Seth's Blog : Nihil hic deest

Nihil hic deest

This page intentionally left blank has a long history.

I thought it was an IBM thing from the 1960s, but I was off by a thousand or more years.

There are good reasons for a page to be blank. Folding signatures, printing processes, having chapters start on the right or the left…

But there are even better reasons to let people know you did it on purpose. Particularly in a loosely bound book or a technical manual. Knowing that the page isn’t supposed to have something on it removes stress and lets the reader gain confidence that the text is complete.

Of course, as we race to fill in every moment with swiping, surfing and clicking, it’s easy to forget that we’re allowed to leave some blank spaces. In fact, not just allowed, but if we want to live well, required.

And it gets even easier if we announce (to ourselves and perhaps to others), that we’ve done it on purpose.

[HT to Andy for the prompt]

[unrelated: Here is a fascinating essay from an insider at Google about the shift in the AI universe. It’s happening very fast. There’s a ton of organizational turbulence, and this might be a moment open source has been waiting for.]