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Technology Science

Post-It Notes - 25 Years of Hypertext in Paper 142

Posted by Zonk from the little-yellow-different dept.
RexDart writes "A Minneapolis/St. Paul magazine, The Rake, has a fascinating article revealing the history and development of the humble, ubiquitous Post-It Note. An intriguing tale of a dedicated visionary working the system to bring an innovative product to life in a monolithic, tradition-bound organization." From the article: "Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it's easy to forget what a recent innovation they are. Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips. Instead, they're an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing the web, they offered an easy way to link one piece of information to another in a precisely contextual way. Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."
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Post-It Notes - 25 Years of Hypertext in Paper More

Post-It Notes - 25 Years of Hypertext in Paper

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  • Obvious Question (Score:5, Funny)

    by DSpaniel ( 882128 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:39AM (#12461264) Homepage
    What was the First Post(it)??!?

  • Post-It Note Web Map (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ThatWeasel ( 113982 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:40AM (#12461268) Homepage
    Because they are comparing Post-It Notes to the Internet wouldn't it be fun (and time-comsuming) to create an Internet Map [thinkgeek.com] using just Post-It Notes? Of course, Post-It Notes stock would go through the roof since it would require billions of stickies but it would be fun!
    • comparing Post-It Notes to the Internet wouldn't it be fun (and time-comsuming) to create an Internet Map using just Post-It Notes? - I have one on my basement walls, each note is indexed into my extensive collection of newspaper clippings. I use the small notes as nodes and the bigger ones as hubs. I keep my darknet map under tinfoil just in case.

  • yea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by metricmusic ( 766303 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:42AM (#12461271) Homepage Journal
    Its amazing what somebody saw in something no one else saw a use for.

    the saying 'someone's junk is another's treasure' comes to mind.

    http://www.snopes.com/business/origins/post-it.asp [snopes.com]

    • Re:yea (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Eric Giguere ( 42863 )

      someone's junk is another's treasure

      Which is really why eBay exists and is so profitable!

      Eric
      New book out on June 17th! [memwg.com]
    • I started working before the Post-It notes came out. We mainly used similar-sized pieces of paper held on with paper-clips. (This was before the paper-clip had become a universal symbol of evil and obsequiousness :-)

      At Bell Labs, the standard "routing slip" was green, so they were referred to as "greenies".

  • This just in... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:46AM (#12461275)
    ...the world's first Post-It Note is being auctioned on eBay. It comes complete with certificate of authenticity, written directly on the Post-It itself.......uh.......oops.

  • timeline (Score:5, Informative)

    by cahiha ( 873942 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:49AM (#12461286)
    Seriously! Minnesota's greatest invention prefigured email, hypertext, and the digital revolution.

    No, it didn't. E-mail and hypertext preceded the PostIt note by a decade or two.

    • Re:timeline (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:38AM (#12461405) Homepage
      That doesn't mean that they were present in the average office. A networked computer on every desk became common much later.
      • Then they should have said something like "prefigured the spread of email, hypertext, and the digital revolution to offices". By making a broad statement they make it sound like email didn't exist at all before the Post-It Note.
    • E-mail and hypertext preceded the PostIt note by a decade or two.

      Not to mention RexDart's hyperbole.

      KFG

  • creative other use (Score:5, Funny)

    by moz25 ( 262020 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @06:52AM (#12461291) Homepage
    I've also seen some creative use [boingboing.net] for these notes that probably were not part of the original ideas either :-)

  • Love the Post-its (Score:5, Funny)

    by elecngnr ( 843285 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:00AM (#12461314)

    I grew up in a 3M town and had family that worked for them. I was 10 or 11 when they came out and I remember the big deal made about them. There was a 3M exec who worked with the Junior Achievement groups and I would always be hoping and praying that he would bring some Post-It notes in to school so I could get a pad.

    It is interesting to note the products of unintended consequences. Just a few: Post-Its, Microwave Ovens, and Vasoline.

    • Re:Love the Post-its (Score:4, Funny)

      by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:28AM (#12461383) Homepage
      It is interesting to note the products of unintended consequences. Just a few: Post-Its, Microwave Ovens, and Vasoline.

      I shudder to think what the sequence of 'unintended consequences' leading up to the invention of vaseline were.

      • Sadly, kind of boring (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Vaseline was gunk that kept seeping out of the joints on an oil rig's drill bits.

        The fella who noticed that wounds didn't get infected if you covered them with vaseline lived into his 90s, and credited his long life to a full-skin vaseline massage given to him by his nurse everyday.

        • Re:Sadly, kind of boring (Score:4, Funny)

          by Dogtanian ( 588974 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @09:12AM (#12461655) Homepage
          The fella who noticed that wounds didn't get infected if you covered them with vaseline lived into his 90s, and credited his long life to a full-skin vaseline massage given to him by his nurse everyday.

          This guy is getting a full-skin vaseline massage from a nurse every day and you think it's "sadly, kind of boring"?!

          My God! I wouldn't mind helping that nurse live into her 90s using the same method (though I'd prefer she was in her 20s at the time I was doing it).
        • Vaseline was gunk that kept seeping out of the joints on an oil rig's drill bits. The fella who noticed that wounds didn't get infected if you covered them with vaseline lived into his 90s, and credited his long life to a full-skin vaseline massage given to him by his nurse everyday.

          Robert Chesebrough, the inventor/discoverer, wasa wack guy. It gets even better:

          The best use of Vaseline® has to be by Mr. Chesebrough, himself. He believed that a person should eat a spoonful every day for good healt

          • Re:Sadly, kind of boring (Score:4, Interesting)

            by jizmonkey ( 594430 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @12:14PM (#12462440)
            Robert Chesebrough, the inventor/discoverer, wasa wack guy. It gets even better:

            The best use of Vaseline® has to be by Mr. Chesebrough, himself. He believed that a person should eat a spoonful every day for good health. He lived to ninety-six years of age and never missed that delicious spoonful every morning.

            Vaseline is about as harmless as mineral oil. Eating a spoonful of vaseline every morning would keep him regular and otherwise be harmless assuming he didn't inhale any of it and monitored his fat-soluable vitamin intake. Now, gasoline would cause him some real problems if he had a spoonful of that every morning.

    • Re:Love the Post-its (Score:3, Interesting)

      by gwernol ( 167574 )
      It is interesting to note the products of unintended consequences. Just a few: Post-Its, Microwave Ovens, and Vasoline.

      Probably the most lucrative example of this is Viagra, which was originally developed as a heart medication. I heard that the original developers considered its unintended side effect so unfortunate that they ceased development of the heart medicine until someone at Pfizer realized that perhaps the side effect might be worth something. I suspect that's an urban legend though....
      • What Viagra does is thin your blood, just like anti-inflamatories (such as aspirin) and medicines marketed to help the heart. Since your blood is thinner it doesn't clot as easily. This is great if you're in danger of having a heart attack because a clot is what fills in a cholesterol coated artery.

        I'm not entirely certain about this; it's all from HS anatomy.

      • Re:Love the Post-its (Score:4, Interesting)

        by jizmonkey ( 594430 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @12:23PM (#12462507)
        There are tons of drugs that are prescribed for reasons other than what they were invented for.

        For instance, Propecia was originally a prostate medication. It blocks the uptake of testosterone in certain tissues. The effect they wanted was that the prostate would shrink. It also makes one's dick shrink and it stops hair from falling out (eunuchs don't go bald, by the way -- one way to think about Propecia is that it chemically castrates the man who is taking it). One of these side effects was worth a lot of money.

        There's a lot of tetracycline that gets prescribed in this country for zits.

        There was one drug I remember reading about that was intended to treat some kind of frivolous Western medical problem, didn't do so well at that, but turned out to work really well on a particular tropical disease. The drug company gave the remaining stock to Doctors Without Borders, but didn't make any more of the drug because there was no profit in it.

    • ..Vasoline.

      You really shouldn't learn to spell things from song titles [lyricsfreak.com]. Musicians are frequently the worst authority on literacy. The word you want is Vaseline [vaseline.com].

      • It is what I get for posting replies at 6 am with a little bit of a hangover......
      • I don't know if Stone Temple Pilots are authorities on literacy or not, but I strongly suspect that the title of the STP song was deliberately spelled differently from the spelling of the name of the petroleum jelly product for legal reasons, i.e., to keep from getting sued into oblivion by Chesebrough-Ponds for using their no doubt trademarked and/or copyrighted brand name.

  • Other ideas for Post-It technology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:01AM (#12461316)
    I which they'd come up with full page size Post-Its with full adhesive backing with a removable liner. That way you could print off CAD drawings and use them as guide templates for drilling and cutting out parts. Sort of a poor man's CAM tool. Think of surfaces like plexiglass where you can't mark on it directly since it would ruin the finish.

  • Not just the /. Eds that are clueless (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ronald Dumsfeld ( 723277 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:03AM (#12461318)
    Seriously! Minnesota's greatest invention prefigured email, hypertext, and the digital revolution.
    Say what?

    Despite common belief, e-mail actually pre-dates the Internet; in fact, existing e-mail systems were a crucial tool in creating the Internet. [wikipedia.org]

    Email originated before I was born, and I'm old enough to remember the introduction of the Post-It.

  • Come on! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matthias Wiesmann ( 221411 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:03AM (#12461319) Homepage Journal
    You realise that before post-it notes, people would simply use a sheet of paper and some duct tape or a bloody paper-clip? (the non virtual, non annoying kind). The brilliant idea of post-it notes was to have pre-cut, pre-glued paper notes. Claiming that post-it notes are ancestors of hyper-links is like saying that the red pen used by teachers is the ancestor of versioning systems...

    • Re:Come on! (Score:5, Funny)

      by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:23AM (#12461366) Homepage Journal
      Yes, it's all about laziness. My univ still doesn't use post-it, and they don't intent to, until they run out of their supply of blank 80-column [retrologic.com] cards. Every office has a box (10,000 or so of them) and they are used instead of post-it notes, actually being way more handy because of stiffness and size.

    • bloody paper clip? (Score:3, Informative)

      by bobalu ( 1921 )
      Yuck. Point taken, but what a nasty mental image! Wouldn't want too many of those on my desk. :-)

      Actually the real innovation was the glue that wouldn't "set", so you could remove the thing later w/o tearing the original. It was a failed experiment that they found a use for. I believe the guy was looking for a way to keep his place in a hymm book at church. He didn't want to deface it.

    • Claiming that post-it notes are ancestors of hyper-links is like saying that the red pen used by teachers is the ancestor of versioning systems...

      It's not quite that far out of line. It is possible to see the connection they've tried to make, between directly linking an idea to another idea without interfereing with the first and HTML, because that is kind of how HTML works, but I understand what you're saying. It's quite a bit of a stretch, but the items are related more closely than red pens and versioni

  • Electronic Equivalents (Score:4, Funny)

    by Baricom ( 763970 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:04AM (#12461322)
    There have been a number of software products based on the Post-It concept, such as 3M's own app (which includes an ability to transfer notes using XML) and Apple's Stickies.

    I'm curious: do fellow Slashdotters find these programs helpful versus other ways of keeping track of snippets of information, such as e-mail?

    • Re:Electronic Equivalents (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Ctrl-Z ( 28806 ) <tim&timcoleman,com> on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:10AM (#12461338) Homepage Journal
      I actually find it easier and more convenient to stick real notes onto my monitor than work with those things on my desktop. The notes are always on top, can be moved easily if necessary, and can adhere to the frame of the monitor to stay out of the way.
      • And not to mention having a real bit of paper can be handy when your PC decided to stop being a useful pile of electronics and become a device for providing frustrating hex dumps on a blue screen ;)

        Seriously though I prefer real notes as I don't need to login to my desktop and wait for all the networking stuff just to read a note saying "X tried to call... can you call back?"
      • I actually find it easier and more convenient to stick real notes onto my monitor than work with those things on my desktop. The notes are always on top, can be moved easily if necessary, and can adhere to the frame of the monitor to stay out of the way

        Actually in Mac OS 10.4, the postit notes widget can be made to do all of that. This hint [macosxhints.com] at MacOSXHints.com shows how to keep the stickies always on top. They are easy to move and can be put back into the dashboard at any time. Maybe not as good as on
    • I have been using on screen 'Post-it' notes for many years. I run my own business and have to multitask far beyond the task switching capabilities of my memory, so these notes are great for temporary and semipermanent storage.

      I started using freeware post-it like software that allowed arbitrary sized/coloured notes to be left on the desktop, however I gradually migrated to using MS Outlook notes, which I use for all of my notes. Currently I have about 40 different notes active. Usually only one or two are
    • No.
      They take up screen real estate, which is a very limited resource. I often use post-it notes myself, to write down useful info from the computer. More, I sometimes print sidebars and paste them to the sides of the monitor (i.e. SFR and memory map for 8052 while developing programs for it, or basic help for some new program - I had "mouse gestures" in "printed sidebars" before I remembered them.) - these actually "increase screen real estate". (same reason I think no 15" ultra-hi-res super-duper LCD scre

  • Users celebrate! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Skiron ( 735617 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:07AM (#12461328)
    If it wasn't for the Post-it-note, how on EARTH would users remember their passwords! Got to be the best invention ever for Windows users in businesses everywhere!

  • I hate post-its (Score:3, Funny)

    by tedric ( 8215 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:08AM (#12461333)
    "Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."

    I hate it when I come back from a lunch break and my monitor shines in yellow with gazillions of post-its from co-workers on it! Sometimes I think people just wait until you leave your desk and then attack you with post-its from behind. Office is so cruel sometimes...
    • Because when you're away, you can't say "No, I can't do it", "No, I'm busy with something else", "Why don't you do this yourself?" or such. There's no "Reply" button on post-it notes, which makes them a great tool to unload your own work onto someone else.
      • Because when you're away, you can't say "No, I can't do it", "No, I'm busy with something else", "Why don't you do this yourself?" or such. There's no "Reply" button on post-it notes, which makes them a great tool to unload your own work onto someone else.

        But on the up-side, post-its leave no sender-side copy of themselves, nor is there any delivery confirmation mechanism. I have shirked off jobs that others have tried to shirk off on me via post-it by simply "vanishing" the note. "Dincha' see that post-i

    • Then May I present my soon-to-be-patented bulk post-it notes remover!
      Just a sort of plastic-paint-scraper with a receptical, it allows you, with one foul scrape, to remove all the notes and transfer them painlessly to the nearest appropriate receptacle. (Trash can or toilet - it just depends on your mood!)
      More advanced models, containing, say, a shredder or some kind of incendiary device will also be covered.

      I recall once possessing a similar device, but that was for removing ice from the inside on a free

  • There's one problem about them... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:08AM (#12461335) Homepage Journal
    They are bitch to remove from inside the floppy drives.

  • BANNED! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Linker3000 ( 626634 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:17AM (#12461348) Journal
    Amongst other things I provide consultancy for help desks and call centres (migration, training, expansion, logistics, workflow etc.)

    On that kind of environment I strongly recommend AGAINST using sticky notes because they are apt to get lost, fall down the back of desks, under keyboards etc. and they do not stick well to fabric partitions, plus, when you see a desk/wall/monitor plastered with dozens of 'please call' or 'urgent' notes not only does it look extremely messy but it also devalues the urgency of the notes and looks unprofessional - it's a bit like if you received all incoming emails flagged urgent.

    If a call centre or help desk cannot send electronic notes, I recommend a clipboard for each employee hooked by their desk in a specific location upon which A5-sized pre-printed notes can be left - because each note is arranged in the same way with regards to from/date/subject/priority etc, it is easier than wading through tons of stickies all written in a diferent way and placed on your keyboard, monitor, chair back, or whereever the person chose to leave it. Some advocate sticking notes on the monitor, but if someone comes back to their desk and needs to check something out on their computer they just peel off the pile and put it 'somewhere' to deal with later and they can get lost, forgotten or ignored.

    This may all sound a bit over the top bit it just takes one note from a very important customer to go astray and you can appreciate the need for organisation and consistency - I'm not a control freak but sticky notes are not always the best way to do things in some environments.

    • Re:BANNED! (Score:4, Insightful)

      by yagu ( 721525 ) <yayagu@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Saturday May 07, 2005 @08:15AM (#12461487) Journal
      This may all sound a bit over the top bit it just takes one note from a very important customer to go astray and you can appreciate the need for organisation and consistency - I'm not a control freak but sticky notes are not always the best way to do things in some environments.

      Well it does sound a little over the top... not because it's bad policy but more because I don't think it guarantees that one note from a very important customer still won't get lost somehow. I probably have a couple thousand "notes to self" in the form of text files laying around and I'm sure some of those are lost.

      Chaos is chaos, and better tools probably just provide better chaos. And more expensive chaos. Wish I had an ultimate solution to suggest, but I've seen many sophisticated environments (e.g., Lotus Notes, PM tools, etc.) and not one has solved the "lost note" problem. Sigh.

    • For the more important. mission-critical issues (e.g. workflow, schematic, tactical plan) may I suggest a table napkin.

  • The Big Picture (Score:4, Interesting)

    by coastwalker ( 307620 ) <acoastwalker@[ ]mail.com ['hot' in gap]> on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:20AM (#12461358) Homepage
    Theres still no better way to get a bunch of people to collaborate over solving a problem than sticking ideas on postit notes on a framework sketched out on a Very Large Piece of Paper (TM.) stuck on a wall.

    What I could do with is a way of capturing these things and then cutting and pasting portions of the thing and moving them around and then reprojecting them, rinse and repeat..

    I could do it with a laser scanner (of the sort used to capture egyptian tombs) and a high deffinition projector I guess.

    Good for web site design, FMEA, Business process re-engineering and the capture of complex systems.

    No time to lose, I'm off to start up a new business right now, just as soon as I have recorded the idea on a postit note stuck on my monitor. Now where did I leave them....

  • Great for storing passwords! (Score:4, Funny)

    by gooman ( 709147 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:37AM (#12461403) Journal
    Just jot it down and stick it on your monitor.
    If you are really security minded, you can simply stick it under the keyboard.

  • You're all wrong (Score:5, Funny)

    by gtoomey ( 528943 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:44AM (#12461424)
    Romy and Michelle invented Post Its [wikipedia.org]
  • Seems someone tried to mark this anniversary by selling a post-it note on eBay UK. Bids got upto £1.8 million, but then that bid was retracted. I managed to get a screenshot of it. See the screenshot here [linux-hoster.co.uk]

  • this sounds familiar (Score:2, Interesting)

    by rizzo5 ( 574275 )
    from TFA: "At 3M, however, there is a long-standing policy that permits employees to spend fifteen percent of their time working on projects of their own choosing." I guess Google can't be credited with innovating that (although I've never seen anyone claim that they had). I wonder how many other companies have done something like this?
    • From what I recall, HP had a varient on this. Engineers could use anything in the HP inventory to work on whatever they had in mind, and if HP chose not to turn that idea into a product, the engineer was free to do with it what ever they chose. Thus Woz created both the Apple I and Apple II from mostly off the shelf parts at HP, and was able to take the result outside of HP, and colaborate with Jobs on creating Apple.

      Then again you probably remembered that just after you posted, and decided it was just out
    • from TFA: "At 3M, however, there is a long-standing policy that permits employees to spend fifteen percent of their time working on projects of their own choosing."
      Not only that, but they are obligated to not spend some percentage of their budget on their primary research project, so they have that little margin to explore "side effects" that would be neglected thanks to traditional normal stupid shortsighted bean-counters.
  • I would like us all to recall that line from the original Star Wars movie where Obiwan Kenobi tells Darth Vader:

    "If you cut me down you will only make me stronger".

    PCs, the web have not cut down post-it notes, only made them stronger or transformed them.

    I still see a few computers in every office with post-it notes plastered around the monitor with fresh pads of them in every supply closet.

    Every desktop I have seen has an electronic analog of post-it notes. Even gnu/linux with the KDE ( I don't know

  • Ah yes... The Post-it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by nunchux ( 869574 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @07:55AM (#12461445)
    I hate you, Post-it Notes. I hate the person who invented you. And most of all, I hate my uptight, neurotic and textbook case of passive behavior ex-roommate who communicated exclusively through you.

  • problem with post-its (Score:3, Funny)

    by miyako ( 632510 ) <miyako AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday May 07, 2005 @08:46AM (#12461568) Homepage Journal
    I've always liked the concept of post-it notes, since my memory for tasks is abysmal (or rather I'm too easily distracted from the tasks I need to complete). I've tried using post-it notes, but the problem is that usually after a few hours, they stop sticking. I've tried using other brands but I can't get any of them to stick for more than an hour or two. Anyone have any experience with a brand that will actually stay stuck on vertical surface (e.g. monitor, fridge, etc) for more than an hour or two?
  • ...'cause they use multi-colored neon Post-Its. :)
  • I know one of the primary developers of the chemical they used to make it sticky...he was on the original team. And I think I rememeber him telling me that they only gave them a one time 50K bonus. (Might have been 500K, but he said it was pretty small, so I think it was 50K). Thats sad.
  • They're notes. How exactly are they hypertext? They are annotations, like tooltips.
  • Macintosh post-it notes: the post-it note for the rest of us. [uriah.com]

    Saturday Night Live's Macintosh Post-It Notes Parody.

    Coral cache. [nyud.net]

  • Virtual Post-It Notes (Score:3, Informative)

    by bender647 ( 705126 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @09:59AM (#12461836)

    GTK+ dependencies:
    http://xpad.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]

    For KDE:
    http://pim.kde.org/components/knotes.php [kde.org]

  • Strange that the "quote of the month" in our elevators is from Spencer Silver.

    "The key to the Post-It adhesive was doing the experiment. If I had sat down and factored it beforehand, and thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. If I had really seriously cracked the book and gone through the literature, I would have stopped. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do it."

    The Post-It is a great example of bucking convention and developing something that is 1) useful and 2

  • Post-Mortem (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Ranger ( 1783 ) on Saturday May 07, 2005 @11:34AM (#12462275) Homepage
    Everything about that blurb annoys me:

    "has a fascinating article revealing the history and development of the humble, ubiquitous Post-It Note."

    Anything small yellow and square can't be humble. Just ask SpongeBob SquarePants.

    An intriguing tale of a dedicated visionary working the system to bring an innovative product to life in a monolithic, tradition-bound organization."

    We are talking about Post-It Notes, right?

    From the article: "Two and a half decades later, as the little yellow notes celebrate their silver anniversary, it's easy to forget what a recent innovation they are.

    I suppose so, if you are generation X. Everyone else knows they are modern. Why doesn't liquid paper get the same accolades? It's been around longer. Whatever happened to liquid paper anyway?

    Thanks to their material simplicity, they seem more closely related to workplace antiquities like the stapler and the hole-punch than integrated chips.

    Again what about liquid paper? Workplace antiquities? A scrivener's tools are workplace antiquities: blotters, quills, inkwells, candles, etc.

    Instead, they're an exemplary product of their time. Foreshadowing the web,

    Ooh, puh-lease! No it didn't.

    they offered an easy way to link one piece of information to another in a precisely contextual way.

    What the fuck are you talking about? Post-It notes are about as contextual as writing on a cocktail napkin.

    Foreshadowing email, they made informal, asynchronous communication with your co-workers a major part of modern office life."

    Foreshadowing email my ass. Email existed before Post-It's. Asynchronous? Do you even know what that means? Who the fuck used Post-It Notes to communicate to other people? I just used them as reminders for myself. And if other people saw them at my desk any communication was unintentional.

    • This part really bothers me:

      ...monolithic, tradition-bound organization.

      3M is what it is (a really really big, really really successful company) solely because they hire smart people and turn them loose. They know that. They're not stupid. This wasn't one guy trying to convince a large company that he was right and they were wrong. This was a guy who had a good idea, and when he approached others for help, they went along with it and did what it took to make it successful. But I guess that wouldn't

  • More corporate fluff (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is just another serving of the kind of corporatized "news" that litters our media environment. Obviously written by PR flacks at 3M, headquartered not surpisingly in the same town that the originating newspaper comes from, the only purpose of this article is to sell more product. Never mind the article being factually incorrect -- email goes back to the 60s -- this is the sort of advertisement that passes for actual news everywhere these days.

    I avoid traditional media to get away from this self-serv
  • Yeah, I'm always clicking on (or otherwise selecting) links in Post-it notes in order to retrieve and view other documents. Some people think of them as mere pieces of paper with a strip of adhesive, but they are unaware of the linking feature.
  • At one workplace, some guy took PostIts to the extreme. He had the complete outer edge of his 17" monitor covered in PostIts. I once remarked to our manager while standing next to his desk, that if we got him a 19" or 21" monitor, we could improve his productivy immensely.
  • One of my colleagues who worked for 3M told me:

    3M is very engineer-driven -- a lot of 3M products (e.g. Post-It) were invented/developed by engineers.

    Of course, an engineer with a Vision still has to sell the idea to management/marketing.

    The secret: make it flat. According to my source, 3M management/marketing wonks really like things flat.

    Savvy engineers therefore pack their prototypes into flat boxes -- even if a cubical box would be more efficient.

    -kgj
  • Is someone really glorifying the post it note? I am sure the inventor made a pile on them but post it notes are evil.

    They get lost in the shuffle and misplaced. Those who use them lack accountability. Perhaps post it notes plugged a hole for a short time but now the world would be better without them.

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