SIGNUM: DETRITUS

The Post-it Note’s tactile simplicity is misleading in another way as well. While it often stands in counterpoint to the digital office, a throwback to the days of paper clips, staplers, and typewriters, the Post-it Note is actually postmodernism writ on a square of yellow paper. Unlike its predecessor, the memo, which functions as a self-contained message, the Post-it Note is an analog forebear to hypertext; it acknowledges in its very construction that what’s most important is context – and that context is where you make it, achievable with glue as much as any organic cohesion of ideas.