[Sigia-l] Redundant information and content

[Listera]

"Peter Merholz" wrote:

> I was an avowed disciple of this view for a long time. I felt that content
> needed to be anchored somewhere, so that people could orient around it, find
> it again, etc. 

One of the reasons we have this notion of a distinct location is the file
system/structure of the OSes we use. This is changing and with it, I
predict, the very notion of single file/location/instantiation as a simple
1:1 relationship. The successor to Windows XP, Longhorn, will bring a
measure of FS abstraction, unfortunately it's destined to ship sometime in
2005/6, at the earliest.

In the meantime, we can look at what's already shipping and about to ship in
a month or so, Mac OS X Jaguar and Panther.

In OS X, your music files are abstracted by iTunes, your pictures by iPhoto,
your code by XCode and files, in general, by the new Finder (which allows
you to dynamically filter/search for files as you type, in real-time).

In other words, the average user doesn't/shouldn't care where a photo or a
sound file is actually located on a disk. The application iPhoto/iTunes uses
its own internal file structure. (For a novice, manually finding a specific
song or a photo in the directories of these apps could be tricky.) Any item
(photo/song) can then be instantiated multiple times in many
categories/classification structures definable by the user. Apple calls
these "playlists". 

The user can "search" for specific items via the playlists he defined or
"smart lists" that are automatically maintained by the app, like the Top
Rated, Recently Played, etc. Even at the root level/Library, the Google-like
consistent search box gives instant filtering and type-ahead access to
files, wherever they may have been stored.

When you download or drag a file into a playlist, the user doesn't care
where iTunes actually stores the file, as long as the user can easily get at
the song and put it in many different playlists.

This, of course, is just the beginning, of realizing that the virtual world
does indeed offer some distinct advantages over the physical one.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba