Extremely Online: Sophie Haigney
New York magazine|December 20, 2021 - January 02, 2022
The Tabular Self I saw the best minds of my generation being uploaded onto “second-brain” apps.
Annie
Extremely Online: Sophie Haigney

THE 20TH CENTURY BROUGHT with it a deluge of paper. As American businesses expanded in both number and scale in the wake of the Civil War, so did their printed material; there were graphs, memos, charts, forms, and more correspondence than ever. This “pauperization” eventually spilled into the home, where a rise in personal documentation meant that houses were filling up with bills, letters, tax forms, receipts, birth certificates, recipes clipped from magazines. As these archives ballooned, a new technology rose in popularity: the filing cabinet, whose history the scholar Craig Robertson documents in The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information. One 1918 advertisement described the filing cabinet as “oracle-like” with a “great gigantic memory”: “It is only a bit o’ steel, yet no brain was ever made/That could wholly supersede it with the busy businessman.” The filing cabinet, then, was better than a human brain— it could hold and organize the entire contents of one’s professional and domestic life, broken down into discrete bits of information and made retrievable at will.

Not everyone was happy with the invention. The writer Montrose J. Moses was wary of how filing cabinets externalized personal memory: What would be the consequences of trying to turn every aspect of your life into “information” to be hoarded for later? “You can’t expect yourself to say, when you give your wife the first kiss, ‘File that, my dear, for future reference,’ ” he wrote in 1930.

Esta historia es de la edición December 20, 2021 - January 02, 2022 de New York magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

Esta historia es de la edición December 20, 2021 - January 02, 2022 de New York magazine.

Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.

MÁS HISTORIAS DE NEW YORK MAGAZINEVer todo
Trapped in Time
New York magazine

Trapped in Time

A woman relives the same day in a stunning Danish novel.

time-read
6 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Polyphonic City
New York magazine

Polyphonic City

A SOFT, SHIMMERING beauty permeates the images of Mumbai that open Payal Kapadia's All We Imagine As Light. For all the nighttime bustle on display-the heave of people, the constant activity and chaos-Kapadia shoots with a flair for the illusory.

time-read
3 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Lear at the Fountain of Youth
New York magazine

Lear at the Fountain of Youth

Kenneth Branagh's production is nipped, tucked, and facile.

time-read
5 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
A Belfast Lad Goes Home
New York magazine

A Belfast Lad Goes Home

After playing some iconic Americans, Anthony Boyle is a beloved IRA commander in a riveting new series about the Troubles.

time-read
5 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
The Pluck of the Irish
New York magazine

The Pluck of the Irish

Artists from the Indiana-size island continue to dominate popular culture. Online, they've gained a rep as the \"good Europeans.\"

time-read
8 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Houston's on Houston
New York magazine

Houston's on Houston

The Corner Store is like an upscale chain for downtown scene-chasers.

time-read
3 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
A Brownstone That's Pink Inside
New York magazine

A Brownstone That's Pink Inside

Artist Vivian Reiss's Murray Hill house of whimsy.

time-read
3 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
These Jeans Made Me Gay
New York magazine

These Jeans Made Me Gay

The Citizens of Humanity Horseshoe pants complete my queer style.

time-read
2 minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
Manic, STONED, Throttle, No Brakes
New York magazine

Manic, STONED, Throttle, No Brakes

Less than six months after her Gagosian sölu show, the artist JAMIAN JULIANO-VILLAND lost her gallery and all her money and was preparing for an exhibition with two the biggest living American artists.

time-read
10+ minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024
WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT BRIGHT PINK MEAT THAT LASTS FOR WEEKS WAS A GOOD IDEA?
New York magazine

WHO EVER THOUGHT THAT BRIGHT PINK MEAT THAT LASTS FOR WEEKS WAS A GOOD IDEA?

Deli Meat Is Rotten

time-read
10+ minutos  |
Nov 18-Dec 1, 2024