i love love love this thinking and your diagrams. this reminds me of the community of 19th c women here in new england that I study, who exchanged letters which were also journal entries and also annotations of sermons or books. tiffany k wayne called their culture of shared learning "rhizomatic" and i love thinking about the subterranean-ness of this distributed knowledge sharing, and mutual education. i think a big part of it is the idea of annotating and commenting on texts yourself, synthesizing and questioning them like you describe, rather than just sharing them. i have been thinking about that with my impulse to "restack" on this platform without adding anything new; whether comments sections like this can be a move towards the kinds of learning you describe, or whether they distract from it because they don't accrue over time or develop relationships.
yes I love this! rhizomatic is a perfect descriptor! I think restacking with adding additional layers of your own thoughts to the curiosities and questions from the essay you are sharing is a perfect example of this commitment to shared learning. I love reading the comments and restacked notes too because I see the ripples of where these " idea seeds" that I have sown in these essays take root in other peoples imagination. Hence the title of my substack " Re-seeding Imaginations" Thank you for your contributions...
Thank you. I keep discovering new ways that I need to decolonize my brain, and other ways that my most natural way of processing has always resisted the colonization. You’ve given me more food for thought in this unraveling.
Much of this resonates with me as I am shifting my individual creative practices towards amplifying the collaborative/symbiotic elements with the individuals that I am blessed to work with currently.
I am starting to understand reciprocity as less of an exchange BETWEEN and more of a lens to see WITH those who I co-create.
My own 'idea culture' has absolutely been formed in isolation and detachment from others and reading this today I feel assured in moving towards a different state of ideation. Thank you!
Wow, such a gorgeously articulated musing! I've long thought about how curiosity forms & articulates our lived "ethics". Since I was a child also, reading has been a primary way that my heartspace capacity has opened ever-further & my gratitude for aliveness deepened. Reading as a practice offering so many possible ways of knowing and being into my conscious attention, un-making, re-making & re-membering me as a human. And writing being a practice that can develop our conscious awareness of our dependencies on/reciprocities with other human brains & cultures in the formation of our own. I am so delighted whenever I see an author making conscious use of footnotes or citations within their writing, the readerly/writerly/human thought and culture lineages/rhizomes being offered up like a sweet gift to readers. I think of marginalia within found books similarly! Ross Gay does this super playfully & beautifully, and wrote a gorgeous essay about the footnote I think you'd appreciate it a lot: https://lithub.com/ross-gay-in-praise-of-foot-end-etc-notes/
One question I have - are any of the tools you use for the PKM practice you mention here able to show information visually as rhizomatic? My final year of art school I was obsessed with trying to think through how to create a way to gather and/or present information rhizomatically, as it is really how my brain has always felt it is wired. So I'd love to know if any of the tools you're using can actually show information in this distributed, reciprocal way :-) !
YES! i use Obisidian, which has this amazing mycelia view where you can see the linkages between notes that have been linked as relating to each other. I will be teaching a workshop on my idea culture system soon, I will keep you posted if you are curious to learn more.
I loved this, Rowen. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I have heard a Skokomish teaching that they teach each of their children different lessons, because that way our children need one another, and share knowledge in a collective web.
Loved this! It makes me think of being dyslexic, as one of its strengths is the capacity to make connections between seemingly distinct and not overlapping ideas. It’s not a trait that is praised or rewarded much in the school system I grew up in (in England) but it’s a trait that leans itself to creativity and weaving. I’ve tried all sorts of note taking systems to capture all this, often ends up looking a bit like some of your diagrams so it’s lovely to see those, thank you!
Thank you, Rowan. I love how you described this beautiful way of looking at how engaging with each other and collaborative thought can be mutually beneficial to our growth process. Inspiring food for thought. Thank you.
“If we are to grow as a species beyond the violence of empire, we need to listen and learn alongside each other, and teach our children how to engage in collective and relational critical thinking which is the best antidote to the poison of propaganda“ — this has been a really driving force behind my work in the last several years — alongside a parralel realization that the traditional structures and cultures of formal education institutions are really designed and enforced for the opposite.
Another thing I’m curious about is how you and others go about the process of building a sort of back catalog. I keep feeling like I need several weeks to go back through things I’ve read, scribbled, wrote over the years and put them into my PKM so that I can make the connections more fully to what came into my awareness well before I started building.
i love love love this thinking and your diagrams. this reminds me of the community of 19th c women here in new england that I study, who exchanged letters which were also journal entries and also annotations of sermons or books. tiffany k wayne called their culture of shared learning "rhizomatic" and i love thinking about the subterranean-ness of this distributed knowledge sharing, and mutual education. i think a big part of it is the idea of annotating and commenting on texts yourself, synthesizing and questioning them like you describe, rather than just sharing them. i have been thinking about that with my impulse to "restack" on this platform without adding anything new; whether comments sections like this can be a move towards the kinds of learning you describe, or whether they distract from it because they don't accrue over time or develop relationships.
yes I love this! rhizomatic is a perfect descriptor! I think restacking with adding additional layers of your own thoughts to the curiosities and questions from the essay you are sharing is a perfect example of this commitment to shared learning. I love reading the comments and restacked notes too because I see the ripples of where these " idea seeds" that I have sown in these essays take root in other peoples imagination. Hence the title of my substack " Re-seeding Imaginations" Thank you for your contributions...
and for your teaching!!!
Thank you. I keep discovering new ways that I need to decolonize my brain, and other ways that my most natural way of processing has always resisted the colonization. You’ve given me more food for thought in this unraveling.
Much of this resonates with me as I am shifting my individual creative practices towards amplifying the collaborative/symbiotic elements with the individuals that I am blessed to work with currently.
I am starting to understand reciprocity as less of an exchange BETWEEN and more of a lens to see WITH those who I co-create.
My own 'idea culture' has absolutely been formed in isolation and detachment from others and reading this today I feel assured in moving towards a different state of ideation. Thank you!
Wow, such a gorgeously articulated musing! I've long thought about how curiosity forms & articulates our lived "ethics". Since I was a child also, reading has been a primary way that my heartspace capacity has opened ever-further & my gratitude for aliveness deepened. Reading as a practice offering so many possible ways of knowing and being into my conscious attention, un-making, re-making & re-membering me as a human. And writing being a practice that can develop our conscious awareness of our dependencies on/reciprocities with other human brains & cultures in the formation of our own. I am so delighted whenever I see an author making conscious use of footnotes or citations within their writing, the readerly/writerly/human thought and culture lineages/rhizomes being offered up like a sweet gift to readers. I think of marginalia within found books similarly! Ross Gay does this super playfully & beautifully, and wrote a gorgeous essay about the footnote I think you'd appreciate it a lot: https://lithub.com/ross-gay-in-praise-of-foot-end-etc-notes/
Thank you for this great essay from Ross, just read it today and took some of my own marginalia notes in response!
One question I have - are any of the tools you use for the PKM practice you mention here able to show information visually as rhizomatic? My final year of art school I was obsessed with trying to think through how to create a way to gather and/or present information rhizomatically, as it is really how my brain has always felt it is wired. So I'd love to know if any of the tools you're using can actually show information in this distributed, reciprocal way :-) !
YES! i use Obisidian, which has this amazing mycelia view where you can see the linkages between notes that have been linked as relating to each other. I will be teaching a workshop on my idea culture system soon, I will keep you posted if you are curious to learn more.
I loved this, Rowen. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I have heard a Skokomish teaching that they teach each of their children different lessons, because that way our children need one another, and share knowledge in a collective web.
Thank you for the words for this widening I’ve been feeling called to :)
Loved this! It makes me think of being dyslexic, as one of its strengths is the capacity to make connections between seemingly distinct and not overlapping ideas. It’s not a trait that is praised or rewarded much in the school system I grew up in (in England) but it’s a trait that leans itself to creativity and weaving. I’ve tried all sorts of note taking systems to capture all this, often ends up looking a bit like some of your diagrams so it’s lovely to see those, thank you!
Thank you, Rowan. I love how you described this beautiful way of looking at how engaging with each other and collaborative thought can be mutually beneficial to our growth process. Inspiring food for thought. Thank you.
Well... Welcome to the world of connectivism and community of practice. 🤗
“If we are to grow as a species beyond the violence of empire, we need to listen and learn alongside each other, and teach our children how to engage in collective and relational critical thinking which is the best antidote to the poison of propaganda“ — this has been a really driving force behind my work in the last several years — alongside a parralel realization that the traditional structures and cultures of formal education institutions are really designed and enforced for the opposite.
Another thing I’m curious about is how you and others go about the process of building a sort of back catalog. I keep feeling like I need several weeks to go back through things I’ve read, scribbled, wrote over the years and put them into my PKM so that I can make the connections more fully to what came into my awareness well before I started building.