The post-it modern age

Yellow is supposed to be the colour of madness; Van Gogh's colour, British Telecom's colour.  If this is so, then it seems that the world must be mad; everyone has taken yellow to their heart.  Wherever you go, you find them, these garish distinctive splotches of yellow.  They cover desks, walls, chairs, phones, books and paper like virulent algae.  Turn your back for a minute; and the place is infested.  It is the Dutch elm disease of our modern IT age.  It is the Post-it.

The Post-it seems to be the quintessential idea of the late eighties, one of those totally unexpected key new concepts which burst upon a culture and colonise it almost overnight.  They are distinguished from mere fads like Filofaxes by durability and universality; they transcend fashion and the concerns of any one group such as the yuppies.  They are not factitious crazes; to sell, they do not need manufacturers' massive hype like CDs, since they come complete with their own vacuum which they then effortlessly fill.  Most crucially, once introduced, life becomes unimaginable without them.  For an earlier example of a new and indispensable idea, consider the VCR; who today could envisage not owning and using one? 

Superficially, the Post-it offers few advantages over notepaper.  But ours is a lazy, style-conscious age.  Loose sheets of paper get misplaced; fixing them to memos with pins or paperclips works, but is inelegant – and quite inappropriate for more general note-making tasks.  Post-it scores by offering adhesion which is not only simple, but reversible.

By dint of its ability to stick more or less anywhere, a Post-it allows you to comment on anything.  This may take the conventional form of detailed notes on a document, where each Post-it refers to particular passages of the text.  More imaginatively, they can be used to comment on books, graphics, desk layouts, wallpaper, furniture and carpets - even to comment on comments.  Today, everyone has an opinion on everything, and the Post-it provides the perfect medium for adding your two penn'orth.

Even more importantly, it allows you to change your mind.  Unlike comments which are scribbled directly onto the material under review, Post-it notes can be removed.  In an age which is nervous about commitment, the Post-it provides the perfect escape: if in doubt, you simply take it all back – no tell-tale marks, no one any the wiser, no unpleasant consequences.

For the user, the Post-it note is an instrument of power.  Like the royal decrees which are sent forth throughout a kingdom, they become embodiments of their maker.  The more you comment, the more you extend your implicit jurisdiction, and the bigger your world becomes.  The little sheets of paper are bright yellow flags claiming an empire on the shifting atlas of reality.  They are signs to fellow imperialists: here I have been, they say, I exist and this is my proof.  And in a world which has been deconstructed into nothing but signs, where anything can be taken and made new by adding the slight but witty contextualising comment, what could be a more appropriate sign for today than the simple, spare, yet forthright post-modern conceit of the omnipresent Post-it? 

(17.10.87)

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