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My last article on paper address books vs. digital address books received some good feedback. I've taken some of the best of that feedback and made a web page out of it. You can read those comments and the original article here: http://www.tnpcnewsletter.com/dan/digital-vs-paper/ I have similar thoughts on other areas. Sometimes efficiency is achieved while other information is lost. Often the other information consists of things we didn't really think about. You might remember the old index card catalogs at the library. The cards had extra information to help you out. But only if you looked for it or happen to notice it. You could tell which items were most popular by the wear and tear on the card. New items were obvious from the lack of handling. I often stumbled on titles that sounded interesting as I flipped through the stack in search of my book. All of this was lost with electronic card catalogs. My local library went to electronic catalogs about six years ago. When I was in college in the mid 1980's, the incoming freshman did not know how to use a card catalog. They would pay me to show them how to use the card catalog and stacks. They had never used one before. I do wonder about thinking processes. For instance when you used to make a research paper you would put each thought on an index card then shuffle through them and put some structure to things. It wouldn't surprise me if people today just use the order presented to them on a search engine. Using the index cards trained you to think of how ideas relate to each other and the best way to present those ideas to others. So am I saying we should go back to card catalogs? No. But I am becoming more aware of the information sources that I no longer have access to. I'm having to rethink how I gather information and more importantly how I rank the quality of that information. Don't get me wrong I'm very good at searching things out on the Internet. I've been doing that for over ten years. But I'm spending time lately making sure I look for the connections and give information the consideration it deserves. © 2004 Dan Butler |
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