I learned about computers and worked in the software industry before nearly all of the boxes on that diagram even existed. This was only 30 years ago! If you ne

I learned about computers and worked in the software industry before nearly all of the boxes on that diagram even existed. This was only 30 years ago! If you needed information you got it from coworkers, source code, vendor documentation, or the library. Of course we had “second brains” to cope, called notebooks and filing cabinets (and notes in text files). It’s kind of sad that instead of using the Internet to vastly expand the reach and effectiveness of that existing system, we seem to have thrown it away so we need articles like this to try to rebuild it. Rather than developing our own thoughts we search for someone else’s thoughts. (And I’m not being holier-than-thou; my first stop is Google and Stack Overflow now too!)