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People who can't give up paper

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Re: People who can't give up paper

#61

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

dboreham wrote: post #57
davchana wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on my first travel trip to Rome, and dropped my phone & damaged it at Amsterdam airport while trying to charge it. All maps, instructions, how to reach hotel, public transportation help, everything was in that phone. God helped & Rome airport had public computer terminals at airport. Found some scrap paper, & drew the general directions to hotel.

I always carry my (N-1)th phone in my suitcase in case of such an event.

Or for those with true tourist savvy, carry (N-1)th phone as primary in pickpocket public, and your current, flashy, expensive device is your backup instead.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#62

Post by hypertexthero »

gspencley wrote: post #17

I've worked in tech as a software engineer developing web applications for 25 years and I'm one of these people. For note taking, I prefer pen and paper. For diagramming and brainstorming, I prefer a physical whiteboard. For non-work related scheduling, I prefer marking things on the physical calendar hanging on my wall... or sometimes I'll reach for a post-it note. For bills, I prefer that my company mail me a paper…

Ditto.

Hate is a strong word, and I hate typing on phones or tablets by trying to hit small shapes behind glass with the tips of my fingers.

I like the feel of pencils, particularly softer ones like 2B, 3B, or 4B, on paper, preferably those with texture like recycled brown paper that is often used as a tablecloth in Italian trattorias, the good ones, that aren’t too expensive.

The smell of pencil lead and paper and the sound that a pencil marking paper makes both help me absorb and remember things.

Betty Edwards wrote Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, and Frank R. Wilson wrote The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture. Both warmly recommended.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#63

Post by ilamont »

MIT is starting up a design center to be located in the old Metropolitan Warehouse. One of the directors on the engineering faculty has done a lot of research on how designers work, especially early stage design. When the center was profiled in Tech Review last year, she noted that sketching (including on paper) still has a role to play:

Among other things, Yang has found that the very existence of those visual representations matters greatly: designers who do even basic, preliminary sketching consistently generate more design ideas. As she and a coauthor wrote in a 2007 paper, there is “an important interplay between a designer’s ability to sketch and their ability to visualize in their heads or through prototypes.” She has even found that if designers aren’t highly skilled at drawing, that doesn’t affect the quality of their final design outcomes; it just matters that they draw at all.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1063906/design-c...

Whiteboarding also falls into this realm ... not paper, but it enables the act of sketching without a digital intermediary.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#64

Post by dboreham »

V__ wrote: post #30

One of the great festures of using paper is, that it exists physically. I can see my stack of to-dos or bills or notes and this also helps remembeing where what what is. I don't have this experience using digital. My brain just remembers computer as the general location. I loose all spacial intuition. On the other side, this is great for anything I don't want to remember.

I also like the spatial context, but tend to misplace paper.

Suggest to try using multiple desktops: one for work project A, another for personal email, etc. Open a browser tab or text editor window on the top left of each desktop with a note about what this one is for. In the case of work projects that tab will often be the bug report covering the task at hand. This way when I get defocused, it's a simple process to tab between the desktops, reading the index tab to reacquire wtf this screen was for.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#65

Post by dboreham »

zubairq wrote: post #6

I’m a developer and I still rely on paper to do some of my best work

I've found that today's pen/tablet experience is pretty close to paper, with the added benefit that I can't lose the work and I can easily share it. Surface Pro X for me, but the larger iPads probably work as well for this.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#66

Post by spacemadness »

gspencley wrote: post #17

I've worked in tech as a software engineer developing web applications for 25 years and I'm one of these people. For note taking, I prefer pen and paper. For diagramming and brainstorming, I prefer a physical whiteboard. For non-work related scheduling, I prefer marking things on the physical calendar hanging on my wall... or sometimes I'll reach for a post-it note. For bills, I prefer that my company mail me a paper…

Throwing another anecdotal example: Everyone in the gym looks at me like I’m twice my age jotting down my lifts in my notebook. It’s so much less stressful than navigating BS mobile UI stat entry between sets. I say that as someone who develops mobile UI on a daily basis. It’s hard to mistype with a pen.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#67

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

gspencley wrote: post #35
agumonkey wrote: post #24

for everybody still on physical medium (be it paper, board, whatever), did you try to leverage digital tools thinking it would allow wider expressiveness, faster iteration, more precision and yet came back to paper ? if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise…

> if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise.. that cost might be actually beneficial for your brain way of working) There is some of that. But pen and paper has other benefits that are hard to match: - Pen & Paper works even if there is a service disruption…

It's ruling our lives

There is no hope

Thought I'd drop a line

The weather here is fine

But day and night it blares

Commanding through loudspeakers:

"Metal is tough, metal will sheen

Metal won't rust when oiled and cleaned

Metal is tough, metal will sheen

Metal will rule in my master scheme"

-- Siouxsie and the Banshees, "Mittageisen"

Re: People who can't give up paper

#68

Post by jackthetab »

FalconSensei wrote: post #9
amerine wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are severely underestimating the complexity of preserving digital data for 200+ years. It’s not trivial, but a family could totally put a box of notebooks and loose papers in a box in a dry/somewhat safe location and pretty much guarantee they will still be usable/viewable in 200+ years without any electricity/file format/solar flare/emp/etc/etc issues to have to consider. I’m not disagreeing that it’s wo…

> I think you are severely underestimating the complexity of preserving digital data for 200+ years although I doubt my personal notes will be necessary in 200+ years

_Ea-nasir enters the chat_

Re: People who can't give up paper

#69

Post by gorgoiler »

Bound lab books with printed numbers on the pages are, I am led to believe, at the forefront of any technical defence of a patent or discovery. You just can’t fake ‘em.

This is why I record all my ideas in a lab journal — a cargo cult it may be but we’ll see who’s laughing when I finally invent homomorphic encryption / perpetual motion / alchemy!

Re: People who can't give up paper

#70

Post by clnq »

gspencley wrote: post #17

I've worked in tech as a software engineer developing web applications for 25 years and I'm one of these people. For note taking, I prefer pen and paper. For diagramming and brainstorming, I prefer a physical whiteboard. For non-work related scheduling, I prefer marking things on the physical calendar hanging on my wall... or sometimes I'll reach for a post-it note. For bills, I prefer that my company mail me a paper…

Pen and paper doesn't have many failure modes. Put it in a fireproof safe, and it will outlive most digital media. No hacker in a foreign country will steal it, no one will encrypt it, no cloud provider will lose it, and no government will read it, no SSD will byte-rot it. There's really not much to be said against pen and paper.
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