Isn't it depressing, that we live in 2023 and the predominant document format is pdf, which was invented in 1993 and is optimized for printing? I would love to have a new format, which is easily parseable (like JSON) AND printable (like PDF).
I’m not sure if they’re being intentionally annoying or if someone thought this was actually helpful for the thousands of independent contractors who track their expenses down to the penny?
However, fundamentally I completely agree with you. Information we seek should not be bound to the medium it is stored on in this day an age. I wish we could get out of the containerized knowledge but it seems to me we are creating ever more virtual containers in which information is stored. I for one only get a glimpse of the vast amounts of information TikTok is making available to it's users when it is posted on one of the few websites I visit.
I guess the reason we still think of information being in books and on paper is because we are human and its hard to get rid of millennia of habits and institutions that have grown around us to accommodate for our limited ability to grasp the universe.