I found this to be a great collection of insights! My criticisms: Organizing your files and digital “stuff” has very little to do with the “rich structure of

I found this to be a great collection of insights! My criticisms: Organizing your files and digital “stuff” has very little to do with the “rich structure of human knowledge,” to me, any more than organizing your kitchen or garage is an exercise in philosophy. The goal should be as usable a system as possible, full stop. Now, the actual content of the article is extremely practically oriented, so I have no beef with that. I just think people get carried away with the idea that storing a file is “representing knowledge,” and it takes them in weird directions like trying to create elaborate universal ontologies. The question is, is it easier or harder to find your files, and save your files? Whenever a phrase like “representing knowledge” or “augmenting intelligence” comes up, it’s like everyone gets a boner, and then moves on to something unrelated, like (hopefully) usability. Mutability: Everything changes. The only way to have immutable facts is to have timestamps. Image hosting sites, message boards, etc are misleading examples of file storage because they are really means of publishing. When you publish something, and people link to it, there’s a case for thinking of immutability as the default, though even then, most things that can be published can be retracted or edited. This comment can be edited after I publish it. I think true immutability as a default, for files as opposed to time-stamped facts, only makes sense in a very narrow domain.