
How the Index Card Cataloged the World - Hooke
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/how-the-index-card-catalogued-the-world/547271/?single_page=true
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mfichman
What's fascinating to me is that index cards are a kind of spiritual
predecessor to modern database systems and computers - perhaps even more
closely related than counting devices like the abacus. Richard Feynman touches
on this in one of his lectures [1] that's been linked many times on HN.

The theory of information and computing seems pretty fundamental, and not
necessarily tied to what we typically think of as a computer, with CPUs, RAM,
SSDs, etc. In a way, a card catalog full of index cards and run by a bunch of
people is a computer too. Maybe this isn't an incredible revelation, but it's
still interesting to think about.

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EKWGGDXe5MA)

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tumba
For anyone interested in index card systems, the idiosyncratic method of
Niklas Luhmann [0] is a fascinating example. Many additional interesting
opinions on notetaking and modern database translations of classic note taking
ideas maybe found on the website of the translator, Manfred Kuehn [1].

Another interesting and radically less complex example that I have personally
found useful is the Pile of Index Cards system. [2]

    
    
      [0] http://luhmann.surge.sh/communicating-with-slip-boxes
    
      [1] http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkasten.html
    
      [2] http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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markvdb
The most impressive use of the index card is probably the Mundaneum:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundaneum)
.

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sn41
I am a fan of index cards, and only recently was thinking of buying a deck to
replace my current GTD organizer.

I have heard that Vladimir Nabokov used to write his works on index cards. The
Wikipedia article on him mentions this.

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Sukotto
You might like the "Hipster PDA" then:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_PDA)

