What is a moleskine? Well, is is not a moleskin, or any of the associated uses of that word!
"It's kind of like a gadget in itself. It's just an analog gadget,"
That urge -- to take command over a tidy, small expanse of paper, to quickly write in your own hand -- has turned the smartly marketed literary throwback into one of the odder trends of the instant-information age. Moleskine use has erupted in Washington and elsewhere, driven in part by a subculture of tech-savvy people otherwise electronically gadgeted to the hilt.
"If you really want to stand out, you can't do it with technology," said Henning, who has hardly forsaken his hand-held digital assistant, which tracks his appointments and houses a digitized copy of the Bible. "This is something else," he said of Moleskines. "It's retro. It's making a statement.""It is a low-tech solution to a high-tech problem," said Rockville's Ken Britz, 34, an engineer with Dynamic Animation Systems who develops software for training simulators used by the U.S. Navy.
He explains why: At work, things come so fast that the best way to note something important often is to write it down. Britz keeps a 5-by-8-inch Moleskine at hand; it doubles as a mouse pad. Should he need to take notes during a call or sketch out a flow diagram of a graphical user interface, he slides off the mouse and grabs a pen.
Britz keeps two other Moleskines for personal use. In these he writes scenes for his screenplay, which involves manipulated human genetics and King Arthur living in modern times.
A strong literary bent has always motivated journal users, of course, and the Moleskine is no exception. Those at the farthest end of this spectrum don't necessarily consider Moleskines an addendum to technology; they consider them a shelter from it.
The sketchbook of Vincent van Gogh (1888–1890)
Kept in the Van GoghMuseum of Amsterdam
While you can't buy that one, you can get your own from many quality retailers or follow this link.
Read more Moleskine legends and stories at moleskinerie.com
Comments