I teased you with a bit of Artificial Intelligence (AI) via Chat GPT in describing the benefits of using a Filofax in the modern age.
However, I will not go any deeper in to using AI, there is a lot of scare stories and hype around the notion of machine learning and machines spying on us every day. AI being used to create perfect photographs and images.
Instead, I will pose the idea of Filofax Intelligence or FI.... I'm sure you can come up with some alternatives for the meaning of FI.... but this is a family show, so we won't go any further with that one!
Jokes aside your Filofax is not connected to anyones AI network, they can't spy on what you write on your pages, it's just pen and paper. Unless you photograph your pages that is.
You have full control over what is contained in your Filofax, there is only the ring size that limits the storage capacity, you can swap the contents any time you want.
FI doesn't require to be have any software patches/upgrades, pages written over 100 years ago can be added to your Filofax, they are readable now just as well as they were 100 years ago, try that with any recent technology, 20 years might be your limit most probably much less in certain cases
Going forward in to the future long after you are not in this world people will still be able to access and read what you had planned every 4th Monday when there was an 'R' in the month, that is unless you wrote in some sort of code, in other words my own hand writing!
Your Filofax puts less strain on your own memory and its capacity to remember a huge range of facts and information in addition to recording where you should be next Monday at 10:00. The facts that you need to have a few page turns away is totally in your control not some software developer who you have never met.
Next time someone looks at you curiously when you pull out your Filofax to look up something, just tell them "This is FI" and if they look puzzled just say "Those that know about FI know the advantages of FI" with a casual rub of your index finger on your left hand on the left hand side of your nose.... it's the signal of those with 'the knowledge'
Talking of technology going forwards too quickly and pen and paper being a constant. The original Domesday Book can still be read but the Doomesday Project we did when I was about 13 years old was put onto video discs which are now not readable because technology has come on too far. I think someone has now put it onto the web but pen and paper rules.
ReplyDeleteYes and when you look at the Doomsday Project the video on those discs wasn't digital, but analogue! I think the internet version has been converted.
DeleteThere's more about the project here: https://www.domesday86.com
But I was fortunate enough to have access to the system at work, in a different section to the one I worked in but it was an excellent project given the constraints of the technology at the time!
But you are 100% correct, preserving digital data is much harder than preserving paper records.
Around the time broadband proliferated, large numbers of websites removed their text content in favour of Flash, the fractal video format which briefly took the internet by storm.
ReplyDeleteNow, Flash is completely gone, and most of that work is permanently lost.
MySpace is a legendary abandoned digital empire, but I also recall when Facebook was open for all to read unless made private by an individual user, and now all that once-public info is behind walls, though of course still available to be slurped up and used by Meta. Twitter has gone the same route.
Google returns fewer complex search results every year, and instead favours Pinterest and Etsy over independent sites of any kind, or gaming wikis over human history and mythology (the games rip off the names and terminology, and the algo prefers "new and fresh" to "static reference" when it ranks results, and so history is buried behind commercial fabrications).
Heavy use of javascript to create pages which auto-save drafts and constantly update, without needing to be refreshed, is the current craze. They feel more liquid, responsive, and alive, and yet, are they really just writing on water? Will a heavily scripted page survive in any readable format in a few years time? Flash didn't. Many can't be saved easily to a hard-drive for later viewing, even now.
I note that all along, this blog has quietly existed in a fairly basic format, as those mighty empires of the latest shiny thing rose and fell, or became walled gardens, locked away from the masses. I hope it continues like that; a perfect specimen of form following function, and outlasting them all.
If my Filofax, the gestalt entity (which, like great-grandpa's antique broom which has only had three new heads and two new handles, has inhabited many covers, and a rotating array of inserts) had an intelligence, I would imagine it to be a kind of ageless sage, wandering, mostly self-contained, needing nothing in the way of hourly recharge or SIM top-ups.
You can move house with it, and no-one needs to know, no tired callcentre worker on the other side of the world needs to see proof of change of residence before you can open the covers. There are no green lights, to ever turn red.
Old Filofax is just quietly existing, seeing all, taking notes. Five years in the back of a drawer will do little to diminish its skills.
He might not be the guy you'd want to party with, but you know if things ever got really weird, he's the one you'll instinctively turn to for answers and support.
I used to post on a forum called outdoorsmagic. I even ended up as a kit reviewer and moderator. Then new owners took over, and decided to drop the user forum. So ten or 15 years or so of useful discussion just disappeared forever.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Google's search engine has suffered, like many internet facilities, from 'ensh*tification', with their head of search features being the genius who destroyed Yahoo search... it seems they thought they weren't making enough money (!), so have to punt unrelated adverts as 'search results' instead.
Kevin
Shame that forum got killed off by the money-men. There is nothing quite like it or as good now. Met a fair few friends on there. Not all progress is better, unfortunately.
DeletePaulB