going from filing to finding

I am an inveterate filer of things. There is a certain virtue in a world that is ordered and neat. Tidyness is a form of virtue. I could easily have become a librarian, efficiently finding the right place for things, even in my house, I am obsessed with finding sensible places to put things, logically placing like items with like items. Putting the frequently used to the front, the less frequently to the back.

In office terms, you had to file, if you did not file, you lost, and if you lost, you might as well never have had, and you were done for, you might as well never have been.

And so, my email is filled with folders within folders, my hard drives have folders within folders. There is a certain overhead to this, though virtual filing is certainly less onerous than physical filing. But it is a system that serves me well, I can generally place my hand on anything of note pretty briskly.

But computing is all about metaphors, because we do not think in binary, we apply metaphors to make meaning. Folders are a paper based metaphor, because you put things in them, then ordered them neatly. We know folders, we like folders, so we have virtual folders in our virtual lives. But folders exist because processes like duplicating and sorting and finding are all labour intensive in a real world. But when you have four gigabytes of RAM, and a terrabyte of storage, then processes that might seem unimaginable if performed physically suddenly become a mere commonplace that come at no real cost.

So we are moving from filing to finding, you don't need to file something logically, so that you can find it again. You can simply title it and leave it in a big dump of stuff, and search for it if you ever feel that you need it. So what if your search turns up twenty possible documents, it will be there anyway, and it only takes a moment to pick the right one.

But have we just swapped one metaphor for another. By making searching faster we can get rid of filing, but it is still a rather manual mindset that we are thinking in. Surely the point of computing power is not just that it does what we do a little quicker, or a little cheaper. That is like employing servants just to do what you cannot be bothered to do yourself, knowing that basically the servants came with pretty much the same design specification that you did, only their hourly rate is cheaper than yours, so you can get them to do all the stuff that you cannot be bothered to do. Like your family really.

But computers are not just a mini-me, they are something completely different. Why are we trying to get computers to comply with our outdated metaphors, and ways of working. We could instead look to what computers are good at, use them to compliment ourselves, while we have abilities that it would be impossible for computers to equal, they equally exceed us in other areas.
I suppose that this is the sort of hive-mind idea that is floating about, without any particularly clear articulation, because it is all a bit too blue skies to really be able to assimilate. We are uncomfortable about pushing away from the side, losing our metaphors. On the one hand artificial intelligence could offer a potential future, but isn't that just all about trying and failing to make computers think like we do. Like people making two legged robots to climb stairs. We did not design motor cars to duplicate horses, that could eat grass and jump fences. We built them to run on specially built roads and come in attractive colours.

It is about accepting the differences and changing our world a bit to accomodate what computers unfettered could offer.

I'm no smarter than anyone else - I don't know the answers, or even what they would look like, they will be different, that much is for sure.

THINGS THAT WORK NOW

• storing incredible amounts of data works well - especially now that computers can search and sort it so easily,
• paths - allowing the wisdom of crowds to sort out the most crucial of stuff
• living on line lives - minimal barriers to putting stuff on line
• communities of interest, rather than geographical communities

ISSUES TO WORRY ABOUT

• the internet is still a scarce resource, we are not touching the sides yet, but soon will.
• Datafarms already use about 3% of the UK's energy. Factor in how difficult it will be to produce energy in future, with peak oil and the declining acceptability of fossil fuels, and this could be an issue
• internet pipes are not infinitely fat pipes, they were designed for stuff like email, as were the protocols. So stuff found its way through, not instantly but efficiently. There was enough capacity for all, you just had to wait a wee while sometimes, or the site you were after might be down.
• But now people are using broadband as a means of accessing vast amounts of data, watching TV programmes on iPlayer, phoning each other by skype. These are hungry and need to be pretty quick to be useable, so they have hungry protocols that don't play nice and share so well.
• There is an internet infrastructure and new internet infrastructure needs to be paid for. But current charging mechanisms don't really help fund infrastructure.
• I would expect the internet infrastructure to start creaking in a serious way in the next few years. I would also expect the electricity grid to start creaking too. In America they are used to brown-outs when the amount of power reduces. Fine if you are running an electric fire, not so great if you are running a data farm. An interesting point about datafarms is that they already select hardware on the basis of power efficiency, it is that crucial a factor for them.
• I know that digital inclusion is a very trendy term, and I know the theory that some people are excluded access to the internet and this serves as a barrier to their full participation in society. I don't really disagree, but although there are people with good reasons for being excluded, through disability or infirmity, or inability to cope, most of those who are excluded choose to be excluded. People without a computer either cannot afford one or are not interested. Often enough they can afford games machines, they simply choose not to spend their money on a computer. Even if you were to magically place an easy to use computer in every house - would it really get used in any useful way. Just as children use a dictionary to look up rude words, or prop up a table, there is no guarantee that people will use the internet wisely. If you simply want to passively interact with a medium that entertains you, then that is the medium that you will find on the internet. The challenge is to make people make more use of the potential of the internet, to join these communities of interest, to create the wisdom of crowds. The internet should raise our potential, or what use is it.

POSSIBLE FUTURES

• the death of computers - because in future everything will be smart - to an appropriate degree
• your boiler will tell you when it was last serviced, who your service contract is with, and supply competitive quotes for fuel, service and insulation services, as well as responding to ambient temperature, preferences and holidays.
• your cup will advise on the presence of off-milk and beverage temperature
• not just some blade-runner esque nightmare of continuous and cretinous advertising, but useful functionality. Why should we spend so much time shopping, mostly we don't like it.
• the death of applications - because in future everything will be smart, why switch on your computer, it switches on so as to be ready for you as you come in, it advises you of your tasks for the day, and any urgent emails, finds reading material for work and leisure, suggests contacts that you might want to follow up. You switch seemlessly from email to browser to word processor, the computer offering appropriate options based on your previous behaviour with appropriate wild card options.
• the smart paths - wisdom of crowds model will extend beyond shopping, what about politics with smart crowds, what about meaningful social change!
• what about work with all the boring bits taken out, a work that responded to you, rather than fitting you into some strait-jacket of how the office liked to function.

I really will need to do some serious thinking around this. Safe bets would appear to be that human skills like interpersonal skills or creativity will be more valuable than stuff that can more easily be duplicated by a computer. We all want to feel valued and happy, and computers will only ever be able to go so far in making that happen.