Transcending Hierarchy
In the present we use nouns to describe things, sort things, and understand things. The future is verbs, and I’ll tell you why.
We live categories. You are a designer, I am a TTC driver. We speak of each other as categories. You are my co-worker, you are my boss, you are my client. Most of all, we think in categories. An orange is a fruit, which comes from a plant, which is a living organism, which has cells in it, which are alive, which needs the sun, which is a planet, which is an object, in a solar system, which is in a galaxy, which is in a universe.
Our technology also requires the same type of hierarchy to work. Screws and hammers, wallets and cards, chairs and tables, shelves and dresser, clips and paper, lamps and light shades, hard-drives and monitors. A place for everything, and everything in its place. All is well in the land of categories until reality kicks in. We realize that the lines between are not so clean. Chairs become tables, shelves become dressers, and even sometimes, clips become wallets.
The real problem with categories arises out of change and realignment. Especially when this change contradicts an existing system or belief. Our current operating systems resemble these rigid structures. Within these structures, use is constantly readjusting hierarchy. The best of systems accommodate blurry lines and fuzzy borders to the point of their own destruction. The worst of systems constrict description, relations, and manipulation. In place they offer a single hierarchical method of understanding. This single method, at which I take aim, is the file and folder.
The way we do things now
Certainly one of the worst metaphors for computing, it is amazing that this office inspired paradigm has survived for so long. Not only has the file invaded our psyche to the point of acceptance, it has managed to bury itself so deep in our brain that we are now in fast pursuit of 3D files, able to be piles, thrown, and crumpled, all on our 3D manifestation of a messy desk.
I think bump top is great. Its what we always wanted but never knew was bad. The first time I saw this demo I was blown away. Imagine, a desktop where interaction with objects on the screen were guided by the laws of physics. After a while, months, I realized that this was completely the wrong direction. What we need is not more files, or more realistic files. What we need is a new paradigm. One which is not based on things inside of things(read taxonomy), or even things which remind people of words (read folksonomy). No, what we need is a new way of thinking and working, one which is based on our actions, which adjusts to our habits, which maintains multiple hierarchies in the form of distributed sets.
A simple look-up on the dashboard reveals: Taxonomy, origin early 19th century, coined in French, from Greek taxis ‘arrangement’ + -nomina ‘distribution.’ Library science has been working on this one for a while, I’m not even going to try to challenge the value of such a system. It’s great, but not what we need right now.
Another popular concept is one of folksonomy. Folk has a German origin and means “people in general”. From this came folksonomy which is the idea of a group created understanding. By many people using words to describe things, we get a flat picture of interrelated information. This has been great for my bookmarks, but it doesn’t scale. I want all of my stuff in one place, and with simply words, it breaks down.
A new term
Enter actsonomy. What if the systems around us adjusted to our actions. They would maintain many perspectives on what different information is, and how it relates to each other. Take for example the finder in mac os. It has a column view. You can move horizontally through folders for a while, but inevitably hit a wall: a file. In the recent version, leopard, this file is made available through a nice preview. If it’s an image you can see a little image and some dimensions. If its a PDF you can see one page at a time by clicking on a couple arrows. If its a text file you can see really tiny text which gives you an idea of the contents.
The problem is I don’t want a preview, I want a view! Don’t tease me, Give me the whole thing. Why can’t I expand a PDF in the Finder and see the pages? Why can’t I expand a web-link and see the links and images within it? Why can’t I expand a book and see the chapters? Why can’t I expand a zip file and see the contents? An event calendar and see the dates? A CSS file and see the selectors? An application and see the recently opened items? An FTP program and see the bookmarked servers?
Deeper down the rabbit hole
We begin to see that hierarchy disintegrates into recursive cycles.
Inside a personal profile is a link, to another site, which links to a blog, which links to a listing, which links to an event, which links to a list of speakers, which links to personal sites, which links back to the original profile.
Inside a PDF is a page, which cites a book, which contains a chapter, which cites another book, which was written by an author, with a blog, which links to a news article, which is written by a newspaper, which gave you the original PDF.
Inside a CSS file, is an author attribution, which links to a blog, which links to a google code project, which links to the original CSS file you downloaded.
Even up is a cycle.
Your photo is in a folder, which is in another folder, which is on your desktop, which is in your home directory, which is in users, which is on your hard-drive.
One might think it ends there, but no.
Your hard-drive is made by a company, it was also purchased on a certain date, as well it is owned by you, and further more is made of certain parts which connect to other parts. It very well might be shared on a network.
Files are certainly dead, actsonomy is the new direction. How will we find things in the future? My bet is on verbs.
May 6th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I remember reading a while back that when Apple was first developing its OS they played around with the idea of having a file focused versus an application focused environment. So the OS would be like the end-all and be-all of applications and would automagically adjust it’s settings and floating palletes and tabs based on whatever file you opened.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Yeah, I heard about that, it was with next computers. I think you would just choose a bunch of activities and that would determine your OS.
What I’m stewing over is how to keep the old world and augment it(Also known as hacking it). I think I figured it out, at least for a test. Filenames become tags, hierarchy become transferrable and overlays, and actions(open, send, create, move) become ways to organize things.
Are you gonna come by the studio?
May 7th, 2008 at 3:41 pm
Tags definitely seem like the way to go, I think mostly because they allow the information to be kept at the top most level, which makes it extremely accessible. And with live searching you can be very precise and fast in finding what you need.
I also think that tagging is a lot closer to how our brain works in terms of retrieving information. When we’re looking for a phone number in our brain, we don’t go into a folder called contacts, then into a folder called work then alphabetically scroll down to the person whose number we need. Our recollection of the number is instant, it’s like that piece of information is always on top along with thousands of others, and we simply focus on it when we need it.
The problem with tagging however is that it’s labour intensive. It takes too much work and discipline to enter all the relevant metadata for a particular file.
I might drop by tomorrow.
May 8th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
well Semantic Web and Semantic apps. might be an end to tagging problems. I just got my pass for Twine, i’ll play around with it and see how it picks up trends/tags of your data.
I’m very much on the same page with you Mr.PK!