141–150 of 168 posts
Perhaps because it's so much easier to have an opinion and have that broadcasted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think paper probably really does have value for mental retention, but digital is so convenient it's easy to totally forget paper is a thing. Paper is easier to annotate, but if you didn't grow up with lots of paper, you don't notice, because annotating isn't something you think about, you mostly think in terms of quoting and leaving a comment. The medium shapes your thinking, and the stuff that's hard to do on pape…
> Paper is easier to annotate, but if you didn't grow up with lots of paper, you don't notice, because annotating isn't something you think about, you mostly think in terms of quoting and leaving a comment. In other words, people can be fine with worse because they don't know better. One of the things that should be a deep embarrassment to the technology industry is its failure to replicate some of the strengths of p…
This lack of ubiquity of features happens because proprietary systems aren't interested in supporting other systems' features, because they're competing. It's literally caused by capitalism.
When you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
Paper is a tool and a good one. It is simple, flexible, and most of all reliable.
You'd be laughed out of the room for suggesting that Wi-Fi connected e-hammers [0] are the way of the future, and when will the last old fogeys finally get with the times and throw away their old dumb hammer?
[0] I mean is it really even hammering without an oled screen that shows you how much force you're swinging with? And don't forget about the proprietary app that graphs your hammer swings for you. The light glaze of gamification (try for the biggest force!) will distract you from the personal data it's hoovering up to sell. Yes it definitely needs your precise location for Home Depot Hammer Hard Coupon Rewards (TM).
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.
Modern paper will disintegrate over time, something with acid.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mold is a failure mode for floppy disks and water is a failure mode for many electronic storage media or the tools we use to read them. I suspect that many people associate durability with electronic media simply because it becomes obsolete so rapidly that we don't experience it in the same way. We don't know whether that dusty floppy disk or CD-R is readable since we disposed of our last computer with a drive, or we…
One unexpected issue with digital media is changing manufacturing quality and an inability to identify it until it is to late. Early stage floppy disks and CDs actually were pretty reliable but by the tail end so much cost saving had happened in manufacturing they'd turned to crap. The same thing has happened with flash drives already, how do you identify a good flash drive? If you aren't careful you'll end up with a…
That said, such things did happen in the past. Paper is the classic example since the manufacturing process affected its longevity, yet many other materials are graded based upon their properties.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, lunacy to do any outdoors without paper map + compass beyond the there-and-back loop where you can still hear car traffic.
Does anyone know how to use a map and compass? I don't think I could outside a city. Everyone talks about the physical maps, but the bigger issue is without the skill the map is useless, and if you've always had a phone, the true terror of being lost and alone might not enter your mind till you're there. I guess I'm lucky that I often forget my charger and wind up having no clue where I am and trying to get back by a…
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…
Paper just works . Whether it's for notes, menus, or voting, paper has a lot of really desirable properties: it's cheap, easily understood, minimal room for external dependencies or BS. The moment you introduce software and internet connectivity is the moment you invite fragility and inscrutability.
I just love the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil made with good quality wood and the feel of it gliding across the paper. There’s a friction and give to it that you can’t get with a touch screen made of hard glass. No matter how good the stylus or what coating you put on the screen, it’ll never have the (cushiony, slightly rough but smooth) feel of a good writing pad or notebook.
And of course it’s fairly easy to digitize your handwritten scribbles, if that’s what you want to do. I just use a scanner app on my phone and take a picture. The app detects the borders of the page and corrects the geometry automatically. I also have it convert the colours down to 1-bit for maximum contrast and to get the background solid white. But that’s only when I need to send it somewhere, otherwise I don’t bother scanning.
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 t…