Moleskines Redux

Of course, I claim a lot of the credit for this decade-long trend Why Startups Love Moleskines: 

“The notion that non-digital goods and ideas have become more valuable would seem to cut against the narrative of disruption-worshipping techno-utopianism coming out of Silicon Valley and other startup hubs, but, in fact, it simply shows that technological evolution isn’t linear. We may eagerly adopt new solutions, but, in the long run, these endure only if they truly provide us with a better experience—if they can compete with digital technology on a cold, rational level.”

I have returned to Moleskines recently, partly because I realised I have a cupboard full of them, and partly because of exactly this problem: there’s no digital equivalent experience. 

• easier to conceptualise on paper
• you can doodle when the speaker is waffling; those doodles embellish, even turn it into Mike Rohde’s sketchnotes
• you can whip it out in places where an electronic device would be weird, or rude, or impractical;
• there’s a natural timeline to your thoughts
• there’s something sensual about having a pen in your hands and holding a notebook
• pen and moleskine focus your thoughts and attention
• the cost of the book acts as a brake on mindless note taking (writing stuff down without really thinking why) 
• no mindmap software has ever really improved the mindmapping experience. 

(Via.Newley Purnell)