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You know whats calm and not distracting? A notebook and pen. You can buy a LOT of decent notebooks for the price of one of the reMarkables mentioned in the arti

You know whats calm and not distracting? A notebook and pen. You can buy a LOT of decent notebooks for the price of one of the reMarkables mentioned in the article. (~30 or so?), and it will last a lot longer as well. Im starting to sound like a luddite.

kibwen 2y ago
> Im starting to sound like a luddite. Obligatory mention that the Luddites weren't against technology in general, they were against technology that was causing them to lose their livelihoods (while the country was already in the midst of an employment crisis and economic downturn due to a trade war (and real war) with Napoleon's Europe).
golly_ned 2y ago
With the usual trade-offs between pen and notebook: namely durability and storage, for me. Some can account for all their notebooks going back years. I cannot, which makes me sad to have lost a lot of writing.
- CapeTheory 2y ago
  I have observed a strange/alarming behaviour when I carry a notebook - because friends and family don't typically have one, they find it intriguing and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop through what I've written if I leave it unattended. The same thing just doesn't happen with a ReMarkable (and even if it did, you can set a PIN code).
  - girvo 2y ago
    > and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop through what I've written if I leave it unattended I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced that! Such a fascinating experience, though really quite upsetting at the time. Doesn't happen now with my PIN-locked e-ink device.
ryanianian 2y ago
I get you're being snarky, but I'll politely push back. I remained skeptical for a long time. Then I got one. I absolutely love it. In particular, the ability to have multiple notebooks with me and cross-linking via tags. And "infinite pages" lets you insert space in the middle of a page or continue moving down without having to worry about physical page sizes. I can also screen-share the tablet with the desktop app to draw diagrams on zoom calls. Admittedly, it is only incremental over a spiral notebook and a bic pen. But they do that incremental thing pretty well, particularly because of their focus on the "calm tech" aspects and lack of mainstream ecosystem to track upstream.
- malfist 2y ago
  I had the opposite experience. I am an avid note taker, love the idea of a remarkable and got one for all the benefits you mentioned, especially the screen share part and just found it unsatisfying. Couldn't stick with it, wound up sending it back and going back to pen and paper
girvo 2y ago
My paper notebooks can't do linking, I can't easily rearrange pages, rearrange my notes on the page, and getting it off my paper and into my work PC is more challenging. My Kindle Scribe is excellent for all of this, and I can't go back, personally!
- notatoad 2y ago
  >I can't easily rearrange pages, rearrange my notes on the page okay. so don't do those things. for me, that's what "calm tech" is all about - it's not just notifications and distractions, it's all the desire for more features, and for software to solve all problems. sometimes we can just not have features, and keep some problems, instead of trading our problems for the problems that more features bring.
  - girvo 2y ago
    You’re better at writing than I am then! I make mistakes all the time, so being able to move my words around on the page is super useful. This to me is calm tech, because that’s all it does: note taking. If your definition is such that only pen and paper meets it, that’s not a very useful definition for tech IMO
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  There are of course pen-and-paper approaches to all of these. Links in text are called references. These can be internal within a document or codex, or external, referencing third-party works. Either case is far less subject to linkrot than URLs have turned out to be. One of the killer concepts of a bullet journal is the use of indices and spreads to provide an interlinked and searchable reference. If you go back in time, there are numerous journal and commonplace book organisational schemes. Pages can be easily rearranged using a removeable binding (three-ring binder or various other options), or by using an unbound format such as index cards (the original database solution). Data can be entered into a computer through scanning and handwriting recognition, though this is admittedly slow, cumbersome, and inexact. On the other hand, you may want friction between your paper-based and electronic data systems.
deleted 2y ago
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kibwen 2y ago

> Im starting to sound like a luddite. Obligatory mention that the Luddites weren't against technology in general, they were against technology that was causing them to lose their livelihoods (while the country was already in the midst of an employment crisis and economic downturn due to a trade war (and real war) with Napoleon's Europe).

golly_ned 2y ago

With the usual trade-offs between pen and notebook: namely durability and storage, for me. Some can account for all their notebooks going back years. I cannot, which makes me sad to have lost a lot of writing.

CapeTheory 2y ago
I have observed a strange/alarming behaviour when I carry a notebook - because friends and family don't typically have one, they find it intriguing and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop through what I've written if I leave it unattended. The same thing just doesn't happen with a ReMarkable (and even if it did, you can set a PIN code).
- girvo 2y ago
  > and so will sometimes absentmindedly snoop through what I've written if I leave it unattended I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced that! Such a fascinating experience, though really quite upsetting at the time. Doesn't happen now with my PIN-locked e-ink device.

ryanianian 2y ago

I get you're being snarky, but I'll politely push back. I remained skeptical for a long time. Then I got one. I absolutely love it. In particular, the ability to have multiple notebooks with me and cross-linking via tags. And "infinite pages" lets you insert space in the middle of a page or continue moving down without having to worry about physical page sizes. I can also screen-share the tablet with the desktop app to draw diagrams on zoom calls. Admittedly, it is only incremental over a spiral notebook and a bic pen. But they do that incremental thing pretty well, particularly because of their focus on the "calm tech" aspects and lack of mainstream ecosystem to track upstream.

malfist 2y ago
I had the opposite experience. I am an avid note taker, love the idea of a remarkable and got one for all the benefits you mentioned, especially the screen share part and just found it unsatisfying. Couldn't stick with it, wound up sending it back and going back to pen and paper

girvo 2y ago

My paper notebooks can't do linking, I can't easily rearrange pages, rearrange my notes on the page, and getting it off my paper and into my work PC is more challenging. My Kindle Scribe is excellent for all of this, and I can't go back, personally!

notatoad 2y ago
>I can't easily rearrange pages, rearrange my notes on the page okay. so don't do those things. for me, that's what "calm tech" is all about - it's not just notifications and distractions, it's all the desire for more features, and for software to solve all problems. sometimes we can just not have features, and keep some problems, instead of trading our problems for the problems that more features bring.
- girvo 2y ago
  You’re better at writing than I am then! I make mistakes all the time, so being able to move my words around on the page is super useful. This to me is calm tech, because that’s all it does: note taking. If your definition is such that only pen and paper meets it, that’s not a very useful definition for tech IMO
dredmorbius 2y ago
There are of course pen-and-paper approaches to all of these. Links in text are called references. These can be internal within a document or codex, or external, referencing third-party works. Either case is far less subject to linkrot than URLs have turned out to be. One of the killer concepts of a bullet journal is the use of indices and spreads to provide an interlinked and searchable reference. If you go back in time, there are numerous journal and commonplace book organisational schemes. Pages can be easily rearranged using a removeable binding (three-ring binder or various other options), or by using an unbound format such as index cards (the original database solution). Data can be entered into a computer through scanning and handwriting recognition, though this is admittedly slow, cumbersome, and inexact. On the other hand, you may want friction between your paper-based and electronic data systems.

deleted 2y ago

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