The cupboard
The second largest fate in the record
The second largest fate in the record. What is in there, how it got there, and why almost none of it comes back.
Seventy-eight things kept and not used
The second largest fate in the record. Twenty-seven per cent of everything that was ever on these desks is intact, owned, and not in use.
What is in there
Twenty-one cables, fourteen input devices, eleven screens, nine lamps, and four chairs. The categories in order, and what each one is doing there.
How things get into the cupboard
Three routes account for sixty-seven of the seventy-eight. All three share a structure: the object never presents itself for a decision.
Why almost nothing comes back
Six objects out of eighty-six returned to use. All six went to somebody else. The one mechanism that works, and why it is so small.
The eight that are broken and kept anyway
Nineteen objects broke. Eleven were got rid of. Eight are still in the building, not working, and nobody is going to fix them.
The cupboard as a decision nobody made
Eighty-six objects, and the record contains no instance of anybody deciding to keep any of them. What that means for reading the figure.
What a cupboard costs
The record has no prices, so it cannot answer this in money. Four things it can say about cost, and one it cannot.
Two readings of seventy-eight
Waste or prudence. What each reading has to assume, where the record supports each, and why it refuses to pick.