[HN Gopher] People who can't give up paper
___________________________________________________________________
People who can't give up paper
Author : luigi23
Score : 75 points
Date : 2023-09-25 07:51 UTC (15 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| _moof wrote:
| For me personally paper is indispensable as a design tool for
| sketching out complex systems. I "think" more clearly on paper
| than I do with any digital tool I've used.
|
| In an aviation context I mostly use an iPad these days (learned
| to fly long before iPads were a thing) but I carry some backup
| paper charts. I've had chargers fail mid-trip and the electronic
| flight bag apps are real power hogs. And that's not to mention
| the ever-present threat of GPS failure, which is very real.
| histriosum wrote:
| I'm always fascinated with the folks who still carry paper
| sectionals.. at any given time in the cockpit Ive got three
| digital sources of charts that would have to fail, not counting
| whatever onboard gps I'm flying behind (primary tablet, backup
| tablet, phone).. I just can't find the point in carrying paper
| anymore, at least for my risk matrix..
|
| Re: GPS failure, that's orthogonal to the paper argument, since
| paper doesn't provide GPS either..
|
| I personally am looking forward to the day when paper charts
| stop being printed! Huge waste of resources that could be
| better allocated..
| dogman144 wrote:
| You'll know the value of it when your electronics bork out in
| a no-fail situation. Or it's a stress situation and the quick
| reference chart on paper can be eyeballed while the iPad
| requires a couple clicks.
|
| It happens eventually.
| histriosum wrote:
| Three independent electronic devices (two tablets and a
| phone) running different operating systems would need to
| fail. And for this to then become an emergency, I would
| need to be in IMC, also have my onboard installed GPS fail,
| along with all installed radio equipment.
|
| Short of an EMP event or wildly bad decision making on my
| part, the risk of this is vanishingly small.
| dogman144 wrote:
| That is usually the response!
|
| From another angle, there's a lot of hubris in refusing
| to carry analog backups that are a meaninglessly small
| addition to a packing list vs their risk benefits...
| which is the only ultimate job for a pilot.
|
| It takes one oversight to not charge a phone, or it gets
| cold in the cockpit and battery drops, suddenly you're
| down to two systems, risk jumps, odds one fails...
|
| Military pilots still fly with paper charts and darts for
| a reason.
| histriosum wrote:
| Military pilots are trained to fly in areas where
| electronic warfare is commonplace. That's not a risk that
| needs to be in my risk matrix as a GA pilot.
|
| I personally think it takes a decent chunk of hubris to
| believe that the likely out-of-date chart that you
| haven't picked up and actually used in years is going to
| help you and not impact your airplane control while you
| find the correct chart and then fold it properly. If
| we're talking VFR sectionals, I'd need to carry four
| charts to cover my state -- three, just to cover the area
| in which I typically fly. Good ole Michigan -- we lost
| the sectional lottery.
|
| I treat my electronics as required equipment, just like
| you would apparently treat your sectionals as required
| equipment. I check their battery level before every
| flight. If they aren't charged, I don't fly. If I don't
| have a way to charge them in flight, I don't fly
| (particularly if IMC is in any way a possibility). If one
| of them fails during a flight, I seriously consider
| whether it's safe to continue the flight as planned.
|
| I see paper charts providing a tiny amount of risk
| mitigation, which is easily outmatched by treating the
| electronics as an important checklist item and making
| sure to carry enough redundancy for the mission.
|
| You know who also doesn't carry paper charts anymore?
| Part 121 airlines. They take risk mitigation pretty
| seriously.
| _moof wrote:
| "Paper doesn't provide GPS" - spoken like a child of the
| magenta line! ;)
|
| Paper provides the VOR frequencies and visual navigation
| info, and approach procedures if you're really in a bind.
| It's also cheaper than a second tablet.
| histriosum wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're intentionally misreading my comment.
| It was in reply to your statement that GPS failure was a
| "real concern". I simply noted that GPS failure is
| orthogonal to the paper discussion.
|
| I'm quite happy to use pilotage to navigate, but lugging
| four sectionals around is a waste of my time and a waste of
| the FAAs resources to print. My state won the "let's see
| how annoying we can make these sectional divisions"
| contest. Just my local flying area is split onto three
| charts.
| cal85 wrote:
| > I "think" more clearly on paper than I do with any digital
| tool I've used.
|
| I have no specialist knowledge but my theory is this is at
| least partly down to the fact that it utilises our highly
| evolved fine motor control system. Compared to prodding
| chimpishly at a glass screen, using paper and pens/tools
| requires a more intricate system of movement and tactile
| feedback, which implies a more elaborate dance of of neurons
| and neurotransmitters in the brain and nervous system - and
| somehow our capacity to "think" is boosted by this extra
| activity.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I use computer and also write on paper a lot (I usually use a
| pencil rather than a pen, although some people prefer to use a
| pen). Writing on paper it can be done anywhere (and I commonly do
| in many places), and regardless of power outage, etc, and is also
| easier to give to someone else, than a computer (and do not have
| to worry about the incompatibility of computers, etc). I could
| also store them anywhere.
|
| Also for calendar, you can write it on a paper if you have a
| calendar on the wall; and, if you want to write notes on a paper
| next to something that it is relevant to (e.g. program numbers on
| a radio), then you can do that.
|
| Paper can also be reused (especially if you write on both sides)
| and recycled, and should be done more; even you might have spare
| paper that you can write notes, etc.
|
| They also mention package materials. I do think that reusable
| packaging materials would be better. (Reusable stuff is better in
| general.)
| m1n1 wrote:
| A professor once gave me a demo of a printer that could erase its
| own work and print a new image on the same regular printer paper.
|
| In between the two prints he let me mark the page however I
| wanted so I could be sure it was the same physical page coming
| back out.
|
| He admitted there was no market for such a thing but it was cool
| to see anyways. This was in the mid 1990s
| ilamont wrote:
| 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.
| goatsneez wrote:
| ... the entire Germany in the most comprehensive and pervading
| (bureaucratic process integration kind of way) that is
| conceivable for a human being in 21st century. Germany.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/germans-use-more-paper-than-any-other-...
| netbioserror wrote:
| When it comes to tabletop gaming, I strongly prefer handwritten
| force lists and character sheets. Printed is okay, so long as
| they can be marked and modified on the fly with a pencil.
|
| Requiring someone to fiddle with a poorly-designed app to record
| momentary bookkeeping is downright obnoxious and will not stand
| for it.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've seen some people use dry erase for consumables.
|
| I've also seen little magnets which would be cleaner.
| no_one_ever wrote:
| I did all of my note-taking on paper in school. I felt like I had
| to to keep up with complex visualizations and concepts. The habit
| has carried with me.
|
| I still keep those notebooks for reflection on what I studied.
| They're very valuable to me, even though I get teased for it. To
| me, it is like looking at a photograph of your younger brain.
| PumpkinSpice wrote:
| It's fairly clear that paper is being driven out of most white
| collar settings. It's still invaluable in many blue collar jobs.
| Phones don't work all that well when you're wearing work gloves,
| ports get clogged with debris, screens crack when you're crawling
| through narrow openings or pushing heavy stuff.
|
| I have pencils and post-its in my electronics lab and I use them
| when working on digital circuits.
| tivert wrote:
| 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 kind of digital document. Digital
| input methods are usually pretty awful, especially when you don't
| have the luxury of fumbling around for a few seconds (or more)
| with each input.
|
| IMHO, any reasonable-aware tech professional should be able to
| understand that. Especially given how frequently computer
| technology objectively sucks.
| eternityforest wrote:
| 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 paper doesn't really occur to you as something you'd want
| to do, unless you're deeply familiar with it. Just like any
| technology.
|
| Perhaps that's the big benefit, adding more variety of ways of
| thinking.
| tivert wrote:
| > 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 paper and make them ubiquitous across platforms.
| Things actually seem to be settling for a lowest-common-
| denominator that's getting _ever lower_ (e.g. people
| regularly resort to _screenshotting text_ in 2023).
|
| > Perhaps that's the big benefit, adding more variety of ways
| of thinking.
|
| One of the strengths of paper is its flexibility: you can
| make pretty much any mark you want, not just marks approved
| and implemented by some 3rd party. You seem to be describing
| a situation where technical limitations (of digital systems)
| are so ingrained in people's thought processes that they have
| trouble thinking outside the little box they've been given.
| ghaff wrote:
| Years ago I said something along these lines to the CTO of
| Novell and didn't get a very satisfactory response.
|
| I do think shared collaborative documents have filled a
| bigger void than many expected. But I still feel the
| current situation is unsatisfactory.
| eternityforest wrote:
| I think you pretty much have it spot on. Digital is the
| like another dialect of language that people think in.
|
| The paradigm is "I can very, very, easily make this set of
| marks, and I'm gonna build my process around them" rather
| than "I can make any mark I want and I'll spend the time to
| figure out exactly what marks and what process to use".
|
| It's incredibly easy and convenient, since it's all a
| prepackaged process with really only one medium, linear
| text, that only needs a tiny fraction of the skill... but
| we probably are losing something in the process.
|
| I never got into paper or handwriting, and gave up on
| drawing pretty quick after discovering how much harder it
| is than I expected, so I never really felt anything missing
| from paper when moving to digital, but thinking more about
| it, I definitely do think the tech shapes my thoughts
| pretty heavily, ideas that are hard to express with current
| tech rarely occur to me, if I'm designing something
| physical I'll probably be thinking in the 2.5D way that you
| do with CAD without really understanding 3D structures,
| etc.
|
| I tried to get into paper notetaking for quite a while(but
| found the level of attention to each letter needed to be
| kind of exhausting) and I tried to learn art drawing, but I
| never really paid much attention to or thought about the
| idea of trying to get into any kind of sketching or
| diagramming on paper, it's not as heavily talked about as
| text notetaking, perhaps I should try as an experiment.
| jjav wrote:
| > 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.
| qingcharles wrote:
| Most courts in the country have laws mandating electronic
| submissions for all documents.
|
| They all have to have an exception in the statute for prisoners
| as they are stuck using paper for everything.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| Honestly, I didn't know that I was being asked to do so.
| dzonga wrote:
| I support paper notebooks compared to the e-forms.
|
| 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.
|
| whether inaccessibility is due to data damage, lost passwords
| etc. whereas with a notebook as long as it's not damaged by fire.
| it should be good. also invest in waterproof paper notebooks i.e
| stone-paper.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| >I can bet a notes written today in a paper notebook - would be
| accessible 200+ years from now.
|
| I bet if you got a sheet of granite and chiseled them into the
| granite, they would have a far better chance of surviving that
| a paper notebook.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > 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 are just text files) +
| git/cloud/external drive backups, you are unlikely to lose them
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I recently moved and was going through boxes of stuff I had
| accumulated. In one of the boxes, I have notebooks from over
| 20 years ago. There is also a hard drive with an IDE
| connection on it packed around the same time. The papers were
| ever so slightly degraded, but immediately completely
| readable. I no longer have the hardware to read the hard
| drive (though, yes, I'm sure I can find some online or at a
| garage sale). This box of materials has now gone through at
| least ten moves with me. My money is, generally, on physical
| media.
| jjav wrote:
| > 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?
| amerine wrote:
| 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 wonderful to be able to make
| multiple backups, offsite storage, etc of digital data, I'm
| just making sure you understand how difficult it is to keep
| digital data stored long term without significant attention
| to that desire.
|
| Dropping some markdown in git is not a long-term (using 200
| yrs as my example) plan.
|
| I spent years and years working in a newspaper publisher
| trying to preserve the output digitally and it required
| serious investment (network storage, auto backup to LTO
| tapes, and verifying recovery is possible years later). It
| was and almost always is easier to ship two or three copies
| of the physical paper to separate storage facilities. I had
| to remind folks countless times that things like a dvd-r or
| cd-r have a maximal lifetime where we can trust that the data
| is retrievable.
|
| Maybe long term storage of personal data will have some
| future breakthroughs that make it dead simple to trust they
| can be viewable in 200+ years but today that's not the case.
|
| I will say that most personal data (sans photos imo) isn't
| useful after a few years (maybe 10+) and digital options are
| great for that. But for stuff we want to keep for centuries,
| it's extremely hard and expensive today.
| bluGill wrote:
| Most paper will not last 200 years in a normal climate. The
| acid treatment often used ensures it will break down in
| less than that. Sure if you actually have a dry climate and
| archival grade paper it can last thousands of years.
| However most of us don't have that.
|
| However most of us don't need that either. There are very
| few things you care about. I threw my kindergarten art out
| long ago when I realized I wasn't interested in seeing how
| I improved (back then I thought it would be cool to look
| back and see). There are things I have done I will care
| about, but not too many.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > 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
| amerine wrote:
| Big same. It might be a curiosity to my kids (or
| grandkids if I have those) but I doubt anyone beyond that
| will care
| allturtles wrote:
| Your personal notes are probably not significant in and
| of themselves, but historians will certainly care if _no
| one 's_ personal notes from today are preserved 200 years
| from now.
| jackthetab wrote:
| _Ea-nasir enters the chat_
| agumonkey wrote:
| 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.. that cost might be actually beneficial for
| your brain way of working)
| gspencley wrote:
| > 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 /
| outage
|
| - Pen & Paper works even if the device's battery dies or the
| power goes out
|
| - Pen & Paper is fast. I don't need to unlock the screen, I
| don't experience progressive sluggishness due to memory leaks,
| analytics / telemetry running in the background or
| feature/library bloat
|
| - Pen & Paper doesn't send everything that I'm writing to some
| remote server for analytics purposes
|
| - Pen & Paper has never crashed on me
|
| - I get to decide if and when I want the newest version of
| pen/paper. I don't ever reach for Pen & Paper to discover that
| some product owner has pushed a change on me without my opt-in
| / consent.
|
| - Pen & Paper works in virtually every envrionment, regardless
| of whether I'm wearing gloves or my hands are cold (though
| admittedly cold hands can slow down the writing process, but
| much less so than trying to use a touch-screen or keyboard).
|
| - Pen & Paper is often easier to read (assuming the hand-
| writing is legible, which is admittedly hit or miss, but it
| causes much less eye fatigue than staring at a screen).
|
| - Pen & Paper doesn't distract me with spell/grammar checks
| that I don't need in the moment. Disabling / re-enabling these
| features is time consuming.
|
| - Pen & Paper is a technology that has truly stood the test of
| time. The fact that it continues to persist into the digital
| age is very telling. Sometimes "simple & works" beats new and
| featureful but complicated.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| 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"
| jjav wrote:
| To add:
|
| The manufacturer of the pen or paper can't remove your access
| to using them because they decided to chance licensing.
|
| Said manufacturers can't force push an update that suddenly
| makes your old writing unusable.
| maxxk wrote:
| Two years ago I moved back to paper for my productivity and
| notetaking after about 7 years going fully digital. There are a
| lot of advantages for me. Some of those may apply to others:
|
| - Tactile feeling and aesthetics. My writing is not very
| beautiful, but a stack of papers filled with my notes and
| diagrams is very inspiring.
|
| - Paper is an offline, distraction-free medium. I think better
| with paper. Maybe it _is_ a cultural habit.
|
| - Paper won't disappear one day due to bad battery, untested OS
| update, malware, EOL for cloud service etc. Losing a couple of
| sheets of paper is easier than electronic device. But when
| speaking about losing a bulk of notes, it is much easier to
| lose it electronically than physically.
|
| - Paper is forgiving. I can draw quick-and-dirty diagram in a
| minute and move on. It is hard to draw quick-and-dirty diagram
| on a computer. I will spend at least a couple of minutes
| deciding which app will be more convenient to draw this
| diagram, about ten minutes fighting an app, and up to an hour
| fighting my perfectionism, placing all shapes in proper places
| in grid.
|
| - A sheet of paper is bounded, which helps with internal
| distractions. If I need to make a TODO list, I will take a
| smaller sheet, and fit all important things there.
|
| - When you have large desk, you can spread a lot of paper
| sheets on it and see it all at the same time. Rearrange it, put
| it in stacks by some criterion, and so on. And neither
| scrolling nor list of thumbnails work as good as flipping
| through a paper book.
|
| Disadvantages are:
|
| - Lack of search function. I didn't try Apple Notes document
| scanning recently, maybe some kind of handwriting recognition
| is there and it will be enough to just take photos of all my
| notes.
|
| - Portability: I need a desk with enough free space for both
| laptop and papers (so, mostly in terms of depth - probably a
| problem for open space offices).
|
| I have some hopes for Apple Vision Pro (maybe in V2 or V3). I
| think it has a potential to bring some of these advantages to
| digital world :)
| [deleted]
| mikestew wrote:
| _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 digital tools ("hey dingus, add bananas to the
| <shared family> grocery list"). But the first thing I grab in
| the morning is a paper notebook[1] to plan my day, using the
| "bullet journal" style that I've settled on these past few
| years. Every digital tool I've tried just turns into an abyss-
| like dumping ground where tasks go to die (and never get
| completed).
|
| I don't know why, maybe it's the lack of spatiality with
| digital tools. Or an abstraction too far, I don't know. I just
| know that I'd been pounding that square peg into that round
| hole for decades, until I finally just gave in went back to
| paper. Bullet journal style, nice notebook, and a nice fountain
| pen works for me for most of my organization, and it's probably
| what I'll stick with.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Wizard [1]
| https://www.leuchtturm1917.us
| bluGill wrote:
| Digital is worse than paper because with paper you need to
| copy and clean up your todo list often (typically daily,
| though other things can work) That means every item you
| didn't do is reviewed to see if you still care enough to put
| in the effort to copy it. digital systems make it easy to
| keep a long list of things you want to do eventually, but in
| reality never will, and soon you can't find in the long list
| things you really must do now.
|
| If you use your digital todo list for things that you must do
| by a deadline it works well. Digital tools are good for the
| yearly tasks list "buy birthday card for my sister" - knowing
| that you can then decide when it pops up if you will buy one
| or not. Digital tools make it too easy to put things in like
| "investigate interesting widget you just heard about when
| money isn't so tight", and then they clutter the list with
| things odds are you won't do.
|
| If you have a digital todo list you are allowed to have 2
| things that you must do today, and 10 things you must do
| sometime in the next week (numbers are debatable). If you
| have more than that something must go. If it isn't in the
| next two weeks put it on the calendar not the todo list so it
| doesn't pop up until you need to do it. (todo lists that
| integrate with your calendar are good at this!) Actually I've
| found my todo list works best if instead I use my calendar to
| block of time - I have a short presentation to give in a
| couple weeks so I have one hour a week to work on it.
|
| I have dysgraphia which means I cannot read my own writing.
| As such digital solutions have a higher interest for me.
| However there are things people using paper can do that I do
| not have a good replacement for. Things are working for me,
| but writing is a much better system if only I could use it.
| ska wrote:
| For me it's just that it works much better for some tasks.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Really dislike the "give up" terminology and related digital
| nudging in group/out group.
|
| Just like I can't give up:
|
| - paperless billing bc I'd like ironclad proof I've paid my
| mortgage off and have experienced plenty of database failures
|
| - driving without an insurance black box plugged into my car for
| a few % off my insurance
|
| - cash because it saves the small business a few % points and
| I've (/s) never seen a POS crash and burn before
|
| - paper maps bc you're completely insane to do outdoors stuff
| without a paper map and analog compass. When you have the
| emergency that needs it, you'll understand.
|
| The best success IT has had is convincing the world that the
| digital metaphor is as good, No... better! A total replacement!
| Stop killing the environment paper-man! ... than the analog
| thing.
|
| I have no idea how you can work in and around technology and have
| this mindset. I get sketched flying on software-defined airplanes
| these days even. If the scheduling software falls over under
| load.. I'm sure that implies every other airline software is A+!
| didntcheck wrote:
| The notion that paper letters are more authentic than digital
| has always confused me. If you can forge a realistic-looking
| PDF, you can also print it. On the other hand, an email still
| on Gmail's servers with headers showing its authenticated
| origin, or a document held in escrow by Docusign, seems like
| far more rigorous evidence in a hypothetical court dispute. And
| I'd have my bank statements as corroborating evidence, rather
| than relying on one company
|
| Ideally, companies would have well-known public keys and sign
| every PDF they send you. In practice, they don't, but it's not
| even (feasibly) _possible_ to sign a paper letter, unless we
| 're still counting a printed squiggle as some sort of proof.
| Holograms and other genuinely hard-to-print marks are
| presumably very effective against non-sophisticated forgers,
| but I only see them on a _few_ government documents, not
| mortgage papers
|
| Also I'm aware that printers print identifying dots, and that
| is probably the downfall of many amateur forgers, but only
| because it allows you to find a smoking gun if the document
| _is_ forged (and the printer was suspected _a priori_ ). But I
| imagine it's a lot harder to use that in the other direction,
| where a customer wants to prove a document did come from some
| company, as they'll presumably struggle to get their hands on
| the signatures of all the company's printers
| dogman144 wrote:
| The use case I'm referring to has:
|
| - a paper letter with an audit trail through the postal
| system
|
| - a printed out email to include headers that has the
| customer service rep +1'ing a total loan payment went through
|
| - etc
|
| It's not an everyday thing but it seems like lunacy to rely
| on essentially a servicenow queue for any important state
| change that relies on corporate trust of your actions that
| took away a revenue stream for them.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| 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!
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Another paper user checking in. I even have two different types
| of pads. One with thin paper for taking notes in meetings and
| such, since they will be deciphered to better paper later, and
| the thin paper will be recycled. One for more robust paper to
| which said notes will be deciphered and arranged, which is also
| used for real work. Plus I find it very hard to read from
| screens, even e-ink, so I tend to print things out if it's going
| to be a long read.
| mmphosis wrote:
| As much as using a phone with nav software and a dedicated
| plotter is easier to use--when everything breaks, and it will, I
| rely on paper charts when sailing.
| Decabytes wrote:
| Too be fair I don't think the anti-paper crowd are talking about
| me. The amount of paper I consume is minuscule compared to large
| businesses. I use paper a lot more than the average person. I
| make paper from recycled junk mail, and I hand write all of my
| notes. I retain things better when I write them down on paper. I
| also look at screens for 12 hours a day so staring at a piece of
| paper is a reprieve.
|
| My only concern with moving entirely to digital is that it is not
| strictly better. Digital should be the best way to consume media
| but it often isn't. I don't own the digital media like I do with
| physical media. Buying brand new digital media is also waaay more
| expensive then getting used books on Ebay. This is all on top of
| the fact that we can barely keep services around for more than 10
| years without them going away and being stuck with proprietary
| formats that are not accessible anymore.
|
| I am concerned for the day where everything is all digital, and
| then something catastrophic happens and we lose a significant
| chunk of our information. But maybe I'm just giving myself FUD
| TheCapeGreek wrote:
| Sometimes I want to get _more_ into paper, so I have an excuse to
| buy pretty notebooks. I do that about once a year and never end
| up using it right now.
|
| Secondarily, hearing about our risks of EMPs from solar flares
| (or even in war scenarios), or in case of electrical grid
| collapse (a not-impossible scenario in some countries), paper is
| the only way I'll have survival knowledge available to me.
| foobarian wrote:
| My favorite indulgence is high quality thesis-like paper.
| Archival quality, with nice cotton fibers. Pair with some nice
| ink nibs or fountain pens... ahhh
| zubairq wrote:
| I'm a developer and I still rely on paper to do some of my best
| work
| jebarker wrote:
| Likewise. I've never found anything as effective as a pencil
| and paper as a scratchpad when thinking through problems. I
| also find a strange motivation day to day in checking items off
| a physical checklist/todo-list that I don't get from the
| digital equivalent. However, digital is indisputable king when
| it comes to sharing information.
| dboreham wrote:
| 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.
| gwervc wrote:
| Same here, and when I was a grad student (phd) I used to write
| most important sections of a paper on paper.
| [deleted]
| helf wrote:
| [dead]
| gspencley wrote:
| 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 bill.
| Especially if accessing the e-bill requires me to have an account
| with a web app and enable MFA and change my password every 90
| days and always have Okta give me problems when I want to check
| my bill and thus need to jump through these hoops those whopping
| 12 times per year that I need this information.
|
| Maybe it's because I see how the sausage is made. Maybe it's
| because I use some sort of eletronic device all day for work. But
| the last thing I want to do when I need to jot something down
| quickly is reach for a phone or a laptop. Heck, most of the time
| I don't even remember (or care) where I left my phone.
| hypertexthero wrote:
| 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.
| rpowers wrote:
| I'm in the same situation as you. Though I think the major
| factor is that the physicality of handwriting the notes helps
| me.
| spacemadness wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| HPsquared wrote:
| I'm the same, I think it's literally because I used pen and
| paper all day in school and that's just what I'm used to.
| clnq wrote:
| 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.
| jjav wrote:
| Indeed. I have family books from the 1800s and photo albums
| from the early 1900s. Zero effort was put into preserving
| these, they were just left on a shelf, occasionally moving
| from generation to generation.
|
| Except for the most obsessive & technically skilled
| archivists, nobody will have any photos/documents from today
| in 100-150 years.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Same, iOS developer here. Maybe if software were treated less
| like fashion that had to constantly be updated, resulting in a
| neverending revolving door of bugs and new waves of learning
| curves, and instead like a focused tool, it could catch up more
| to paper.
|
| There are absolutely benefits to software over paper but they
| feel hamstrung by the constant desire to roll out the next UI
| paradigm. Sooner or later the set of constraints between
| device, OS and app versions forces an upgrade. Security updates
| should be the only reason to even hint at that possibility IMO.
|
| Maybe I'm just too close to the problem. If I squint enough I
| can see how a pen running out of ink is like an app crash, and
| replacing the pen/ink has a real, nonzero environmental cost.
| I'm not sure how to amortize the costs of device manufacture
| and software development across all bugs, and compare that to
| the costs/benefits of pen and paper. There is some shade of
| rose on my glasses, no doubt.
|
| I need more information, but I sense it's not the kind of
| information that is important to many people, and especially
| corporations, to gather.
| galdosdi wrote:
| > If I squint enough I can see how a pen running out of ink
| is like an app crash
|
| Interesting analogy. I think a closer analogy to a pen
| running out of ink and having to grab another pen, is a
| laptop battery running low and having to be plugged in.
| the_snooze wrote:
| 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.
| galdosdi wrote:
| The security properties are also really really different, and
| really intuitive, and quite strong too: if you have physical
| possession you have total access, otherwise none at all.
|
| With a computing device, only if you are certain there is no
| wifi/bluetooth/cellular/etc hardware inside the device, can
| you have a similar trust. And the days are rapidly coming
| when there's no such thing as a device without such hardware,
| not even a watch.
|
| With computing devices, you do get the ability to encrypt
| data at rest, so for example, a locked physical paper diary
| is less secure in that sense than an encrypted text file. But
| the possible number of actors that would attempt to break the
| security for a physical paper document is much lower, only
| whoever is nearby, not everyone on the entire internet.
|
| If I had something I really didn't want to get out, these
| days, I'd be much more likely to recommend the use of a
| notebook in a safe than an encrypted file on a laptop or
| phone or something. It doesn't matter how encrypted it is if
| my device gets compromised.
|
| (If it had to be electronic, it'd be a laptop with no working
| networking hardware, in a safe.)
| araes wrote:
| ChangeLog - Paper - Sept 2023
|
| Good news everyone, Paper supports MSPen 2.3.4.5.3.2....,
| GPen 1.10.1.0.11 "Lumpsucker", iPen 4.2.0 (8 new colors!),
| and the AmaWEbLumberPen (AWELP)
|
| We're happy to report we've solved the issue of Paper
| randomly vanishing from your house, and reappearing on your
| roof.
|
| Security exploits with D4r|<9@nc1l and Y+e()v+ have been
| discovered, and we're working on a fix. In the meantime,
| please update your Paper password (remember not to write it
| down)
|
| Minor issues with Paper flickering (and in a limited user
| group causing epilepsy seizures and incontinence) have been
| mitigated.
|
| We're aware of Paper occasionally causing i#Desk models to
| collapse, and working to close the loop.
|
| We're also happy to report we've been sold to ShredderCo.!
| Congratulations to the team for going the extra mile, and
| we expect a bright future in their exciting and challenging
| area of business.
|
| [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/16hqcly/good_ne
| ws_ev...
| dieselgate wrote:
| "..the simplest thing that works but not any simpler"
| TapWaterBandit wrote:
| Amazon removing 1984 on people's kindles all the way back in
| 2009 was a wake-up call. Digital media/content is open to
| revision in a way that physical media/content is not.
|
| I have swung back around and now buy many physical
| books/blurays/etc for things I really love or think are
| important because my faith that companies/govt won't decide I
| cant have that version anymore is very low.
| mongol wrote:
| My poor handwriting is something I am disappointed in myself
| with. I knew how to write quite well, but that skill went to
| shreds in university when I tried to write too much, too fast. My
| hand started to repulse the pen. It is as if it always wants to
| let go of it and only with mental force can be made to hold on
| and scribble some ugly notes in protest. If I slow down I can
| write prettier, but I don't have patience to write slowly.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > 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.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Ya, lunacy to do any outdoors without paper map + compass
| beyond the there-and-back loop where you can still hear car
| traffic.
| eternityforest wrote:
| 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 asking
| directions, I'm well aware of how awful it is to have no idea
| where you are or what direction you're facing or if you're in
| the right city!
| ghaff wrote:
| Sure. I usually just use GPS but I absolutely know how to
| read a trail map. Orienteering off-trail is a bit rusty but
| I can absolutely deal with most map and compass navigation.
| dogman144 wrote:
| I do not know anyone serious about the outdoors that does
| not know how to use a map and compass.
|
| Extremely straightforward to learn.
|
| I hike with a Garmin foretrex, I route plan and land nav
| when out there with a map. The garmin sanity checks me once
| in a while.
|
| There is a significant amount of bad stuff that can go very
| wrong, to start, just bc your Garmin's altimeter and
| calibration is bugging out while you mindlessly follow. And
| when you're in areas where this matters (ie "can I hear
| street noise" judgment"), the out of the box technical land
| navigation tools tend to not work out of the box.
|
| I've had an updated and calibrated Garmin put me 5-600m
| away from where I definitely was via map, compass
| triangulation and then sanity check with a iPhone b/c the
| difference really surprised me. 5-600m difference is quite
| consequential. Mix in Garmin using optionally Glonass
| (Russian satellites), there's just a lot of stuff that can
| go sideways. Easy enough to buy a compass, map protector,
| local map. Even something like knowing what and how to
| shoot an emergency azimuth can solve an otherwise crisis
| situation.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Everyone serious about the outdoors probably does, but
| lots of more casual people don't. I'm assuming that's how
| a lot people get lost, because the casual people suddenly
| decide to try something out of their skill level without
| knowing it's out of their skill level, because GPS has
| always hidden their lack of skill.
|
| I don't think just buying a map and compass is a
| guarantee, for the casual people who don't know what
| they're doing, and the military has entire navigation
| classes, seems like it's a real nontrivial skill that you
| have to actually learn.
|
| Definitely a good idea to learn, but GPS makes it easy to
| not know how much you don't know.
| cracrecry wrote:
| >any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map
|
| The best maps are cloth maps. They are amazing as you can bend
| those, put over a stone, rain could go over.
| ghaff wrote:
| Tyvek works fine. But really anything is better than nothing
| if you know how to use it.
| ghaff wrote:
| 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.
| davchana wrote:
| 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.
| dboreham wrote:
| I always carry my (N-1)th phone in my suitcase in case of
| such an event.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| 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.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure I'm quite that paranoid but I can't really
| argue. And already pretty much do it with the computer I
| travel with--my 8 year old laptop. But eg N-1 probably
| doesn't have as good a camera if you do every 3-4 years
| like me.
|
| With some extended personal travel coming up I'll
| definitely think about my strategies.
| brightsize wrote:
| Re: hiking, your comment reminded me of this recent write-up in
| the Seattle Times. It's hard to imagine serious hikers hitting
| the trail in the PNW without at least one person in the party
| carrying the relevant Green Trails paper maps, but I suppose
| they exist.
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/life/outdoors/seattle-mapmaker-...
|
| "Your devices aren't big enough to show you the context at any
| level of detail that from our point of view would be useful,"
| he said, citing the possibility of needing to find an escape
| route in a wildfire. "If you unfold a map, you can see where
| you are and get a better handle on where you can go."
|
| Coburn's stewardship also resulted in the durable quality of
| today's Green Trails maps. Made of Polyart tearproof synthetic
| paper, with special ink to shade topographic relief, and
| printed at Capitol City Press in Olympia, these maps have a
| clear selling point: waterproof, solar-powered, no batteries
| required."
| eternityforest wrote:
| I like the idea of paper. It's got some pretty cool uses.
| Sometimes I think I probably _should_ use it more. Most of my
| favorite works of art, buildings I 've enjoyed being in, an even
| a lot of tech had their beginnings on a page.
|
| But it's never something I just casually reach for, the thought
| of using physical media just doesn't really ever occur to me
| unless I'm specifically going out of my way. Digital is so much
| easier, no fighting your hands to make the letters readable, no
| worrying about losing anything, no need to physically sort
| things, no need to have dedicated space and time for it thanks to
| the portability and durability of the screen.
|
| The UI changes, apps go obsolete, but keeping up is just a matter
| of stuff you can learn on a random blog, not stuff that requires
| the long, hard process of figuring out how to translate thoughts
| into spatial patterns, which nobody can even describe really.
|
| It seems like using paper at least occasionally is probably a
| good idea. It's definitely gotten easier now that we have cheap
| space pens and A5 format binders that are a little more
| convenient than full pages.
| all2 wrote:
| I think differently on paper. For some reason my entire mode of
| reasoning shifts and the way I process information becomes
| different. Could I write the same thing in Vim? Sure. But for
| some reason paper makes my thoughts more careful, more
| substantial, as if the input latency gives me time to think.
| nottheengineer wrote:
| Paper has two objective advantages over digital: It's reliable
| and it doesn't scale. That makes it the only option for elections
| as any compromise of a digital system would instantly decide the
| outcome. With paper, a bag of ballots might be lost or a few fake
| ones introduced, but none of these attacks scale very well so if
| we can prevent most of them, that's good enough.
|
| I won't touch on preferring paper for visualizing thoughts
| because that's just preference, but seeing people prefer paper
| invoices over digital ones is just sad to see. On a conceptual
| level digital should always be preferrable, but we somehow
| managed to screw the inplementation up so bad that it's worse
| than no implementation.
|
| Why do we need to overcomplicate everything?
| V__ wrote:
| 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.
| dboreham wrote:
| 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.
| V__ wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestions. Somehow, I never thought about
| using virtual desktops, but it sounds intriguing.
| pimlottc wrote:
| This is an actual problem in government modernization projects.
| When legacy paper-based systems get overburdened, it's
| impossible not to notice growing stacks of file folders
| everywhere: on desks, on carts, in file cabinets, on shelves,
| in storerooms and storage facilities.
|
| But when the new digital systems back up, it's invisible.
| What's a few hundred thousand rows to a modern database?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I've been writing some assembly, learning ED, and some other
| things on my Kaypro 1. I write notes on paper from the reference
| material on my desktop then go over to the Kaypro to apply it.
| Seems to work really well for learning and brings back memories
| of college classes.
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