I’m attending Forum PHP in Paris and, as the first talks go by, I’m realizing what I’ve been completely missing in other conferences I’ve attended before: the reason I’m here.
Why am I here?
I’m here to learn new things and get new ideas from experts and this means I’m trying to listen and store each and every bit they share; some talks might be out of my league or typical use case but still the ideas, workflows and concepts expressed might come in handy.
And in this knowledge craving I’ve messed up it completely acting like a “computer guy”.
High fidelity
In a way or another I’ve got a “computer” in my hands most of my waking time, be it a tablet, smartphone or laptop. This means that the resistance of using a computer to consume, capture and manage my life is near 0. And computers are “fast” and “connected” making any note, appointment and mail echo through other computers in my life in an (almost) seamless way. Computers will replicate digital content with high fidelity.
S-low fidelity
I came to a point where jotting down a written note poses more resistance to me than sending it to Omnifocus or Evernote as I will have, later, to parse and research it anyway and can write faster using a keyboard than my hands.
So, where’s the advantage of taking notes usin pens and paper?
I think I am, as any human being, inherently energy efficient and will try to accomplish the task at hand walking the path of lowest possible resistance.
And the “task at hand” here is not storing information but, see the first sentence, learning; and since I consider “information” jsut information I can act upon listening will allow me to get more actionable information than the ADD-like methodology of listening (maybe), browsing to the speaker site, GitHub and Twitter account and, in general terms, multi-task.
In the end is a way for me, a computer-educated and depending human being, to focus on one thing and one thing alone.