Taking ‘smart’ notes: warnings from history

Ryan Kemp Since the COVID pandemic, new note-taking applications have emerged inspired by the Zettelkasten system of the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. This post juxtaposes the promise of such applications with the lessons academics should draw from the more complex history concerning how scholars have mastered and exploited the information at their disposal. A note-taking app would seem an unlikely focus for a cult. Yet for #RoamCult, academics among them, Roam Research, a ‘note-taking ...