Ivan Illich uses (well, he sort of borrows) the term "conviviality" for the quality that this exemplifies. I wish the term would catch on and become part of the Free Software vocabulary. For me, it is one of the biggest reasons that I use open-source software, and why I prefer human-readable data formats. It goes deeper than just freedom -- this is power. If we understand, control, and "live with" our own tools, their power is magnified. They can be combined with other tools that we also understand so that their domain is extended into unexpected new areas. It's a beautiful thing.
In this case, your ledger file has become the center of an impromptu semantic web of information about your life. Obviously, that wasn't what ledger was designed for. But our finances are one of the few areas in life that we really need to record at this level of detail. Since the financial dimension of our lives intersects with so many other dimensions, the result of recording our finances has the unanticipated benefit of also recording our lives. On the other hand, this is only a "benefit" as long as the information is private, and solely under our own control. Maybe someday our government will claim the right to this data, on the theory that "it's only metadata". Tim Crews On Sunday, February 9, 2014 8:40:47 PM UTC-7, Craig Earls wrote: > > My wife asked where we bought a particular item she wants replaced for our > house. We bought the thing in 2008. I have a quicken data file from this > time period that I cannot read. The payees names are stored in plain ASCII > in the file so at least I was able to search for it somewhat. This will > never be a problem with ledger. Thanks John! > > -- > Craig, Corona De Tucson, AZ > enderw88.wordpress.com > -- --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ledger" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
