Pieces of information should be known for what they are However, to be able to get to them, you will always need a unique identifier for each piece of informat

Pieces of information should be known for what they are However, to be able to get to them, you will always need a unique identifier for each piece of information. I have a file named 'expenses-2010-03.ods' on my machine. I can imagine a 'file system' where this piece of data doesn't have a filename, but where it has a set of tags (or whatever other name you would like to give to the pieces of meta-information identifying the piece of information). I'll type, say, or think 'expenses' and then 'select' '2010'. Then I need to be given the choice between 'january', 'february' and 'march'. Is that much of an improvement? There is no indication that, in the foreseeable future, machines will be able to automatically provide correct meta-information. Is tagging them really less tedious than coming up with proper filenames? If I may hazard a guess, I think that in your heated argument, you are defending your position with vague ideas of futuristic sounding things that may come. However, without concreteness, you can defend your idea against anything by hiding in the vagueness. This 'person' is trying to drag you back to earth by stating a simple fact: to be able to get to information, you need to be able to identify it. You can only do that by a unique set of computer encoded units of meta-information.