So much knowledge not being applied Most organisations have a lot of documents and data floating around that hardly ever gets revisited or used. They all have research, reading, and relevant information collecting dust. Stuff that should be informing the decisions and strategies of the company. Some of it sits unread in a knowledge base or a wiki. Some of it lies in the drives of individual employees who don’t have a way to share it productively. So much knowledge not being applied! Except that’s not how we work as human beings. If you haven’t read it, experienced it, and contextualised it, then it isn’t knowledge to you. Knowledge is a quality that people possess, not documents, and the only way to transfer it from one place to another is for people at both ends to apply themselves and make it their own. Baldur Bjarnason, On online collaboration and our obligations as makers of software knowledgedocumentationwork
Dependence is more profitable than education A customer who pays—in advance—for service contracts is a more stable income source than a customer who has fully mastered a product's use. Customer dependence is more profitable than customer education. What I find truly baffling are manuals—hundreds of pages long—that accompany software applications, programming languages, and operating systems. Unmistakably, they signal both a contorted design that lacks clear concepts and an intent to hook customers. Niklaus Wirth, A Plea for Lean Software The design concept documentation
Such an unholy alliance Something was wrong, according to Raymond Loewy, who admitted that, "with few exceptions, the [competitors'] products were good." He was "disappointed and amazed at their poor physical appearance, their clumsiness, and...their design vulgarity." He found "quality and ugliness combined," and wondered about "such an unholy alliance." ...Loewy was also "shocked by the fact that most preeminent engineers, executive geniuses, and financial titans seemed to live in an aesthetic vacuum," and he believed that he could "add something to the field." But, not surprisingly, the people he approached were "rough, antagonistic, often resentful." Raymond Loewy, The Evolution of Useful Things On TasteWe might as well make them beautifulRestrained beauty aesthetics