Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kenji | Hacker News Reader

I think the author neglects one point: Deciding what to keep and what to throw away is a really difficult problem. Why is that so? Because to do it 100% correctly, you would have to know the future. Because only then you can know for certain what is worth keeping. You don't know the future so you will err. Now, in times where data storage is almost free, it makes sense to keep an ever growing but well-ordered set of files or bookmarks. It has saved me lots of time, just searching my bookmarks "I remember this article I once skimmed, and it contains exactly what I need" or even "I remember this book I downloaded, I'm sure the answer is in there".

View on HN

That's essentially what my bookmarks are. An index of self-curated articles, tutorials, tools, books, etc. of things I'm generally interested in. Before I put something in my bookmarks I do a quick skim and decide if has value, even if it's not relevant right now. So that in the future instead of a Google search, where I'd have to browse through a pile of results to identify the gold nuggets, I can instead search through my bookmarks knowing that whatever pops up is going to be immediately useful because I've already screened for it.

What you are doing is essentially using your computer as a memex (as described in "as we may think"), like it is intended.

>I think the author neglects one point: Deciding what to keep and what to throw away is a really difficult problem. Why is that so? Because to do it 100% correctly, you would have to know the future.

The key point here is that you don't need to do it "100% correctly". Not even "80% correctly".

In the long term (and even in the mid-term) it doesn't matter, and most of those pieces of information collected is BS that wont contribute to anything at all with regards to one's life, career, etc.

The few pieces that are actually useful, one will either encounter time an and again, or know they're something important from the get on.

>Now, in times where data storage is almost free, it makes sense to keep an ever growing but well-ordered set of files or bookmarks.

Data storage might be free, but time to organize and dig through is not. Besides, one can let Google be their storage.

Additionally, so much of the internet is ephemeral, compared to the content that students or researchers would have been photocopying when Umberto Eco wrote the piece that's quoted in the article. For this reason, if I find an interesting article/page/whatever, I tend to save a local copy even if I don't know when or if I'll read it. It might not be online anymore when it turns out to be useful.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com