The Papernet, small pieces of paper loosely joined. Obviously a popular topic, the room has filled out more than previous sessions, is something Aaron has been writing on for over a year – but today he has a set of slides that “you could argue over while havng drinks”.

Recipes. Recipe cards are hard to share, everyone has boxes of them, you try to copy other people’s but it’s hard and you never get all of them. Aaron thought maybe put them online! But he never wants to see a computer in the kitchen. Reading a recipe for Chocolate Cake in a text editor loses the magic.

So he needed a way to print cards with recipes on. He created a markup language. He wanted to use index cards, this is a terrible experience. There are no printers set up to do it. He says he’ll come back to that.

Ubiquitous does not mean “Always On”

Due to power constraints, networking and all the rest, laptops are not always on. Paper, you can screw up, fold, tear and unwrap and it still works !

The revolution will not be convergence

What a great phrase. Use the internet for what it’s good at. Use paper for what it’s good at. Reading a book on a palm pilot is not a good experience. And in Paris, nobody’s going to get their laptop out in a rainstorm.

Artifacts are the soft-porn of memory

Aaaron has a notebook guide of Barcelona, with his own notes in. The next person he knows who goes to Barcelona will get the notebook, so it can come back with more notes in it.

There’s something more than online information. Everyone loves to receive a letter, a real one, not an email. The power goes off and there’s still something there.

There is a limit to computer magic because human language is also magic and computers are still dumb

The web is not your desktop because you don’t always have a connection, your battery runs out, your laptop gets stolen and so on.

<snip>a wander around what’s broken about online data, google base, stickit and more</snip>

Aaron introduces a nice little guide printer, it takes stuff from stickit and other places, grabs maps and prints a booklet so you can carry it around. It also prints barcodes (QR codes) as well, so you can link the data back into your phone.

This post doesn’t even come close to doing him justice. If you get the chance to see Aaron speak then do. Ditch any other session in favour of this guy.