Steven Johnson on the Tumblr of the enlightenment era:

In its most customary form, “commonplacing,” as it was called, involved transcribing interesting or inspirational passages from one’s reading, assembling a personalized encyclopedia of quotations. It was a kind of solitary version of the original web logs: an archive of interesting tidbits that one encountered during one’s textual browsing. The great minds of the period—Milton, Bacon, Locke—were zealous believers in the memory-enhancing powers of the commonplace book.

My favorite characteristic of Johnson’s writing and speaking is his ability to reach back into history for some much needed perspective. Great post. Read it with Instapaper.