my branch, take three – it’s actually just a twig (the laundromat edition)
the way we organize things impacts how well we will be able to find them.
this seems obvious, but i used to think of organization and search as two separate questions, and now i think that’s misguided.
people who are able to find what they need have one of a few traits:
– a limited information space
– power users of tools
– skilled organizers, dedicated to the task
it’s not good to rely on any of these things.
gmail reles on 2
focused tools rely on chunking into 1 (which takes 3)
on the web, folksonomists are saying that we can get the benefits of 3 without a lot of work because there are so many of us. but most of the tools they cite still rely on 2. the’re working on that, though.
semantic websters say we need to do 3, either by letting experts do it or just sucking it up and learning to do it ourselves.
neither of these camps address PIM though, and all of them could benefit from a more intentional focus on how we can afford annotation at the interactional level.
i looked at email habits to find some common problems, explored how prevalent these problems really are, and came up with ideas to address them.
the ideas are driven by a desire to understand how we are reconceptualizing location in the digital world.
it seems like we need to think about multi-dimensional location and higher level organization.