While the idea of a common user interface on computers may have felt like a selling point when facing a new scary machine with a variety of functionalities, did it really save that much time, effort, and learning curve? Particularly with respect to the common office tools it was replacing?

The common user interface was really more a benefit to the company and all the companies which programmed for it at scale. The benefits are like Melvil Dewey's standardization of the Dewey Decimal Classification which allowed libraries everywhere to work on the same system rather than needing to reinvent their own individually.

This sort of innovation with scalability is helpful as humans are far better at imitation than innovation.

Older content may broadly be considered more valuable than newer content. The fact that it has been "tried and true" gives it enormously more value than newer and untested content.

Newer content is primarily valuable solely because it is new. How much of it will live on to become old content without falling off of the long tail of the value distribution?

Link this to the idea of imitation > innovation in Annie Murphy Paul's book The Extended Mind.

Link this to the fact that NASA uses 30+ year old software and systems in their outer-space program because all the glitches and bugs have been found and it's far more reliable.

Finding the older gems has generally been the sort of driving idea behind @peterhagen and his https://lindylearn.io/ site -- particularly his Hacker News tool.

catalog, until a successor card catalog comes along in 1848. Only the<br /> absence of a bound repertory allows the paper slip aggregate to answer all inquiries about a book ’ s whereabouts after 1781. Thus, a failed undertaking tacitly turns into a success story.

The Josephinian card index was created, in part on the ideas of Konrad Gessner's slip method, by accumulating slips which could be rearranged and then copied down permanently. While there was the chance that the original cards could be disordered, the fact that the approximately 300,000 cards in 205 small boxes were estimated to fill 50 to 60 folio volumes with time and expense to print it dissuaded the creation of a long desired compiled book of books. These problems along with the fact that new books being added later was sure to only compound problems of having a single reference. This failure to have a bound catalog of books unwittingly resulted in the success of the index card catalog.

This is a good idea for large, multi-site libraries. Staff have trouble leaving the branch for training, and have no incentive to increase their skills. Badges would be a tangible result, which (ideally) would accrue over time to illustrate an upward trend in skill development. An extrinsic motivator, true, but also a record of effort and time expended.