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"A national card catalogue system was the original “search engine” — one that needed no electricity, no service providers or broadband or smartphones, and that

by jmull 9y ago

"A national card catalogue system was the original “search engine” — one that needed no electricity, no service providers or broadband or smartphones, and that was truly democratic." Oh come on. You needed a building to house it, cases to hold it, people to clean & repair it (physically), and to maintain it. That's plenty of infrastructure. Not to mention, card catalogs require electricity to work, just like electronics. You have to be able to read the cards, and I don't think you would have a library for long if people were constantly holding candles close to large sets of cards. And libraries provide local terminals, so service providers, broadband and smartphones aren't required. As far as "democratic", card catalogs aren't bad -- if you can get to the library during operating hours and are physically able to use one, then you are good to go. But electronically searchable indexes are better. E.g., they allow for remote searching, can support accessibility interfaces, etc.

reaperducer 9y ago
> I don't think you would have a library for long if people were constantly holding candles close to large sets of cards. Worked OK for 400 years or so. Newspaper archives, too.
scottLobster 9y ago
Yeah, this whole article strikes me as one of the "I don't fully understand modern technology so I wistfully recall the predecessor technology that I do understand" variety. There's a lot of these going around these days, and while it's easy to dismiss them when they try to argue on the merits there is a certain value to them from a design perspective. Old-school analog systems were (to the user) tangible, comprehensible, predictable and repeatable in ways that digital systems often fail to match. You push a button and the device does a thing. You push that button 20 years later, still does the same thing. The response is also tactile and immediate, having a specific feel, sound and smell. Much the same reasons us CS nerds glorify mechanical keyboards. I think a lot of apps/user facing products could improve from attempting to emulate analog systems more closely. People want a piece of software that they can use for 20 years without being thrown to the ground when the UX does a triple-360 in the next upgrade because someone thought it was "bad design". In the tech world we seem to gravitate towards this relentless, iterative, constantly changing march to perceived glory when perhaps shifting the balance back the other direction could be helpful.

by jmull 9y ago

reaperducer 9y ago

> I don't think you would have a library for long if people were constantly holding candles close to large sets of cards. Worked OK for 400 years or so. Newspaper archives, too.

scottLobster 9y ago

Yeah, this whole article strikes me as one of the "I don't fully understand modern technology so I wistfully recall the predecessor technology that I do understand" variety. There's a lot of these going around these days, and while it's easy to dismiss them when they try to argue on the merits there is a certain value to them from a design perspective. Old-school analog systems were (to the user) tangible, comprehensible, predictable and repeatable in ways that digital systems often fail to match. You push a button and the device does a thing. You push that button 20 years later, still does the same thing. The response is also tactile and immediate, having a specific feel, sound and smell. Much the same reasons us CS nerds glorify mechanical keyboards. I think a lot of apps/user facing products could improve from attempting to emulate analog systems more closely. People want a piece of software that they can use for 20 years without being thrown to the ground when the UX does a triple-360 in the next upgrade because someone thought it was "bad design". In the tech world we seem to gravitate towards this relentless, iterative, constantly changing march to perceived glory when perhaps shifting the balance back the other direction could be helpful.