Why Obsidian
The Obsidian Manifesto
Documentation
Obsidian is a counter-culture movement.
File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.
File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data. - Steph Ango, Obsidian Founder
https://stephango.com/file-over-app
Content is the Constant
When I had worked at Walt Disney Imagineering, I attended a talk where the presenter went through the history of how stories get told. “In the end, the stories stay the same, but the means in which we deliver it change” She said. This fundamental truth becomes easy to notice when you start looking around.
Own your content or risk losing it
With cloud based applications that offer unparalleled convenience, it is easy to forget that there existed a time where those apps didn’t exist. Sometimes, it seems like the transition to cloud is the only way forward. However, the app is only there to facilitate the creation of what is truly valuable; The work that you put into it.
If the work has value, shouldn't it also be fluid? In a possible future where the servers that run the cloud services stop being maintained, would it be possible to save the effort that was put in?
Remembering everything
Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte discusses the idea that a second brain could help us remember better and sharpen our thinking.
CODE is a workflow to organize and create valuable insights
graph LR Capture --> Organize --> Distill --> Express
PARA is an organization method to capture long/short term info
graph TB Projects Areas Resources Archive