On the 30th January 2023 I had a heart attack and on the 20th February 2023 Open Heart Surgery to change a faulty aorta valve. Whilst recovering I realised if I died all my life’s stored documentation would have been placed in a skip and sent to landfill. This documentation means nothing to my family and it would be impossible for them to collate it and store it. So like all good process engineers this has caused me to review and then change my approach to documentation. The essence of this change is to go digital since this removes the storage issues and allows for a more structured way to store it possibly improving access to those choosing to want to read it. Essentially it is creating my digital legacy now essentially by placing my work into a structured set of blogs that anybody can access. In fact allowing it to be easily accessed after my death is important to me. Oddly enough it is inclusive of this blog where you get to share my consciousness on a Sunday morning the 9th April 2023 at 6.00 am. What I am not going to do in this blog is detail all the decision making that I have made about the way it will be stored and where it will be stored. That is the subject of a future blog. This blog is going to look at how I operated prior to my heart attack and the way I have started to operate now in a specific area of document storage.
I have always been a big reader and a hoarder. For some
reason I store things for future use often without knowing what will be that
future use. This applies to all the screws, nails, tools and so forth stored in
my garage so it applies to physical things. There is little order to these
physical things with this working against me in that I cannot locate the stored
“hardware” when a need arises whilst in the case of things like drill bits I
keep blunt ones along with the sharp ones. Following from my father’s (Bill)
habit I have always kept a small wood store. But this blog is not about these
type of physical things but about the storage of documentation, which is
currently physical being paper based, but has the scope to become digital
thereby none physical. So let us look at an example of how I operate in terms
of information storage in support of its future use in my writings.
A common daily practice for me is to read a daily
newspaper which is normally “The Times” and to cut out any articles I believe
may be of use in my future writings. I would say some 10 years ago I
appreciated that this needed some structure so I created my own DMB Publishing
Knowledge Base Taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science and practice of
classification. Just to be really boring and pedantic I also use topography
which links things to their geographical location. This is important to me
since the importance of mapping, as distinct to writing, as a technique of
communication has for some unknown reason been thought of differently within my
thought processes. I like to sit and read maps in a similar manner to the way I
would read a book. In many information transformation tasks then a map is more
effective than using words. Thus my obsession with not just geographical maps
but with business process maps. Just as an aside when I wrote my book on the
Domesday Book (1086) allocating land to individuals it was made almost
impossible because mapping as a technique of communication did not exist. Imagine
the work of the current Government Land Registry without having access to a
map.
So back to the DMB Publishing Knowledge Base Taxonomy. To
create it I listed my areas of interest in a table that I kept on the study
wall. Each area was allocated a number from 01 to 10 for starters with the
opportunity to add others over time if necessary. The key thing was for this to
be kept simple so originally my idea was that it should be only 10 subject
areas but it almost immediately extended to be 11. It should be noted as of 09/04/23
it has extended to 14 with it starting to align itself with books I am
currently writing from 12 to 14.
The one theme running through all the subjects is a focus
upon digitisation. As a writer it is the impact of digitisation that drives my
thought and creative processes. It forms the bedrock upon which all my thinking
is based although increasingly the digital is within a biological context both
in terms of the world, and universe, but increasingly things within my own
consciousness. The digital thinking has to acknowledge that the biological has
taken the subject of digitisation to its most effective and complex
implementation. This has evolved into the “Biology of Machines” and “Unity of
Knowledge” taxonomy entries at references 12 and 13.
These are listed below so you get the idea.
|
Ref |
Subject Name |
Description |
|
01 |
DMB
Publishing |
Generic
covering everything about publishing. |
|
02 |
Digital
Human |
The
digitisation of the human and health. |
|
03 |
Digital
Investor |
Investing
based upon the digital revolution. |
|
04 |
Digital
Disrupter |
Where
going digital disrupts markets. |
|
05 |
Digital
Thought |
Just
any thoughts I have on anything. |
|
06 |
Digital
Vision |
Visions
out into the future. |
|
07 |
Digital
Creative Thinking |
How
creativity works. |
|
08 |
Digital
Documents |
In
the broadest context everything going digital. |
|
09 |
Digital
History |
Anything
historical. |
|
10 |
Digital
Geographical |
Anything
geographical. |
|
11 |
Digital
Artist |
Anything
artistic. |
|
12 |
Biology
of Machines |
Book
Specific – Kevin Kelly – Out of Control |
|
13 |
Unity
of Knowledge |
Book
Specific – Edward O. Wilson - Consilience |
|
14 |
Devon
Estuaries |
Book
Specific – Devon Estuaries and Goole Maps |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Now my filing system
consisted of Cardboard Document Wallets (Envelope Files) each labelled with the
taxonomy reference (eg 09) and subject name. (eg Digital History) . Many wallets
could exist for a reference. I had started to sub-categorise these on the
labels where necessary but this was never formally recorded.
So let us now look at how I
have now digitised my own working practices. Back on the 19th May
2021 I was very impressed by James Marriott’s article on Nostalgia. I cut out
the article wrote on it the date of publication. Then I decided where it should
be stored in terms of my taxonomy. I decided it should go in “05 Digital
Thought” because this was the one classification where other writers work could
be stored since they had transferred a thought to me with it becoming one of my
thoughts. So the cut out article was placed in the correct envelope. So for now
that was the end of the process. This is where things really break down in
terms of the effectiveness of this approach.
Now periodically I would
decide to go back and read the contents of an envelope. This was sometimes
triggered by the gathering of evidence to support a piece of writing I intended
to do or just a case of wanting to re-read things that had triggered my
imagination in the past. It was a messy process with bits of cuttings falling
all over the place. Often articles had to be sellotaped together to make sense so
this became an untidy way of reading material. The biggest problem was if I
wanted to use any of this material and rightly give copyright credit to the
original author it was a re-typing exercise. So what was the new process?
So let us look what I have
done to James Marriott’s article which has been in the envelope for over 2
years unread. The first major step is I now have access to “The Times”
digitally via a subscription so I can now link to or cut and paste articles.
The subscription allows me to search the Times archived copies of their
newspapers. So I have searched and found this article. My way of working is
then to firstly post to my email account the link to it.
In my own time using the
link captured in the email I bring it up and copy and paste it into a Word
Document stored in a folder on my PC named according to my DMB Publishing
Knowledge Base Taxonomy. It is named suitably and must incorporate a time stamp
in the file name having a format “V99 ddmmyy”. (eg V01 08023).
Now it is important to
appreciate that on my PC is a master blog directory containing all my individual
blog directories named according to the taxonomy. Within the individual blog
directories is a Word copy of each blog being a copy of exactly will be posted
to the internet blog. Each blog post has a unique blog reference for example
DP23010 representing blog name (DP),year (23) and serially posted number within
year (010). There are many lessons to be learnt about the insecurity of the
internet which will be discussed in detail in a future blog but some pointers
for now.
Never keep your only source
of something you store on the internet on the internet. Whatever it is text, narrative,
pictures, movie or sound must have an original copy stored on your own PC with
its own defined backup plan. Be prepared for what you have on the internet to
disappear overnight. Commercial organisations are storing your work and they
can easily go bust.
Be prepared for paywalls to
be suddenly be put in place denying you access to your materials or their
materials you are using without you being required to pay a subscription.
Always look to copy the materials you are using onto your own PC so you retain
your own copy. On a number of occasion’s materials I thought I had free access
to have been suddenly been placed behind a paywall and with me not being
prepared to pay the subscription access has been lost.
If you are trying to extract
materials to bring down to your own PC be prepared for the owner of the sites
to prevent you from doing this by putting in place a number of denial
strategies. Most can be got around but you may need to be an expert or seek
expert advice. This is why the movement called Open Systems and the Creative
Commons Licencing initiatives are so important at guaranteeing freedom of access
to internet materials but these being subject to specific defined criteria. You
need to know these rules. Essentially they make your use free but look to
preventing you re-selling the material in its original format or your reworked
format without the Copyright Owners permission. Although there are an
increasing number of sites offering completely free and unrestricted use of
their materials.
So now go and look at the
blog where my new digitised principles have been applied.
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/3005846826155496721/6355759670567118338
