For note taking, I prefer pen and paper. For diagramming and brainstorming, I prefer a physical whiteboard. For non-work related scheduling, I prefer marking things on the physical calendar hanging on my wall... or sometimes I'll reach for a post-it note.

For bills, I prefer that my company mail me a paper bill. Especially if accessing the e-bill requires me to have an account with a web app and enable MFA and change my password every 90 days and always have Okta give me problems when I want to check my bill and thus need to jump through these hoops those whopping 12 times per year that I need this information.

Maybe it's because I see how the sausage is made. Maybe it's because I use some sort of eletronic device all day for work. But the last thing I want to do when I need to jot something down quickly is reach for a phone or a laptop. Heck, most of the time I don't even remember (or care) where I left my phone.

Among other things, Yang has found that the very existence of those visual representations matters greatly: designers who do even basic, preliminary sketching consistently generate more design ideas. As she and a coauthor wrote in a 2007 paper, there is “an important interplay between a designer’s ability to sketch and their ability to visualize in their heads or through prototypes.” She has even found that if designers aren’t highly skilled at drawing, that doesn’t affect the quality of their final design outcomes; it just matters that they draw at all.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/19/1063906/design-c...

Whiteboarding also falls into this realm ... not paper, but it enables the act of sketching without a digital intermediary.

For instance: paper documents are generally more robust/reliable (as a practical matter), easily attached to physical items, and easier to annotate than any kind of digital document. Digital input methods are usually pretty awful, especially when you don't have the luxury of fumbling around for a few seconds (or more) with each input.

IMHO, any reasonable-aware tech professional should be able to understand that. Especially given how frequently computer technology objectively sucks.

You'd be crazy to get rid of paper charts on a boat, for the same reason any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map, and the smart ones actually do it. Yeah, the primary system will be GPS, but that system requires a lot of things to be functioning which may not always be functioning. You need a backup, and paper is perfect for that.

While there are digital versions of this, nothing really matches the broad awareness of the field like just having the 2 meter by 3 meter map stretched out on the play space with all the pieces mid-game. Monitors feel like looking at the world through a straw in this context and the tactile ability to pick up pieces and try out scenarios can't be replicated with a mouse or even touchscreen.

Any technological solution would have to be able to display such a large piece of paper without scrolling, at retina display levels of quality. The closest technology I've seen that sort of "got it" was the early Microsoft cocktail table where you could put phones and controls and such on the screen directly. From those early concept ideas we ended up with the Surface Studio and dial I guess, but it's not a 2x3m retina display with thousands of game pieces, sometimes stacked.

In an aviation context I mostly use an iPad these days (learned to fly long before iPads were a thing) but I carry some backup paper charts. I've had chargers fail mid-trip and the electronic flight bag apps are real power hogs. And that's not to mention the ever-present threat of GPS failure, which is very real.

Just like I can’t give up:

- paperless billing bc I’d like ironclad proof I’ve paid my mortgage off and have experienced plenty of database failures

- driving without an insurance black box plugged into my car for a few % off my insurance

- cash because it saves the small business a few % points and I’ve (/s) never seen a POS crash and burn before

- paper maps bc you’re completely insane to do outdoors stuff without a paper map and analog compass. When you have the emergency that needs it, you’ll understand.

The best success IT has had is convincing the world that the digital metaphor is as good, No… better! A total replacement! Stop killing the environment paper-man! … than the analog thing.

I have no idea how you can work in and around technology and have this mindset. I get sketched flying on software-defined airplanes these days even. If the scheduling software falls over under load.. I’m sure that implies every other airline software is A+!

When you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

Paper is a tool and a good one. It is simple, flexible, and most of all reliable.

You'd be laughed out of the room for suggesting that Wi-Fi connected e-hammers [0] are the way of the future, and when will the last old fogeys finally get with the times and throw away their old dumb hammer?

[0] I mean is it really even hammering without an oled screen that shows you how much force you're swinging with? And don't forget about the proprietary app that graphs your hammer swings for you. The light glaze of gamification (try for the biggest force!) will distract you from the personal data it's hoovering up to sell. Yes it definitely needs your precise location for Home Depot Hammer Hard Coupon Rewards (TM).

I can bet a notes written today in a paper notebook - would be accessible 200+ years from now. compared to notes written in some notebook app.

whether inaccessibility is due to data damage, lost passwords etc. whereas with a notebook as long as it's not damaged by fire. it should be good. also invest in waterproof paper notebooks i.e stone-paper.

I won't touch on preferring paper for visualizing thoughts because that's just preference, but seeing people prefer paper invoices over digital ones is just sad to see. On a conceptual level digital should always be preferrable, but we somehow managed to screw the inplementation up so bad that it's worse than no implementation.

Why do we need to overcomplicate everything?

* Paper does not run out of battery. On a ship where you need to be able to navigate whether or not the computer fails, this is a feature. My brother-in-law tells a story of when he was an air traffic controller in the military. Every so often they told them they had to turn off their computers and navigate the pilots in the air using paper to make sure they knew how to do it in case the computers failed and the power turned off.

* Paper cannot be hacked. In the article, Russian intelligence and MI5 were mentioned, as well as paper prescriptions. Of all highly secure mediums, paper is the most convenient.

* Paper is just handy. I use it right now to print out knitting patterns and write notes on them. I don't have to find some app to annotate the pattern I can just write directly on the paper. For what it is, paper is the default because it is so fully featured.

Requiring someone to fiddle with a poorly-designed app to record momentary bookkeeping is downright obnoxious and will not stand for it.

But it's never something I just casually reach for, the thought of using physical media just doesn't really ever occur to me unless I'm specifically going out of my way. Digital is so much easier, no fighting your hands to make the letters readable, no worrying about losing anything, no need to physically sort things, no need to have dedicated space and time for it thanks to the portability and durability of the screen.

The UI changes, apps go obsolete, but keeping up is just a matter of stuff you can learn on a random blog, not stuff that requires the long, hard process of figuring out how to translate thoughts into spatial patterns, which nobody can even describe really.

It seems like using paper at least occasionally is probably a good idea. It's definitely gotten easier now that we have cheap space pens and A5 format binders that are a little more convenient than full pages.

My only concern with moving entirely to digital is that it is not strictly better. Digital should be the best way to consume media but it often isn't. I don't own the digital media like I do with physical media. Buying brand new digital media is also waaay more expensive then getting used books on Ebay. This is all on top of the fact that we can barely keep services around for more than 10 years without them going away and being stuck with proprietary formats that are not accessible anymore.

I am concerned for the day where everything is all digital, and then something catastrophic happens and we lose a significant chunk of our information. But maybe I'm just giving myself FUD

In between the two prints he let me mark the page however I wanted so I could be sure it was the same physical page coming back out.

He admitted there was no market for such a thing but it was cool to see anyways. This was in the mid 1990s

Paper doesn’t need to go away or be given up. Some uses of it would be better digital.

Digital can’t do everything nor would it be able to handle everything in every way.

I might use paper less, but writing is still invaluable.

I have pencils and post-its in my electronics lab and I use them when working on digital circuits.

For archiving, some cities still have pen drafted mylar that sits in vaults. If you want to revise plans, go to City, check out the mylar with your life, use a razor blade to edit, pen with permanent ink and send back into the vault. New plans are plotted, but still to mylar.

With kids I am curious if they will learn how to handwrite. Will schools even teach how to read handwriting? Some interesting stuff as more goes digital and type printed.

Pen, Pencil, paper still has very great uses.

Also for calendar, you can write it on a paper if you have a calendar on the wall; and, if you want to write notes on a paper next to something that it is relevant to (e.g. program numbers on a radio), then you can do that.

Paper can also be reused (especially if you write on both sides) and recycled, and should be done more; even you might have spare paper that you can write notes, etc.

They also mention package materials. I do think that reusable packaging materials would be better. (Reusable stuff is better in general.)

For note taking, with a pen I cam easily transcribe math formulas. I cant do that with a txt editor.

Ok, so I switch to org-mode and become a tex mode guru. There's still no easy way to make a geometric drawing.

So now I have a tablet. The stylus feels weird, the tablet heavy. The resolution much lower than paper, the GUI, the battery life abysmal compared to paper, the latency anodyne.

But sure, it does everything paper can do.

... that is until I crease the paper to make a geometric figure freed from the limitations of compass and straight edge constructions, a cube [1], a crane to flirt with my neighbor, a bottle opener [2], a makeshift knife [3] or to use as kindling.

[1] I've actually done this to help me visualize crystal structure's interstitials.

[2] Neat trick a frenchman taught me.

[3] really sucks at this, but I did slice an apple with a sheet of printer paper once

I gave mine up and tried to go digital, but I just haven't found anything I like. Google Cal has been ok, but I hate the way I had to maintain a personal and private version of my planner. I was worried if I got laid off I'd lose access to my stuff. This is basically a concern with any planning software for me. The app turns to shit or the company goes bust and that's it. I have to invent some new way of managing my time.

Even with my iPad Pro + Pencil, I'm not satisfied yet. I still find just writing a comma cumbersome on the iPad pro.

I'm going to buy a paper day planner again because I've never been so unorganized since I quit the paper planner. I feel kind of guilty because I'm not taking advantage of all the amazing modern cloud, AI crazy amazing tech to plan my life...

Perhaps because it's so much easier to have an opinion and have that broadcasted.

1. Drawing is laborious on a computer, and it rarely needs to be precise. It gives me eyestrain headaches and wrist fatigue. I still draw things like simple wiring schematics and flow diagrams by hand, take a pic with my phone, paste into Jupyter.

2. Sheet music. My kids have the latest tech (Apple 12" tablet, Apple pencil, page turning pedal) but I haven't upgraded yet. Also, the "charts" for one of my bands have not been digitized. Someday, but not yet. My notebook computer in tablet mode might be an option.

3 Meeting notes, just because I don't want to have a device in front of me when I'm having face-to-face discussions. The time is too precious.

Over the years I've gradually transitioned all my computing devices to be ones that support pressure sensitive stylus input. Most of my note taking thus ends up being handwritten, but still offering the benefits of digitization.

For me it's the perfect compromise since I always have a device I can access all my years of notes on (although I don't tend to need to access them). With paper notes, I used to just throw them out every few months because they'd pile up and it was clear I wouldn't miss them.

With a pencil you can rest the tip on the paper and you can erase its traces, but it has lateral drag and requires some downward force. The fountain pen requires no force, but you can't rest it on paper or it makes a huge blotch. You can't even leave it uncaped for very long, so it kinda forces you to be writing. The computer allows searching, copying and pasting, but every minor alteration in font or typeface requires cooperation from the software.

Typewriters are paper tech. Drawing tablets are digital. Large physical keyboards can be used with paper (typewriters) or digital (computers).

How different from a piece of paper and a pen is a digital tablet device with a blank canvas that you draw on with a stylus? In what ways?

Just some thoughts.

if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise.. that cost might be actually beneficial for your brain way of working)

For designing something I will take the time to physically draw it, but for any notes I need to be able to access regularly I will use a digital version.

Secondarily, hearing about our risks of EMPs from solar flares (or even in war scenarios), or in case of electrical grid collapse (a not-impossible scenario in some countries), paper is the only way I'll have survival knowledge available to me.

Is the impact of printing a paper navigational chart really higher than replacing that chart with an electronic device?

https://www.dw.com/en/germans-use-more-paper-than-any-other-...

This is why I record all my ideas in a lab journal — a cargo cult it may be but we’ll see who’s laughing when I finally invent homomorphic encryption / perpetual motion / alchemy!

I still keep those notebooks for reflection on what I studied. They're very valuable to me, even though I get teased for it. To me, it is like looking at a photograph of your younger brain.

that's why we all keep using it for maps.

They all have to have an exception in the statute for prisoners as they are stuck using paper for everything.