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William Sherman wrote a whole bunch of stuff, including:
[...]
> This is why you may want to document your job, as you can pull up all
> the
> neat things you did years before all the know-it-all kids of today who
> think
> they invented this stuff were even born.
I don't often get that.
What I get is eye-rolling amazement that all this wonderful
stuff WASN'T around for my entire lifetime and for some
fuzzily indeterminate time before me.
Hell, I lived well more than half my life before the
web came along (much of it before even the Internet,
per se, was available to people outside of research),
and *I* have a hard time remembering how we got along
without being able to move a mouse, type a few characters,
and have tons of information instantly available.
Yeah, I remember libraries, but I also remember how LONG
it took to look up stuff. You had to really want to find
out something very specific, and it could sometimes involve
reaching out to other institutions over a period of days,
to get a copy of a book or periodical brought around to
the local branch. I also remember a lot of being on waiting
lists, and of branches (or entire municipal library systems)
having few - or no - copies of this-or-that document because
of budget constraints.
The interweebs don't appear to have time or budget constraints.
The problem now is peeling oneself away from the instant
riches of information (much of it quite well cataloged)
and of entertainment.
So, I think that you document your job to the extent
that you need to, or to the extent that your employer
(or auditor) demands, but you don't do it for posterity.
Posterity (today's 12-year-olds) can read an archive
of this list if they really care or are given an
research assignment by their second-year history, or
perhaps anthropology, prof in 2019.
"Oh look! They still talked about "virtual" in those
days (2012). Like it makes a difference. Maybe it
did, back then, but that was almost half my life
ago, man. Those people are dead now, right... or in the camps?"
-k
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