Documenting and Documents

• Many of my thoughts about the deep impact, versatility and ubiquity of documents are formed from the 2025 Are.na Annual on Documents (link). Some of the key concepts I took away from here are:
  • The diverse formats that documents or quasi-documents can take (writings, online recordings, stones, objects of superstition, 
  • The various forms of documents distinguished by the process and context of creation (number of writers and their relation to one another, intended audience like a diary or public address or an immortal etching for anonymous future audiences)
  • How in spite of the potentially narrow intention of a document, the document often captures a broader context about the world where it was created and the world, the document has lived through (eg: via amendments, redactions, degradations), and the state of the author (eg: writings of a new mother)
  • Documentation is a fundamentally reductive to the encompassing reality it refers to (but so is much of perception in general)
  • How documents can be effective in communicating even though using non-standard shapes, symbols (shapes with a non-verbal meaning) and lexigraphs (shapes with a verbal meaning)
  • Extending the above, how spacing and layout interact with the content to influence the experience received from a document
  • How the medium of a document can also feed into the message of the document. For example, the permanence.
  • How exists in each of us is the potential of documents, and how the set of unique documents we have the potential to produce based on our background and experiences is a way to frame our own identity
  • The feedback loops that documents provide in terms of shaping our experiences, and influencing us to share or create experiences in others. Similarly, how the medium of documents influences documents' capacity to do this (eg: shareable digital media vs. books)
  • How documents can be artfully crafted to convey multiple meanings to multiple audiences by leveraging how symbols take on multiple meanings over time
• As a student I would take notes and rarely revisit them. That is not to say I wouldn't have needed to if I hadn't written the notes in the first place. On talking to my peers and professors, I found that this experience was shared - the act of writing itself was the main way to retain information.
• The act of creating documents benefits the writer by forcing them to make a collection of intentional decisions. The writer must:
  
  • Serialize their thoughts into a certain order
  • Localize and position thoughts. The writer must decide the distance between every related contained concept
  • Draw explicit connections and associations between thoughts and points
  • Deciding on an overall format to represent the information (ie: usage of renderings, charts, tables, lists, etc.)
  • Decide what information to include or exclude
  • Select what background context information is needed for the intended audience
  • Decide what concepts or points would benefit from more explanation
  • Apply appropriate evidence to support the claims being made to the point that the audience will accept it
  • Be aware of the points that are implicit within the document
• The above causes the writer to generally become more closely engaged with the subject of their writing and their audience. In addition to this, as writing introduces these requirement to the writer, their response in turn influences the writer's perspect on the subject as well. Perhaps they reconsider the strengths of some of the axioms they held, or perhaps they identify gaps they need to fill with more research. Ultimately all this leads to better thinking on the subject.
• It is mostly on the role of the writer to create an experience for the reader. But it is also helpful when the reader is actively aware of all of the above