the modern common book

Wildenhaus’s description has stayed with me because it reflects how the best software products aren’t just assemblages of functionality ,exposed by particular formal elements (links, buttons, icons, menus). Rather, they organize and shape how you think, and they create or sustain a particular lifestyle:

• How you think: In 1985, the writer and critic

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Look, my commonplace book is easily justified. I write and speak about things for a living. I need this resource. But so do you. You write papers, memos, emails, notes to friends, birthday cards, give advice, have conversations at dinner, console loved ones, tell someone special how you feel about them. All these are opportunities to use the wisdom... See more

Without the right tools, our minds are hopelessly leaky.

Too often, we think of notebooks as a way-station: a necessary stop en-route to the perfected, polished work of art. But what if the notebook is the work of art? What if the process of taking notes is the point?

“Research is a ceremony for building closer relationship with an idea” -Shawn Wilson

Research as leisure activity is directed by passions and instincts . It’s fundamentally very personal: What are you interested in now ? It’s fine, and maybe even better, if the topic isn’t explicitly intellectual or academic in nature. And if one topic leads you to another topic that seems totally unrelated, that’s something to get excited about—no... See more

Concretely: researchers need to do a literature review that is simultaneously comprehensive and specific, that helps situate them in existing bodies of knowledge.

Research begins with a desire to ask and answer questions, thereby contributing to the greater sum of human knowledge and culture .