Obligatory mention that the Luddites weren't against technology in general, they were against technology that was causing them to lose their livelihoods (while the country was already in the midst of an employment crisis and economic downturn due to a trade war (and real war) with Napoleon's Europe).
I remained skeptical for a long time. Then I got one. I absolutely love it. In particular, the ability to have multiple notebooks with me and cross-linking via tags. And "infinite pages" lets you insert space in the middle of a page or continue moving down without having to worry about physical page sizes. I can also screen-share the tablet with the desktop app to draw diagrams on zoom calls.
Admittedly, it is only incremental over a spiral notebook and a bic pen. But they do that incremental thing pretty well, particularly because of their focus on the "calm tech" aspects and lack of mainstream ecosystem to track upstream.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who experienced that! Such a fascinating experience, though really quite upsetting at the time. Doesn't happen now with my PIN-locked e-ink device.
okay. so don't do those things.
for me, that's what "calm tech" is all about - it's not just notifications and distractions, it's all the desire for more features, and for software to solve all problems. sometimes we can just not have features, and keep some problems, instead of trading our problems for the problems that more features bring.
Links in text are called references. These can be internal within a document or codex, or external, referencing third-party works. Either case is far less subject to linkrot than URLs have turned out to be.
One of the killer concepts of a bullet journal is the use of indices and spreads to provide an interlinked and searchable reference. If you go back in time, there are numerous journal and commonplace book organisational schemes.
Pages can be easily rearranged using a removeable binding (three-ring binder or various other options), or by using an unbound format such as index cards (the original database solution).
Data can be entered into a computer through scanning and handwriting recognition, though this is admittedly slow, cumbersome, and inexact. On the other hand, you may want friction between your paper-based and electronic data systems.
This to me is calm tech, because that’s all it does: note taking. If your definition is such that only pen and paper meets it, that’s not a very useful definition for tech IMO
I do not mean URLs, though, I mean locally linking from one page or notebook to another. It's internal references on steroids, and is much more useful to me than my collection of paper notebooks and references were
I'm a BuJo afficionado too! I'm still adapting it to my e-ink note-taking system, starting to get there via folders and notebooks instead of one big notebook, and its exactly why internal linking is so useful!
That way the BuJo reads as: index, calendrical pages, spreads/references (at the end).
The advantages are non-electronic storage with ready reference. You can only access the current year's BuJo generally (unless you're where your archive is kept), but current references should be readily available on you (e.g., addresses, current information, calendar, etc.). You can only lose the current journal should you misplace it, and the information won't leak out readily as it can from digital storage.
For an index-card system, look up Zettelkasten if you haven't already. Very robust and useful indexing systems have been at the heart of academic and commercial research for over two centuries now, and the systems developed are quite powerful. Digital systems are more powerful still, but have their own downsides: loss or corruption, data exfiltration, and devices which may not be convenient to use in all circumstances.
With a BuJo or Zettelkasten, information capture is possible by carrying a few index cards with you and jotting notes. You have capture, can file these into your journal (or an indexing system, or a loose-leaf binding), and don't risk losing the rest of your archive in the process. The lack of digital distractions is its own powerful benefit.
But also Android makes it something I’m not very interested in. The Fujitsu device is also running Android.