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Why Some Power Tools Have Slipped My Mind
There was a scene in Creation (the movie) where Darwin was writing the The Origin Of Species manuscript. I think the scene is sexy. One, it’s a writing scene. Two, it looks very antique (old, brown, and slow –it’s quite a hazy way of describing, I know, but that’s the best I can come up with for now). This being around 1800s, writing involved paper after paper being individually hand-written. In that scene, Darwin put a stack of just recently written paper and some leather bound notebooks into a small shelf. After a while, something about that shelf made sense about something else.
The shelf, if I remember it correctly, was a CPU high (which CPU model is beside the point) and were divided into several compartments. Each compartment would fit a chapter-thick of papers and several leather-bound notebooks, into which they are slipped horizontally –as the scene depicted. I suppose the number of shelf compartments would at least equal the number of chapters a book would eventually amount to. It was so systematic it was enlightening.
Then it hit me that the interface logic of a Windows Explorer (or the likes of it, if you use other operating systems, I suppose) is consistent with that shelf. Such a shelf would enable a writer to arrange his/her raw materials. He (I’m going to skip “/she” and “/her” for efficiency reason, no sexism intended) could, from very early phase of writing, decide to which compartment some notebooks or scribbled napkins should go and move them to another one he thought more fitting. When progressing to writing a particular chapter, the system would save him the time being distracted by data noise. And after having done with the working chapter he could place it in the same space where its raw materials were, where it reasonably belong. This is outlining brought to life.
After all the years using Explorer (yes, by the way, I used that operating system), it is only then that I realized how beautifully intuitive the software really is. I have been moving contents in and out of folders only for the sake of retrieval, or worse, a sense of visual neatness (as the number of times I go nuts finding a file would indicate). Putting my self in Darwin’s shoes (which by the way I have no idea what they look like) I realized how in my hands those features have been no more than routines, no longer power tools as they are. This is not yet mentioning copying, cutting, pasting, and renaming.
I see two reasons why I have been missing this out. One, Explorer’s file size is so miniscule compared to the total OS package that I don’t feel I paid for it (some of us don’t even pay for the whole thing). It is as without price as it is without value. In fact, that it has any value at all never crosses my thoughts. I don’t know how much Darwin’s manuscript shelf cost. It might not did him much since he was quite the gentleman of wealth of his time. But I do suspect that the shelf was a stand-alone purchase. It didn’t ship out with any stack of blank papers (or do Darwin typed them? When was typewriter invented, by the way? --“wikipedia-lazybum”). That alone must have made the shelf almost impossible to go unnoticed. It was after all a stationery relevant to one of Darwin’s main business: writing.
Two, unlike Darwin, (and all writers and/or thinkers of similar age of time) I deal with my data, digital as they are, symbolically. There’s no touching involve during the interaction, aside from mousing around. Darwin literally got his hands on his. The manuscript shelf, I suppose, had proxied his mental processes --categorizing, reasoning, problem solving, etc-- extended to direct physical actions, making his thoughts way clearer and thus richer than ours. Imagine that: thinking and moving, fully synchronized, during complex problem solving, multiplying the quality of its output.
I wonder how much of this is responsible in making The Origin such a beautiful opus, both as a scientific insights and a prose.
Maybe it has slipped my mind that Darwin’s manuscript shelf has evolved into Explorer we're more than familiar with. If I’m right, that means a degree of negligence may have cost us some amount of valuable quality of thinking --and thoughts-- for quite some time. I think it is worthy of our time to look back and retrace what and how ancient tools have enabled the crafty, creative minds before us. If living up to their standard is too much, a little copy-catting will not hurt.
.
There was a scene in Creation (the movie) where Darwin was writing the The Origin Of Species manuscript. I think the scene is sexy. One, it’s a writing scene. Two, it looks very antique (old, brown, and slow –it’s quite a hazy way of describing, I know, but that’s the best I can come up with for now). This being around 1800s, writing involved paper after paper being individually hand-written. In that scene, Darwin put a stack of just recently written paper and some leather bound notebooks into a small shelf. After a while, something about that shelf made sense about something else.
The shelf, if I remember it correctly, was a CPU high (which CPU model is beside the point) and were divided into several compartments. Each compartment would fit a chapter-thick of papers and several leather-bound notebooks, into which they are slipped horizontally –as the scene depicted. I suppose the number of shelf compartments would at least equal the number of chapters a book would eventually amount to. It was so systematic it was enlightening.
Then it hit me that the interface logic of a Windows Explorer (or the likes of it, if you use other operating systems, I suppose) is consistent with that shelf. Such a shelf would enable a writer to arrange his/her raw materials. He (I’m going to skip “/she” and “/her” for efficiency reason, no sexism intended) could, from very early phase of writing, decide to which compartment some notebooks or scribbled napkins should go and move them to another one he thought more fitting. When progressing to writing a particular chapter, the system would save him the time being distracted by data noise. And after having done with the working chapter he could place it in the same space where its raw materials were, where it reasonably belong. This is outlining brought to life.
After all the years using Explorer (yes, by the way, I used that operating system), it is only then that I realized how beautifully intuitive the software really is. I have been moving contents in and out of folders only for the sake of retrieval, or worse, a sense of visual neatness (as the number of times I go nuts finding a file would indicate). Putting my self in Darwin’s shoes (which by the way I have no idea what they look like) I realized how in my hands those features have been no more than routines, no longer power tools as they are. This is not yet mentioning copying, cutting, pasting, and renaming.
I see two reasons why I have been missing this out. One, Explorer’s file size is so miniscule compared to the total OS package that I don’t feel I paid for it (some of us don’t even pay for the whole thing). It is as without price as it is without value. In fact, that it has any value at all never crosses my thoughts. I don’t know how much Darwin’s manuscript shelf cost. It might not did him much since he was quite the gentleman of wealth of his time. But I do suspect that the shelf was a stand-alone purchase. It didn’t ship out with any stack of blank papers (or do Darwin typed them? When was typewriter invented, by the way? --“wikipedia-lazybum”). That alone must have made the shelf almost impossible to go unnoticed. It was after all a stationery relevant to one of Darwin’s main business: writing.
Two, unlike Darwin, (and all writers and/or thinkers of similar age of time) I deal with my data, digital as they are, symbolically. There’s no touching involve during the interaction, aside from mousing around. Darwin literally got his hands on his. The manuscript shelf, I suppose, had proxied his mental processes --categorizing, reasoning, problem solving, etc-- extended to direct physical actions, making his thoughts way clearer and thus richer than ours. Imagine that: thinking and moving, fully synchronized, during complex problem solving, multiplying the quality of its output.
I wonder how much of this is responsible in making The Origin such a beautiful opus, both as a scientific insights and a prose.
Maybe it has slipped my mind that Darwin’s manuscript shelf has evolved into Explorer we're more than familiar with. If I’m right, that means a degree of negligence may have cost us some amount of valuable quality of thinking --and thoughts-- for quite some time. I think it is worthy of our time to look back and retrace what and how ancient tools have enabled the crafty, creative minds before us. If living up to their standard is too much, a little copy-catting will not hurt.
.
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