I had the realization yesterday while waiting for a train that the Notes app on iOS contains all the functionality I'd need in order to be able to build a small organization/business .. as long as I standardized my form of note-taking and rigorously applied policies on how Notes are transformed from one Folder to the other - and on what conditions I send the Notes to others using Airdrop.

In other words, all I really need a computer for, is formatting and forwarding rules. ;)

Anyway it was an interesting experiment to come up with some standard Notes that would be productive for a small office - and I realized, part way through this hacking on the rails, thats how people used to do it: plain old ink and paper, and a standard system for routing things around.

I started to wonder what happened? I guess HR departments got tired of having to train workers, and came to rely on computerization as a way of 'training in the chair' - or, outright, replacing peoples ability to apply standard techniques to their workday.

Even today in a computer-savvy environment, people still seem to resist the idea of having standard ways of doing things. Everyone has this idea that they are unique and special individuals who have more to contribute to the world than they end up taking - but give them pen and paper and tell them thats the only way to do things from now on, and all the hubris falls apart and the excuses come out.

It has been true for 40 years, and I think it'll long be true for another century at least: if you can't do it on paper first, you're not ready to computerize the problem.