30 september 2021
The weather is finally cooling enough to make it pleasant to go outside during the day, so of course, naturally, I managed to hurt myself.
A minor crack in one of my ankles, nothing serious. I took a misstep off our back porch stairs and rolled the ankle hard enough to hear a pop. Now it's all swollen and bruised. I've been trying to avoid putting weight on it until now, even though it doesn't hurt much. I'm in a protective medical boot, no cast or anything like that. The boots are, thankfully, removable for things like showering or changing clothes, so I can maintain some semblance of civilization. I've been avoiding going outside, too, since navigating up and down stairs on crutches is a chore. But now I've been given leave to put some weight on the foot, which makes life easier. Like I said, it doesn't hurt that bad.
Aside from that, well, I've been working, and I've been drawing. I've been a bit distractable.
There was an article recently published in The Verge about how young adults now use computers in a way that is fairly alien to adults of the millennial generation, the first digital natives. The short version is that younger people don't make much use of file and directory structure, and some struggle even with the basic concept. One of the students interviewed compared the data model to a laundry basket--you just throw all of your files on the desktop or in one or two catch-all folders, and use the search function of the OS to find what you need.
I don't know why that was so jarring to me. It makes total sense that the model for interacting with data would change over time. For me the file and directory model is so ingrained that it seems fundamental. It's hard to even explain the idea to someone who doesn't understand it. There are categories and subcategories and you put your files in them. It is a model that assumes organization is desirable and that the data may not be easily searchable, neither of which is guaranteed to be true for every potential user. I get that. But it seems like there are at least some circumstances under which it is true, and I didn't think such circumstances were actually that rare. It does occur to me that people aren't really familiar with using shared computers directly anymore, whether that's a shared system like tilde.town or a household PC in the family room. One of the top reasons to understand file and directory structure in the '90s and early '00s was to hide things from your parents and siblings on the family computer. If every kid has their own devices, they don't have to worry about that. Maybe they're accustomed to the idea of being spied on by parental controls anyway.
I have a suspicion that the "laundry basket" works well for files with descriptive names, and text documents that can be easily searched. But I also suspect that those are the types of files most people have. Searching images is basically impossible unless they're well-named. If you don't use directories you need either a metadata organizational system like Apple's Photos app or an OS that lets you tag files. Either of which is a good solution, as long as you actually sort or mark the image files.
The whole discussion got me thinking, though, about how software is designed. We design systems iteratively, based on past systems, because we want users who are accustomed to the old systems to be able to adapt to the new ones. If there is anything people hate about software, it is the way the design changes after they've already learned the old system. There may be better ways, ways that are friendlier to human beings, but it's hard to get there when dinosaurs like me are holding onto the old ways. Nothing wrong with that, I don't think. Making big changes is hard and it's sure to alienate some people.
I recall reading a long time ago about an operating system (possibly a theoretical one?) with a user interface designed from the ground up with a goal of being friendlier to how human beings think and interact. Ideas like avoiding mode-based operation (i.e. pressing a specific key should always do the same thing) were involved. But among those ideas was the proposal that users do not and should not have to care about files or directories, or locate the file or program they want to access. They should be able to search for it. In a delightful twist, I have no idea where I saw this article, nor what search terms to use to find it. But it's interesting to think about. It's exciting to imagine a way of using computers that is less painful and frustrating for the average person, even if that is very different from the way I, a fairly computer-savvy person, want to interact with computers.
It raises the question of whether it's better to have to understand a little about computers in order to use them effectively. But I'm not sure a majority of users ever really understood them anyway. I feel hobbled when a system tries to hide too much about its workings from me, especially when there are problems I'm trying to diagnose. But I have to admit I'm in the minority. On the other side of things, I like that my smartphone doesn't let me screw around with it too much--it's my only phone, and I look at it more as an appliance than a traditional computer. I don't want to alter the OS, or get root access. I just want the damned thing to work. Most people have probably been looking at computers that way for a long time.