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People who can't give up paper

bbc.com

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Re: People who can't give up paper

#111

Post by Cyphase »

We should be sure to distinguish "paper vs. digital" (the question of storage technology, I suppose?) and "tablet(paper)/pen(pen) vs. touchscreen/finger vs. keyboard/mouse" (the kind of interface).

Typewriters are paper tech. Drawing tablets are digital. Large physical keyboards can be used with paper (typewriters) or digital (computers).

How different from a piece of paper and a pen is a digital tablet device with a blank canvas that you draw on with a stylus? In what ways?

Just some thoughts.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#112

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

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…

Same. I have tried a few tools but none beat taking notes on paper.

You immediately get to mix text, tables and pictures. You can do it however you want. You can arrange it however you want.

Nothing beats this. Digital tools might be good at organizing old notes but I feel it is not necessary most of the time.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#114

Post by davchana »

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.

The onwards, I started carrying a second phone.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#115

Post by sasaf5 »

The writing tool affects the choice of words and, by extension, the thought itself.

With a pencil you can rest the tip on the paper and you can erase its traces, but it has lateral drag and requires some downward force. The fountain pen requires no force, but you can't rest it on paper or it makes a huge blotch. You can't even leave it uncaped for very long, so it kinda forces you to be writing. The computer allows searching, copying and pasting, but every minor alteration in font or typeface requires cooperation from the software.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#117

Post by fragmede »

clnq wrote: post #70
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.

Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems with paper.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#118

Post by tomrod »

fragmede wrote: post #117
clnq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems…

Eventually, but all those are likely less likely than the electronic degradation. That said, keeping paper organized is hard.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#119

Post by ddejohn »

dredmorbius wrote: post #104
djha-skin wrote: post #101

There is more than simply preferential reasons to keep paper around. Some of them were touched on by the article: * Paper does not run out of battery. On a ship where you need to be able to navigate whether or not the computer fails, this is a feature. My brother-in-law tells a story of when he was an air traffic controller in the military. Every so often they told them they had to turn off their computers and naviga…

Paper is difficult to hack. Typewriters, however, are a different story, and the Soviets managed to bug IBM Selectrics during the Cold War: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-crazy-story-of-how-soviet-russ... > Several related HN discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16246432 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965969 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21998774 >

Absolutely fascinating.

I found a link in one of the linked discussions which is quite a bit more in depth than the ieee article, for those interested:

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/covert/bugs/selectric/

Re: People who can't give up paper

#120

Post by gspencley »

fragmede wrote: post #117
clnq wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Fireproof safe's, aren't. A thief could steal it out of your house, you can't access it on the go, it'll get water damaged and mold and rot. The ink will fade. You won't have a drive to read the floppy disk/CD-rom/DVD/USB-A flash drive. You can't grep it and unless you meticulously organize it, it's a jumbled pile of unopened envelopes. Cloud and digital isn't the be all and end all, but there are plenty of problems…

> you can't access it on the go

You can to the same extent that you can access a smart phone on the go. You just have to remember to bring it with you. Given how often I "forget" my smart phone at home, the "access anywhere" isn't a huge selling feature for most things to me. While I do use web-based email, I tend to prefer things like paper tickets for events and paper receipts because I actually find them to be more convenient than digital. This is because having to have a smart phone with me at all times that could get lost, stolen, damaged, malfunction etc. and is a single point of failure in the event thereof is the polar opposite of my definition of convenience.

No one has made the argument that paper is without problems. Only that it has way fewer problems than digital. That, and that the businesses and shills that are trying to force digital-everything are evil monsters that belong in the same rung of hell typically reserved for murderers and people who talk at movie theatres.

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