The pencil

What Hacker News says

1. wpietriSep 2021
   I think it's still a useful category, but we need to be careful with it, because "tech" is a moving target that only includes what's novel.

   As an example, pencils are an excellent technology for writing. (Petroski's "The Pencil" and "The Evolution of Useful Things" are great reads on how much innovation it takes to make something mundane.) But Faber-Castell is definitely not a tech company. Similarly, ~100 years ago, electricity was novel. Fortunes were made starting and investing in electricity and electrical-adjacent companies. Now it's mundane.

   Dealing with novel technology requires different skills. Both for the specific technology involved and for wrangling things that are less well understood and keep changing. A good example is the IT department and what they are and aren't responsible for. The breakroom toaster? Nope. The breakroom wifi? Yup. The breakroom TV? Well, that depends.

   For me the useful dividing line for "tech company" is where novel, volatile technology is at the heart of their business and vital to their success. That doesn't last. And indeed, the markets have been too generous about pretending certain things are tech companies. Most notably, WeWork, but I'm sure here folks here can name plenty more.

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2. mcguireMar 2018
   All of Henry Petroski's books are good. A couple that I'm particularly fond of are The Pencil and The Book on the Bookcase.
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3. whoopdedoNov 2015
   Related: "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance". My favorite passage mentions Henry David Thoreau, who was a pencil maker by trade.

       Thoreau seemed to think of everything when he made a list of essential
       supplies for a twelve-day excursion into the Maine woods...
       But there is one object that Thoreau neglected to mention, one that
       he most certainly carried himself... without it he could not make
       his list. Without a pencil Thoreau would have been lost in the Maine woods.
   

   http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679734155/
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4. mckossApr 2014
   Henry Petroski's excellent book The Pencil[1] uses the same subject to explore the history of the pencil's development into the common artifact we know today.

   [1]http://www.amazon.com/The-Pencil-History-Design-Circumstance...

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5. drcubeJul 2013
   I've never read this book but of course now I have to.

   I'll suggest reading Henry Petroski's stuff, too. "The Evolution of Useful Things", "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance", and "To Engineer is Human" all make the case that the design of things around us are shaped less by insight and more by evolution, incrementally building on the mistakes of the past.

   If "The Design of Everyday Things" is half as interesting as Petroski's books, I can't wait to read it.

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6. jt2190Dec 2011
   [Edit: I wrote this while thinking that we're debating "design" without a common defintion. I've made an attempt to express two different sides of "design".]

   Those who aren't building the product often can't express ideas about what they don't see or know about. To them, the design is the surface, the user interface. So naturally they assume that if they want to create a product with "good" design, they should hire someone who does the visual part, and make their product look just like other products that they think are well designed.

   If you want a good counter-example, about good design that is very subtle and runs very deep, read "The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance" by Henry Petroski.

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