Re: [Usability] spatial nautilus concerns, revisited

[Daniel Borgmann <daniel borgmann gmail com>]

On 5/12/05, Steve Hall <digitect mindspring com> wrote:
> Don't these two ideas conflict? I thought the central two arguments
> against spatial navigation were:
> 
> 1. We understand files better as their content, not location.
> 2. The computer enables us to instantly find this content in a
>    haystack without having to navigate to any particular place.
> 
> IMO, a spatial construct works against these.

Imagine you'd have access to a robotic filing clerk, who can serve you
every document you are looking for in a second (after receiving the
order). Would you throw away your desktop because of this? Most likely
you'd keep the documents you are currently working on around, because
they are still faster to access if you can just grab them. This scales
to the point until your desktop overflows, then you'll want to put
some of this stuff back into the archive, knowing that your bionic
friend will take care of the rest.
Of course you might prefer to never actually store anything on your
desktop, but removing the possibility (and the possibility to group
documents in folders) would gain us nothing. There is no conflict as
far as I can tell.