Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [49]
Suppose you type a personal letter, print it out, and postal-mail it to Aunt Marge, but you still want to hold on to the original file. The first step, of course, is to give it a bit-literate file name. But that’s not enough, since you still need to store the file on the computer so that you can find it again later. There’s no “iLetter” application that organizes personal letters. The file has to live somewhere; there must be some catch-all place to store files that aren’t managed by another application.
There is such a catch-all: the file system, the application that stores and organizes all types of files. Every computer has one—Mac, Windows, and Linux—and some Web applications offer “online file systems” that allow users to store and organize files online. Even applications like iPhoto and iTunes use the computer’s file system, behind the scenes, to organize the user’s files; they just show the files in a prettier format than the file system would. It’s like getting laundry done at a luxury hotel. The hotel uses the same washing machines and detergent that you might use at home, but the hotel staff hand-delivers the clothes, nicely folded.
While some types of files get the “luxury treatment” from iPhoto and iTunes, others only have the file system. This isn’t a problem. For bit-literate users, the file system offers an elegant and efficient way of organizing all kinds of files. Users just need to know how it works.
First, a quick tour. When you turn on your computer, the first thing that shows up is the desktop, which displays the hard drive icon (or “My Computer” in Windows) and the icons of any files that have been placed on the desktop. Double-clicking the hard drive displays the top of the file system’s hierarchy: folders here contain other folders, which contain yet other folders, and on down through many levels. Any folder can contain any number of files or folders. Thus any file on the computer—the letter to Aunt Marge, any photo, any song, or other kind of file—ultimately lives somewhere, in some folder, within the hierarchy of the file system. (Files on the desktop are within the file system, too.)
Unfortunately, most users have never learned how to use the file system effectively, so they are unsure of what folders to create or how to organize files within them. Here are some common pitfalls:
Some people create too many folders, resulting in a jumbled mess, or an impossibly deep hierarchy, and thus can’t find files later—or even decide where to store new files.
Others create too few folders, dumping everything into one or two places, and thus can’t find files later because of the clutter.
Sometimes people dump everything onto the desktop, cramming it with icons—a demoralizing sight whenever it’s visible.
Worse of all, some users are partially organized. They follow one method for awhile, then dump things randomly for awhile, then try something else for awhile. As a result, their file system is a crazy quilt of abandoned organizational schemes, and they are utterly at a loss whenever they have to store or find a file, because they don’t know which scheme to follow.
Seeing that many users don’t want to organize their own files, the technology industry offers its own solutions—at a price. The tools promise to help users find their files later without requiring the pesky discipline of getting organized. Users presumably can dump files anywhere—making a mess of the file system, or cramming every file they have onto the desktop—and the tool will find any file with a simple search query. The reality, however, is not so pretty. The more files a user has, the less likely the search will come up with the right result. And searching is just one activity: users may more often want to browse a set of files having to do with a certain topic. This is much more easily