Was Niklas Luhmann lonely?

Why on earth does someone want to structure his note-taking process so that he could have a conversation partner?

It's a fair question.

So, I read through his own essay, "Communicating with Slip Boxes", written 26 years into his 2-books-a-year career, and here's what I found.

The focus of his Zettelkasten was to Surprise him.

While he initially built his Zettelkasten as a way to retrieve information, he became more interested in how ideas can be re-combined to create new ideas.

Here's how a "conversation" might go.

1. You're thinking of writing about the topic of abstraction.

2. You find the word abstraction in the index.

3. It leads you to a sequence of 5 notes about the topic.

4. No surprise here.

5. You notice a linked example from S. Ahren you've forgotten about.

6. You follow it, and the note reminds you that if the story Romeo and Juliet touches us, it is likely not because you can relate to their family dynamics.

7. And that's when you notice a tag art_abstraction and followed it.

8. You're pleasantly surprised.

9. You found an image you didn't initially think of when starting this conversation.

It's the perfect visual example of abstraction. (See it below).