3 May

Marshall McLuhan used to talk about how our technologies shape us. One way that I think is less seen is how our 'writing' technologies shape both how we think, and how we work. For example, tables and spreadsheets. If you work in an organisation, have you ever noticed how many of the decisions and discussions are really nothing more than sorting things into categories, like in a table? Deciding who will do what, and when etc. We've used tables for so long that they've become a core part of our cognitive furniture, and we don't always realise it. 'Thinking outside the box' should also be 'thinking outside the table'. But it goes even further, because we're so used to thinking using documents more generally, that we maybe haven't realised one of the main reasons companies have so many meetings is that it's rare to think outside documents any more. Meetings are where documents are shared and discussed, we think documents give us the 'big picture' of an organisation (another visual technology metaphor, which is quite literal).