The Persistence of Paper, the Dewey Decimal System, and Connections:
An article by Malcolm Gladwell on the reasons why paper refuses to go away. [link via Tech Architecture Lodge].
Gladwell rocks. One of the reasons I like him so much is that he takes the big view of technology, in this article tracing the development of many contemporary organizational principles back to Melvil Dewey (yes, the Dewey of Dewey decimal system fame) who invented the vertical filing cabinet. The vertical filing cabinet! Of course someone had to invent it, but you never think about one guy sitting around his office in pre-filing cabinet days, with stacks of papers and pigeonholes in his desk — pigeonholes! — thinking “How the hell am I going to organize all these papers?” But someone had to do it. And Gladwell had to write about it. Another great example is his article, King Road Drag where he traces the e-commerce revolution back to a tool called the King Road Drag used to smooth out dirt farm roads. Yup. Read the article. It makes sense in a roundabout kind of way.
Gladwell’s articles remind of the old late 70’s/early 80’s PBS series, Connections, hosted by James Burke. Burke would take all these seemingly unrelated historical/technological events and show how they all worked together integrally to create a particular historical outcome. Fascinating stuff to my junior high mind…and apparently still fascinating to my 30-something noggin.