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People who can't give up paper

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Re: People who can't give up paper

#121

Post by RhysU »

jjav wrote: post #94
tivert wrote: post #23

People have been trained to fetishize "new" technology and dump on "old" technology. Frankly put: new is not always better. A technology is just a technology, and "new" technologies almost always introduce regressions along with whatever benefits the they bring. For instance: paper documents are generally more robust/reliable (as a practical matter), easily attached to physical items, and easier to annotate than any…

> new is not always better This is something I eternally argue with so many people. I can't understand this blind assumption that something made more recently is better just because. Better is better. Something new may or may not be better, need to evaluate. Way too often new means a regression on functionality, which is worse.

Amen.

'"Legacy" is not a pejorative. Do not use it as such.'

http://jdebp.info/FGA/legacy-is-not-a-pejorative.html

Re: People who can't give up paper

#122

Post by vlark »

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…

And yet for thousands of years we managed just fine with paper & ink.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#123

Post by bane »

I have a friend who's really into wargames, and I don't mean Catan or Risk. When he moved into his current house he dedicated about 1500 sq ft of his basement (he has a large house) to this hobby where he and his other wargamers will spend months playing a game on a huge map with thousands of pieces - a turn might take several days.

While there are digital versions of this, nothing really matches the broad awareness of the field like just having the 2 meter by 3 meter map stretched out on the play space with all the pieces mid-game. Monitors feel like looking at the world through a straw in this context and the tactile ability to pick up pieces and try out scenarios can't be replicated with a mouse or even touchscreen.

Any technological solution would have to be able to display such a large piece of paper without scrolling, at retina display levels of quality. The closest technology I've seen that sort of "got it" was the early Microsoft cocktail table where you could put phones and controls and such on the screen directly. From those early concept ideas we ended up with the Surface Studio and dial I guess, but it's not a 2x3m retina display with thousands of game pieces, sometimes stacked.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#125

Post by 6510 »

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…

> Maybe it's because I see how the sausage is made.

I feel the same, only without the maybe.

It just struck me that taking a picture of the white board and sending it to the printer would add up to acceptable use of technology. I have no idea why I never thought of that before. It seems actually nice to uses. (provided you delete the picture from drives, clouds, backups and trashcans)

Re: People who can't give up paper

#126

Post by deafpolygon »

ghaff wrote: post #26
karaterobot wrote: post #19

> Paper, it seems, still rules the waves. You'd be crazy to get rid of paper charts on a boat, for the same reason any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map, and the smart ones actually do it. Yeah, the primary system will be GPS, but that system requires a lot of things to be functioning which may not always be functioning. You need a backup, and paper is perfect for that.

There are a ton of situations where it’s really a good idea to have a paper backup. Traveling, especially internationally, and you lose your phone in a taxi? Do you know your itinerary and where you’re staying? I’m not religious about it for simple trips where I know where I’m staying but I definitely make a printout for anything more complex—but I bet a lot of people don’t.

I always have paper printout, even if I'm using my smartphone as the main ticketing device. Phones break, cell service isn't 100%, battery could die.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#127

Post by deafpolygon »

jjav wrote: post #92
FalconSensei wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can bet a notes written today in a paper notebook - would be accessible 200+ years from now. compared to notes written in some notebook app I think it's the opposite, at least if you use obsidian or just md files. With paper notes, they can get lost more easily, there are no backups. In many countries, termites are a real problem (tell that to my damaged comic books and magic cards). If you use md files (which ar…

> git/cloud/external drive backups, you are unlikely to lose them I can guarantee with total certainty that github & cloudprovider & your external drives will not exist in 200 years. Probably not even in 50. If you want to leave anything at all (photos, documents) for your grandchildren to see, how would you do it?

How Gen A does it; cloud drive shared to your kids.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#128

Post by 6510 »

vlark wrote: post #122
fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

And yet for thousands of years we managed just fine with paper & ink.

Engraving things in [hard] stone is the winning technology. When we chose to use anything less the information cant be very important.

Re: People who can't give up paper

#129

Post by agumonkey »

mikestew wrote: post #73
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…

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 ? Dude, I have been trying digital tools since I thought that one of these things[0] would replace my Franklin Planner. I'll save you a click, that was over 30 years ago. Yeah, I use the hell out of some d…

So far I observed two-three things about computing in regard to human experience:

- it removes stimuli (you move less, you touch less)

- it removes cost (undo is near free, unlike erasing on paper)

- it offers too much distraction / choice

I really feel that my brain loves (deeply) having to deal with multiple sensory inputs and making sense of them from physical to conceptual. Maybe that's why having tools "too powerful" is detrimental somehow.

Just a thought

Re: People who can't give up paper

#130

Post by agumonkey »

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…

Thanks to everyone who answered, it's really really great reading your stories and ideas.
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