[HN Gopher] When paper beats the screen
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       When paper beats the screen
        
       Author : edward
       Score  : 65 points
       Date   : 2022-12-17 10:44 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
        
       | hilbert42 wrote:
       | I recall when as an IT department head I had a difficult CEO who
       | often changed his mind (he seemed to always hold the view of the
       | last person who spoke to him).
       | 
       | My response was to refuse email from him (as emails can be
       | ephemeral). Second, I requested all his future instructions to me
       | be in words written physically in the form of black atoms adhered
       | to sheets of white atoms and signed by his own hand in blue atoms
       | at the end.
       | 
       | It dismayed him and everyone including my staff some of whom I'd
       | instructed to block my emails--yes, I'm likely one of the few
       | heads of an IT department in history who refused to have an email
       | address.
       | 
       | Yes, it worked and he complied and ultimately I had the last
       | laugh but that was only after the feud had become newspaper
       | headlines.
        
         | hcurtiss wrote:
         | Respectfully, I would have fired you immediately.
        
       | fedeb95 wrote:
       | > In one part of their study, the researchers approached
       | strangers and asked them to take a made-up survey. Half the
       | respondents were given a pen and paper to fill out the form; the
       | other half were handed an iPad. At the end of the exercise,
       | respondents were asked if they wanted to give their email address
       | to receive information on how to donate to a charity. Those who
       | used paper were much likelier to provide their email addresses.
       | 
       | Forgive my ignorance, but what should this mean?
        
         | baq wrote:
         | If you want someone to give you their email, give them a piece
         | of paper and a pen and ask politely
        
           | filoleg wrote:
           | Once I thought about it, I realized that on some lizard-brain
           | level with no logical reasoning present, I am indeed more
           | likely to agree to give someone an email if they asked me to
           | write it down on paper vs. type it in somewhere.
           | 
           | I can think of many different reasons for why, but they are
           | all just guesses at best. One that comes to mind is that
           | writing it on paper feels more "personal", as in "i am giving
           | you this piece of my info", and I instinctively know that a
           | human will have to look at it, read it, or do something else
           | with it. Regardless, a human will have to take a look at it
           | before something else happens to it.
           | 
           | While typing it on the person's device feels much more
           | impersonal and more of a "I am entering my email into this
           | digital form, with no expectations of any real human to ever
           | look at it, with my email probably being sent into some
           | database for some automated processing or spamming me or
           | whatever else".
           | 
           | The latter isn't a real objective concern of mine, both
           | typing and writing it out could easily lead to the exact same
           | outcomes (both good and bad). But just instinctively, I feel
           | that this is one of the main reasons for why it feels
           | different for me on a subjective level in the back of my
           | head.
        
         | mach1ne wrote:
         | Likely that the experience of the electrical survey was more
         | aggravating than the pen-and-paper one.
        
           | fedeb95 wrote:
           | I don't think that that can be concluded with certainty, or
           | anything else beyond that the people in that survey with pen
           | and paper were more likely to give their email address for
           | charity.
        
           | elliekelly wrote:
           | Typing out an email address, especially on a device that
           | isn't yours, does seem to feel particularly tedious.
        
       | psychphysic wrote:
       | Absolutely I don't understand how people use Google calender or
       | even worse the outlook calender for any meaningful scheduling.
        
         | whirlwin wrote:
         | With wife and 2 kids who have activities now and then I cannot
         | imagine a life without a shared calendar. Not sure how that
         | would work. Perhaps with rigorous phone calls during the day to
         | so sync up, but that's unfeasible for me at least
        
           | psychphysic wrote:
           | You literally share a calender it sits on your fridge and it
           | has your shared appointments.
           | 
           | If I really want to get work done then I need to make myself
           | a to-do list.
        
         | nottorp wrote:
         | Which kind of scheduling? My task list is on paper (and in the
         | issue tracker, sometimes at a far less detailed level). But my
         | dentist's appointments and the rare meetings (we do async text
         | comms 99%) are on my phone because it can SCREAM at me when
         | neededd.
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | The notifications are an advantage. Paper can't scream at you.
        
           | Broken_Hippo wrote:
           | Plus, I always have my calendar with me and everything is in
           | one place. I can simply _look_.
           | 
           | Honestly, it is the same with notes - as in, lists and things
           | to remember later. I always have my phone, so I always have
           | the grocery list and can write down ideas that I have while
           | on the bus or walking.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | I guess the killer application is the shared scheduling,
         | calendars kept in sync between everyone who is in the same
         | meeting or activity.
        
         | komali2 wrote:
         | What do you mean? What do you use? I use google calendar for
         | meaningful scheduling.
        
           | psychphysic wrote:
           | In terms of actually plotting my day and week. Electronic
           | calenders for me don't lead to schedules I'm likely to be
           | able to stick to.
        
             | sho_hn wrote:
             | The calendar for me is a coordination tool between me and
             | many other people. Other people can see my calendar, too,
             | and see whether I am available or not.
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | I guess it also depends on the office structure, I'm very
               | lucky that our team is just the right size for a single
               | secretary who coordinates our calenders if we ask.
               | 
               | And mostly we coordinate with ourselves.
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | I'm working in a project with around 4000 people across
               | 330 teams and quite a few different sites in a comm-heavy
               | role - time blocks on the calendar to get work done can
               | be a necessary survival tactic :-)
        
             | makeitdouble wrote:
             | I feel this hasn't much to do with calenders themselves,
             | but I'm really curious why you wouldn't stick to schedules
             | you set electronically.
             | 
             | Is it about the ability to edit it afterward ? Or because
             | it's not in your hand writing ?
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | I think the biggest and most obvious when it goes wrong
               | factor is.
               | 
               | That electronic calenders are less intentional people
               | chuck over potential times and I don't necessarily
               | consider if they are practical slots. Often I have
               | multiple, up to five, conflicts with various meetings
               | automatically appear in my calender.
               | 
               | If I personally write it into my calender I have a
               | stronger connection with the decision to attend or act at
               | that time. And I just have a better sense in my mind of
               | what that means in terms of that's in a fortnight, that's
               | the day before Christmas etc.
               | 
               | But what's come up in these replies is I'm also at a
               | different team structure that my previous experience with
               | Google calendars. Maybe I'm just not good in a large
               | workforce Vs in a small 5 person team in a 20 office.
        
             | pigsty wrote:
             | Setting a reminder that's visible the moment I wake up and
             | see my phone has a better chance of reminding me than
             | something I've written on paper.
             | 
             | But I personally use both. Paper is for ongoing goals I'm
             | working towards since I'll glance at it several times a day
             | (unless I forget my notebook), but for events and so on,
             | electronic reminders are a "do this now" sort of thing that
             | I can't accidentally miss because they're so distracting.
        
               | psychphysic wrote:
               | Ah I think the way I work leads to the opposite working
               | in my notebook and forgetting to check my phone/emails.
               | 
               | I think I'd struggle moving into that kind of setting.
        
       | jrib wrote:
       | > Doodling on a phone is just not as satisfying.
       | 
       | Not the main point of the article, but that remark stood out to
       | me.
       | 
       | I sometimes still take notes on paper. Doodling to pass the time
       | or let my thoughts wander is relaxing.
       | 
       | I remember doing it all the time as a child. Do children still
       | have this experience?
        
         | e12e wrote:
         | When I was using my surface pro 4 - I found it quite good for
         | doodling (and note taking) in meetings. My ReMarkable 2 are in
         | some ways better, some worse in this respect (I find I miss
         | bright colored sketches, on the other hand the rm2 feels quite
         | like pencil/pen and paper).
        
         | seafoam wrote:
         | >Do children still have this experience?
         | 
         | Our children do.
         | 
         | Son designed a seal to stamp on paper this week. Learned that
         | it reverses the image, and that ink dries out.
        
         | unityByFreedom wrote:
         | > Do children still have this experience?
         | 
         | Haha, yes, we are not that far gone..
        
           | ergonaught wrote:
           | Some very much are.
        
       | AstixAndBelix wrote:
       | LCD screens are a wonderful technology that has unfortunately
       | been adopted for a whole range of unsuitable applications.
       | 
       | this article talks about writing, but I want to highlight the
       | viewing part.
       | 
       | LCDs were not made to be stared at for hours on end, e-ink
       | displays on the other hand were made exactly for that purpose.
       | they don't tire your eyes more than a piece of paper and they
       | require external light to be visible. this is very much in tune
       | with how every single object has worked in the whole history of
       | humankind until the invention of artificial illumination.
       | 
       | in my opinion working for 8 hours in an office starting at an LCD
       | screen should be considered as damaging as sitting at a computer
       | for 8 hours with an incorrect posture. you end up with a headacke
       | and your eyes burn, and the rest of the day is just painful to
       | continue.
       | 
       | this wouldn't be the case if some technology was invented that
       | had the refresh rate and color palette of standard LCD screens
       | while having the pleasant viewing experience of digital paper. I
       | think many people would drop their books or even their e-book
       | readers if normal tablet or computer monitors weren't painful to
       | look at.
        
         | BlueTemplar wrote:
         | Even basic colour support (like 3 colours in addition to black,
         | no grayscale) with a 1Hz refresh rate might be enough for me...
         | 
         | And I would have expected us to have them by now, considering
         | how colour e-paper has passed the prototype stage and is now
         | widely used in supermarkets for labels ??
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | danuker wrote:
         | [citation needed]
         | 
         | You make many unsubstantiated claims. I don't get headaches
         | from staring at an LCD even 14h/day.
        
           | peoplefromibiza wrote:
           | > I don't get headaches from staring at an LCD even 14h/day.
           | 
           | You are probably a young person (sorry for assuming)
           | 
           | I didn't get headaches when I was 18 and stared for 14 hours
           | straight at a 1024x768 14 inches CRT monitor at 85Hz
           | interlaced.
           | 
           | p.s.: the term you're looking for is "screen headaches"
           | 
           | p.p.s.: http://oaxis.com/lcd-screens-harmful-effects/
        
             | ergonaught wrote:
             | I'm 51 and have been staring at screens for 40 years, on
             | average rather close to the amount of time I'm awake, and I
             | can't really connect that to headaches.
        
             | danuker wrote:
             | I am 30. I guess that is young-ish. I try to take care of
             | my health.
        
             | christophilus wrote:
             | I'm in my 40s and don't get these. How old do you have to
             | be before they set in?
             | 
             | I have glasses-- without those, I'd probably get a
             | headache. I also use a very high quality 5k monitor and
             | proper lighting. Maybe those make a difference? Maybe I won
             | the genetic lottery? Dunno.
        
               | qnr wrote:
               | Same, never got any headaches from any screens.
               | Regardless of the type of the screen, lighting or viewing
               | position. Have been using computers for almost 25 years,
               | with many 10h days and occasionally 15+ hours.
               | 
               | As I got older I started getting neck pain though, if I
               | sit too awkward. But still no headaches ;)
        
               | peoplefromibiza wrote:
               | I don't get headaches, but know many people who do and
               | the frequency have increased lately during covid.
               | 
               | What I suffer from since Covid restrictions settled in
               | and had to work from home all the time, confined in a
               | space that cannot be easy illuminated properly, is
               | blurred vision.
               | 
               | I don't suffer from it after reading an ebook on an e-ink
               | in natural light, but I do after a day of work in front
               | of my laptop display (can't easily move the 30 inches
               | display I had at work because insurance, laws,
               | bureaucracy etc) so mine it's not exactly a scientific
               | study, but a close friend of mine she's an optometrist
               | and she said to me that people reporting eye strain,
               | blurred vision and headaches have almost doubled.It
               | affects older people much more than the younger ones of
               | course, but are treating kids too, that were a rarity
               | before.
               | 
               | They all have in common spending a lot of time in front
               | of an LCD displays at home.
               | 
               | I'm middle 40s.
        
         | makeitdouble wrote:
         | Working for 8 hours in an office is already considered
         | damaging, staring at LCD or a pile of paper.
        
         | mrob wrote:
         | If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright. E-ink has
         | the advantage that it automatically shows the correct
         | brightness for the lighting conditions, but there's nothing
         | inherently less tiring about it. I have keybinds set to change
         | my monitor brightness using DDC, so I can easily adjust my
         | LCD's brightness as needed.
        
           | zozbot234 wrote:
           | If you lower the brightness on an LCD screen, it's going to
           | have terrible contrast even if you use the lowest possible
           | black because the "black" on that kind of screen is achieved
           | by filtering out polarized light. Additionally on some screen
           | models, low brightness is obtained by flickering the
           | backlight which only adds to the discomfort.
        
             | mrob wrote:
             | Changing the brightness of an LCD screen does not affect
             | the contrast of the emitted light. The lowest possible
             | black is some percentage of the backlight brightness, not a
             | fixed value. You can see this by changing the brightness
             | while displaying a pure black image. LCDs do also reflect
             | some ambient light, so turning down the brightness will
             | reduce the contrast slightly in most environments, but many
             | LCDs have anti-reflective coatings to mitigate this.
             | 
             | LCD typically has higher maximum contrast than e-ink.
        
             | alin23 wrote:
             | When lowering the hardware brightness (either through the
             | monitor OSD or through DDC), the voltage of the LED
             | backlight gets lowered and thus the LEDs get dimmer and
             | less light passes through the crystals. Polarization
             | doesn't come into effect here.
             | 
             | What you're describing happens when lowering the brightness
             | through software (either Gamma adjustments or a dark
             | overlay) because in that case you're only changing the
             | software pixels to be darker.
             | 
             | Although even in that case, newer miniLED/quantumDot LCD
             | screens also lower the LED brightness when pixels get
             | darker, because they have more granular control and dimming
             | an LED doesn't cause shadows over a large area of the
             | screen anymore.
        
           | nottorp wrote:
           | > If your LCD is tiring your eyes, it's set too bright.
           | 
           | The race for brightness considered harmful :)
           | 
           | The problem that LCDs have and CRTs didn't is that you lose
           | color reproduction/contrast if you turn down the brightness
           | to healthy levels.
           | 
           | Hopefull OLED fixes that and becomes affordable. But I'm
           | afraid manufacturers will still race for brightness even on a
           | technology that doesn't need it.
           | 
           | > E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the
           | correct brightness for the lighting conditions
           | 
           | Tbh I find eink very readable in bright sunlight and it's all
           | downhill from there, to the point that i prefer reading on a
           | tablet with brightness way down and the lights off to eink
           | with a lamp on. But that may be a consequence of staring into
           | LCDs most of my life.
        
           | alin23 wrote:
           | There's even software that can adapt that DDC brightness
           | automatically using the ambient light around you. I develop
           | Lunar (https://lunar.fyi) that can do that for macOS.
           | 
           | For me, the screens I use are always at the brightness where
           | white regions are as comfortable as a piece of paper. Sure,
           | colors aren't reproduced "as the artist/developer wanted" at
           | those values, but neither do I need that, nor do we have
           | e-ink screens that can reproduce color more accurately.
           | 
           | I just want to create software, research stuff on the
           | internet, arrange my music etc. and if I feel like doing that
           | for 10 hours straight, I only want the screen to tire my eyes
           | as little as possible.
           | 
           | I also read a lot of books and research material, both on
           | Kindle and paper. My eyes get tired after hours of doing that
           | as well. Light is not the only factor.
           | 
           | So although it's good to try to be optimal about the light
           | that gets in your eyes over large periods of time, it's best
           | to also try periodic rest and moving some activities to non-
           | screen mediums instead of fretting endlessly over the last 5%
           | of screen light optimization.
        
             | hxugufjfjf wrote:
             | I've been looking for this software for ten years. My eyes
             | thank you!
        
           | lloeki wrote:
           | > E-ink has the advantage that it automatically shows the
           | correct brightness
           | 
           | It doesn't because e-ink is a non-light-emitting technology
           | so has no concept of brightness. Ambient light is what lights
           | it up usually (unless one turns an entirely optional
           | backlight on to read in the dark). So you don't need to
           | adjusts as there's nothing to adjust, it's literally ambient
           | light bouncing back, so is the same brightness by virtue of
           | being the same light source.
           | 
           | Conversely, typical displays (TN, IPS, OLED, CRT even...)
           | being a light emitting technology, one needs to turn
           | backlight _up_ as ambient light increases as both compete.
           | (That is, unless it 's a transflective LCD, but even then
           | it's quite dim in ambient light).
           | 
           | > there's nothing inherently less tiring about it
           | 
           | e-ink really is more like paper, while typical displays are
           | like turning a flashlight straight towards your eyes.
        
             | balaji1 wrote:
             | but the e-ink displays have a dull gray background. While
             | printer paper is the bright bleached white which a lot more
             | pleasing and easier to read.
        
           | AstixAndBelix wrote:
           | >there's nothing inherently less tiring about it
           | 
           | e-ink doesn't flicker.
           | 
           | I know that past a certain number of Hz our brain just mushes
           | the images together and we magically perceive that the
           | motions on the screen are fluid, just like we believe our
           | electric lights are completely on all of the time. But even
           | though our final perception might be continuous, maybe there
           | are steps in the image processing pipeline in our brain where
           | something gets overloaded by the discrete refreshing of the
           | screen.
        
             | mrob wrote:
             | My LCD doesn't flicker either. Some LCDs use pulse-width
             | modulated backlights, which do flicker, and there are
             | gaming LCDs with optional strobing to improve motion
             | clarity, but these are not inherent to the LCD technology.
        
               | AstixAndBelix wrote:
               | Maybe you're misunderstanding the usage of "flicker"
               | here. I'm not saying that I can _see_ my monitor
               | flickering, because nobody can past a certain refresh
               | rate. What I 'm saying is that any monitor inherently
               | flickers because of its refresh rate, independently of
               | our perception.
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | Refresh rate is not the same as flicker.
               | 
               | Refresh rate is the rate at which new information is
               | displayed. Flicker is things turning on and off.
               | 
               | As the parent mentioned, some screens use fast cycles of
               | turning on/off to modulate perceived brightness, but this
               | is not always the case.
        
               | shanebellone wrote:
               | I'm not entirely sure if what's being said is true but I
               | believe the intention is to stay:
               | 
               | All LCDs "flicker" in the same way all movies "flicker".
               | The technology simply displays or flashes a series of
               | still images quick enough to be perceived as fluid motion
               | or video.
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | I'm not sure that's the intention, because they said that
               | "e-ink doesn't flicker". But e-ink certainly has a
               | refresh rate. So I think they attribute some other form
               | of flickering to LCD.
               | 
               | (And in fact, some of the e-ink readers with optional
               | display lighting will use PWM to modulate its brightness,
               | and then exhibit flicker. This is a super dumb
               | engineering choice, though, so it's not very common. The
               | Kobo Forma was an offender.)
        
               | AstixAndBelix wrote:
               | >But e-ink certainly has a refresh rate
               | 
               | of course it has a refresh rate when there is a change in
               | the image, but if I'm reading something completely static
               | then literally nothing changes whereas an LCD screen
               | still does things in the background
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | On an LCD also nothing changes when the display image is
               | static.
               | 
               | When the image is not static, because an LCD updates line
               | by line, if you don't coordinate your data updates to the
               | refresh rate you can get artifacts such as "tearing",
               | where different sections of the monitor show different
               | data that doesn't fit together. However, e-ink displays
               | doing differential or fast partial updates have similar
               | problems (and some exciting new ones, making refresh
               | overall quite bad). You just usually don't try to display
               | fast moving imagery on them.
               | 
               | e-ink displays are what is known as "bi-stable", meaning
               | you don't need to apply a voltage to keep a pixel in a
               | particular state, only when you want to change that
               | state. This is not true for LCD, where you do need to
               | keep supplying a voltage. This however doesn't result in
               | any visual change if the voltage isn't changing.
               | 
               | The real difference here is that LCDs aren't reflective,
               | unlike e-ink. So you need a backlight, and that light
               | shining at your eyes is more tiring than how things work
               | with an e-ink display. That either doesn't need a
               | backlight (in a bright ambiance), or the LED lighting
               | isn't behind the display and doesn't shine directly at
               | you, but rather bounces through the display surface. This
               | is a nice quality.
        
               | shanebellone wrote:
               | Fair point. E-ink does refresh the entire screen though,
               | correct? It's closer to a old-school slide projector than
               | a monitor. I admittedly know little about this topic.
               | 
               | As an aside, I'd love a secondary e-ink monitor.
               | Hopefully the technology improves so prices come down.
        
               | sho_hn wrote:
               | > E-ink does refresh the entire screen though, correct?
               | 
               | No, e-ink displays and controllers support partial
               | updates.
        
               | shanebellone wrote:
               | Thank you for the correction.
        
               | peoplefromibiza wrote:
               | > not inherent to the LCD technology.
               | 
               | actually they kinda are
               | 
               | Blue light from close distance screens is the enemy of
               | your eyes and has many other side effects.
               | 
               | https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/blue-
               | ligh...
        
               | mrob wrote:
               | The amount of blue light emitted by an LCD depends on the
               | backlight used. Some brands advertise low blue light. You
               | could even build an LCD with zero blue light emission if
               | you wanted to, at the cost of being unable to display
               | blue. And even with a conventional backlight, you can
               | reduce the blue light to very low levels in software,
               | e.g.:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift_(software)
               | 
               | E-ink reflects light over a broad spectrum, so the amount
               | of blue depends on the amount of blue it's illuminated
               | with. It can be higher than the LCD in some conditions.
        
               | peoplefromibiza wrote:
               | not disagreeing, but you can't chose the display of the
               | laptop most of the times.
               | 
               | Besides, in the last 2 years people reported many more
               | cases of eye strain and blurred vision (at least in my
               | country), because "home" is not really the best work
               | environment for 95% of the people.
               | 
               | There's a reason why offices are always well illuminated.
               | 
               | e-inks are usually used with lights turned off and when
               | ate not I use the red light because it's better for
               | reading.
        
       | kzrdude wrote:
       | I use a paper notebook every day in my job. Pen and paper is a
       | help for the mind, part of thinking out loud maybe. Far too long
       | was I content with staring into a screen and trying to "think
       | harder".
       | 
       | As it has been said elsewhere, what I jot down are not finished
       | thoughts but steps on the way there.
        
         | pitaj wrote:
         | I've tried using various digital Todo lists but nothing
         | compares to the sticky notes on my monitor.
        
       | Superbowl5889 wrote:
       | Thanks anon for kindness l
        
         | dang wrote:
         | We detached this comment from
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026745.
        
         | dang wrote:
         | Nothing wrong with saying thank you! but just to save space at
         | the top of the thread, I detached this comment from
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34026745.
        
       | 082349872349872 wrote:
       | Anyone have notations specifically intended for pseudocode
       | sketching on paper?
       | 
       | (eg the "offside rule" was originally conceived to be easy to
       | interpret even for handwriting)
        
         | beagle3 wrote:
         | Ken Iverson.
         | 
         | It's called APL, it is incredibly effective, it won many
         | awards, there's a book about it called "Notation as a tool of
         | thought" which is a bit dated but still highly recommended.
         | 
         | But it is not really compatible with modern programming
         | languages and styles.
        
       | nonoesp wrote:
       | The digital medium often strips human expression when capturing
       | input.
       | 
       | Devices such as the Apple Pencil are getting better at capturing
       | pressure and highly-detailed paths, which inturn are encoded as
       | vectors and can gather information that is lost in physical
       | mediums, such as coordinates, drawing order, and temporality,
       | even capturing things not present on paper such as hover gestures
       | and pressure.
       | 
       | Yet it's common practice to reduce gestures and clicks to points,
       | lines, or curves - two clicks from thousands of users in a CAD
       | environment may output the exact same line from point A to point
       | B - which often forget about the expressiveness of pencil strokes
       | on a sheet of paper, features which could be used by machine
       | learning algorithms to discern intent in the input of different
       | users.
        
       | uvdn7 wrote:
       | I think it boils down to cost. Digital content is extremely cheap
       | to replicate and distribute; hence the quality of the content is
       | assumed to be lower (and it's usually the case). One doesn't have
       | to put in too much effort in producing digital content.
       | 
       | Now with ChatGPT, it's even more so than ever. It's practically
       | free to produce digital content.
       | 
       | On the other hand, even by just printing out a doc increases the
       | cost of replication and distribution significantly (compared to
       | pure digital replication); hence the quality of the content is
       | assumed to be higher.
        
         | coffeefirst wrote:
         | Yes, and I think that's driven a novelty factor. If you spend
         | all day on screens, it's the last thing you want to do more of.
         | The paper book or vinyl record is special _because_ it 's
         | disconnected and tactile.
         | 
         | I'm also gradually hearing friends come to realize that their
         | ebooks and streaming movies may vanish at the whims of
         | corporate licensing agreements, but their libraries of physical
         | books and DVDs are durable.
         | 
         | Give it two more years and we might see letter-writing clubs
         | emerge.
        
       | kstrauser wrote:
       | For me, it never does: https://honeypot.net/post/digital-notes-
       | are-better-than-pape...
       | 
       | Paper is worse for _my workflow_ in almost every way. I keep
       | trying paper-based systems because of articles like this and I
       | keep coming back to digital. I bring this up to say that it's OK
       | not to like using a pen and paper. Find a system that works for
       | you and not the mode person.
        
         | isthisthingon99 wrote:
         | Try a writing tablet like the Remarkable.
        
           | kstrauser wrote:
           | Trust me, I see the appeal. The back of my mind shouts that,
           | if I were to get one, my organizational issues would go away
           | and I'd be hyperproductive.
           | 
           | I'm used to things calling out to me like that.
           | 
           | As a halfway step, I've tried using a Rocketbook and scanning
           | things in, with workflows to file text away appropriately.
        
       | makach wrote:
       | My remarkable 2 seems to work for me. I am always struggeling
       | with note taking. Some times, it makes sense to write directly at
       | the PC, but on occasion pen and paper is the way to go. Problem
       | with paper is that I tend to, either lose it or crumple it and it
       | becomes useless.
       | 
       | With my remarkable I seem to be able to doodle notes better.
       | 
       | For doing homework with the kids, and especially maths, the
       | remarkable is _remarkable_
       | 
       | we can burn through pages and pages of notes explaining and
       | solving problems.
       | 
       | Using a pen and a medium you can write on is extremely useful,
       | and until you can PAVE the walls with screen and make them as
       | endurable as paper - I will continune to prefer pen + paper.
        
         | musingsole wrote:
         | The reMarkable tablet is the best innovation on pen and paper
         | since the ballpoint pen. It's become a thinking tool more so
         | than any other electronic device I have, and it has me
         | daydreaming about a tablet and stylus based computing
         | environment.
        
           | shanebellone wrote:
           | Are these really worth it? I'm interested in the concept but
           | worry it's not as practical as it looks.
        
             | ek750 wrote:
             | I don't have any experience with the remarkable, but i
             | recently got a kindle scribe and it's better than the boox
             | ereaders/tablets i've gotten over time.
             | 
             | The clarity, density and speed of the kindle's screen is
             | miles better than boox, probably close to remarkable if the
             | videos are any indication.
             | 
             | I got the Scribe for the large screen to read ebooks, but
             | the pen and its responsiveness and feel is surprisingly
             | good.
             | 
             | i don't know if it does handwriting recognition, but the
             | notebook app has been surprisingly fun for me to jot down
             | notes when i'm contemplating a design problem.
        
               | shanebellone wrote:
               | The Kindle Scribe is also overpriced IMO. Plus, native
               | advertisements (even when there's a paid upgrade) offends
               | me as a consumer.
        
             | e12e wrote:
             | I am happy with my rm2, largely because the note
             | taking/sketching feels great. It's pretty bad as an
             | e-reader unfortunately. It's slow, and sometimes feels
             | unresponsive - although the software keeps getting better.
             | 
             | For reading it would have benefitted immensely from a pair
             | of hw buttons for page turning.
             | 
             | That said - unless you really want exactly the rm2 - I'd
             | say it's maybe two to three times as expensive as it
             | "should" be.
        
               | shanebellone wrote:
               | I agree with you. I'd buy this at a $200 price point
               | without hesitation.
        
       | maegul wrote:
       | A bit wishy-washy, but the general point holds.
       | 
       | Since the 90s, I've been somewhat surprised to see the PC
       | technology fail to really learn from how well humans have
       | leveraged printed information that is embedded in our
       | environment.
       | 
       | I figure screens and projectors are simply harder and more
       | expensive than what would be required for the digital to get
       | paper like. But still, it's disappointing.
       | 
       | Incidentally, just watched a recent Bret Victor talk about his
       | latest application of his RealTalk/Dynamicland system:
       | 
       | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_gXiVOmaVSo
        
         | brainzap wrote:
         | holy shit that duck animation is so good, it also teaches a bit
         | on data collection and matching, love it
        
         | makeitdouble wrote:
         | The right balance is probably a mix of digital and analogue, so
         | yes leveraging printed information where it's more cost
         | effective or practical is a good call.
         | 
         | Now, I think there really are better interfaces than paper in
         | most of our everyday use cases, and it's more on what people
         | are used to or what they're comfortable with (the Chinese
         | student example in the article is basically that). It's totally
         | valid, and everyone has preferences, it should just be
         | explicited that it's really about individual taste.
        
       | taink wrote:
       | Here's the ordered list of publications mentioned in this
       | article.
       | 
       | [1] https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2021.1347
       | 
       | [2] https://doi.org/10.1002/jcpy.1297
       | 
       | [3] https://doi.org/10.1177/00222437211059540
       | 
       | [4] https://hbr.org/2022/07/how-paper-catalogs-remain-
       | relevant-i...
        
         | hilbert42 wrote:
         | _" In a series of 10 studies, we find that people are more
         | likely to make virtuous decisions on paper than on a digital
         | device because they perceive choices on paper as more real..."_
         | 
         | Right, that's not only my experience but also those with whom
         | I've worked (see my earlier post of refusing instructions by
         | email, when on paper they were real and held much more weight).
        
       | the-printer wrote:
       | Can anyone recommend a good quality pencil that doesn't smear? I
       | like pens. I do. I've never owned a good fountain pen, but I
       | think I'd prefer a good quality pencil (for short-term notes at
       | least). There's something about the feeling of the pencil making
       | its mark across paper that is satisfying.
        
         | blueridge wrote:
         | I use Blackwing pencils while reading and for day-to-day note
         | taking. Their long-point sharpener is also excellent.
         | 
         | https://blackwing602.com/collections/pencils
         | 
         | https://blackwing602.com/products/blackwing-one-step-long-po...
        
         | hunter-gatherer wrote:
         | Was given a nice mechanical pencil as a gift years ago and dug
         | it up not too long ago and started using it. It is a .7 mm
         | lead, which I believe is a minimum size for good notetaking for
         | me. All through college I used regular wood pencils and loved
         | writing with them. I believe the thicker leads are more
         | forgiving for writting letters.
        
         | abakker wrote:
         | I love my Pentel Graphgear 1000. If note taking, I really think
         | the way to go is .7 or .9 leads, but .5 is nice if you need
         | fine lines.
         | 
         | I use the .5 for woodworking, but a .7 along with a Rhodia dot
         | paper notepad for my desk.
        
       | john-doe wrote:
       | https://archive.ph/JSlSm
        
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