this is a very brief thread about book shelves
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now then, let's talk about models for book shelves. I don't mean actual pieces of furniture I mean abstract models and their intersection with physical systems (aka furniture)
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model #1: the archive categorized, sorted, indexed
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pros of the archive: - easy to find a book if you know how to find it's index (O(log n) gets) - dense, efficiently uses available shelf space - orderly, encourages rigorous mental habits
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cons of the archive: - inefficient to insert a new book (O(n) puts) - low browsability. hard to find a book if you don't know it's index - fragile. does not survive contact with 10 year old nephews
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model #2: the lending library take-a-book/leave-a-book, sparse and unordered shelves
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pros of the lending library: - high browsability, encourages exploration and discovery - is a social game as well as a book storage system - efficient to insert a new book (optimistically O(1) puts) - sparse shelves also very good tchotchke storage space
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cons of the lending library: - inefficient to find specific books (pessimistically O(n) gets) - requires community trust and participation, can be exploited by antisocial jerks
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model #3: the stack literally a stack of books, in LIFO order, cuz it's a stack
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pros of the stack: - requires no furniture - relatively high browsability, can view entire stack with minimal effort, and don't even have to tilt your head to read the spine - frees your mind from the petty concerns of anything besides temporality
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cons of the stack: - difficult/precarious to take a book from anywhere except the top of the stack - extremely embarrassing
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model #4: anti-fragile shelving like the archive, but books are not sorted or indexed, but rather placed on sparse shelves by category alone
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pros of anti-fragile shelving: - relatively efficient to find specific books (tightly bounded O(n), i.e. n restricted to small values) - relatively efficient to shelve new books (optimistically O(1)) - strongly resists 10-year old nephews, arguably improved by it
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cons of anti-fragile shelving: - less dense then archive, shelves fewer books per unit volume - requires coming up with useful categorization schema which varies over time and sometimes needs to be reset and reshelved
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End of conversation
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