by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let’s analyze the best value of an old tool and a new one.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We could go on with the usefulness question, but the next question makes much of that a mute point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh well. There we have it. The clipboard wins the best-value analysis. Perhaps we can perform some other type of analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,292],"tags":[342,295],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-simple","category-tools","tag-simple","tag-tools"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2894,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2893\/revisions\/2894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}