Systemic Sublime: on note-taking, connections, and finding appreciation for my kitchen taps 🚰

I've always liked connections. My outlet for this for the past 5.5 years has been a networked note-taking app. I've experienced what is apparently called the "network mindset shift", where I understand that everything is connected and I view the world as complex webs of relationships. I'm fully convinced of this and I think I always have been, ever since my Grandma told me about the Lincoln-Kennedy connections and I printed out a list of them to carry with me like it was gold. Connections are gold, urban legend or not.

But anyway, back to note-taking. I think using a networked note-taking app was the key to learning how to actually deal with the overwhelm that comes with this idea that everything is connected. These apps give connections a home; all I have to do is write them down. I see life as a journey of uncovering connections, and I expect my note-taking habit will capture a lifetime of them. In that way, my notes are artefacts of an ongoing process of uncovering connections, and along the way it shows me how to make sense of the world and of myself. But I uncovered a new angle to this recently when reading How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra. I'll admit that I have barely paid infrastructure a second thought in my life, except for marvelling at how on earth Frankfurt Airport works. This book gently showed me how to see infrastructure, and I now have an emotional connection to the kitchen tap and many thoughts about note-taking as personal infrastructure, which I want to discuss today.

This book taught me that we can define infrastructure by that which we take for granted, which deepened my gratitude for these systems that allow me to live my life. It also taught me that infrastructure gives people agency. For example, I can choose what to do with my time (read and take notes!) rather than having to think about fetching clean water. When problems arise with my house (and believe me they do), I can rely on the telephone network to contact a tradesperson, who can drive to my house on well maintained roads. I can work with my colleagues in Germany over the internet with no effort at all. Infrastructure lets me take all this for granted, which was a huge lesson for me. I feel both humbled and empowered by it.

Whilst the book was generally fantastic, it introduced to me one specific concept that has not left my mind since, that of 'systemic sublime'. First of all, I think the phrasing is delicious, but second of all the implications this has had on my thought-process are wonderful because it named something I’d long felt but lacked the words for, and doing so within the context of infrastructure set off all sorts of thinking.

Let's start with what it is. Chachra found the term in Tim Carmody's Every Cup of Coffee Is a Spectacle of Logistics, a short article talking about two other articles (connections! rabbit holes!) whose message is about how things arrive in our hands, the journeys they go on to get there, and how interesting that process is when you take a step back. Carmody names that concept the 'systemic sublime'.

Chachra says she feels this looking at airport codes or light switches, and she links it (more connections!) to Helen Macdonald's concept of the "green blur" where in the natural environment you get a "giddying glimpse into the inhuman systems of the world that operate on scales too small and too large and too complex for us to apprehend". This comparison helped me, and it also made me think of my note-taking app. I realise it’s infrastructural systems that make connection possible, both in real life and in Capacities (my networked note-taking app).

I think each backlink is a tiny peek at the complexity of an infrastructural system working around you. The connections between all our notes are far too complex to hold in our heads, hence why we use apps to externalise things. The backlinks (and unlinked mentions) serve relevant connections to us on a platter without having to think about all other backlinks among all other notes. To me this is akin to turning only my kitchen tap on and not needing to think about how all my other taps will behave, let alone the magic behind the scenes that both delivers fresh water and removes waste water. I simply don't need to think about it, in the same way I don't need to think about any other backlinks when reviewing a note, just the ones that are neatly presented there for me. I don’t even have to think about collecting the backlinks, I just have to open a note.

But from all l've read around this now, it’s not just the existence of complex systems, but the act of marvelling at their complexity. I thought about that around my note-taking app too. When do I marvel? When do I feel the most? It's when connections I had totally forgotten about or never even noticed are resurfaced in the backlinks or mentions. Again, the infrastructure of a note-taking app has been working for me to manage that complexity and it's delivered a gift. Perhaps this is why people like graph view too, it’s a representation of some of the complexity. These are two core parts of a networked note-taking app; they’re what got me hooked on networked note-taking back in the day and now it is my job to help others benefit from it, and I’d like to help people enjoy it too.

In general, I find the concept of offloading complexity to systems very powerful. Infrastructural systems do it on a collective and social basis (power, water, communication networks), but we can do it on a personal level too. For example Capacities gives me a place to put information and to connect it, meaning I don't need to store it in my head. By freeing up brain space from things I don't have to do, I can shift to think about things I get to do, like writing posts like this. Thanks to public infrastructure that I never have to think about (unless it goes wrong, another great point from the book), I get to write a post like this with a lamp on in my warm living room because the UK gets dark and cold at 4.30pm in October. Either way, I find it thrilling to see peeks of the complexity visible in our every day but that is managed through systems.

This thinking has set me off on many tangents too (connections!). For example, we talk about tools for thought often, but what about infrastructural systems for thought? It’s much less punchy phrasing but I think there’s something in there. If you’d be interested in reading more about that do let me know and I’ll try to pull a post together. Regardless of where I take my thinking next, I wanted to share the concept of the systemic sublime. I think it’s a great framing for gratitude, be it in Capacities or when I’m stood at my kitchen sink. 🚰

Sources

How Infrastructure Works - Deb Chachra.

You can see the paragraph about green blur from Helen Macdonald here, an excerpt from Vesper Flights

Impact Networks - David Ehrlichman

You can also read about the network mindset shift in Ehrlichman’s Medium article too.

Every cup of coffee is a spectacle of logistics

Note

Personal infrastructure is already a term in use, there’s a popular article by Stephen Wolfram and my favourite is a map of personal infrastructure here. I can’t imagine how long this must have taken. Enjoy the rabbit hole if you’re intrigued by this concept!