5 ms·

I’ll take the bait: what do people do, then? Let’s say I agree with your point, genuinely: what are they doing instead?

freels 4y ago
They don’t bother and just use search: https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems
- llampx 4y ago
  Wasn't that the point of Google Desktop? Irony is now that when speaking of Google OS search: I can't just search on Android, whereas iOS does it better. I miss that little context-aware Search icon on the menu bar in early Android. You could press it on the home screen to search the whole device, or in an app to search only that app, for eg. Gmail.
- PascLeRasc 4y ago
  The tone of that article is so condescending. "Students act like they have a robot who will fetch them everything they want on demand" Yes! That's the point of a computer. Your machine should do work for you.
  - oneplane 4y ago
    That's not actually the point of a computer. The point of computers was to accelerate and augment, not valet. Perhaps one day they will be smart enough to do that, but right now they are still just bicycles for the mind (as per an old computer ad). Knowing how to store, organise and retrieve information, regardless of what system is used (including computers, file cabinets and archive rooms) is a skill that doesn't just magically appear in your brain, you have to actually observe, trial or classically learn about it to make use of it. It used to be through day-to-day tasks and a growth in responsibilities when growing up that people got that skill semi-automatically, but that is no longer the case.
oneplane 4y ago
Usually a combination of search, time-based ordering (like: "I did this thing a while ago, let me scroll back 1000 items") and some mental landmarking (tracking some stand-outs in a list to know the relative position of other items). Same thing with pictures/photos, you could have them in albums, or even smart albums with tags etc, but people tend to just have a running list of all pictures in chronological order. Most systems have or used to have tagging functionality as well, but apparently that wasn't used all that much either for information classification and organisation. Granted, I can't read minds and I don't know what everyone everywhere does, but I do see large scale changes in employee instructions for new hires, university hires and even in cross-org/education projects. For most young/new people, their phone was their first 'computer' and the 'default' environment, and a desktop is the anomaly. People looking up how to do things on ticktock is not a funny meme, it's reality and seriously tainting the knowledge of junior hires on the lower end jobs (like entry level service desk backoffice). Knowing where to find authoritative information, how to verify it, and how to use that as a reference to validate and find other information seems to be a foreign concept to some as well. Even something like a somewhat specific google search or wikipedia article and the references it can supply are not as normal as one might think, and the gap is getting bigger, not smaller.
kelnos 4y ago
Nothing, for the most part. Stuff that gets downloaded ends up in Downloads. Stuff that gets created in a local document-creating app ends up in Documents. Photos end up in My Pictures (or not even, as most people just leave them on their phone now and do cloud sync). When they want to find stuff, they just search for it in the file picker. Or hopefully the file picker is just already in the right place. Often this UX is kinda bad, and it's hard to find things. Sometimes they give up, and either do without, or (if applicable) visit a website to just re-download whatever they can't find. Or they ask a technically-adept friend to help them. Carefully creating a directory hierarchy and actively picking and choosing where to put things when downloading or saving files is just not a thing most people do.

They don’t bother and just use search: https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems https://futurism.com/the-byte/gen-z-kids-file-systems

llampx 4y ago
Wasn't that the point of Google Desktop? Irony is now that when speaking of Google OS search: I can't just search on Android, whereas iOS does it better. I miss that little context-aware Search icon on the menu bar in early Android. You could press it on the home screen to search the whole device, or in an app to search only that app, for eg. Gmail.
PascLeRasc 4y ago
The tone of that article is so condescending. "Students act like they have a robot who will fetch them everything they want on demand" Yes! That's the point of a computer. Your machine should do work for you.
- oneplane 4y ago
  That's not actually the point of a computer. The point of computers was to accelerate and augment, not valet. Perhaps one day they will be smart enough to do that, but right now they are still just bicycles for the mind (as per an old computer ad). Knowing how to store, organise and retrieve information, regardless of what system is used (including computers, file cabinets and archive rooms) is a skill that doesn't just magically appear in your brain, you have to actually observe, trial or classically learn about it to make use of it. It used to be through day-to-day tasks and a growth in responsibilities when growing up that people got that skill semi-automatically, but that is no longer the case.

oneplane 4y ago

Usually a combination of search, time-based ordering (like: "I did this thing a while ago, let me scroll back 1000 items") and some mental landmarking (tracking some stand-outs in a list to know the relative position of other items). Same thing with pictures/photos, you could have them in albums, or even smart albums with tags etc, but people tend to just have a running list of all pictures in chronological order. Most systems have or used to have tagging functionality as well, but apparently that wasn't used all that much either for information classification and organisation. Granted, I can't read minds and I don't know what everyone everywhere does, but I do see large scale changes in employee instructions for new hires, university hires and even in cross-org/education projects. For most young/new people, their phone was their first 'computer' and the 'default' environment, and a desktop is the anomaly. People looking up how to do things on ticktock is not a funny meme, it's reality and seriously tainting the knowledge of junior hires on the lower end jobs (like entry level service desk backoffice). Knowing where to find authoritative information, how to verify it, and how to use that as a reference to validate and find other information seems to be a foreign concept to some as well. Even something like a somewhat specific google search or wikipedia article and the references it can supply are not as normal as one might think, and the gap is getting bigger, not smaller.

kelnos 4y ago

Nothing, for the most part. Stuff that gets downloaded ends up in Downloads. Stuff that gets created in a local document-creating app ends up in Documents. Photos end up in My Pictures (or not even, as most people just leave them on their phone now and do cloud sync). When they want to find stuff, they just search for it in the file picker. Or hopefully the file picker is just already in the right place. Often this UX is kinda bad, and it's hard to find things. Sometimes they give up, and either do without, or (if applicable) visit a website to just re-download whatever they can't find. Or they ask a technically-adept friend to help them. Carefully creating a directory hierarchy and actively picking and choosing where to put things when downloading or saving files is just not a thing most people do.