In Obsidian, the local graph has real uses, but the global one is mostly to see structure in your notes and look cool on social media.
I was researching and prototyping a graph like Obsidian's before Obsidian came out, based on the ideas in "how to take smart notes"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6yUA46ek6M
I believe the direction of UI I was exploring there has more than what graphs currently have, although I didn't have the time to build it out and I saw that the site has been offline for a while.
It was a working tool though.
I don’t personally use Zettelkasten but I can see how it benefits from the visualization — the system itself is basically building a graph (cards are nodes and links are edges), it makes sense to have a tool that lets you work with it visually.
It’s a neat demo.
Suppose you've been collecting thousands of notes from meetings, feedback from colleagues or code-reviews, "insights" and tips from you wife over the years. Aren't you curious what this KB contains and how it has evolved over time?
So, shortly it is a debug tool for your second brain.
Can you give a more specific example of what you have found in this data? I already know what KB contains and how it evolved — I was the one who put things into it, after all.
Just to clarify — I am not being snarky or criticizing your project, I am genuinely curious. I like data visualization.
P.s. Also, as an unrelated tangent, please feel free to ignore it — why did you put a hypothetical wife’s insights into quotation marks?
Anyway, I'm just curious about what contained in my Obsidian and gbrain (mostly the latter one).