43 Folders

43 Folders feed subscription icon - Shiny! Drowning in email? Try Inbox Zero to learn sane tips for dealing with high-volume email. And don’t miss the free Inbox Zero video. »

Login or register

Register for free on 43 Folders to comment on articles, post to our forum, customize your visits, and much more. Current users can login now.

Dick on Kipple

grant balfour | Dec 13 2007

Quote:
There's the First Law of Kipple... 'Kipple drives out nonkipple.'

...Kipple is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday's homeopape. When nobody's around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you to go bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up there is twice as much of it. It always gets more and more.

No one can win against kipple, except temporarily and maybe in one spot.
- Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Philip K. Dick, 1968

I think kipple is the main problem with my computers. It’s not just adware (on the Windows box), but the weird little things that wind up in the nooks and crannies. Installers for demoware. Photographs of children. Zipfiles loaded with mp3s… of songs that I already have in other directories, or on other machines, or on CDs on the shelves on my walls.

It spills into my inbox - newsletters I should read, old notes to myself - and my bookmarks - links to sites I need to read sometime, or specific blog entries about things I need to know.

But it seems to be far worse physically. Notes, magazines, review copies of (fascinating) paperbacks, paper clips, address labels.

It's useful to me to think of this stuff not in an atomized way, as a million things to process, but as constituent parts of one thing: kipple. That way, I can actually start to act on it.


4 Comments
POSTED IN:
TOPICS: Clutter, Clutter whispering, Philip K. Dick

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
vapa's picture

kipple

Submitted by vapa on December 13, 2007 - 10:04am.

The answer is Hazel

» POSTED IN:
grant's picture

Hazel?

Submitted by grant on December 13, 2007 - 1:57pm.

Doesn’t she just, essentially, shift the piles around?

» POSTED IN:
Kama's picture

Kipple is the same as the broken window theory

Submitted by Kama on December 14, 2007 - 12:17am.

Here is a good explanation I cam across on another blog recently:

http://www.businesspundit.com/50226711/isitinthedetails.php

» POSTED IN:
grant's picture

Re: Kipple is the same as the broken window theory

Submitted by grant on December 14, 2007 - 7:21am.

Had to look a little - the comments here parsed your underscores as meaning "italicize this!".

But the article is here.

The central thing (which I think is a good observation) is:

Quote:
We feel more comfortable when we are in control of things. So we say we are detail oriented meaning that there are certain small things we like to control. Bad sign. The hard thing about managing details is focusing on the right details.

The fun part is learning how to notice the right details.

» POSTED IN:
 
EXPLORE 43Folders THE GOOD STUFF

An Oblique Strategy:
Discard an axiom

STAY IN THE LOOP:

Subscribe with Google Reader

Subscribe on Netvibes

Add to Technorati Favorites

Subscribe on Pageflakes

Add RSS feed

The Podcast Feed

Inbox Zero

The original 43 Folders series looking at the skills, tools, and attitude needed to empty your email inbox — and then keep it that way. Don’t miss the free video of Merlin’s Inbox Zero presentation.

Get Started with ‘GTD’

David Allen’s popular productivity book and the system on which it’s based help turn ‘stuff’ into actions that support valuable outcomes.