It's not really even "filing".
Frankly, it doesn't make sense to relate to search as replacing folders as the
"dominant filing metaphor" for the simple reason that "search"
isn't a "filing" metaphor at all. Again, for me, it certainly occupies
the space that "filing" once occupied, but it doesn't replace filing
in the same way that a bicycle might replace walking, or that methanol might
replace gasoline. In those examples the activity - traveling, or the function
- a source of energy, remains the same, but a new tool or element replaces an
old one. When search replaces folders, however, the activity itself changes. The
desired goal may remain the same - access to stored materials, but the means toward
achieving that goal are significantly different. I don't think I exaggerate when
I claim that those means are so different such that they demand a change, a new
understanding, of the whole process of accessing our materials. In the past we
filed things in order to be able to readily access them, and in the process we
formulated a series of thought processes that accompanied that access. We had
to think through to ourselves where a certain file "belonged" so that
we could place it there, and then retrieve it from that same place. But when search
started elbowing-out folders from the access equation we began to realize that
the correlation between our decisions about where something "belonged",
and how we found our way back to it wasn't really necessary, may only have been
a byproduct of our dependence on filing.
And this rather long-winded hairsplitting may have been little more than an attempt
to explain to myself that perhaps I shouldn't have written "dominant filing
metaphor", but instead "dominant accessing metaphor". Whether or
not that's the case, it's rather clear that over the years a great deal of emotional baggage
has become attached to our acquired accessing behaviors. What's more, even if and
when we realize that a particular behavior is no longer necessary, that emotional
baggage makes it difficult for us to free ourselves from it.
Go to: For me, of course, or
Go to: One tool to rule them all?