Tales from the history of documentation, chapter two

Generations came and went and before long many of the more long term issues regarding storing information had been addressed. Storage facilities (archives) had been established at central places, so the documentation could be kept for many, many years and review boards controlled any updates to the archives to ensure the quality of the documentation was maintained.

But the common people didn't use the huge archives that much. The complexity of it all was a bit overwhelming, and if you did manage to find something, it was properly out of date or wasn't really relevant for the common peoples daily life's.

So in an attempt to remedy this, procedures were carefully written on how to ensure updated and relevant documentation. Elaborate indexes were also created to document how to find the documentation. And all this was of course also stored in the archives, because this was the right place to keep important information.

To assist in facilitating the efficient proliferation of the documentation archival management system, an organization of archival and process experts was created with the responsibility of guiding people towards the information they needed. A host of managers was also need to ensure everything was handled correctly.

But even with this massive effort to perfect the documentation system, the common people didn't really use it much. They preferred to use more informal channels of information, which didn't have the complexity of the official documentation system.

Then one day a young enthusiastic fellow approached the community with a new media for maintaining documentation. A new electronic device called a computer was able to provide electronic versions of the document spreadsheets and other forms of paper documentation stored in the archives. He said that the computer was a major improvement over paper-based documentation. The electronic documents where much easier to edit and maintain. They could also be kept in computer based storage systems, avoiding the huge paper document archives. Copy and distribution was also much easier, just a click of a button.

The experts and managers from the archives listened to the young man and told him this computer thing looked very nifty and he was very welcome to use it, but it could of course not be used for the more important information. After all, it wasn't as safe as paper, it could loose power, the data could be corrupted or hacked, incompatibility issues would certainly arise. The control of the documentation would also be difficult to enforce, when copying and distribution was so easy.

The young man was pretty disillusioned by this lack of vision from the archive experts and managers, but agreed to follow the decision to only use the computer for things considered less important by the experts.

The years passed, and surprisingly enough computers gradually started to replace the paper documents. Apparently the intangible concept of 'easy to use' and the possibility of everybody to contribute was found to be 'better' by the common people. Soon most documentation was stored on computers and the archives were used more for historic documentation.

End of chapter two