It's safe to say that there are two types of people in this world of ours - stuck-in-the-mud, anal-retentive neat-freaks who obsessively keep their desks prim and proper at all times, and creative geniuses so engrossed in "voyaging through strange seas of thought" that they can't help accumulating piles of assorted "stuff." Those who fall into the former category will find that alphabetical file drawers suit them just fine, but if you're lucky enough to belong in the latter group, you'll likely appreciate this clever document filing technique. The best thing of all? It actually benefits from a dash of that creativity the less inspired like to call "randomness" ...
Very nice. Algorithmically this is the same as the "pile" filing system (i.e. just put every document in a pile). But where the pile filing system is often seen to be morally deficient (because it's lazy), Noguchi has seen laziness as a virtue, and improved it with the use of the envelopes.
Posted by: Dan Phillips | October 20, 2005 at 03:34 AM
There is a story of a tea master who told his student to put the garden in order. The student picked up the rake and raked the leaves off the path and was going to start in on the moss lawn when the master stopped and told him to do it right this time, so the student raked the path again. And again. And again. The master gave up, grabbed the rake out of his hand and with his other hand reached up and shook a branch of the Japanese maple overhead, which sent down a shower of red and orange leaves. "There! Now it's in order!"
Posted by: Jim | October 20, 2005 at 05:48 PM