will be able
to navigate and uncover genius-level insights and surprises along the way.

It’s not a stretch to imagine how Luhmann approached the design and archi-
tecture of his Antinet, likely taking a systems-science approach to devising
what he initially thought of as his “second memory.”16 Later on, of course,
this system evolved, thanks to the unique architecture and design of the
Antinet, into a second mind.

Luhmann did this by first breaking apart the components that create human
memory. After this, he created abstracted instantiations of the components.

You can see such in the architecture of how cardlinks mirror key functional
aspects of human memory.

14   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014).
15  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8b—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 10, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8b_V.
16  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luh-
mann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  535

After studying how human memory works, one can begin to see the brilliance
in Luhmann’s design of the Antinet.

Take, for instance, an Antinet with the following numeric-alpha addresses:

– 4212/1
– 4212/2
– 4212/3
– …
– 4214/1
– 4214/1a
* 4214/1a/1
* 4214/1a/2
* 4214/1a/3
– 4214/1b
– 4214/2
– 4214/3
– …
– 5425/1

The branch is expressed by the four-digits at the beginning of the numeric-alpha

address. For instance: 4212, 4214, 5425.

The stems are things like: 4214/1, 4214/1a, 4214/2, 4214/3. From this, there are
relative stemlinks like 4214/1a/1, 4214/1a/2, 4214/1a/3. These stemlinks are
essentially linked to 4214/1a (they’ve “stemmed down” from 4214/1a). These are
analogous to forward and backward associations in human memory.17

Because the Antinet is based on similarity by way of proximity, it mirrors human

memory in that the further away two memories or thoughts are, and more mem-
ories in between them, the more the association decreases.18 The closer the
items and memories are, their greater the association is.

17  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 11.
18  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
536  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Yet, from experience, we know this isn’t necessarily always the case. There
are some ideas located in some contextual branches that are very closely
related to an idea in a branch or discipline located far away from it.

For such instance, remote associations are part of human memory.19 These
are essentially cardlinks that link to a branch or a card in a remote part of
the Antinet. For instance, say the card 4214/1a/2 contains a sentence at
the bottom: For more on the subject of the power of writing by hand, see
‘5425/1’. This is an instance of a remote cardlink (i.e., a remote association in
the terminology of human memory).

THE NEUROSCIENCE BEHIND

THE ANTINET
Another analogy of the Antinet comes from neuroscience. Think of notecards
as neurons, and the cardlinks as connections.

The idea of likening notecards to neurons may seem farfetched at first. How-
ever, it’s really not. The neural networks we think of today as legitimate are
artificial abstractions. In fact, they’re perhaps even abstractions of abstractions.
The reason why is simple. The models researchers use to study human mem-
ory “bear only a faint resemblance to real biological neurons: they are highly
simplified computational ‘units’ that integrate and transmit information.”20

Most of what people think of when they think of neural networks aren’t
actually real; they’re artificial.

You see, many people think neural networks are part of natural science.
They’re abstractions. When people think of neural networks they’re usually
thinking of artificial neural networks. However, there are three types of neural

Press, 2014), 11.

19  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 7, 11.
20  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 152.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  537

networks: (1) biological neural networks, (2) artificial neural networks, and
(3) haptic neural networks.

Haptic neural networks are artificial yet not digital; they can be touched
and worked with in physical reality. The Antinet is an example of a haptic
neural network.

Notecards serve as a wonderful physical world abstraction for neurons—

at least the neurons modeled by psychologists, computer scientists
and neuroscientists.

Notecards fit the definition of “highly simplified computational ‘units’ that

integrate and transmit information.”21 Another good analogy for a neuron
is a tweet (perhaps that’s why Twitter, with its character-limited nature, has
done so exceptionally well). The simplicity of such containers representing
a neuron actually mirrors a natural reality quite well.

There’s one difference between the Antinet and the human brain, and the
difference centers around one thing: vastness. The sheer size of neurons and
connections in the human brain are staggering. The human brain possesses
one hundred billion neurons, and two hundred trillion connections.22 If we
were to take the neuroscience analogy of the Antinet seriously, you would
need to compile one hundred billion notecards and create two hundred tril-
lion cardlinks between them. From the Antinet Niklas Luhmann worked on
from 1951 to 1997, he was only able to create a measly seventy-five thousand
cards (maincards).23 That’s a lot fewer than one hundred billion.

Yet, I say all of this with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Of course one shouldn’t
intend to create 100 billion notecards, with 200 trillion cardlinks. I chose to

21  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 152.
22  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 30.
23  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 292.
538  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

illustrate this comparison just to show how powerful this structure can be.
With a database of 75,000 notecards one creates a communication partner
that proves itself to be quite powerful.

Niklas Luhmann was familiar with how the brain was structured. It’s no
coincidence that he built his Antinet around the concept of connections.

Luhmann points out how memory does not function as a sum of point-by-
point accesses24 (i.e., like sequentially moving through your notes or just
navigating wikilinks in a digital notetaking app). Rather, your brain needs
just a starting direction of access points. From there the brain uses internal
links by way of the sequential notes, and the internal links and connections
(made possible by remote cardlinks).

AN ANTINET REPRESENTATION OF HOW

HUMAN MEMORY ACTUALLY WORKS
The latest research on human memory reveals evidence for something
termed the distributed representation of memory. The idea holds that mem-
ory is represented not merely by one notecard (neuron), but an interaction
between a large set of neurons.25

For instance, in one piece of writing, I used the following distributed rep-
resentations of memories (representations of thought) to form an article:
2428/1, 2428/1/0, 2428/1/1, 2428/1a, 2428/1b, 3535/2, 4212/2ba, 4214/1a/1a,
4214/2e/1b/1. Combined, these created a distributed representation of
a memory.

24  “Communicating with Slip Boxes by Niklas Luhmann,” accessed May 4, 2021, https://luh-
mann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes. “Memory does not function as the sum
of point by point accesses, but rather utilizes internal relationships and becomes fruitful
only at this level of the reduction of its own complexity.”
25   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 26.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  539

THE CONTEXTS OF THE ANTINET

Context can be thought of as a base layer protocol in the Antinet. In other
words, context is a foundational component for how thoughts are developed
in an Antinet. The importance of context cannot be overstated.

Think of context as the branch or stem in which an idea or thought is

contained. For instance, my branch on information science is 4212. The
thoughts that I develop in this branch are developed within the context of
information science.

Early memory scientists thought of context as a fixed container (thus, 4212

would always be known as the information science branch). However,
more recent findings in the study of human memory have led to this model
being revised. Today it is believed that such context gradually evolves over
time.26 In other words, what starts out as the information science branch
can evolve to become the Antinet branch. Paradoxically, the context evolves
based on its content, and the content evolves based on its context. This fuzzy
occurrence serves as another illustration as to why the Antinet is built on
a rough structure with fuzzy categories. Such a system mirrors how human
memory works.

Digital Zettelkasten systems exhibit fewer properties of rough structures

and fuzzy categories; they’re locked into the strict binary world of 1s and 0s.

One scientist specializing in the field of memory writing about what takes
place when learning suggests that one forms associations not only based on
the actual content encountered, but actually on three things.27

First, of course, is the actual content. When you read a book, you’re forming
associations based on the content of what you read. Content can include
other media (music, articles, podcasts, etc.). In other words, when you’re

26  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 224.
27  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
540  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

reading a biography about F. Scott Fitzgerald, and you read about The Great
Gatsby selling fewer than five hundred copies in the entire decade of the
1930s, you might associate the content (the information) with the principle
of failure, or with things taking time to blossom.28 The association emerges
from the content itself.

Second, associations are formed based on the external context of the item
that is encountered (for example, the environment or setting, or the tactile
dimension of the material one is learning about). More on this will be
discussed shortly.

Third, associations are formed based on the internal context at the time one
is processing the content. For instance, the internal thoughts and ideas
taking place in your mind while reading an article today vs. those you had
while reading the same article ten years prior; the same content results in
a drastically different experience depending on the internal context. In
other words, the associations you form based on reading the same content
at different periods of your life, will yield different ideas.

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 develop-
ment; 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.29

28  David S. Brown, Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Illustrated edition

(Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard
University Press, 2017), 101.
29  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 98.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  541

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 adver-
tising 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).
542  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

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.30 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.

30  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  543

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).31

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.32

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.33 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.34

31   Pigs are, let’s just say, “challenging.” Garth would get bored during the day and eat the cov-
ers off my books at home. That’s when I drew the line.
32  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 249.
33  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
34  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
544  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

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
 Human Memory and the Antinet  545

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.
546  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

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 mecha-
nism 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,
 Human Memory and the Antinet  547

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.35 Or, we
can refer to the field of human memory studies, which lumps this into a
category called external context.36

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.37

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.38

In the digital-focused age of today, far too many people overlook the con-
cept of external context, even though this component is critical for building
memory and the mind.

35  Lawrence Block, Hit Man, Reissue edition (HarperTorch, 2002), 280.

36  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 98.
37  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
38  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 12.
548  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

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 men-
tioned, 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.39 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.”40

39  Jim Kwik, Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your
Exceptional Life, Illustrated edition (Carlsbad, California: Hay House Inc., 2020); Kevin
Trudeau, Kevin Trudeau’s Mega Memory (Niles, IL: Nightingale Conant Corp, 1990).
40  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 294.
 Human Memory and the Antinet  549

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.41 These thinkers assigned
to the thoughts that backed their arguments items situated in rooms and
gardens in order to facilitate their recall.42

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.”43

The importance of external context and external memory, in which various

objects in our physical environment is not foreign to scholars.44 This may
be why many are hesitant to discard physically-dependent knowledge sys-
tems 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

41  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 136.
42  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in
Early Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill,
2016), 7.
43  Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 31.
44  Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 129.
550  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

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 the-
oretical 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)!
 C H A PT E R T W E N T Y
�

EVOLUTION, PERCEPTION,
PERSPECTIVE AND RUMINANTS

I‌ this chapter we’ll be discussing the concept of long-term evolution

n
in the Antinet. We’ll also be diving into the concepts of perception vs.
perspective, and how the Antinet locks these elements into each notecard.
We’ll cap this chapter off with the concept of the Antinet as a ruminant.

EVOLUTION
In his paper Communication with Noteboxes, Niklas Luhmann talks about
the “inner life” of the Antinet. He touches upon its “mental history,” which
evolves through time.45 The inner life and mental history of the Antinet are
brought forth by its unique structure. Specifically, it’s brought forth by the
numeric-alpha addresses. Luhmann refers to the fixed positioning of order
(Stellordnung), which is created through unique card addresses. This property
enables the Antinet to evolve over time in such a way that it’s possible to
view the mental history of your thoughts; with the numeric-alpha addresses
and the tree structure, you can observe your mind’s evolution.

Viewing the evolutionary history of your thoughts proves useful for certain
types of activities. Take, for instance, the activity of reading scientific liter-
ature. According to Luhmann, the key to reading scientific texts centers on
long-term memory. According to Luhmann, long-term memory is more
crucial than short-term memory for reading scientific texts because it is

45  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.

551
552  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

necessary to distinguish the “essential from the non-essential and the new
from the merely repetitive.”46 In other words, you want a system where you
can refresh your memory of your notes and evolve your current ideas with
new ideas. You don’t want to waste time relearning what you already know.

The Antinet’s workflow involves noting down observations on a bibcard.

Then, before actually developing a main note, you review the Antinet. You
figure out where a card will be placed before dedicating the time to reformu-
late or reflect on the material. This is an important step as it prevents you
from spending too much time on writing about the non-essential or repetitive
material that you already know.

When you review this material you’re not only reducing the risk of getting
bogged down on things you already know; there’s another useful feature.
As Markus Krajewski observes, “The reader is not only reading his own
memory, but rather also his shifting frame of reference over time.”47 In other
words, when you review your Antinet, you’re seeing your shifting frame
of references over time. You’re seeing your different perspectives and your
different interpretations of ideas based on communication with different
sources you’ve engaged with. It’s possible to view how your thoughts have
developed, changed, and internally evolved over time.

Oftentimes, the most surprising finds are the links you stamp onto the
cards. These shed light into what the idea reminded you of at the time and
shed light on your own internal reverberation of ideas at a given time. The
cards that these links point to serve as the source material of your own
internal perspectives and context. When viewing Luhmann’s system, this
is something Krajewski confirmed as well: “What is more surprising are
the references listed.”48

46  Niklas Luhmann, Short Cuts (English Translation) (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins,

2002), 83.
47  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice of a Counter-Measurement
against Forgetting (Brill, 2016), 331.
48  Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice, 331.
 Evolution, Perception, Perspective and Ruminants  553

This relates to something in human memory called temporal context.49 Mem-

ories and thoughts that occur around the same time are essentially linked
together.50 Temporal context can be thought of as a function of time, external
context, and internal context. In essence, your thoughts are a function of the
period of time in which you had them. They’re shaped by your own internal
dialogue at that specific time, as well as the external context in which you
have the thought. As a result, you link together a unique set of other ideas at
the time of creation. These unique associations of other ideas are represented
in the form of cardlinks in your Antinet.

These cardlinks are way more valuable and effective than things like wikilinks
in digital systems. The reason is that notecards in the Antinet are updated
and changed less frequently than in digital systems. Notes in digital systems
are constantly being updated, rearranged, deleted, and added onto. Within
the Antinet, notecards are locked in time once they’re created. This then
locks in a view of the temporal context of your ideas over time.

COMPOUNDING OF IDEAS
Albert Einstein considered compound interest to be the eighth wonder of the
world. Warren Buffett has said his financial success is simply “a product of
compound interest.”51 Simple things compound into complex things. Luh-
mann himself experienced this first hand with his Antinet. The little, simple,
everyday commitment to building and evolving your Antinet results in
genius-level thought. Over time your ideas evolve and snowball into things
you never could have planned. This happens in an organic way, slowly, one
notecard at a time. Thought-by-thought, branch-by-branch, stem-by-stem,
link-by-link, your Antinet evolves into a complex entity, experiencing the
magic of compound interest. Yet it’s not easy. You have to earn it. This is

49   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2014), 14.
50   Mostafa M. El-Kalliny et al., “Changing Temporal Context in Human Temporal Lobe
Promotes Memory of Distinct Episodes,” Nature Communications 10, no. 1 ( January 14,
2019): 203.
51  “Compoundingquotes,” Investment Masters Class, accessed July 18, 2021, http://masters-
invest.com/compounding.
554  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

often seen as a negative aspect of the Antinet (writing things by hand is

hard); yet it pays off in the end.

Markus Krajewski observes, “Whoever sets about ongoing work (or com-
munication) with such a secondary memory can not only count on the
fact that the apparatus will faithfully reproduce everything which has been
shared with it, they can also trust that, with the information successively
provided over time, future knowledge will be enriched.”52 In essence, the
individual notes you provide to the Antinet will be enriched over time. The
individual pieces of information compound and collide with one another
to form rich pathways of knowledge. When it comes time to write, your
cognitive energy is freed up to collaborate with this entity. You’re left with a
very rich, interconnected store of knowledge with which you can creatively
reinterpret that knowledge and tie it into the paper or creative work you’re
actively building.

The idea of notes becoming a rich store of value is certainly not a new one.
John Aubrey (1626–1697), a fellow of the Royal Society, once said that
habitual notetaking creates “‘nest eggs’ for the future.”53

The bottom line is this: The entity you’re creating with the Antinet is a
complex one. It’s a product of compounding the interest of your ideas. The
result is something magical: it morphs into an entity that you (and only
you) can truly understand.

PERCEPTION AND PERSPECTIVE

Perception and perspective derive from similar etymological roots. These
terms are often confused with one another, even though they’re different.

Perception comes from the Latin term percipere. Let’s break this apart. Per
means “fully.” Cipere means “to grasp” or “to take.” Combined, percipere
means to fully grasp, understand or interpret the meaning of something.

52  Markus Krajewski, Note-Keeping: History, Theory, Practice, 326.

53  Richard Yeo, Notebooks, Recollection, and External Memory: Some Early Modern English
Ideas and Practices (Brill, 2016), 138.
 Evolution, Perception, Perspective and Ruminants  555

Perspective comes from the Latin term perspecere. Per means the same thing
as it does in percipere (“fully”). Specere means “to observe” or “to spectate.”
Combined, perspecere means to fully observe and to see and spectate.

Think of perception as applying your own interpretation of some observations.

Perception uses interpretation to help us derive meaning out of an observation.
The meaning you assign to an observation shapes your thoughts, which
shape your reality.

Think of perspective as your point of view. Perspective is your vantage point.

It’s a function of space and time. Where you are in the world, and at what
time you observe an event shapes your perspective.

When you use an Antinet your notes contain both your perspective and your
perceptions of ideas. When you create reformulation notes, you’re summariz-
ing ideas based on your perspective at the time. You’re shaping your ideas by
your current point of view. When you create reflection notes, you’re adding
your own interpretations of the ideas you encounter. You’re stamping your
556  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

own perceptions of ideas onto your notes. These are locked in time. They
are not updated, overwritten or edited (like they often are in digital tools).

It’s very important that both your perspectives and perceptions be locked
in time. This provides the raw material for the communication experience
that makes the Antinet so valuable. When you go back and review old notes,
you’re having a communication experience. You’re viewing ideas containing
your second mind’s perspectives and perceptions. You’re then comparing
these with your own present-day perspectives and perceptions. This creates
the valuable internal dialogue we’ve touched upon throughout this book.
You begin seeing your perspectives and perceptions evolve over time. This
proves to be an invaluable interaction during the creation process.

RUMINANTS
Ruminants are a type of mammal that acquire nutrients from eating grass.
They first ferment the grass in a specialized stomach called a rumen. After
the grass is fermented in the rumen, it is then digested.

The word ruminant comes from the Latin term ruminare, which means “to
chew slowly.” This is where the term rumination derives from.
 Evolution, Perception, Perspective and Ruminants  557

Here’s why I’m even talking about this: in Luhmann’s own Zettelkasten,
he describes his system by calling it a ruminant.

“The Zettelkasten is like the complicated digestive system of a

ruminant. All arbitrary ideas, all coincidences of reading, can be
included. It is then the internal connectivity that decides.”

–Niklas Luhmann, Zettelkasten II: 9/8i54

By calling it a ruminant, Luhmann is referring to the idea that some pieces

of knowledge need time to be digested. The technique of using external
references (ExRefs) helps with this. Sometimes you come across interesting
material; however you don’t yet know whether the idea is worth fully pro-
cessing yet. In this case you create ExRefs for the material and thus enable
the material to ruminate in the Antinet. If the time comes wherein the
material will become useful, you can then digest the material by converting
it into a main note. Or, you can digest the material by using it while writing
your manuscript.

The idea of the mind as a ruminant is not a new concept. The French Catholic
philosopher Antonin Sertillanges writes:

Man’s mind is a ruminant. The cow looks away into the dis-
tance, chews slowly, bites off here a tuft and there a twig,
takes the whole field for her own, and the horizon as well,
producing her milk from the field, feeding her dim soul on
the horizon.55

What this involves is reverberation as understood in the study of human

memory. I talk about the concept of reverberation throughout this text.

54  “ZK II: Zettel 9/8i—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed May 4, 2022, https://niklas-luh-

mann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/zettel/ZK_2_NB_9-8i_V.
55   OP A. G. Sertillanges, The Intellectual Life: Its Spirit, Conditions, Methods, trans. Mary
Ryan, Reprint edition (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1992), 78.
558  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The idea involves “just-experienced” ideas and associations reverberating

in one’s mind.56 Reverberation is most often associated with short-term
memory. However, with the Antinet, you can lock in reverberation over a
longer period of time. Reverberation over the long term reflects the concept
of rumination.

The idea of rumination doesn’t just have important implications in the

Antinet. Rather the way you approach books involves rumination as well.

As Francis Bacon once pointed out, “Some books are to be tasted, others
to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”57 Some books
are to be read only in parts; others should be skimmed, some few should be
read wholly, and others should be read with deliberate attention. Mortimer
Adler asserted: “Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.”58

Yet without the Antinet, the knowledge one gains during analytical reading
is lost. The Antinet captures the insights from deep analytical reading and
stores them for the long term. In the Antinet these deep insights collide
with other ideas and compound.

The point in all of this is reflected in the following suggestion: view the
Antinet as a ruminant of your mind. Store all of your material there that you
wish to evolve. Store both your fully developed thoughts, as well as thoughts
that need more time to sprout.

56  Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory, 9.

57  Mortimer Jerome Adler and Charles Van Doren, How to Read a Book, revised and updated
edition (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 19.
58  Adler and Van Doren, How to Read a Book, 19.
 C H A PT E R T W E N T Y- O N E
�

RANDOMNESS, SURPRISES
AND ACCIDENTS

A s‌ we’ve learned, one of the more overlooked benefits of the Antinet is

its ability to foster randomness, thanks to its tree structure. This struc-
ture generates invaluable surprises and accidents, allowing users to encounter
ideas they would otherwise not have reviewed had they been using digital
systems. When you work with an analog system, you’re exploring and sifting
through your previous thoughts. This ignites a reverberation of ideas that
circulate in your mind, causing a crucial “collision” of ideas in your mind
during the writing process.

RANDOMNESS
Here, randomness is a feature, not a bug. A key property of a living, evolving,
anti-fragile system is its unorthodox structure. The perfectly normalized
structures we find in digital notetaking systems are synthetic. They’re frag-
ile. They’re overly malleable and they rarely retain a unique character. As
one scholar points out, “Evolution always occurs through the selection of
accidental differences without a design.”1

It doesn’t seem intuitive, but here’s the reality: randomness doesn’t come
from chaos alone. Randomness actually relies on order. As Luhmann states,
“even the creation of random suggestions requires organization.”2

1   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 11.
2   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred

559
560  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When I first began using notecards to store my thoughts in 2006, I would

simply take notes about a book on 3 x 5 inch cards. Each card contained
one idea. These notes were primarily reformulation notes. They summarized
individual concepts I learned while reading the book. By the time I finished
reading the book, I would have about twenty or thirty new 3 x 5 inch cards.
I would then wrap a rubber band around them and throw them in a shoebox.
From time to time I would then review the notecards.

However, this isn’t the most ordered structure. It’s seemingly random. The
Antinet, on the other hand, introduces an ordered structure (numeric-alpha
addresses and the tree-like branching architecture). As a paradoxical result,
the structure induces more useful random features.

SURPRISES
The tree structure of the Antinet encourages the asking of unique questions
that are less commonly asked when one uses digital systems, since those
systems are fully indexed with full text search. Upon encountering a new
idea while using an Antinet, you ask yourself questions like What is the
name of that concept. You’re then prompted to ask what other terms live
near that concept if you can’t find its location. It requires finding alternative
ways to think about the concept and to essentially re-imprint the pathways
that led you to the idea. This practice is a fun way to approach knowledge.
Embarking upon an associative-thinking process brings about fascinating
surprises along the way. Your current mind (with its own active memory)
has a dialogue with your past self (your second mind), and this dialogue
often results in amazing surprises. If nothing else, the core output of the
Antinet is one thing: it’s a “surprise generator.”3

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
3 Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 295.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  561

As one scholar observes of Luhmann’s system: “a true communication

process is triggered that exploits the machine’s ability to surprise, i.e., to
produce information.”4

The same scholar observes how a true secondary memory arises when the
questions one asks triggers a network of associative references and links.
These links then give birth to “collaborative” reasoning that was not inten-
tionally designed.5 The network of associative references refers both to the
concept of forward associations and to remote associations. Here we see that
the tree structure, with the continuous flow of cards as well as the remote
cardlinks, helps create a collaborative communication relationship with the
second mind. It also serves as the core component for creating surprises
(realizations that are a result that had not been intentionally designed).

Again, the network structure of the Antinet is similar to associationism.6 The

association of nodes in the network is based on contiguity. The continuous
flow of notes (containing thoughts) is augmented by insertions of similar
material later on. Thoughts grow contiguously from previous branches and
are grouped together with similar thoughts over time. These two components
(contiguity and similarity) are the very components which govern thought
in general, and that is used to the Antinet’s advantage.

THE NATURE OF SURPRISES

Isaac Asimov once observed that great ideas and breakthroughs begin not
with Eureka! but with Hmm, that’s funny.7 While using the Antinet, you’ll
come across many instances where you think to yourself Hmm, that’s funny!
Take note of these instances and create links between them.

4   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 15.
Emphasis added.
5   Alberto Cevolini, ed., Forgetting Machines: Knowledge Management Evolution in Early
Modern Europe, Library of the Written Word, volume 53 (Leiden ; Boston: Brill, 2016), 20.
6   Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 113.
7   Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (New York, New
York: Viking, 2021), 59.
562  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Keep in mind, though, that in the spirit of good science, you should not let
your guard down. When you say to yourself, that’s funny, that doesn’t mean
the idea is true. It could merely mean that the idea is interesting. Ideas have
a tendency to survive not necessarily because they’re true, but because
they’re interesting.8 In the name of good science, you ought to search for
surprises that excavate truth. Your goal should not center on excavating stuff
that’s merely interesting—that’s pop science gibberish.

In some ways, the Antinet helps mitigate against getting carried away by
interesting but unfounded insights. It does this by collecting contradictions.
Surrounding the leaves and stems of cards that generate surprises it’s likely
that one will find thoughts that contradict the surprise. This is only possible
thanks to the principle of not erasing anything in your Antinet. The fact that
contradictory ideas remain for you to find helps you filter out ideas which are
merely interesting in order to find insights that are both interesting and true.

In addition to this anti-self-deception mechanism, the fact that you’re

neuroimprinting ideas enables you to call to mind the contradictory ideas
by attending to the reverberation achieved through writing by hand and
sifting through your notes. In brief, you’re less likely to deceive yourself
when working with the Antinet. Why? Because you can think of examples
that contradict insights you might otherwise be charmed by.

THE ANTINET IS BUILT FOR SURPRISES

Thanks to the Antinet’s structure, surprises are achieved by giving the Antinet
“autonomy.”9 This autonomy is created by the commitment to never change
card addresses. Unlike digital files with their dynamically updating links, the
Antinet’s card addresses never change. Likewise, aside from editing marks
or additions made directly on a card (that leave a trace of the change in

8 Adam Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know (New York, New
York: Viking, 2021), 59.
9   Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication
Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 295.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  563

thinking), any future changes made to the information on a card can only
occur by adding related, child-like nodes underneath it.

The commitment to never change card addresses is pretty easy and doesn’t
require willpower (unlike the temptation to change card addresses in a dig-
ital system). Thanks to the analog nature of the Antinet, it’s just completely
impractical to change the addresses of many cards!

This is a good thing. If constant changing, deleting, or updating of the

system were possible, it would rip out the unique personality of that sys-
tem. Because of this, complementary and contradictory thoughts are
gathered in an essentially “locked” system that then generates surprise com‑
binations.

AN EXAMPLE OF A SURPRISE
Something interesting happened a few months into building out my Antinet.
I was going through the process of installing my legacy notecards when
I came upon a card pertaining to something called cluster analysis. In machine
learning, cluster analysis involves using algorithms to classify data patterns
into groups or clusters. The clusters are then analyzed to determine which
features and properties make the groups alike.

When I went to create a keyterm for cluster analysis I was surprised by the fact
that I already had a keyterm for the term cluster! What I found was that the
keyterm linked to something in the cognitive biases branch of my Antinet
(address 2431/18). When I traveled to that card, I found a concept outlining
something called clustering illusion. Suddenly I recalled this concept that
refers to a cognitive fallacy by which humans see patterns in data—even
if the data is completely random. This tendency usually happens when the
data is composed of a small random sample.

As a result of this, in my section for cluster analysis, I included a disclaimer

for my future self: Before beginning any significant time investment in cluster
analysis, be wary of falling into the trap of clustering illusion (See ‘2431/18’).
In brief, I’ve created a link across two branches of knowledge that have very
important implications for each other.
564  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

These types of surprises occur frequently in the Antinet because the keyterms
and links are created deliberately. When you see a surprising occurrence (like
the shared term cluster which points to concepts which may contradict each
other), you pay closer attention to them. You appreciate the surprise more
and you use the surprise by creating relevant links between the two ideas.

If I were using a digital system, I believe it would have been less likely that I’d
have realized the same relationship between the two ideas. If I had searched
the term cluster, I’d likely have found myself bombarded with dozens, if not
hundreds, of notes containing the term cluster. My state of mind would have
been one of I want to find the file I’m looking for as quickly as possible, which is
not an explorer mindset exhibiting curiosity and pattern-seeking). I would
have quickly passed over the commonality of these two concepts because
they would have been crowded out by too much information.

HETEROGENOUS RELATIONS
Luhmann points out that the most fruitful types of surprises within the
Antinet happen by way of relating “heterogeneous things with each other.”
He holds that it’s more valuable to associate patterns between ideas that
otherwise would not be associated with one another.10

One interesting way to facilitate these heterogenous relations is to group ideas

around certain polarizing keyterms.

For instance, in my index I’ve created the keyterm Most, and some interesting
concepts have grown around it.

For example, there’s the idea stemming from life philosophy: Most Important
Variable for Success in Life. This keyterm entry points me to card 2460/2/0,
which contains an idea from the book How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis. The
idea centers on the concept that self-belief is the most important variable
for success in life and suggests that we lack self-belief because we do not

10  Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans.

Manfred Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  565

yet have confidence. One way to develop this confidence is to retrain your
mind through the use of self-affirmations, a (positive) form of self-deception.

Now, when I navigate to another keyterm relating to Most, I find the follow-
ing entry: Most Important Variable for Success in Science. Cardlink 2431/1/1
points out that avoiding self-deception is the key to success in science. Rich-
ard Feynman points out that, “The first principle is that you must not fool
yourself, and you’re the easiest person to fool.”

It seems we have an interesting paradox here. The key to success in life is

self-belief, which may involve self-deception. Yet the key to success in science
is avoiding self-deception. This creates an opportunity to explore this con-
flict in greater detail to determine how one can cultivate healthy self-belief,
without falling prey to the downsides of self-deception.

This is just one example of how heterogenous relations can emerge around
certain keyterms in an Antinet.

Heterogenous Relations by Way of Proximity

Another example of heterogenous relations happens naturally thanks to the
tree structure of the Antinet.

As you’ve learned, associations are a fundamental building block of human

memory. Yet, rather than liken associations to simply links between related
items, associations have an additional function: they create new entities alto-
gether. Some types of associations collide and create new ideas. In human
memory studies this is called a holistic association.11 For example, take the
following sequence of items: horse and house. When one thinks of those
items together, they may think of a new entity altogether: a barn. Essentially
the proximity of those two items creates a new holistic entity.

Luhmann would regard these associations as fruitful instances of surprise

and accident. They are the result of seemingly heterogenous ideas forming

11   Michael Jacob Kahana, Foundations of Human Memory. (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), 12.
566  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

around a certain area that, when viewed together as a whole, create a new
entity altogether. Ultimately, these heterogenous relations create a new form
of understanding that otherwise would not have existed.

Bisociation
Recall that Luhmann devised the Antinet because, in his words, he “wanted
to accumulate knowledge and open up a combination of possibilities.”12 Thus,
using heterogenous relations to effect bisociation—which refers to the simul-
taneous mental association of an idea or object across two fields that are not
normally regarded as related—Luhmann did in fact create combinations of
possibilities.13 Furthermore, he did this by first reducing the complexity of
books he read by extracting irresistible material. He then added back com-
plexity by way of bisociating the material using links. “In a way,” Luhmann
said, “the [Antinet Zettelkasten] is a reduction to build complexity.”14

In brief the Antinet is one big network which enables one to create biso-
ciations by way of linking ideas across different branches of knowledge.
As you’ve seen, this is something that can happen in several ways using an
Antinet, at the core of which is randomness, surprise, and accidents.

ACCIDENTS
Like randomness, accidents are a feature, not a bug. Accidents play a most
crucial part in advancing the evolution of organisms. Likewise, they play a
most crucial part in advancing thinking. Luhmann understood this as well.
“The role of accidents,” he wrote, “in the theory of science is not disputed. If
you employ evolutionary models, accidents assume a most important role.”15

12   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22. Emphasis
added.
13  “Definition of BISOCIATION,” accessed January 20, 2022, https://www.merriam-web-
ster.com/dictionary/bisociation; For a nice summary of the concept as found in Arthur
Koestler’s The Act of Creation , see: Maria Popova, “How Creativity in Humor, Art, and
Science Works: Arthur Koestler’s Theory of Bisociation,” The Marginalian (blog), May
20, 2013, https://www.brainpickings.org/2013/05/20/arthur-koestler-creativity-bisoci-
ation/; Koestler’s work is not without its critics and critiques. See also: Steven Pinker,
How the Mind Works, Norton pbk (New York: Norton, 2009), 549ff.
14   Niklas Luhmann, Niklas Luhmann Short Cuts (English Translation), 2002, 22.
15   Niklas Luhmann, “Communication with Noteboxes (Revised Edition),” trans. Manfred
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  567

How does one unleash the power of accidents? First, you must understand
what is meant by the term accident. We’re not trying to create needless acci-
dents. We’re trying to create useful accidents. Useful accidents are those
which are usually surprising in nature. In the section on surprises we explored
the types of accidents that are useful. Accidents that involve interesting
heterogenous relations and fascinating bisociations are the accidents we’re
aiming for with the Antinet.

One way the Antinet generates the accidents we’re looking for comes from
its analog nature: when surfing through the Antinet and shuffling through
cards, one increases the probability of useful accidents.

Some of the best advice from scholars and researchers focuses on this
act. While doing online research is faster, it misses out on the serendipity
of physical exploration. An excellent library encompasses such features.
It possesses journals, books, and librarians who are shockingly helpful and
more knowledgeable than we give them credit for. Accidents emerge from
“prowling the stacks” of books related to the field you’re interested in.16

The power of prowling the stacks of books also applies to notecards. The
power of sifting through notecards, and in turn, yielding fruitful accidents,
is something scholars have known for quite some time. This powerful fea-
ture of card indexes first became recognized by scholars in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. Scholars noted that Antinet systems, with their
structural decoupling of knowledge into individual notecards, ends up pro-
ducing “a substantial number of combinations and insights that otherwise
might not have existed.”17

Kuehn, https://daily.scottscheper.com/zettelkasten/.
16  Kate L. Turabian, Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations,:
Chicago Style for Students and Researchers, 9th edition (Chicago ; London: University
of Chicago Press, 2018), 31.
17  Alberto Cevolini, Storing Expansions: Openness and Closure in Secondary Memories
(Brill, 2016), 158.
568  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

MOVEMENT OVER MEDITATION

“I do not believe in coincidence. I believe that if you

keep moving, you expose yourself to a better chance of
accidents happening, some good and some bad.”

–Travis McGee, in A Purple Place for Dying18

Accidents don’t come solely from the unique tree structure of the Antinet,
however. One other thing is required: movement.

One of my mentors, Sir Gary Halbert, preached movement over meditation.

In essence, the more you move, the more success you have. The more you
create and learn from mistakes, the luckier you’ll get. Luhmann himself
was tirelessly curious. He kept moving, kept reading, and kept uncovering
useful accidents.

This flies in the face of the conventional and popular wisdom today. The
advice we hear centers on meditating and sitting under a tree. The advice
we hear is that stillness is key. Yet on the other end of the spectrum (literally)
we have people moving constantly. They’re the ones who are going to put
the human race on Mars.

Of course, it’s a balancing act (like everything). However, if you want to

create useful accidents with your Antinet, you need to keep moving. You
need to keep creating and learning.

Even if the knowledge you create isn’t useful immediately, there’s a good
chance it will be useful later on. During the writing of this book, I’ve used
material and notecards written from many years ago. I had no idea they
would be used for a project when I created them. It’s something you’ll
experience as well.

18   John D. MacDonald and Lee Child, A Purple Place for Dying: A Travis McGee Novel,
Reprint edition (Place of publication not identified: Random House Trade Paperbacks,
2013), 128.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  569

When Luhmann was working on a new publication he would document

and record how his thought process evolved.19 He would take on publi-
cation requests and work on articles that would later prove very useful in
other areas. Over the course of producing these developments, Luhmann’s
theories compounded and evolved. By moving, he created more material
which proved useful for other areas of his work. His movement to constantly
take on publication projects allowed him to create useful accidents which
compounded his actions. It created the rich material that would form his
“super theory” of society.

While accidents, and randomness are the key components we’re speaking of,
the question then becomes: in what spirit of mind does one best cultivate
useful accidents? That question is what we’ll answer next.

PLAYFULNESS, CURIOSITY,
AND TINKERING
Halfway through the month of June in 1749, all of Britain was buzzing with
excitement. Things were especially abuzz in Surrey County, which borders
London. The excitement revolved around one thing: a matchup between
two of Britain’s cricket clubs, the All England and the Surrey Cricket Clubs.
The cricket teams were viewed as the titans of those times. “The match
excited considerable interest and was attended by a very numerous body
of spectators,” wrote one who attended.20

The match between the two clubs was intense. The score was close; however
in a wild upset victory, Surrey came away with the win. The best player
in the match, Henry Venn, was exhausted. The other players on the team
looked up to Henry. He was bold, disciplined, resolute, passionate, and very
(very) intense.

19  Johannes Schmidt, “Niklas Luhmann’s Card Index: Thinking Tool, Communication

Partner, Publication Machine,” Forgetting Machines. Knowledge Management Evolution
in Early Modern Europe 53 (2016), 311.
20  John Venn, Annals of a Clerical Family: Being Some Account of the Family and
Descendants of William Venn, Vicar of Otterton, Devon, 1600-1621 (Macmillan and Com‑
pany, 1904), 70ff.
570  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

After Surrey came away with the victory Henry’s teammates crowded around
him. They gathered to celebrate the upset victory. Yet the excitement came
to a stop and things quickly settled down. The fans stopped celebrating and
fell quiet.

Everyone was looking at Henry whose face was red, as if he was angry.
He threw down his bat and declared, “Whoever wants a bat, then here! Take it.
I have no further occasion for it!”21

His teammates were shocked. Their hero was quitting on the spot! One of
his teammates bravely asked Henry why he was quitting, and Henry replied,
“Because I am to be ordained on Sunday.” Henry explained he was quitting
the game of cricket for God. He feared a member of his church remarking
to him, “Nice game yesterday, Reverend!”

Henry intended to be a man who was taken seriously. To his mind this
meant he must take life seriously, and this meant one thing: cutting out all
forms of play.

Sadly, what followed was all but fulfillment and respect for Henry. His health
quickly declined by “a sudden transition from a course of most violent
exercise to a life of comparative inactivity.”22 Yet Henry pushed through the
health issues and stuck with a strict regimen. He would wake up at five in
the morning and preach ceaselessly all day. This continued on until he had
a breakdown at age forty-nine. Henry burnt himself out and was relegated
to a small country parish where he lived for another twenty six years.

Two generations of protestant missionaries followed in their forebear’s foot-

steps. Both his son ( John) and his grandson (also named Henry) became
Anglican clergymen.

21   John Venn, Annals of a Clerical Family: Being Some Account of the Family and Descendants
of William Venn, Vicar of Otterton, Devon, 1600-1621 (Macmillan and Company, 1904), 71.
22   John Venn, Annals of a Clerical Family: Being Some Account of the Family and Descendants
of William Venn, Vicar of Otterton, Devon, 1600-1621 (Macmillan and Company, 1904), 71.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  571

Yet Henry’s physical and mental breakdown hung over the family. It was
an unspoken yet very present tension, a tension between work for God vs.
play (in the form of cricket).

This tension was present during the upbringing of Henry Venn’s great grand-
son, John Venn.

John was a bright young man. Despite his strict Anglican upbringing,
he became interested in mathematics and philosophy. In spite of his interests,
John gave in to the religious indoctrination and ended up following in his
family’s footsteps, becoming ordained as an Anglican priest in 1859.

Unlike his great grandfather, however, John didn’t wish to give up his other
interests in his life. He loved cricket and outdoor activities like mountain
climbing and he did not want to give his interest up as had his great grand-
father.23 Instead of giving up his interests in mathematics and philosophy,
John continued his studies, and, in 1883, he resigned from the clergy after
concluding that his religion was incompatible with his philosophical beliefs.

John continued to pursue life with a playful spirit. His passions ranged from
mathematics, probability theory, and philosophy, to tinkering with inventions
and machinery. He would go on to create the first cricket machine in history.
It bowled cricket balls and is said to have struck out the leading batsman of
the Australian cricket club four times in a row.24

Now, the reason you probably know John Venn stems from the following
diagram (see following page):

23   Patrick J. Hurley and Lori Watson, A Concise Introduction to Logic (Cengage Learning,
2016), 284.
24  “John Venn | Biography, Inventions and Facts,” accessed May 3, 2022, https://www.famous
inventors.org/john-venn.
572  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

The Venn Diagram

All of John Venn’s wide-ranging interests ironically led him to create a diagram
in symbolic logic. This diagram is widely used and bears his name to this day.

This breakthrough in symbolic logic was not unearthed in the same man-
ner John’s great grandfather operated. It was not unearthed through rigid
routine and workaholism. John was playful in spirit, he was a tinkerer, and
he was curious.

Those who love order and structure may at first have trouble adopting
the philosophy of the Antinet. In the land of binary, the world is perfectly
ordered. This (0), or not this (1) underlies the language of digital systems.
Binary logic makes life quite simple. But that’s not reality. There’s entropy
and chaos in reality.
 Randomness, Surprisesand Accidents  573

You must be willing to submit to randomness. You must be willing to submit

to the mess of knowledge development, and to adopt and appreciate the
value of randomness, embracing odd structures and surprises along the way.
It involves adopting a playful mindset when working with your knowledge.
Hopefully this story about John Venn will remind you of this.

To make sure I don’t forget the lesson of John Venn, I purchased a cricket
ball online which I keep in my office. Whenever I see it, I’m reminded to
adopt the playful tinkering mindset of John Venn. This is the spirit I believe
best suited for working with an Antinet. A playful, curious spirit.

In my YouTube videos I teach the Antinet from my office. Using my iPhone

camera, I navigate around and teach certain aspects. Some viewers have
commented, asking why there’s a cricket ball sitting around. Now you know
why. It’s a great reminder. Adopting playfulness, randomness, and curiosity
into your knowledge workflow is something one should not forget.

Now, as we end this book, I’d like to invite you to adopt this same spirit. Take
it with you into the world. The spirit of playfulness, randomness, and curiosity.

I had no idea I’d be ending this book with this seemingly random story of
John Venn. His story relates to the playful intellectual human spirit. This is
but another example of randomness and accidents being brought forth by
the Antinet. Quite frankly, it serves as a fitting end for such a book.

I wish you enjoyment in your journey. The journey of getting in touch with
that deep, internal voice inside of you. I wish you luck in your intellectual
pursuits and the things you will create (with the help of your Antinet).

Please keep in touch and share your own Antinet Zettelkasten journey with
me. You can keep in touch by visiting my website: https://scottscheper.com.

Stay crispy, my friend.

 AFTERWORD

What you have read in this book contains both everything and nothing
you need to know about building an Antinet Zettelkasten. That’s how you
know the material is true. I believe the most truthful knowledge resembles
that of a paradox. It simultaneously tells you everything and nothing about
the nature of something. It’s kinda like learning about Einstein’s theory of
relativity. It tells you everything and nothing about how the universe works.
It just is what it is.

What I’ve laid forth in this book is the theory, practice, and history of working
with the Antinet. I’ve also done my best to describe the more metaphysical
features of the system—the Antinet as a communication partner and second
mind. Interspersed between this is the science of human memory and the
science of knowledge.

However, in the end, the only right answer is: test.

To experience the power of the Antinet, you must experiment with it your-
self. You must commit to it. You must invest in it. Commit yourself to the

575
576  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

work. Commit yourself to the time and the energy required to build your
own second mind.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this book. I’ve had a wonderful time creating
it. Stewie and I have been through a lot together in the year we spent writing
it. We’ve been through several lives together. We have seen our personali-
ties change drastically throughout the process. We’ve been through many
rearrangements of my office here in downtown San Diego. We’ve been
through many different arrangements of my Antinet. During the writing of
this book I’ve gone from a single dude with one cat (Brodus); to a single
dude with two cats (Brodus and Fiona); to an engaged dude with two cats,
a soul-daughter, and a pig (Garth); to an engaged dude with two cats and
a soul-daughter (sorry, Garth). Throughout all phases of this journey, one
thing has been the same, actually two: first, I’ve continued to be a badass
(in my own mind), and second, Stewie has been by my side.

I hope you get to enjoy the fullness of creating and evolving your own thoughts
using an Antinet. If you do, please share your story and experiences in our Anti-
net Zettelkasten community on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/antinet/

Warm regards,

And always remember…

…to stay crispy, my friend.

Scott P. Scheper
Downtown San Diego, CA
Tuesday 10:12 am
 APPENDIX A: LUHMANNIAN TREE
STRUCTURE (ZETTELKASTEN I)

The following contains the luhmannian tree structure of his first

Zettelkasten. There are 108 top-level categories, which branch internally
from there. The list is translated into English and comes from the Niklas
Luhmann Archive.1

– 1: Unity and Unification of the Group in General

– 2: State as Idea
– 3: Legal Method in the Application of Constitutional and
International Law
– 4: Right of Veto
– 5: Control
– 6: Equality
– 7: The Value of Organization
– 8: The System as a Research Tool
– 9: State as an Organization in Principle
– 10: Organization as Imagination and as Reality
– 11: Individual/Community Problem
– 12: Organization and Law
– 13: Unification of Will
– 14: Politics
– 15: Structural Homogeneity
– 16: Sovereignty
– 17: Ideology
– 18: Political Party
– 19: Limits of Organization and Organizational Theory

1  “Inhaltsübersicht ZK II—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 31, 2022, https://

niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht.

577
578  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

– 20: Planning
– 21: Statesman
– 22: Exception
– 23: Formal Sociology (Relationship Theory)
– 24: Competition
– 25: Suggestion
– 26: Power
– 27: Constitution
– 28: The Nature of the Organization Fundamentally
– 29: Organization Theory: General and Methodical
– 30: Revolution
– 31: Terminology
– 32: Method
– 33: Theory / Practice
– 34: State of Emergency
– 35: National Territory
– 36: Government
– 37: Mediation / Mediator
– 38: Historical Foundation of the Theory
of the State as a Science
– 39: Identity
– 40: Welfare State
– 41: Majority Principle
– 42: Line
– 43: Coordination
– 44: Division of Labor
– 45: Authority
– 46: Discipline
– 47: Command
– 48: Centralization / Decentralization
– 49: Hierarchy
– 50: Representation
– 51: Adequacy of Organization
– 52: Organization and People
– 53: Masked Relationships
– 54: Legitimacy
Appendix A: Luhmannian Tree Structure (Zettelkasten I)  579

– 55: Technique
– 56: Organization and Size
– 57: Science
– 58: The Problem as a Research Category
– 59: Rewards as Performance Incentives and Other
Performance Drives
– 60: The Process of Decision-Making
– 61: Measurement of Social Performance / Of
Organizational Performance / Of
Government Performance
– 62: Role
– 63: Lot as a Decision-Making Mechanism
– 64: Probability
– 65: Bureaucracy
– 66: The “Spirit” of Institutions
– 67: Establishment of Organizations
– 68: Communication in the Organization
– 69: Integration
– 70: Informal Organization
– 71: Responsibility
– 72: Permission
– 73: State
– 74: The Post
– 75: Office
– 76: Causality
– 77: Concept of the World
– 78: Philosophical Concepts: History of Dogmas and
Intentions of Meaning
– 79: Conflicts and Their Solution
– 80: Balance
– 81: Status Naturalis
– 82: Sanctions
– 83: Performance Increase
– 84: Regulation (Rules of Human Behavior)
– 85: The Historical Conception of the State
– 86: Delegation
580  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

– 87: Legislation
– 88: Institutions
– 89: Separation of the State from the Public Order
of the Middle Ages
– 90: Success
– 91: Administrative Science, Administrative Reform
– 92: State Science Funding
– 93: Political Pedagogy
– 94: Political Science
– 95: Information
– 96: Poster
– 97: Promises
– 98: Separation of Powers
– 99: Collegiality
– 100: On the Religious Foundation of the Social Order
– 101: Art
– 102: Initiative
– 103: Modern Social Order
– 104: Constituency
– 105: Feedback
– 106: Installments (Advice)
– 107: Family
– 108: Advertisement
 APPENDIX B: LUHMANNIAN TREE
STRUCTURE (ZETTELKASTEN II)

The following contains the luhmannian tree structure of his sec-

ond Zettelkasten. There are 11 top-level categories, which branch internally
from there. The list is translated into English and comes from the Niklas
Luhmann Archive.1

– 1: Introduction to Modern Administrative Science

– 2: Basic Terms and Method
– 3: General Decision Theory
– 4: Office (Offices and Their Order)
– 5: Organization and Living Environment
– 6: Sovereignty / State
– 7: Single Terms, Single Problems
– 8: Economy
– 9: Ad Hoc Notes
– 10: Archaic Societies: Generalizable Main Features
– 11: Civilizations

1  “Inhaltsübersicht ZK II—Niklas Luhmann-Archiv,” accessed March 31, 2022, https://

niklas-luhmann-archiv.de/bestand/zettelkasten/inhaltsuebersicht.

581
 APPENDIX C: DIGITAL ANTINETS

Sometimes people contact me and write Scott, thank you! I finally under-
stand how the Zettelkasten is supposed to work! These reactions are typically
found in the YouTube comments on my videos. Yet every so often I get people
who follow up this praise with some excuse. They insist analog won’t work
for them. For instance, they complain about their bad handwriting. Or they
object to keeping a notebox due to their work environment.1 Naturally, they
follow this up with the question of How can I implement the Antinet digitally?

In brief: you can’t.

Well, you can’t without sacrificing various benefits, that is.

But…

If you put a gun to my head and told me to build a digital Antinet, here’s
what I would do:

First, I wouldn’t do it.

Now with that out of the way, we can move on to the second thing I’d do.

The second thing I would do would be to add a character limit to notes. I did
a rough count of the character space on 4 x 6 inch notecards (or the equiva-
lent, a6 paper). I estimate the character space to be roughly 825 characters.

Here’s one of my notecards, word-for-word:

1   I address these objections in the chapter on Analog.

583
584  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

When you strip away “contiguity” in the system, thus leaving

a pile of leaves, you dismantle the mind of the system. You
destroy the system’s memory and its unique way in under-
standing things. You’ve turned your communication partner
into a pile of leaves! See: ‘4212/2b5’

“Shared meaning” of items that are also located nearby one

another (forward associations, backward associations, and
nearby associations) “play a crucial role in the function of
human memory,” according to one scholar who specializes
in the field.

In other words, note the important distinction: it’s the stem-

links & branchlinks which play a crucial role in how human
memory works—not just remote links. Digital Zettelkastens
do not possess the first two.

(Kahana, 11)

Here’s a photo of it:

 Appendix C: Digital Antinets  585

This card comes out to 738 characters (excluding the card address). Also
there’s some extra room at the top.

Here’s one of Luhmann’s notecards, word-for-word:

Im Grunde führt also die Als-Struktur des Erkennens auf das

System. Denn etwas kann nur erkannt werden durch Hinweis
auf ein anderes, das wiederum in weiteren Zusammenhän-
gen bedeutsam ist. Und das Gewicht, das die Feststellung
von etwas als etwas hat, empfängt sie von diesen anderen
Zusammenhängen her, auf die sie verweist. Sobald solches
Feststellen begrifflich wird, wird es daher auch systematisch.

Vgl. auch Schlick, S. 62: “Das Erkenntnisurteil ist einen neue

Kombination von lauter alten Begriffen. Die letzteren kom-
men in zahllosen anderen Urteilen vor, von denen uns einige
(z.B. ihre Definitionen) schon vorher bekannt sein mussten;
sie bilden die Verbindungsglieder, durch die das Neue in
das grosse System der bekannten Urteile eingeordnet wird,
welches den Bestand unserer Erfahrungen

Here’s a picture of this card:

photo credit:
“Niklas Luhmann-
Archiv,” accessed
May 5, 2022, https://
niklas-luhmann-
archiv.de/bestand/
zettelkasten/zettel/
ZK_1_NB_8-5-1_V.

This comes out to 797 characters.

586  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Again, there’s some white space in both of these cards. Plus, I’m not count-
ing the card addresses. For these reasons, I think a character limit of 825 is
a good guesstimate.

If I were forced to build a digital Antinet, the third thing I’d do is this:
I’d disable editing and deleting. Once a note is created it should not be edited
or deleted. Yet, appending other ideas onto the note is fine. Such additions
can be in the form of adding text to any blank space. For example, adding
‘See Also’-cardlinks. This would be like a pop-up bubble seen when hovering
your mouse over an image. For instance, there are design collaboration
apps that allow designers to add pop-out text over areas of the design as a
comment bubble over the image.

The fourth thing I’d do if forced to build a digital Antinet relates to the direc-
tory structure. There would be three top level structures, corresponding to
the three boxes of an Antinet: (1) Bibliography Box, (2) Index Box, and (3)
Main Box). It would be look like this:

– Bib
* Adams, Scott—God’s Debris
* Adler, Mortimer—How to Read a Book
* Ahrens, Sönke—How to Take Smart Notes
* …
* Zlotnik, Gregorio—Memory: An Extended Definition
– Index
* bstraction
* Abundance
* Accounting
* …
* Zone of Genius
– Main
* 1000
* 1100
* 1100.1
* 1100.1.1
* 1100.1.1a
 Appendix C: Digital Antinets  587

* 1100.1.2
* …
* 5999

The fifth thing I would do if forced to build a digital Antinet would be to

eliminate the ability to copy and paste.

The sixth thing I would do would be to delete tags and backlinks from
the system.

The seventh thing I would do is delete the search box. This forces users to
deliberately create keyterms in the index. It also forces one to navigate the
Antinet in a more exploratory way.

The final thing I would do would be to delete the whole digital repository
and get back to creating knowledge the analog way!

Ironically, one of the individuals who, early on, claimed analog wasn’t an
option for them ended up changing their stance. They tried building out the
Antinet the right way (the analog way), and they’ve since come to see the light.

I believe the majority of those who claim that analog isn’t for them simply
possess false beliefs. If they would only test it first themselves, they’d come
to realize the advantages of analog.

Still, everyone’s different. I’m not some analog luddite. Try both for yourself.
If you decide analog doesn’t do it for you, then hopefully the guidelines I’ve
laid forth in this section will be of service to you.

Oh, and one last thing: don’t do digital.

 GLOSSARY

Analog Knowledge Development (“AKD”): A term for those who develop

knowledge using analog tools. Knowledge development refers to four phases:
(1) selecting sources of knowledge and the material within those sources;
(2) extracting interesting thoughts from books, podcasts, videos, and other
media; (3) creating notes that elaborate on the thoughts one extracts from
knowledge sources; (4) installing those thoughts into a long-term storage
structure so that the thoughts may evolve (the Antinet Zettelkasten being
the ultimate storage structure).

Antinet: A notebox containing four core properties (or principles): Analog,

Numeric-Alpha Card Addresses, a Tree Structure, and an Index. Together,
these four principles create a cybernetic thinking network. Variant terms:
Antinet Zettelkasten, Analog Zettelkasten, Luhmannian Zettelkasten.

Antinetter: Those who develop knowledge using the Antinet. These are
the crazy ones, the crazy few. Those who know, deep-down, that developing
their thoughts using analog tools (and specifically the Antinet Zettelkasten)
is the most magical, powerful, intimate way of creating meaningful output.

Bibliography Box (“Bib Box”): A box in the Antinet which stores all of
your bibcards (notes from the books you read). These bibcards are stored
alphabetically by author’s last name.

Bibliography Card (“Bibcard”): A 4 x 6 inch notecard oriented vertically.

This card is used to store observational thoughts with a corresponding page
number while reading (or engaging with other sources like podcasts, vid-
eos, lectures, etc.). Also useful as a bookmark. Variant terms: Staging Card,
Literature Notes.

589
590  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Bibliography Notes (“Bib Notes”): These are short, observational notes

from readings (or other media), which are placed on bibcards. They begin
with a page number, and then a very brief observation or thought. The bib
notes are then transformed into more in-depth notes (called main notes).

Bubble Graph Boiz: Digitally-obsessed PKM individuals who spend their

days majoring in the minor. These folks obsess over metadata tags, and
creating interesting templates for creating notes. The one thing they do
not prioritize is knowledge development. Nor do they prioritize output.
You can find these individuals hanging out in your favorite PKM software’s
forums. Variant terms: Workflow Warriors, Digital notetaking Junkies, Hotkey
Addicts, Plugin Perverts.

Card Address: The numeric-alpha notecard address affixed to the top-left

or top-right of each notecard (e.g., 4214/5a/1).

Cardlink: Within a notecard, when you reference another card address in

your Antinet, you’re effectively creating a cardlink. For instance, when you
find the following card address placed within the main area of a notecard
(not in the top-left or top-right), you’re creating a cardlink (e.g., 4214/14).
Cardlinks aren’t like digital links. They’re hard to create. Cardlinks are
hardlinks (this is a good thing)!

Collectives: A notecard with a list of keyterms, phrases or cardlinks to

other cards in the Antinet. Variant terms: Hubs, Hub Notes, Structured Notes,
Maps of Content.

External References (ExRefs): References to external sources outside of

the Antinet. For instance, a reference to a specific book and page number
(Scheper, Scott. Antinet Zettelkasten, p. 122). Variant Terms: External Links.

Hoplink Cards: Very simple cards that contain a brief snippet of text that
say something like: For more on x concept, see cardlink ‘xxxx/xx/x’. These
cards enable one to quickly hop to other relevant places in the Antinet.

Index: A box within the Antinet containing keyterms and corresponding

 Glossary  591

cardlinks in the Antinet. Variant Terms: Index Box, The Index, Register,
Keyword Register.

Indexcards: Notecards placed in the index, which enable you to

navigate to different areas of the Antinet (by way of cardlinks and a
human-readable keyterm).

Keyterm:A human-readable concept that points you to a numeric-alpha

address (cardlink) in the main box of your Antinet.

Keyterm Indexcards: A keyterm indexcard, as opposed to a list index-

card, is a dedicated card listing multiple links or external references for a
given keyterm. Whenever a keyterm entry in a list indexcard accumulates
multiple cardlinks, you’ll want to create a dedicated keyterm indexcard
for it.

List Indexcards: Indexcards filed alphabetically, each pertaining to one letter

of the alphabet (A, B, C, etc.). Under the assigned alphabetical character is
a list of keyterms that begin with the letter affixed to the card.

Main Box: The main part of your Antinet containing the main types of
notecards with numeric-alpha addresses affixed to them. These cards follow
the tree-like branching structure of the Antinet.

Maincards (“Cards”): The main types of notecards stored in your Antinet

(in the main box). Maincards are 4 x 6 inch (or a6) horizontal notecards
(preferentially white and blank). They contain a numeric-alpha card address
affixed to the top-left, or top-right, of the notecard. Maincards contain one
of the four types of main notes. Variant terms: Cards, Notecards.

Main Notes: The types of notes you’ll find on maincards. These four
note types are observation notes, excerpt notes, reformulation notes, and
reflection notes.

Neuroimprinting: The concept of more effectively stamping an idea onto

your mind for later recall done by way of writing by hand.
592  ANTINET ZETTELKASTEN

Personal Knowledge Management (“PKM”): A Personal Information

Storage System used by digital apps, which enables one to link documents
(of typically low-processed information). Otherwise known as a procras-
tinator’s wet dream.

Remotelinks: Say you’re writing a note within the card 4214/5a/2 and you
create a link to the card 1334/2a/4. What you have just created is a remotelink.
You’re linking to a remote area of a card in your tree of knowledge (your
Antinet). Remotelinks are essentially the full card address of another card
that reside in a more remote part of your Antinet (relative to the location
of the card referencing it).

“See Also” Cardlinks: Oftentimes, you don’t need to create a dedicated

hoplink card to navigate around your Antinet. You can just append relevant
cardlinks to already developed cards. This is where “See Also” Cardlinks
come in handy. These are snippets of text at the bottom of cards that say
something like, See also: “xxxx/xx/x.”

Wikilinks: Cheaply created digital links to other notes (usually markdown

files). Wikilinks are typically created with text enclosed in two square brackets
(e.g., [[I’m a Useless Link to a Digital Note]]).
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Special thanks to the following people who helped me make this

book a reality: First and foremost, thank you to my lovely fiancé, Arianna
Zabriskie-Scheper. The diagrams in this book were hand-drawn by her (you
can blame her for the illustrations containing the man with a man-bun).
My copyeditor, Wendy Smyer Yu (aka, “Wendy The Wonderful”). My writ-
ing coach, Ross Hartmann, who I worked with only briefly, yet he had a big
impact in getting me started on the actual writing process. Thank you to Chris
Aldrich, who reviewed the Preface, and provided other invaluable feedback.
Chris is an infinite well of knowledge when it comes to the history of analog
notetaking systems. He is also less of a knucklehead than Moe, Larry, and
Curly. Last, but not least, I would like to thank all of my Antinetters who
supported me (by way of my YouTube channel and Reddit and my private
email list). Also a very special thank you is deserved for my Antinetters who
wrote to me by physical mail very early on in this process. This book is for
those who are committed to growth and learning.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott p. scheper, aka “The Analog Knowledge Revolutionary,” is a writer,

copywriter and marketer residing in San Diego, California. When not com-
municating with his Antinet (“Stewie”), one may find Scott communicating
with an actual human being. Actually, probably not. One is more likely to
find Scott reading a book with a bibcard sticking out of it. Keep in touch
with Scott, and join his highly entertaining private email list, by visiting his
website: https://scottscheper.com.

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