Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

There are tools that help me remember the things I need to remember. They prevent a fall into the Dark Ages.

Define Dark Ages: it isn’t that we forget how to do something, it is that we forget than we once could do that.

Personal Dark Ages: it isn’t that I can’t remember the three-key sequence to do something in an application, it is that I can’t remember that I used to do that.

For example, you can create a book index with Microsoft Word (really, you can).

I don’t remember how to do that, but I do remember that I can do that in Microsoft Word. “All I have to do” is find a reference to it that gives me the specific steps.

This comes down to remembering and forgetting, or something like that, sometimes I forget what I am…

There are tools that help me remember. Files (paper files with pieces of paper in them and ink and pencil lead marks), notebooks (paper notebooks with pencil lead and ink on them), pieces of paper (with pencil lead and ink on them). See the pattern? Paper notes last a long time. They span operating systems and hardware (remember the Z-80 processor? I do, and the notes I took on the processor are not usueble today.), they span the decades (I do have notes that are several decades old).

I know how to use the tools to help me remember. I know how to use the tools that prevent personal Dark Ages. Let’s keep it that way.