The Atlantic: The Logic of the Filing Cabinet Is Everywhere.

A captivating new history helps us see the humble appliance’s sweeping influence on modern life.

The history of how a deceptively ordinary piece of office furniture transformed our relationship with informationA captivating new history helps us see the humble appliance’s sweeping influence on modern life: Like the once-ubiquitous 8-track tape, the filing cabinet was an essential marker of modernization that’s now considered clunky and outdated, with none of the mystique that some objects, such as vinyl records and windup clocks, have acquired over time. But Robertson’s captivating history makes the case that, when the filing cabinet was invented in the 1890s, it represented a new mode of efficient work. And today, its legacy informs some of our most innovative technologies, including search, Siri, and the way we organize the files on our computers.

Article at The Atlantic.