In 1820 the first card catalog appeared in a library in London. In the 1870s, the decimal classification system for library index cards was introduced in the library in Massachusetts. The typewriter had been invented a few years earlier, and ultimately the card and the keys met and married. Then, for many years, the library index card and its attendant cabinets would serve as the Google of their day.
In 1990s, card cabinets in libraries were dismantled and the cards discarded . There simply wasn’t enough room anymore to capture all our knowledge on a 3″ x 5″ descendant of papyrus. The once ubiquitous little cards, whose origins are so closely linked to cataloging knowledge, teetered on the brink of extinction. Electronic systems live a perilously finite existence. Better operating systems, application software and search engines will come along and the current hero will be banished, forgotten, trashed.
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Get your digit out, the English are fond of saying—meaning, get cracking. Get your digit out—and your pen—and jot a note on an index card. It still has a place in the digital world.