Subscribe to Solo Salon to receive new posts directly to your inbox.
Over 100 subscribers
There are several clusters of active drafts and nascent theories taking form within the zettelkasten.
One cluster of topics has to do with developing an integrated and multi-disciplinary praxis of organizational design, spanning the following topics: active inference applied to organization design ([[*OUTLINE An Organizational Theory of Active Inference]]); the epistemic paradigm of theoretical governance. ([[*OUTLINE Theoretical and Applied Governance]]); Machiavelli and "micropolitics" applied to org design ([[*OUTLINE Micropolitics and Organizational Design]]); conceptual frameworks for public organizational infrastructure ([[*OUTLINE Multipolar Extitution Design]]), sociocracy and daoism in org design ([[Wu Gwei, or Going with the Flow of Governance]]), and how much of the foregoing can be framed within the domain of 'bureaumancy' ([[*OUTLINE Intimations around Bureaumancy]]).
A second emerging cluster has to do with identifying theoretical politico-economic orders which substantively reconcile certain essential virtues of the major competing world-orders of the twentieth century ([[Prospectus of the Reconciliation of Individual Liberty and Collective Welfare]]). From this theoretical work, there is also the matter of translating theory into more practical discourse ([[Recuperate the Vanguard]]).
A third emerging cluster has to do with technical matters around how smart contracts can be used for organization design ([[What Are Onchain Organizations?]]; [[Pre-Constitutional Governance]]), public goods funding ([[Progressive Public Goods Funding]]), impact assessment ([[*OUTLINE Methodology for Assessing Legal Engineering Impact]]), and various other mechanisms and processes which could factor into a new programmatic economic order. This front of inquiry will hopefully inform a technical praxis around private-sector welfare programs, and, more generally, how a new "programmatically liberal" economic order may be established
Finally, a fourth emerging cluster has to do with personal knowledge management practices, how the zettelkasten may prove to be a useful vehicle for "ideonomy" ([[*OUTLINE Zettelkasten and Ideonomy]]); a general method for topic-mapping, having to do with my previous efforts around 'nootopology'; methodology around self-guided study and research, picking up from my previous 'Modular Generalist Program' methodology. This topic cluster is more "meta" than the others insofar as it regards the methods by which such clusters are formulated, processed, and published. This "ideation stack" also involves methodological considerations around rhetorical and discursive style ([[A Primer on Auto-Discourse]]).
As of now, my current thinking around ideation/drafting/publishing methodology involves the following procedures:
Compile notes within the zettelkasten, using intuitive (i.e. non-complicated) but semantically rich (i.e. conducive to novel trans-contextualization of ideas) formatting practices, still a work in progress. These notes can be spontaneous ideas, or reflections on passages from texts (reference texts are also stored as markdown files in the zettelkasten).
Cluster notes to active drafts and outlines. By including internal links to outlines, within relevant notes, those outline files accrue backlinks, which can help drive ideation and drafting efforts. The exact working procedure for drafting needs to be better defined. Ideally, I can draft writings within Obsidian, but still have these working drafts surface in a way conducive to feedback. I'd prefer to not keep using Google Docs, but the comments and suggestions features there are simply too useful to resist at present.
Once draft is considered ready to publish, I copy the markdown content and paste it into a new post draft on my Paragraph account, where I publish it as a newsletter. Here, it also gets backed up to Arweave. Then, I take the Arweave hash and include it in the frontmatter of the markdown file in the zettelkasten. Ideally this process can be streamlined further, but at present it is not a serious blocker
In parallel to this notetaking, clustering, drafting and publishing process, I also aim to more regularly publish logs like this, which serve multiple purposes. Firstly, they serve as an opportunity to "think through writing", i.e. to work through ideas and topics by actively writing about them. By framing this content as a log, rather than as a draft for an eventual publication, there may be discerned a beneficial psychological effect of disinhibition, which may prove conducive to active sensemaking and iteration of discourse. Secondly, by publishing these logs as unlisted public posts on Paragraph, that enables me to establish public record of provenance of these ideas. Thirdly, by virtue of these logs being public, I can get feedback from others. Because of the casual nature of these logs, i.e. that they aren't expected to be formally polished, this feedback may hopefully prove to focus more on substance than form, i.e. that my peers may focus their feedback on what I am writing in these logs, rather than how I am writing it. The feedback on how pertains more to the polished drafts.
