Tables

A great deal of knowledge is spreadsheet-shaped: inventories, catalogs, registries, lists of works, people’s roles, holdings, events. Note-taking tools can’t do much with it. The Networker treats it as a first-class citizen.

You can import an existing spreadsheet or build a table in place. You can edit the table as you are used to. The difference from an ordinary spreadsheet is that cells are not inert text: a cell naming something becomes a reference to that topic. Columns can carry meaning — this column holds alternative names, that one holds broader categories, that one holds comments or web links — so a table you already maintain becomes a structured contribution to the map, not a dead grid. You can reconfigure the way columns behave at any time.

Rename a topic once and every table that mentions it follows. Edit a cell and you decide whether you’re renaming the thing itself or pointing the cell at a different thing. Your tables stop being isolated files and start answering questions together.