Nostalgia

The other day, we had a long some-software-blah-blah session in office. As far as I got, it was for managing projects… now most of it didn’t interest me and I don’t like feeling stupid. So I stopped listening. However, snatches of “You can do THAT with just a click”, “Everyone can define rights”, “Wow, that’s so powerful” took me back in time a long, long way…


I have always been an organized person. When we didn’t all have personal computers, we had files. My files were stashed, colour-coded and alphabetically stacked, in neat rows. When there were projects, there were paper, scraps, scissors, tape, adhesive, and a lot of yelling. The sense of accomplishment was immense, something that click-click-clicketty-click will never achieve. Every file, every project copy, every scrap book was treasured.

Files that were catalogued and cross-classified would be found in seconds, librarians in school knew where a particular book was before we could finish saying the entire name. There was ink, fountain-pens, refills and calligraphy. There was pride… and now, ink is probably a hue and calligraphy, a font.

I miss the paper days and dread the taking over of human intelligence and emotions by mammoth computing machines…