I'm dismayed they didn't get in touch with us at http://73primenumbers.com/ for a quote!
Paper is the real 'killer app'
161–170 of 346 posts
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only issue is that Ctrl+F doesn't work properly on paper, neither within a single newspaper, not across last year's newspapers.
I think I got a solution - every article is accompanied by a QR code that you can scan to open a searchable version of the exact same text. Just a couple of seconds away and you don't lose the papery-feel either.
We could provide a device -- say, in a nice friendly shape like a cat -- that can read these codes and open up the relevant text on their PC or iPad or whatever! What could possibly go wrong?
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#163Every now and then, it seems a thread of luddism creeps through the geek psyche - and here we see it again. For all the benefits being talked up by the authors and the posters here, a few things are being overlooked:
* Paper isn't searchable. Say whatever you want about how it lets you clear your mind, but what use is all this information you're taking down if you can't easily locate it later?
* Paper media doesn't have adblock. If you want to talk about distraction...
* Paper media can't be reformatted to make the fine print less fine, or to fix an awful font choice or layout, etc.
* Paper is a pain to handle. Any serious amount of writing is going to require desks, filing cabinets, and so forth, more physical stuff to organize other physical stuff, when an entire lifetime of plaintext notes could fit on a MicroSD card of modest capacity.
* Paper isn't safe. The aforementioned MicroSD card can be trivially backed up an indefinite number of times and rendered immune to fire, theft, kids, angry exes, acts of God, acts of Cthulu, and pets. And not to mention, encryption. While you can, technically, RSA encrypt your paperwork by hand[1], it's almost certainly not an efficient use of your time.
I've no doubt that these hard copy systems work for the people that say it works, but I can't help but imagine there's a certain irrational rejection of technology happening, borne out of a refusal to leave the comfort zone when even something ridiculously easy like Simplenote or Notational Velocity would provide actual efficiency gains.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
>due to the replication problem and accessibility the information on it is not durable (at least not as durable as s3) Paper records can last for hundreds of years without the support of any expensive infrastructure. I wouldn't bet on things that are stored on s3 being available hundreds of years from now.
I think it is called a positive selection bias. Some of paper lasted for hundreds of years. How much of information didn't survive during that time period? Information on s3 might not last for hundreds of years, but AFAIK the Voyager satellite didn't ship the information about our specie on paper.
It seems to be default when you count governments and businesses. Those have lasted decades even when they didn't want individual records to on occasion. Whereas, the current systems use individual components that break faster with huge damage loss per square inch provided through services that charge you & try to cause lock-in more over time. The competition for those services is also intense in a way that often results in firms going under with a few surviving.
Whereas, the older tech that lasted so long used simple components on older, process nodes with careful engineering practices. The better ones were also extremely costly with Voyager being a good example at $800+ million.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#165"Paper" used to mean endless soul-destroying reams of office printout, or before that, typed memos. And thank goodness, that seems to be receding.
The new "paper" isn't really the same thing. Like handwriting, woodblock printing, and the making of books from hand-inked parchment, it is receding into a handicraft.
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#166I recently re-subscribed to a real-life, old-fashioned newspaper. I like the digital edition, but prefer the paper version. The resolution is amazing and you can't beat the loading times, and I never run into browser incompatibility issues. There are still too many ads, but they don't pop up and dance.
After almost a decade of not bothering with them, six months ago I signed back up for physical magazine subscriptions again. I decided I like having the physical artifact around sometimes. There's even a niche magazine (Vitamag) where I'm one of only about 100 people that pay for it through Patreon, that they actually print our names on a page of each book. That's a pretty cool feeling.
I've had a subscription to three physical magazines for many years now; for two of them, it's been for 20 years. I've also kept all of those issues (ugh).
Recently, though, for one of the magazines I decided to get the CD version with PDFs (Servo Magazine); for the other two, it would be impossible to do this - Servo Magazine hasn't been out as long, and so it was easy to "catch up".
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#167I use an erasable notebook [1] for my scribbling. I find it quite good for sketching a quick diagram /prototyping, short-term todos, mindmapping and brainstorming. I don't think it's good for long term journaling (a proper notebook would be better). Having an erasable pen solves my problem of making tons of stupid spelling mistakes, being guilty of wasting paper and losing them in a giant pile of worthless annotation…
This is very interesting and it looks useful - thanks for posting this!
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#168I carry a small "Field Notes" pocket notebook in my back pocket, it's useful for jotting small notes down and reminders. Each day I review what I've written and and input anything important into digital applications
Wow, my system is just like yours. The key is the daily review and transcription to a digital format (in my case, a big textfile with a rigid date format for everything, Google Calendar for appointments, Habitica for TODOs).
Like bullet journaling, the review ensures that I actually see what I've written. The searchable digital copy can be hugely helpful later. It also adds the possibility of recording daily metrics to be parsed and made into charts.
It's truly the best of both worlds: paper to record, digital to archive.
(I'm about to hit 50 Field Notes in just under five years of doing this. I plan to do a write-up of my system now that I have a pretty good idea of what does and does not work for me.)
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#169I call this the tangibility factor. When I worked at MetaDesign back in the late nineties and early zeros we had something called RedBooks. RedBooks were most of the work we had done for a specific client printed out in tabloid size bound into a spiral back book and put on a large shelf system. We also had a matriculate digital folder system with projects, searchable and the same pages as PDF plus much more accessibl…
I thought about that a lot, since I grew up in love about computers and believed they would be the solution for everything; even books.
But as many said, "digital" mostly made us realize they were other things than the "pure" content.
I believe our brain just crave as much sensations as possible, and writing, flipping pages, seeing a device move[1], touching, watching, etc ... basically the task of dealing with the physical world is not entirely a cost but a pleasure in itself.
On the other hand(sic) computers send you a massive amount of symbolic informations (think text search in folders, it's "faster" than any physical archive), that tickle another part of your brain but not all of it, also, I think that our brain doesn't actually like too much of these because it evolved to abstract flows into new concepts. And these concepts are either a bit hard or simply not exposed to the users (think relational queries). There's a detrimental mismatch.
[1] I booted a PIII desktop last year, to extract files from a TRAVAN backup tape. I cannot describe the pleasure I had watching that HP Colorado tape wake up and move. No matter how "slow" it was compared to anything today. It was so cool. Even the slick sound of tape moving ..
Re: Paper is the real 'killer app'
#170I call this the tangibility factor. When I worked at MetaDesign back in the late nineties and early zeros we had something called RedBooks. RedBooks were most of the work we had done for a specific client printed out in tabloid size bound into a spiral back book and put on a large shelf system. We also had a matriculate digital folder system with projects, searchable and the same pages as PDF plus much more accessibl…
I thought about that a lot, since I grew up in love about computers and believed they would be the solution for everything; even books. But as many said, "digital" mostly made us realize they were other things than the "pure" content. I believe our brain just crave as much sensations as possible, and writing, flipping pages, seeing a device move[1], touching, watching, etc ... basically the task of dealing with the p…
Yeah you can say that technology is great for finding the artifacts in a complex world with lots of variations. But it's not as good for experiencing these artifacts unless they are obviously only possible in the digital space itself (gifs, animation, interaction etc.)