Central tension

In college (which was before the Internet was readily accessible; before the Web was invented) was when I first encountered true information and opportunity overload. In hindsight, there really should have been a class about how that’s a real thing, and ways that one should embrace it. Not fight it. Not try to control it… but ways to embrace it.

The tradition of the commonplace book contains a central tension between order and chaos, between the desire for methodical arrangement, and the desire for surprising new links of association. The historian Robert Darnton describes this tangled mix of writing and reading […]

~ Steven Johnson from, https://stevenberlinjohnson.com/the-glass-box-and-the-commonplace-book-639b16c4f3bb

slip:4usete4.

The point that it’s the tension that feels uncomfortable is the key that unlocked for me. Yes, there’s tension from all the complexity and voluminous information. That’s a feature to be used and leveraged, not a problem to be resolved.

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