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It's hard to respond to this piece. It makes some very clear observations that seem hard to counter. I've collected two other posts that seem to overlap http:/

It's hard to respond to this piece. It makes some very clear observations that seem hard to counter. I've collected two other posts that seem to overlap http://rudenoise.uk/low-tech-minimal-computing.html http://rudenoise.uk/low-tech-minimal-computing.html Covering: Why the Office Needs a Typewriter Revolution http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/11/why-the-office-needs-a-typewriter-revolution.html http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/11/why-the-office-needs-... The Analog Spaces in Digital Companies http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-analog-spaces-in-digital-companies http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-analog-spaces... For all the work that gets done in offices there's a corresponding lack of self-awareness related to the impact that it has. As an Information Worker it seems to me that there isn't nearly enough diversity in approach.

Tharkun 10y ago
The Typewriter Revolution article is a real beauty. It covers a nice history lesson as well as making some good points. One thing I take offense to is this statement: > Opening multiple windows on a computer screen doesn't work for back-and-forth cross-referencing of other material during authoring work, both because of slow visual navigation and because of the limited space on the computer screen. That's a problem that's easily solved with a half decent window manager.
- douche 10y ago
  Or with multiple monitors.
  - gkya 10y ago
    That one's covered in the article, wastes too much energy. I submitted this article yesterday and it went by with no upvotes because people probably thought it suggest we return to typewriters and paper piles, which it doesn't (I could've editorialised the title but guidelines say not to). It basically describes how energy inefficient today's offices are and how we can fix them.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Edit: Driving just one mile further to work is significantly more energy than a huge monitor and nobody thinks a 11 mile commute is vastly worse than a 10 mile one. Modern monitors are very low energy usage. The lights above you likely use more power than two 27" LED monitors, especially as overhead lights are often on more than your ~25-50w monitors are. Note, monitor brightness does impact usage. PS: 27 inch 4k monitors start pushing 75+w, but that's higher end than the average office setup. ex: https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/most-efficient/me-certified-computer-monitors/details/2266009 https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/most-efficient/me-c...
  - BoorishBears 10y ago
    My main monitor at work is a 34" ultrawide, marginal increase in power consumption, but with Spectacles for OSX I'm able to use it as 2 monitors (I have secondary monitors but I hardly need to use them
- BugsBunnySan 10y ago
  Focus-Follows-Mouse for the win :) Which is even available on the crippled window manager that Windows has...
  - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
    But not on OSX! Yes, really. No, not even with 3rd party software.
    - noelwelsh 10y ago
      Here you go: https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm
      - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
        Unfortunately kwm cannot do real focus-follows-mouse, it can only raise windows to the top. That works okay if you're using tiling mode exclusively, but with floating windows it's unusable. https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm/issues/476 https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm/issues/476
    - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
      Seems like there would be quite a few moments where it's hard to get to the menu bar without accidentally hitting another window.
    - delish 10y ago
      i use amethyst, an xmonad-inspired wm with pretty good focus-follows-mouse. i tried kwm, and couldn't get the keybindings to register, nor get FFM to work. xmonad is better than all of them for what it's worth.
      - thinkmassive 10y ago
        Coming from i3, I tried Amethyst for a while when I had to use a Mac at my previous job. It seems like the best solution within the constraints of OS X, but it always seemed like enough of a hack that I ended up battling both it and the real window manager, so I ended up disabling it after a few months. The focus-follows-mouse never came close to working as expected for me. Fighting with window size, positioning, and focus is such a productivity killer. Now I'm glad to be back in a real tiling window manager.
- tonyarkles 10y ago
  Yeah, I recently changed my main dev environment to be a 27" 2560x1440 monitor (Asus PB278, if anyone's curious) attached to a Mac Mini. There's enough space to happily keep a browser, evernote, and a terminal side-by-side (three vertical pillars); this has had very noticeable impacts on, if not my efficiency, at least my feeling of "not having to context switch". Everything's just right there and I just need to shift my eyes left and right.
  - digler999 10y ago
    I'm rocking a 46" 4K tv at 4096x2160, using xmonad in split-screen mode so I have two viewable displays and 9 virtual displays. The hardest part was finding a 4K videocard with HDMI 2.0 output. I got the video card and TV for under $1k total and I'm very happy with it.
    - tonyarkles 10y ago
      I'm oddly jealous! That sounds amazing! I'm just looking at the wall behind my monitor and scratching my chin... It's Black Friday...
      - digler999 10y ago
        it works fine for software dev. there's some tearing when playing videos, not sure if it's the card (most likely) but it doesn't bother me at all. I dont do gaming, but I've heard the lag can get bad with tv's.
- crpatino 10y ago
  Your average office worker does not get decent screens. Even if the Windows default settings for the desktop have been kind of acceptable for many years, it does you little good if you are looking at it through a 9"-by-5" rectangle. Multiple monitors are beyond any discussion for most, even if we programmers have gotten used to those and find'em indispensable.
  - slededit 10y ago
    Accountants often have 3 screens. Perfect for doing tax work - the form your working on, the customer's documents, and any relevant instructions/legal presidents for whatever they are doing. Of course different firms will vary.
Retric 10y ago
The energy use numbers are kind of silly. Nuclear is ~20% of our electricity gen, so 1/4th of that is 1/20th or 5% of US electricity aka not really that big a deal. Energy wise getting to an office is generally far more expensive. Further they talk about BTU for heating ignoring heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient and running on electricity.
- brokenmachine 10y ago
  > heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient Que? How can anything be over 100% efficient?
  - elric1v 10y ago
    Because efficiency is measured by how much heat you get compared to the electricity you put in, and heat pumps cheat by moving heat in from outside. So you get more heat than you could from the energy input.
omouse 10y ago
IBM did a study on work spaces and how they affect productivity. It would be nice if universities did the same as a joint project of the Architecture and Computer Science departments but everyone seems to be interested in coding to get a job rather than studying these issues that are faced daily by millions of devs.
sean_patel 10y ago
TL;DR anyone? Like seriously. I ran this through the read-o-meter => http://niram.org/read/ http://niram.org/read/ and it says "Estimated reading time: 20 minutes, 38 seconds. Contains 4128 words". How many of you here actually read the entire article? Just curious, not trolling.
- Roboprog 10y ago
  Nope, got about 1/3 to 1/2 in, and it started to seem repetitive. Good points, but needed editing.
- amitdeshwar 10y ago
  I read it. It's good focus practice (and I enjoy it).
- Retric 10y ago
  200 words per minute is kind of average, but for this kind of content it's easy to beat. I would practice a little as hitting 350-400+ as a fairly comfortable pace. It should be easy for most people and it really does add up. As to actual content I kind of skipped over 2/3rds of it as it's really repetitive.
jwatte 10y ago
Why would you need to counter it? If it's right, it's right! The fact that US offices are designed to maximize return on real estate investment, not knowledge worker productivity, is well known. I wish our screens were better so there's not the continual battle between daylight and readability. E-ink for coding?

Tharkun 10y ago

The Typewriter Revolution article is a real beauty. It covers a nice history lesson as well as making some good points. One thing I take offense to is this statement: > Opening multiple windows on a computer screen doesn't work for back-and-forth cross-referencing of other material during authoring work, both because of slow visual navigation and because of the limited space on the computer screen. That's a problem that's easily solved with a half decent window manager.

douche 10y ago
Or with multiple monitors.
- gkya 10y ago
  That one's covered in the article, wastes too much energy. I submitted this article yesterday and it went by with no upvotes because people probably thought it suggest we return to typewriters and paper piles, which it doesn't (I could've editorialised the title but guidelines say not to). It basically describes how energy inefficient today's offices are and how we can fix them.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Edit: Driving just one mile further to work is significantly more energy than a huge monitor and nobody thinks a 11 mile commute is vastly worse than a 10 mile one. Modern monitors are very low energy usage. The lights above you likely use more power than two 27" LED monitors, especially as overhead lights are often on more than your ~25-50w monitors are. Note, monitor brightness does impact usage. PS: 27 inch 4k monitors start pushing 75+w, but that's higher end than the average office setup. ex: https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/most-efficient/me-certified-computer-monitors/details/2266009 https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/most-efficient/me-c...
- BoorishBears 10y ago
  My main monitor at work is a 34" ultrawide, marginal increase in power consumption, but with Spectacles for OSX I'm able to use it as 2 monitors (I have secondary monitors but I hardly need to use them
BugsBunnySan 10y ago
Focus-Follows-Mouse for the win :) Which is even available on the crippled window manager that Windows has...
- thescriptkiddie 10y ago
  But not on OSX! Yes, really. No, not even with 3rd party software.
  - noelwelsh 10y ago
    Here you go: https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm
    - thescriptkiddie 10y ago
      Unfortunately kwm cannot do real focus-follows-mouse, it can only raise windows to the top. That works okay if you're using tiling mode exclusively, but with floating windows it's unusable. https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm/issues/476 https://github.com/koekeishiya/kwm/issues/476
  - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
    Seems like there would be quite a few moments where it's hard to get to the menu bar without accidentally hitting another window.
  - delish 10y ago
    i use amethyst, an xmonad-inspired wm with pretty good focus-follows-mouse. i tried kwm, and couldn't get the keybindings to register, nor get FFM to work. xmonad is better than all of them for what it's worth.
    - thinkmassive 10y ago
      Coming from i3, I tried Amethyst for a while when I had to use a Mac at my previous job. It seems like the best solution within the constraints of OS X, but it always seemed like enough of a hack that I ended up battling both it and the real window manager, so I ended up disabling it after a few months. The focus-follows-mouse never came close to working as expected for me. Fighting with window size, positioning, and focus is such a productivity killer. Now I'm glad to be back in a real tiling window manager.
tonyarkles 10y ago
Yeah, I recently changed my main dev environment to be a 27" 2560x1440 monitor (Asus PB278, if anyone's curious) attached to a Mac Mini. There's enough space to happily keep a browser, evernote, and a terminal side-by-side (three vertical pillars); this has had very noticeable impacts on, if not my efficiency, at least my feeling of "not having to context switch". Everything's just right there and I just need to shift my eyes left and right.
- digler999 10y ago
  I'm rocking a 46" 4K tv at 4096x2160, using xmonad in split-screen mode so I have two viewable displays and 9 virtual displays. The hardest part was finding a 4K videocard with HDMI 2.0 output. I got the video card and TV for under $1k total and I'm very happy with it.
  - tonyarkles 10y ago
    I'm oddly jealous! That sounds amazing! I'm just looking at the wall behind my monitor and scratching my chin... It's Black Friday...
    - digler999 10y ago
      it works fine for software dev. there's some tearing when playing videos, not sure if it's the card (most likely) but it doesn't bother me at all. I dont do gaming, but I've heard the lag can get bad with tv's.
crpatino 10y ago
Your average office worker does not get decent screens. Even if the Windows default settings for the desktop have been kind of acceptable for many years, it does you little good if you are looking at it through a 9"-by-5" rectangle. Multiple monitors are beyond any discussion for most, even if we programmers have gotten used to those and find'em indispensable.
- slededit 10y ago
  Accountants often have 3 screens. Perfect for doing tax work - the form your working on, the customer's documents, and any relevant instructions/legal presidents for whatever they are doing. Of course different firms will vary.

Retric 10y ago

The energy use numbers are kind of silly. Nuclear is ~20% of our electricity gen, so 1/4th of that is 1/20th or 5% of US electricity aka not really that big a deal. Energy wise getting to an office is generally far more expensive. Further they talk about BTU for heating ignoring heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient and running on electricity.

brokenmachine 10y ago
> heat pumps generally being over 100% efficient Que? How can anything be over 100% efficient?
- elric1v 10y ago
  Because efficiency is measured by how much heat you get compared to the electricity you put in, and heat pumps cheat by moving heat in from outside. So you get more heat than you could from the energy input.

omouse 10y ago

IBM did a study on work spaces and how they affect productivity. It would be nice if universities did the same as a joint project of the Architecture and Computer Science departments but everyone seems to be interested in coding to get a job rather than studying these issues that are faced daily by millions of devs.

sean_patel 10y ago

TL;DR anyone? Like seriously. I ran this through the read-o-meter => http://niram.org/read/ http://niram.org/read/ and it says "Estimated reading time: 20 minutes, 38 seconds. Contains 4128 words". How many of you here actually read the entire article? Just curious, not trolling.

Roboprog 10y ago
Nope, got about 1/3 to 1/2 in, and it started to seem repetitive. Good points, but needed editing.
amitdeshwar 10y ago
I read it. It's good focus practice (and I enjoy it).
Retric 10y ago
200 words per minute is kind of average, but for this kind of content it's easy to beat. I would practice a little as hitting 350-400+ as a fairly comfortable pace. It should be easy for most people and it really does add up. As to actual content I kind of skipped over 2/3rds of it as it's really repetitive.

jwatte 10y ago

Why would you need to counter it? If it's right, it's right! The fact that US offices are designed to maximize return on real estate investment, not knowledge worker productivity, is well known. I wish our screens were better so there's not the continual battle between daylight and readability. E-ink for coding?