In Defense of Obsidian: Why 'What Has PKM Accomplished?' Is the Wrong Question

This is a point-by-point rebuttal to Brennan Kenneth Brown’s essay questioning whether note-taking and personal knowledge management (PKM) tools have produced any real gain in understanding. The author’s central objection is that Brown frames the debate around what a single application ‘contributes’ to the world, which conflates a tool with its output. Emacs and vim never advanced public knowledge on their own either — they simply let people write code, papers, and books. The value comes from what users build, not from the software itself.

The author accuses Brown of misrepresenting Obsidian, attributing claims of ‘future-proofing,’ a ‘higher-brow purpose,’ and ‘epistemological value’ that the vendor’s own page never actually makes. Obsidian’s stated pitch is far more modest: plain-text Markdown files living on your own file system, which you can back up with Dropbox, version with Git, or encrypt as you see fit — a flexible foundation rather than an opinionated product. The real target, the author suggests, is Obsidian’s overheated fan ecosystem; Brown is judging the tool by its users rather than its design, and overstating a personal wiki (a concept dating to Ward Cunningham’s 1994 original) as a ‘complex, robust system.’

The piece then turns to the wider PKM field — PARA, Zettelkasten, GTD, Johnny Decimal, Commonplace Books — and dismantles the four questions Brown poses to evaluate them, arguing they conflate personal note-keeping with meaningful academic contribution and lean on a romanticized ‘genius’ myth around Niklas Luhmann’s Zettelkasten. The significance is less technical than cultural: it captures a recurring argument about whether productivity systems ever deliver on their promises, or whether the discourse around them has simply outgrown the humble tools underneath.