And then I found it!

There was time for about one more try. It just didn't make sense that I wasn't able to find that article, and as a rather desperate last ditch attempt, I ran another site-specific Google search on Arts and Letters Daily. The term clutter showed up in the search, but no longer on the linked page, and I'd forgotten to check in the archives of the Arts and Letters site (thinking that from the beginning of the year nothing had yet been moved from the main page to an archive). It thus became a multi-faceted search: I didn't find the article, but I did find a blurb for it, and by copying and searching for the main part of that blurb ("power of positive clutter") I was able to find a page that under that name carried a link to the original article. So after about four clicks, there is was: In Praise of Clutter in the December 19, 2002 issue of the Economist.

And was it worth it? Well, I thoroughly enjoyed rereading the article, and am happy to quote from it:

People spread paper over their desks not because they are too lazy to file it, but because it is a physical representation of what is going on in their heads.

I like that. It fits. Almost. After all, a bookmark isn't really a physical representation, but creating the bookmark is a very similar process to spreading tangible paper over a very real desk.

Still, I have to admit that this is one example of where bookmarking certainly would have made finding that article much simpler.

Go to: Where is that article, anyway?, or
Go to: Well, at least on my shelves, or
Go to: Bye-bye Bookmarks