Death of the File System: It’s About Time

An Opinion Piece from Computer world, by Dr. Barrall, the CEO and founder of Trusted Data Corp., says it’s quickly becoming evident that we can easily manage our data without actually needing a file system. We are beginning to realize that a better solution lies beyond the current mess of files and directories and once these powerful new tools become normal for everyday users, the file system, as we know it, will be history.

August 6, 2005 by Uncategorized 5

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5 Responses

  1. GregS* says:
    August 6, 2005 at 6:06 am

    encouraging bad behavior
    Come on. Is a book without chapters really the same book just because it has an index? Is iTunes better with or without the album headings?

    Granted indexing is great but its no more perfect then folders are. If we have folders going 5 or 10 levels down how many files is that and how many are going to be pulled with an index search?And it won’t necessarily pull all the documents I want unless I put it in the right folder. A large project can involve numerous files on numerous things and they only index properly if I take the time to give them the right tags. If I’m not responsible enough to make a folder for the files in question what are the odds I’m going to tag each individual item properly over weeks or months of work?

    Not to mention (speaking as the messiest desk in the library) organization is important to productivity. We’ve all looked at the books, whether we live by them or not, and the philosophy is sound. You’ll be more successful if you can think and act in an organized manner. Throwing out the file system encourages bad behavior. Your politics might not be conservative but your work ethic should be. 😉

    Reply
  2. Grumpy Librarian says:
    August 7, 2005 at 6:29 pm

    Re:encouraging bad behavior
    ” If I’m not responsible enough to make a folder for the files in question what are the odds I’m going to tag each individual item properly over weeks or months of work?”

    And if you are responsible enough to organize your items into folders, you also are probably also responsible enough to to tag them correctly.

    And, use of tags instead of folders will allow you to have the same document in more than one “place”, which, with folders you can only do with shortcuts.

    Reply
  3. GregS* says:
    August 7, 2005 at 7:54 pm

    Re:encouraging bad behavior
    The folder itself should be able to be considered a tag so that everything it is automatically tagged the same as the folder. That’s a lot easier then tagging each individual document.

    Reply
  4. tqft says:
    August 8, 2005 at 12:12 pm

    Remind me
    .. to never buy from Trusted Data Corp.

    What about security?

    It is apparently very hard to write a file system to manage security on directories and individual files without many serious bugs.

    Are we going to enforce security based on user added tags? All files need some security even if it is world read/write/delete/execute and have it set by default.

    Yes directory attribtues are essentially tags but OS standardised and supported tags. User defined tags? What sort of default behaviour do you want? No access? Full access? It would depend on a host of factors.

    Add to that that user tags may be useful now, but in one or two hundred years will they be as meaningful even if properly applied? (assuming the media can even be read) Whereas a group of files placed in a directory automatically indicate some form of relatedness – a (non-proprietary) file system is much more likely to be readable in 200 years given that the specs are available.

    Do we want to have to rely on proprietary archival software and formats?

    Reply
  5. Grumpy Librarian says:
    August 10, 2005 at 3:08 am

    Re:encouraging bad behavior
    But you save each document into a folder. So why not at, the time of saving, instead of specifing a location, specifying a tag?

    In theory you could have a visual representation for the tags – you might choose folders – so that you could “open” a tag and see all the files so tagged. ANd drag and drop groups of files into the tag.

    I think you would gain flexibility without really losing anything. You might even be able to tag portions of documents differently from the whole document. Here’s one paragraph that is relevant to another project. Give it that project’s tag, and you’ll have it with the rest of that project’s data.

    Reply

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