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Comment by tylercubell | Hacker News Reader

> What I write is important to me. I want to be able to read it fifty years from now. A hundred years from now. So where do I go? Apple Notes? Google? Other private, short-lived, growth-oriented companies? No. What we need is something that focuses on durability and not growth.

I know HN is for the tech crowd, but can I suggest something so simple it sounds stupid? If you want to read your notes 50 years from now use a pen and paper. Go ahead, downvote away. Yes, you won't be able to index them and search them and yadda yadda yadda but you're writing _notes_, not full-fledged documents.

What is a note? "A brief record of facts, topics, or thoughts, written down as an aid to memory." according to Google.

I keep a small Moleskine notebook and a pen with me to write down notes and ideas. James Altucher uses a waiter's pad. It works just fine. I know it's a radical thing to say but technology isn't always the solution to our problems.

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>> I want to be able to read it fifty years from now ...

> Yes, you won't be able to index them ...

The availability of old information is strongly related to the ability to index it. Your notes from ten years ago may be physically there, but how long is it going to take to find what you need?

I use pen and paper all the time but only for ephemera. Its advantage is that I'm not constrained by having to write pure text and I have a 2d surface, but once the thoughts are down and concrete the important bits are transcribed into my org-mode file, which even allows me to transcribe diagrams and math faithfully. I've read Altucher's words on using a waiter's pad and he says the same thing -- it's for ephemera. I've seen the way many people use physical notes and it's largely the same thing. The ones that do use paper as long-term storage have a separate set of notes just for that, and transcribe from short-term to long-term anyway, at which point the other liabilities of paper come into play.

Paper is heavy, and takes space. Over the years I've amassed a copious amount of notes that haven't yet been digitized. Without exaggerating, they're enough to fill a suitcase. That kind of mass is an anchor, and when I move I get to make a decision: bring them, or leave them in storage. Notes I can't get at might as well not exist.

My ideas, understanding of things also evolve over time, and if my notes are to be faithful to that they should allow the same mutability. Even if I want to preserve the history of the evolution, I'll want to be able to insert the new things where they make sense -- a new consequence here, a parenthetical that amends the previous thought there.

Paper worked well for persistence when that was all we had, but we have much better now.

> I've read Altucher's words on using a waiter's pad and he says the same thing -- it's for ephemera. I've seen the way many people use physical notes and it's largely the same thing.

My thoughts exactly. When I think of notes, grocery lists and todo lists come to mind. In my opinion, the function of note taking is comparable to RAM. It's short-term and ephemeral. Notes may contribute to a long-term document that should absolutely be digitized, but storing the notes themselves defeats their purpose in my view.

Gotcha. Your quote at the top regarding long-term storage had me thinking in that direction (the long-term stuff is still "notes" to me).

Come on. I know I'm supposed to avoid needless hostility on HN...ok...

No, I won't be able to search them, nor will they sync, nor will they be there when I lose my notebook. Or it gets wet, or when I forget it, and I sure as Schmidt won't be able to read them in 50 years, because the only thing I have that is that old is my physical body.

I don't know about you, but keeping any paperwork for over ~5 years is a chore: it requires keeping several filing cabinets to even have a chance at keeping track of things.

The other major benefit of having them digital is having them searchable.

Some people like to take their notes digitally. It's a tradeoff, and there is no wrong side.

People who like digital notes might benefit from this system. Pen and paper is a commonly used alternative, even amongst the HN crowd, but there's no need to shout down a product that might help people because you take notes differently.

Yes, there is no wrong side. I'm not even directly commenting on the product itself. I'm merely expressing an alternative viewpoint that doesn't get discussed much around here. The view that often times, technology solves one problem and creates two more in its place.

Notes are supposed to be brief records to _aid memory_, not critically important documents. For this purpose, pen and paper should be good enough in my point of view. For anything more serious, I would absolutely agree that "longevity, portability, and privacy" are much more important. However, for this use case I don't believe technology adds very much value. Depends on your definition of a "note" I guess.

In the HN crowd, I wonder how many notes still start off on paper, but are then transcribed into digital.

>Depends on your definition of a "note" I guess.

Hugely. I write a lot on paper because I'm not always with a good typing device, but I'm happiest when I can write it in my rocketbook. It works with a simple app to handle syncing the paper with multiple digital services/tags. Not fully searchable but still kinda neat.

Well, paper, yes, but usually not pen. These days, it's better to use printers to put more substantial and important information on paper. That way, we get the digital benefits of searching, organizing, mass storage in tiny space, unlimited and free mass duplication, and so on, while still being able to print multiple copies anywhere on demand in order to produce redundant hard copies with extreme archival durability (provided you do some research on archival paper and printer ink/toner).

Of course, if you love using an elegant pen for the esthetics and freedom of it (okay, hard to argue with that), then do anything important on fine, archival, loose paper with a beautiful, pigmented (not dye) ink, and scan and OCR it to once again maximize its usefulness and longevity.

You can bind such paper into a beautiful notebook after writing and scanning.

I took a lot of notes on pen and paper during my studies, but after a decade of moving around (including different countries) I have none of them left. On the other hand, I still have the diary I typed on a Mac as kid in the early 90s. Today I frequently wish I had taken notes in some electronic form rather than on paper.

There is definitely a need for something like Standard Notes. I regularly look for electronic note taking solutions that I can trust to survive a lifetime (local files, no cloud, open format, etc.) with a modern feature set (embedded media, links, etc.), but have not found a solution that I'm happy with. For years I've been using TiddlyWiki[0], and while it has worked fine it is not perfect.

[0]http://tiddlywiki.com/

In fact Evernote has been advertising handwritten text indexing for quite a while: https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2015/06/23/6-ways-evernote-em... This is one of many tiny little things why people still stay with it.

I thought down-voting was for bad behavior, not disagreement. Paper notepads and daily calendars are very popular on Kickstarter. Paper is not a valid idea?

I think we're all thoroughly aware of the pen and paper option. What would the quality of discussion here be if the threads were filled with obvious comments that provided no new insight?

My needs for searching through my notes isn't 'yada yada'. And attempting to justify it by using a single dictionary definition, isn't logic, it's wordplay. My definition of notes is any piece of information that I may need at short notice that is easier to jot down than to google.

I don't / wouldn't do that simply because my handwriting pushes the boundaries of the word 'atrocious'. I'd imagine others who spend the majority of their time using computers are in the same boat.

Downvoted. I use penn and paper all the time and prefer it to note taking apps. Your comment isnt helpful for people looking for a digital solution.

I intended my comment to start a dialogue on problems that don't necessarily need technical solutions. I think the KISS principle applies here.

Requiring to have them on your person for use is a gigantic "yadda yadda"

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