What have note-taking PKMs accomplished, really?

I'm somebody who writes a lot—half a million words and 200 blog posts in the past 8 months. I'm also someone with an unrelenting curiosity to better understand our world. Beyond that, I also graduated with a degree in English literature with honours, with a 3.8 GPA. So, it should be no surprise I've done extensive research on how best to do research, which resulted in me diving into the world of personal knowledge management systems. These are the systems and methods of keeping track and sorting the notes we take, along with any other writing we do. PKMs have existed for many decades (this paper is from 1999), and digital notetaking apps such as Evernote have as well. But if you know what I'm talking about, you probably associate the idea with the application Obsidian. Obsidian has been out for six years now—has there been an increase in public-facing understanding and knowledge? I think it's safe to say that, while there have always been courses and lessons on productivity people…