Index cards in ebooks

Nabokov used them.

Wittgenstein did, too.

But only Niklas Luhmann made the humble index card his magnum opus. The German sociologist, who died 10 years ago, was 28 when he started to organise his first box of cards, or Zettelkasten. Marshall McLuhan declared the medium the message; Luhmann said: "I only think with my index card system." That system began simply enough: rather than being organised by theme, every index card carried a label that started with a number. If an entry got the number 57/12, for example, and took up more space than one card would allow, the second card would be 57/13. But if an observation within that first card led to a separate branch of thought, the index card would get the number 57/12a - which could run on to 57/12b.

Luhmann used the index cards to map out and develop ideas, thoughts and theories. He wound up with labels as long as 21/3d26g53 - the number of a card discussing his academic rival, Jurgen Habermas.The Zettelkasten reflected the structure of society, which, Luhmann argued, consists not of individuals or their actions, but of communication. Nor is modern society hierarchical, but divided into multiple, totally independent subsystems. The Zettelkasten allowed him to think about society in non-linear and non-hierarchical ways."We see ourselves as systems" he wrote - and the "we" referred to himself and his Zettelkasten. For Luhmann, the index card system was not only a work tool, but his "communication partner", as inspiring as any living person could be. It might sound an odd claim, but think of the surprises and delights our good friend Google coughs up every day and you'll realise that Luhmann was, in some ways, ahead of us all.

His disciples recognised this when they compared the Zettelkasten with the hypertext structure of the world wide web. It works more like a network than a book: no single text is more important than another, and the entries refer to each other by links. Easy enough, one would think, to transfer the Zettelkasten to the virtual world. In 1988, an interviewer asked Luhmann if he ever thought about that. "For my 10 metres of densely noted index cards", Luhmann answered, "computers came too late."

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