(2023-12-14) Rogers Zibaldoni

Dave Rogers Zibaldoni. I read Chapter 4 in The Notebook, by Roland Allen, yesterday and it was fascinating. The preceding chapters were great too, but the explosion of "note-taking" in Florence (and seemingly only Florence) in the 14th and 15th centuries was amazing. All because of paper.

Zibaldoni is one of the three genres of notebooks in the chapter called, Ricordi, Ricordanzi, Zibaldoni. It's kind of like an "everything box," recording things like lists, quotations, recipes, events, drawings, devotions, expenses, well, everything.

We know a lot about Florentine Italy because of these notetakers and their notebooks, because so many of them have survived

Western civilization has continued in an unbroken line since the Renaissance. It's very unclear, perhaps unlikely, that it will continue to do so. So I wonder what future historians, centuries hence, might infer about our note taking practices, so many of which occur in media probably less durable and definitely less accessible than paper.