> [!infobox] <s class="aside-in"><em>mentioned in 1 topic, 8 evergreens</em></s> #### [[Communities are knowledge graphs]] When I first started looking for a [[note writing]] system, I did what anybody would do, I googled "Best note-taking apps 2021." Of course, I immediately stumbled upon an article that listed [[Notion]] as the highest and then [[Evernote]], [[Bear]], and [[Typora]], [^1] but then I scrolled to the bottom half of the list and saw an interesting app called [[Roam Research (software)|Roam Research]]. This is where I was first introduced to the concept of [[bi-directional links]] and the idea of a [[knowledge graph]]. I ended up using Roam for about a month, and during that time I started to get hooked into the [[knowledge management|personal knowledge management]] community. I started seeing articles that mentioned [[Zettelkasten]] or talked about how life changing "How to take smart notes" was. I said to myself, "I think I'm going to have to look into those." As I started to read more about [[Zettelkasten]], I saw [[Obsidian (software)|Obsidian]] pop up more and more, and eventually stumbled across [[Bryan Jenks]]' YouTube channel. This is where I really dove in, downloaded [[Obsidian (software)|Obsidian]] and started creating a [[second brain]]. [^1]: I remember spending three hours fiddling with Notion buttons to create a bullet-journal system (when I had never even used bullet journal) I started crafting my own system based off everything that I was reading, tweaking and expanding it to my liking, until I finally stumbled up [[Andy Matuschak's Evergreen Notes]]. As I started to read [[Andy Matuschak|Andy's]] [[philosophy]], I realized that this is exactly the system that I had been designing. At the time, I was a little taken aback to see everything that I had been dreaming up so accurately reflected in [[evergreen notes]], but I now realize that I had been *implicitly* learning Andy's system through the knowledge graph of the PKM community. All it took was one node that linked into the graph for me to start crawling the [[web of thought]]. I read about things upstream and downstream of [[evergreen notes]] and implicitly learned that concept. This is the power of the knowledge graph. It expands your learning by placing thoughts in context. [^2] You can use that context to find and learn the concepts directly, or you can let them implicitly make you smarter: [[Obsidian's graph is useful in the implicit and dynamic relations it can reveal]] [^2]: [[A second brain should mirror how we think]] ### <hr class="footnote"/> **Status**:: #EVER/GREEN *edited 7:35 AM - July 08, 2022* **Topics**:: [[community]], [[human experience]], [[knowledge management]]