Just processing notes and blog posts has clarified some of my recent interests. In neuroscience, it’s issues of mapping, perceptual decisions and genetic influence on cognition. Then there’s fitness and workflow and some tech news discussion.
One of the functions this casual blogging has is providing a way for me to write in short form about some of the big ideas I have in the ODB manuscript. I spent some time editing the section on chaos, complexity and emergence. The subject is top of mind right now so I’ve been tending to link to related stories on the net. But I’m hoping that my brief descriptions here help to clarify my thinking and help the presentation I’m putting in the manuscript.
I’ve also been dipping into Twitter conversations a bit more often. Since Dave Rogers says it’s the Town Square of the internet. It seems to be a more comfortable place to be over the last few months.
If I can’t describe concepts of ecology and systems here or on twitter in a few lines, I doubt I’ll do much better in the long form manuscript. This clarifying of understanding by teaching goes back to the ancient world. This is often attributed to physicist Richard Feynman but Feynman actually described learning by synthesizing the essentials of subject in a notebook rather than reading a textbook. This is closer to Zettelkasten concept of synthesis than blogging to understanding. Hence, Zettelblogging to capture both the synthesis and the teaching.
