Rethinking PKM and Newsletters

Just two things to think about today. What has the PKM/Zettelkasten movement produced? Excellent article questioning what the PKM movement and tools have produced. This point struck me hard. There's a whole subgenre of books about PKM and Zettelkasten, catalogued in this Obsidian forum thread. Ahrens, Forte, Kadavy, Scheper, and others, each producing a book whose primary subject is how to take notes, rather than a book that uses notes to say something new or useful about the world. Tiago Forte claims over 20,000 people have taken his course and 100,000+ copies of his book have sold. This is the actual documented output of the "Second Brain" movement: a course business, not a body of external work produced using the method. I intended to write a book, and keep not getting around to it. I had some courses on Obsidian and taking notes, so I guess I'd have to say that most of what my notes in Obsidian produced, were more notes about PKM and Obsidian not new interesting thoughts about the…