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Imagine being isolated off-grid for an unknown number of years. Maybe you're stuck somewhere like Davidge or Mark Watney; or perhaps you've chosen a life of isolation like Yoda or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe you're a survivor of the $Apocalypse. Wouldn't keeping a journal be a great idea? You could pass on your knowledge, keep track of daily activities, maybe even keep yourself from going insane!
Forget all the wastefulness, extravagance, and complexity of most modern devices, you've got survival to think about! Obviously power usage would be a major concern, but ergonomics, searchability, repairability, and data robustness would be important too. Keeping in mind that this is a dedicated device for journaling and barring the old Russian pencil and paper, what would the best solution look like with off-the-shelf modern technology?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 12 2018, @03:06AM
Since you're for some stupid reason excluding paper, something which has worked for thousands of years (Literally, they keep digging or fishing up more of it) and you want an off-the-shelf tech product rather than a DIY array of batteries and solar panels plus all the components to keep it repaired for years on end or your own personal coal power plant, your only choice is an OLPC laptop. They are rugged, can be powered from a hand-crank, and have minimalist journaling software built-in. You may need a spare hand-crank. I don't know the quality of that part.
Keeping track of daily activities or preventing you from going insane are not valid uses of a journal in the situations you describe. Daily activities quickly become habits and don't need to be recorded. If writing is the only thing keeping you sane after the world has ended then you're gonna die sooner rather than later. You're not mentally tough enough to survive. If you can't handle isolation then writing is only going to make you go insane faster. Talking to yourself/something through journaling isn't isolation, so you'd also be self-defeating your reason of wanting to be isolated. You may want to be isolated so you can focus on writing a book, but book writing is very different from journaling.
Teaching someone after you isn't a valid use either. They either aren't going to care about your enlightenment as your life goals and views aren't the same as theirs (and if they were then they'd want to reach enlightenment on their own rather than by copying you), are going to be too concerned with daily survival to take the time to understand what you've recorded, won't find your stuff, or aren't going to be able to read.
If you're planning on getting ship wrecked on an uncharted desert isle and then coming back after a few years, what you really need is a hand-crank powered radio. You'll want to keep up with current advances so you'll know if you need to stay away from certain areas so you don't get killed by robots by stepping into their work areas. Or if saying "hey" to a random stranger has become an aggressive verbal attack punishable by jail time. It may become illegal for you to talk to someone without sending and confirming a talk request. Or perhaps it'll be illegal for you to look away from that ad before you step on the sidewalk. If you instead waste all your time journaling, you'll probably be unable to cope with the new modern society and will want to go back to your island.
In summary, what is this bullshit 'article' and why did I spend any time responding to it? Go buy two OLPC laptops, keep only one of them, take a tropic tour vacation on a tiny boat with a millionaire and his wife, and finally use your brain before asking people questions. Your teachers lied to you. There are stupid questions. Every question is stupid. You've never seen a question decide it had enough of being a question and chooses a different career path or identify for itself. That never happens so all questions are stupid, including your's.