Since I got my iPhone a couple of months ago, I noticed I started using much less my ubiquitous Moleskine notepad.
Maybe it’s because the iPhone is now more ubiquitous in my universe than the Moleskine. I used to carry it everywhere in my back pocket but now it stays mostly inside my backpack. I use the “mole” for several different things: I write thoughts and notes on trips, to-do lists and ideas I don’t want to forget. I keep some useful business and restaurant’s cards in it’s pocket and stick flight, transport and museum tickets plus other miscellaneous memorabilia to it’s pages. From time to time I also add a sticker and an instant photo to it. I used it to save concepts for future blog articles and business ideas.
Some of that stuff still goes to the Moleskine (imagine glueing a tram ticket to the iPhone) but most of the to-do lists and blog post ideas have been monopolized by Apple’s phone. With Gmail’s task manager I automatically sync to-do’s online, so that I have a unified list. With Wordpress’ App I can jot down blogpost drafts directly online. And if I want to keep track of a restaurant or other place I visited I can add it to my personal Google Maps.
Will I abandon paper for silicon chips? No way! I love writing and drawing with a ball pen on the silky pages. My thoughts are better framed better between the fake leather covers than inside “the cloud“. I like serendipitously browsing through old notes and be transported to past memories by travel tickets I’ve kept.
What does happen is that I consume my notepad much less… and I’m always eager in finishing one to start a brand new one, add stickers to it’s cover and copy useful information (Passport number, contact info, the code I use to tag different notes).
Just an irrelevant thought in a lazy Sunday in Amsterdam.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, I like Moleskine paper too, but I also feel less and less ‘consumption’. Even if I don’t own a iPhone…
I see that you “might have found the right excuse to visit Istambul soon”… that’s good! However, I also notice that you found the wrong excuse to visit Genova in October.
I reached this blog seeing you are scheduled as one speaker in one of the notoriously bogus WSEAS conferences. I’ll just assume your good faith here, and I’ll suppose that you didn’t know, but please consider how armful fake conferences like those are for the scientific and research communities in general. At the end of the day, it boils down to a fraud on public money (and sometimes private too), that ultimately drains funds from the real needs. It is also very unfair.
Beside, be warned that it can look totally disqualifying on anyone curriculum.
If you are curious, I was wandering around the WSEAS websites ‘cos I followed one of the many spam mail they regularly send me (I get invited, as anyone else, as a keynote speaker every week, to one or another of their conference, no matter how unknown I am in most of these fields).
That’s it. Forgive my intromission here! Take care!
Hi Marco, I think you have mistaken me with someone else… I’m not familiar with something called “WSEAS” and I won’t be in Genova in October (actually I’ll be in Amsterdam, Dakar and probably Tokyo during October)… I know there’s another person in Italy with my exact name and surname, someone from the Politecnico di Torino… maybe you mistook me with him? Please let me know. cheers!
You are right! My mistake. Apologies! It is how you say… same name and surname, so when I saw “politecnico di Torino” in your CV I said: “that must be him”. I was wrong! Nice blog BTW.
Actually I went to the “Politecnico di Milano”, not Torino… a different city