In practice 95% of the use cases can be naturally unbundled into disjoint apps, and the lack of centralization and cross-app hyperlinking has no real negative effects.
Well said. However, I found the following sentiment interesting:
Collection Management: this is an area where the software solutions are strangely very lacking.
Fernado goes on to describe a bespoke systems he wishes existed or that he had time to build. Because “disjoint apps” like Calibre and Zotero aren’t good enough. Plus ça change…
Why did California go head over heels for equity? Aside from the political valence of it and the point at which American society was less than a year after George Floyd’s death, it is classic bikeshedding. Most people in civil society cannot develop, manufacture, distribute, or administer a vaccine. Decrying systemic racism, on the other hand, is quite accessible. We exhaustively train the entire professional-managerial class in doing it. Accordingly, official discussions of strategy for the vaccination effort quickly bent toward systemic racism. Lacking any ability to contribute regarding one pressing problem, many individuals of good will focused on the other.
Fred Brooks, ACM Allen Newell Award acceptance speech:
Any thing which has to call itself a science isn’t. By this criterion, physics, chemistry, geology, and astronomy may be sciences; political science, military science, social science, and computer science are not.
We make things that do not themselves directly satisfy human needs, but which others use in making things that enrich human living. In a word, the computer scientist is a toolsmith—no more, but no less. It is an honorable calling.
You will be missed.
