the excluded middle

The excluded middle is a logical fallacy, or false dichotomy, often employed by politicians when trying to manipulate people into accepting their (usually extreme) viewpoint. So it’s often useful and revealing to try to spot the excluded middle whenever you realise that someone is trying to persuade you into something.

This got me wondering about the nature of digital, which is often said to consist of 1s and 0s or On and Off. This seems to be a perfect hunting ground for an excluded middle. Here, however, the excluded middle isn’t a mass of fractions or a lukewarm On-ish-ness. I’ve often found myself hung between the digital and analogue, but recently I seem to have reached a tipping point that has emphasised not only the duality but also the precariousness of my balance between the two. So much so, that, rather than the options being digital and analogue, they seem to be virtual or visceral and I feel called still more strongly by the former. My middle ground of hovering between the two no longer seems to be tenable or, to continue the alliteration, viable.

And what has prompted these musings, you ask?

Yesterday, it struck me that, without really being aware of the significance, I had created yet another board to organise my life in Trello. My latest board is for planning our meals for the week ahead. I have a limited repetoire of dishes that I cook, so it made sense to have these on cards in a list then deal them  out to lists for days of the week according to family members’ commitments in a way that reduces repetition. It also links with my groceries shopping list. And where I’ve found a dish on the web and saved it to my Kifi library, I can take a screen clip (Cmnd- Ctrl-Shift-4) and paste it (Cmnd-V) to the appropriate card in my planner. I can even copy and paste the URL to the recipe as an attachment to the card. No other family members collaborate in my Trello boards, but that would be the next pulse on the circuit path to a completely virtual existence.

(Trello tips and tricks courtesy of the Trello Ultimate Board, which was itself included in a set of techniques on the Trello blog.)

Tags: trello