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We needed a file management paradigm because we couldn't simply say to the filing system "bring me the X file, the one about Y". Now we can. The machines have

We needed a file management paradigm because we couldn't simply say to the filing system "bring me the X file, the one about Y". Now we can. The machines have caught up to our need and we may now be lazy. I am 46. I have worked in IT long enough to remember having to be obsessively organized. Why? Because I had no choice. The machine could not help me. I have become lazy in my dotage. Why? Because the machine lets me. gmail search is so fast I no longer organize email - it simply isn't worth organizing. I enter criteria, I find my email. When I was organized, I would have to break my current flow to remember my organizational method - which morphed over time, good luck with that. find is now so fast - because of fast hardware - that I no longer even bother to try remembering where I filed things, I just type fndi criterion (fndi, he said? function fndi () { tgt="${1}"; shift echo find . -iname \*"${tgt}"\* "${@}" find . -iname \*"${tgt}"\* "${@}" } In other words, case-insensitive search starting in CWD, with optional additional criteria.) I remain somewhat organized, lest my search results be too chaotic for me to read. But I need not be as perfectly organized as I once was, for the machine can now be useful and not a hindrance.

usaar333 15y ago
I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important. Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course. Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages) As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs). So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.

usaar333 15y ago

I agree that find simplifies things, but I feel the ability to label is still important. Just as I may need to "label" an email message from my boss telling me to do something, I may need to label documents by course. Without labeling you lose (re-)discovery. I may want to read everything I wrote for a philosophy course a few years back. If I don't remember what I wrote about (and I don't), I can never find things again. (This has happened to me a lot with finding gmail messages) As for files, the result of your search is just files. You need to be able to do multiple actions on them (use different programs). So yes, our existent file managers are a bit limiting. They should focus more on labeling files (e.g. gmail) then folders. Search is already well-integrated into most operating systems. But in the end, at some level, you still work with files.