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Machiavelli and the Emergence of the Private Study (publicdomainreview.org)
54 points by Caiero 11 hours ago | hide | past | favorite | 11 comments





> We must reserve a back room [une arriereboutique] all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude

And thus the man-cave was born :)

My dream house would have a big study with books covering the walls floor to ceiling and a big wooden desk in the middle, like the one in Palazzo Revoltella in Trieste[0][1] (by the way, goo see the Museo Rivoltella if you ever go to Trieste).

The current small room I work from is something already. At least I can close the door when I call customers and team-mates. Heaps better than when I had to work from the living room. But a bit more room (and not having to share the space with the pantry) would be nice.

[0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/33/47/20/3347206a9602a062ee8f...

[1] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/04/99/fb/0499fb98b756a2511c40...


When I was in undergrad, I worked with Barry Wellman (one of the early proponents of Social Network Analysis). One of his research projects back in the 1970s-90s was interviewing people about their home offices, and they'd have them take photos of their desk, computer setup, etc. Really cool stuff to see how people decide to focus. I wonder how much it's changed?

This is a nice article going in the other chronological direction!


Did many people have home offices in that period?

This is a really interesting question because I think the definition of a home office has changed quite a bit.

In North America, there was a period in the 80s and 90s where the Desktop PC was very much a shared device. You'd have it sitting somewhere like the living room or basement, maybe near the TV, you'd have a landline phone next to it, etc.

I think a lot of families had those, but it's very different from the idea of a "home office" where you have a separate/isolated work room.


A man's desk/workbench or an equivalent is a glimpse into his thoughts; everything exists and is where it is for a reason.

Any time I look inside my SSDs and HDDs I am satisfactorily horrified.


> If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign? -- Einstein (but probably not really)

No desk is truly empty, as each desk contains lots of spacetime, as well as particle-antiparticle pairs which exist only briefly.

Tons of Zero Point Energy to weight on when using such desk

My thoughts are a jumble of everything I’ve thought about and messed around with in the past 3 months or so?

Are you me?

Very much worth reading. Excellent. I didn't know publicdomainreview before either.



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