28 March 2002

The case for messy desks: Gladwell's The Social life of Paper Computer technology didn't replace paper because whilst it's good for filing, paper isn't: it's good for creative thought. "If its usefulness lies in the promotion of ongoing creative thinking, then, once that thinking is finished, the paper becomes superfluous. The solution to our paper problem, they write, is not to use less paper but to keep less paper. Why bother filing at all? Everything we know about the workplace suggests that few if any knowledge workers ever refer to documents again once they have filed them away, which should come as no surprise, since paper is a lousy way to archive information. [...] Had the computer come first - and paper second - no one would raise an eyebrow at the flight strips cluttering our air-traffic-control centers." See also his Tipping Point. Related: John Seely Brown on email, paper and pens (and see also JSB's Social Life of Information) 8:18:03 AM     comments