That's how I think of my work: a bunch of varied sets of commodity capabilities surrounding a couple of bespoke configurations of things. And this is not just research labs. An ordinary home kitchen is organized this way, around the stove-top, fridge, and oven as anchor "rigs"
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A desktop metaphor is like a library. A screens-of-apps metaphor (what do you call this? it's not really even a desktop) is something like a restaurant menu or a living room. Optimized for consumption, not work.
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We talk a lot about repairability of devices, which I actually don't care about much. Computers have become more sealed, less repairable, but also more reliable and less in need of repair at the physical level.
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This can be reasonably justified as a good tradeoff between reliability, cost, form factor and reliability. Just like cars. The hardware is getting higher-tech, less actually repairable by average people, and less in need of repair. But the same cannot be said of software.
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With software, things have gotten MORE awkward, messy, in need of maintenance/repair etc etc. In the 80s, when the command line was still the UX for everybody not just for unix geeks, there was a match between capability and what I'll call "workability"...
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The command line is like a primitive work interface as opposed to consumption. It's like a campfire in relation to a modern kitchen, or a basic household toolbox (screwdrivers, wrenches, hammer...) in relation to a full-scale lab. If it had evolved as a *work* interface...
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... it would look very different. So there has been highly asymmetric evolution. the computer as a consumption device has evolved 3-4 generations towards increasingly frictionless digital shopping basically. But as a production device, it is basically stuck in 1988.
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This is why, over the years, even as my methods for managing physical workspaces (GTD, setting up offices/desks/kitchens, and now a home lab/workshop) have gotten more mature and sophisticated with the evolution of my own thinking, my digital methods have not.
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I'm still struggling with janky link management... most people now seem to solve that via tab proliferation in the browser. (This is one reason Roam was so impressive for me... it improved my link management)
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