Abstract: | A currently fashionable phenomenon in the United Kingdom (and, I understand, elsewhere in the world) is the Personal Organiser. For those in this audience lately returned from several years back-packing in the Himalayas, and therefore without knowledge of what I am talking about, the Organiser is a loose-leaf notebook of a particular format. The inserts — diary pages, memo sheets, cash rulings, street maps — are selected according to the owner's needs from among several hundred different printed leaves. The format has been around for decades. It has only been copied and sold in quantity by large numbers of manufacturers in the past year or two. And it has now achieved symbolic significance. |