Jim Willis

I have been thinking a lot about the relative merits of two different ways of storing files: a robust and well-executed hierarchical folder/file system vs tagging/metadata files. I’m thinking about this in the context of a work project but also in light of something L.M. Sacacas wrote a while back in, A World Ordered Only By Search, one of his excellent newsletters from Convivial Society.

“There comes a point when our capacity to store information outpaces our ability to actively organize it, no matter how prodigious our effort to do so.”

For many computer users of my generation, the filing cabinet has been a very useful metaphor for a computer’s directory system. Organizing computer files in nested folders is a reasonable extension of how the physical office space has always worked. That said, I’ve been considering a few of the limitations of the file/nested folder metaphor on computers that is probably hitting almost 30 years old at this point, if not more.

1.) As this metaphor has been the primary way of understanding file organization for almost 30 years, we now have a generation of computer users who have never seen an actual filing cabinet or manilla file folder. The metaphor and filing system are lost on them, especially as this generation has almost certainly grown up using gmail or similar for their email which relies on searching, not organizing emails into folders.

2.) In the file/folder model of file storage, a file can only exist in one place at one time. In this case we’ve taken a limitation of the physical world (“get me the invoice for last month from the Facilities folder”) and carried it over to the digital domain (“let me save this invoice in the Facilities folder”). In the world of tagging and metadata though, a file can exist in multiple places at the same time. (“Let me tag this document as an “invoice” and as related to “Facilities.”) The same instance of a file can live in multiple collections at once, transcending the limitations of the physical filing cabinet.

3.) Now, getting back to that Sacacas quote from above: folder hierarchies require some internalized understanding of how the filing system works. It is very rare to encounter a hierarchical file system that is self-documenting enough that a new employee could file a document without any sort of training.  Moreover, as anyone who has maintained even the most well-manicured and maintained hierarchical file system knows, sometimes you’ve got to fall back on searching because you just can’t recall where it made sense to put some document. Tagging removes the burden of having to recall the “why” of a folder system.

All of this said, searching is an imperfect solution. Just creating some kind of junk drawer for your data, the hot mess that Sacacas refers to in his piece, is not sustainable for an organization. Some kind of tagging needs to be implemented if searching is going to work. However, tagging does introduce some friction into the file management process, so we’re trading the present convenience of quickly being able to drop a file into a folder in some well-manicured hierarchy for the tedium of tagging a file when it needs to be saved with the future promise that this document will be easier to find. Either way, if not at the individual level than absolutely at the organizational level, our curation, collection and creation of digital data has totally outpaced our ability to manage it using the outdated metaphor of a filing cabinet.

“We build external rather than internal archives. And we certainly don’t believe that interiorizing knowledge is a way of fitting the soul to the order of things. In part, because the very idea of an order of things is implausible to those of us whose primary encounter with the world is mediated by massive externalized databases of variously coded information.” 

That quote is from the same Sacacas piece where, citing Illich, he goes on to discuss how when the “text” became detached from the “book” the individual became detached from the community. Much of this makes me think about how work will change:

When an office migrates to tagging and becomes detached from the geological layers of meaning embedded in its folder structures, what will happen to shared understanding of the business that was represented by those folders?

I’d love to hear any thoughts/feedback on this. Feel free to get in touch.

Really a bummer that iOS makes it so tricky to log listening to last.fm. While on vacation this week I haven’t been sitting at my computer that much and have been doing a bunch of listening on my iPhone and iPad and very little of what I’ve listened to is showing up in my log over at last.fm. I’ve discovered some great music this week and feel like a bunch of those discoveries are gone now because I have no easy way of resurfacing them. Agh. So frustrating.

I’ve been buying albums from new artists for the past year or so. If I find myself repeatedly listening to a new release on Spotify or Apple Music, I buy the record. It’s usually about $30 w/ shipping which is steep but I’ve long suspected that the margin is pretty good for the artist so, why not.

A couple of recent purchases are Yola from the Easy Eye store and a couple of Rose City Band releases from Thrill Jockey. Have listened to them a few times and really like having the artwork/liner notes.

Anyway, came across this today:

A vinyl record costs ~$7 to manufacture, and a band typically sells it directly to fans for $25 — good for $18 in profit.

By contrast, streaming services only pay out a fraction of a penny for each listen. 

A band would have to amass 450k streams on Spotify to match the profit of 100 vinyl sales.

So I think my assumption was correct that buying records from artists is a good way to support them. Anyway, so more interesting numbers around vinyl and supply chain are in the full article.

I’m sure there are a bunch of really excellent use cases for the new focus mode in iOS but this one that I created yesterday is a total game-changer for me. On so many occasions I’ve been playing guitar or recording something in garage band and had a phone call or text interrupt the recording session and it is really a challenge to remember to put on do not disturb each time I launch a recording session in GB.

Enter focus mode! I created a focus mode that turns off all alerts/interuptions called “Recording” and set it so that the mode is engaged every time I launch Garage Band. Focus mode is pretty intelligent and automatically puts all of my iOS devices in “Recording” mode as soon as I launch Garage Band. This is awesome and I highly recommend it!

Over the past year I’ve been using a service called Readwise.io to surface highlights from books I read on my Kindle and from articles I read on my iPad using Instapaper.

The service has its flaws but all in all has been useful to me in helping me to remember what I’ve read and found important.

That said, I’m finding myself less inclined to wanting to read long form journalism on my iPad, especially at night in bed when I’m trying to stay away from screens or at the beach where my Kindle feels easier to read than my iPad.

I have spent the past couple of weeks cobbling together a collection of tools that makes reading long articles on my Kindle easier as well as saves any article highlights I’ve made to Readwise.

I wish that I could use Instapaper for this workflow but, while you can read Instapaper articles on the Kindle pretty easily, tracking highlights doesn’t work so well. So I’ve landed on the following:

Push to Kindle from fivefilters allows me to easily push web articles to my kindle from my Mac (via Safari extension), iPhone or iPad (nice, easy to configure dedicated iOS app)

I then read/highlight on my Kindle paperwhite

When I plug my Kindle into my Mac’s USB connection, the highlights are automatically sent to my Readwise account

This last bit requires a good bit of AppleScript sorcery but it’s pretty easy to achieve using EventScripts.

Basically, EventScripts notices when my Kindle is plugged in. Once it sees the Kindle is plugged in, it executes this AppleScript which emails the My Clippings.txt file automatically to readwise who then imports it.

Really pretty elegant stuff here that, I hope, shows the value proposition of many small/lightweight tools loosely coupled as opposed to some monolithic solution.