Still, I have to notice that using different mediums appears to improve the final work product (insert joke about low quality here). Some of this might be indicative of the technology I grew up with-would someone familiar with smartphone touchscreens from age seven have sufficiently dexterous fingers to be faster than they would be with paper?-but I think the obvious answer to “handwriting or computer?” is “both, depending.” As I write this sentence, I have a printout of a novel called ASKING ANNA in front of me, covered with blue pen, because editing on the printed page feels different to me than editing on the screen. I like to write in notebooks despite carrying around a smartphone. It’s a different mode of thought for most people.” This makes intuitive sense: It’s why people like to brainstorm using whiteboards rather than Word documents. Handwriting is for short phrases, for jotting ideas. “Typing tends to be for complete sentences and thoughts-you go deeper into each line of thought. “The research shows that the type of content you produce is different whether you handwrite or type,” says Ken Hinckley, an interface expert at Microsoft Research who’s long studied pen-based electronic devices. Farhad Manjoo even cites someone who studies these things: For now, it’s enough to feel the relationship. I’m not entirely sure how, and if I were struggling for tenure in industrial design or psychology I might start examining the relationship. Notebooks subtly change our relationship with words and drawings. In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr says: “The intellectual ethic is the message that a medium or other tool transmits into the minds and culture of its users.” Cell phones subtly change our relationship with time.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Moleskine racks have proliferated in stores at the same time everyone has acquired cell phones, laptops, and now tablets. In Distrust That Particular Flavor, William Gibson says, “Once perfected, communication technologies rarely die out entirely rather, they shrink to fit particular niches in the global info-structure.” The notebook’s niche is perfect. I have complete confidence that, unless I misplace them, I’ll still be able to read my notebooks in 20 years, regardless of changes in technology. It’s become a cliche to argue that the technologies we use affect the thoughts we have and the way we express those thoughts, but despite being cliche the basic power of that observation remains. But those possibilities are different from the notebook’s. Which is wonderful in its own way, and that way opens many new possibilities. Similar writing in a computer can function this way but doesn’t for me: the text is too open and too malleable. The lack of editability is a feature, not a bug, and the notebook is an enigma of stopped time. If you want to flip back to an earlier page, it’s easy. Maybe you’ll see another idea that reminds you of the one you’re working on, and you’ll combine the two in a novel way. You’re going to see the page where you left off. If you take a notebook out of your pocket to record an idea, you won’t see nude photos of your significant other. For a notebook, fewer features are better and fewer options are more.
#Another name for a mininote book computer software#
It has no distractions, no pop-up icons, and no software upgrades. The only way to “accidentally delete” something is to leave the notebook submerged in water.Ī notebook is the written equivalent of a face-to-face meeting. I don’t have to manage files and have yet to delete something important. I know where I have everything I’ve written on-the-go over the last eight years: in the same stack. A notebook has never interrupted me with a screen that says, “Wuz up?” Notebooks are easy to use without thinking. The notebook has an immediate tactile advantage over phones: they aren’t connected to the Internet.
I’m a believer in notebooks, though I’m hardly a luddite and use a computer too much. It’s a strange way to begin a post about notebooks, but Jobs’ views on the power of a potentially anachronistic practice applies to other seemingly anachronistic practices. “Despite being a denizen of the digital world, or maybe because he knew too well its isolating potential, Jobs was a strong believer in face-to-face meetings.” That’s from Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.
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