Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Let’s analyze the best value of an old tool and a new one.

Consider a tool in frequent use today: the smartphone. It can access the world. I can access my personal and professional databases. I can control anything in the world wide networks that I connect to just about any device. Cost: $1,000.

Consider an old tool: a clipboard and a pencil. Cost: let’s be extravagant and say $10. It allows for information storage and retrieval. Not everything in the world, but everything I need to accomplish my task now.

Let’s consider other things like information compatibility. If it is recorded somewhere and somehow, the clipboard has it. What I recorded 30 years ago, I can have on my clipboard. Various digital formats have disappeared (I have lots of information still on 5 1/4″ floppy disks, but cannot access that). Various paper forms are, well, they are paper and they are still paper and I can put any paper on my clipboard. The papers I wrote 30 and 40 years ago are usable on the clipboard. (Yes, I am that old and yes, I wrote things that long ago that are still useful.)

I can scan and digitize just about any paper and put it on the smartphone. That is quite useful. I can also print just about any digital information and put it on my clipboard. Of course I need judgement there as my clipboard won’t hold EVERYTHING I can print. Ah, judgement. Hmmm, that is another thing I could use more often.

We could go on with the usefulness question, but the next question makes much of that a mute point.

Now we move to the question of value. We have to create some idea of the usefulness of the tool divided by its cost. The clipboard costs 1% as much as the smartphone. Does it deliver more than 1% of the usefulness? 1% isn’t much. I’m afraid that the clipboard easily delivers more than a mere 1% of usefulness.

Oh well. There we have it. The clipboard wins the best-value analysis. Perhaps we can perform some other type of analysis.