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alexpotato • today at 8:09 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

In the late 1990s or maybe early 2000s, there was a documentary about FedEx and they filmed inside their central operations room.

All of the planes were tracked on giant panels velcro panels that allowed you to move the plane right (aka "it's moving to the next time slot") or up/down (aka " to another route").

The presenter asked why they hadn't switched to computers and the FedEx employee was saying they were considering it but the current system was working very well for them.

This, in turn, reminds me of this article about the Baghdad stock exchange going from chalkboards to computers. I believe they quote the head of the exchange saying something like "chalk is impervious to power outages but computers are faster"

https://www.rferl.org/a/Iraqi_Stock_Exchange_Trades_Chalkboa...