UX designers who eliminated the filesystem from user consciousness in name of simplicity ruined the world and are morally culpable for shriveling minds of children who are unable to tackle the challenges of today thanks to a choice sold as advocacy for the user but was ultimately motivated by control of a disempowered customer.
@SwiftOnSecurity Was thinking about this recently. Man, "sharing" on mac and iOS really is a horrible mess now.
I think maybe the big crime is appification.
Segregated tools working in walled gardens on their own private app owned data. Sold as a security cure! Which has turned in to a huge lever of corporate control.
I'm happy for any reasonably sensible fabric to wire individual "app" units. A file system is an option. Others are pipes, typed data, or a database.
Without that ability to plug together & combine, and use your data anywhere, the corps control it all.
@SwiftOnSecurity
Back in the early 80s, a client, who ran a small business, purchased Peachtree accounting software. Ok, if you must...
After I installed it, he started it up and was astonished that his data wasn't in there. 🤣 Somehow, he expected that his accounts would magically appear in the files. It took a while to explain.
I'm shocked at the #TechIlliteracy of post-millenial #Kids despite them having easier access to #Documentation and #HowTos than I could've ever dreamed of, despite having #ISDN in 1999...
@kkarhan@SwiftOnSecurity not if all their search engines ever feed them are youtube tutorials that obfuscate deep understanding for convenience of presentation.
The quality of potentially available information is better than it has ever been, BUT the signal to noise ratio has gotten far worse.
@ikanreed@SwiftOnSecurity Yeah, because the availability of high bandwith allows the propagation of low quality fancy shit in lieu of good writeups and howtos...
Needless to say people don't even get #TechLiteracy taught in #School and so in 2019 I did met a highschool graduate on a dual-study/apprenticeship position who confessed to me that they've never ever used a #PC before.
@ikanreed@SwiftOnSecurity I was completely speechless because even as a millenial born in 1992 this was more or less unthinkable to me to be possible.
I don't expect much in terms of #TechLinteracy but someone who was deemed eligible for university in 2019 should be able to turn a PC on, enter a password and open #MicrosoftWord or even #NotePad of all things...
Shit that even the #ECDL fake-#certification expects people to be able to do...
Apparently this person never got to touch a PC b4.
@ikanreed@SwiftOnSecurity And no, that person wasn't from some marginalized family living on foodstamps or whatever, but like their allowance was likely bigger than my net payout I had on that job...
@SwiftOnSecurity I’d like to have a database where I can define libraries of documents, images, data, etc based upon the metadata of my choosing and render it all quickly accessible on my own machine without being required to connect to the internet, but corporations will have none of that and UX designers are too busy trying to be the next Jony Ive.
Until I have what I want, something that should be easy to accomplish with general purpose computers, the only type we know how to build, I will stay with filesystems.
@SwiftOnSecurity very well put! :1000: Even sadder, it’s not just the filesystem… I still remember the first time I picked up an iPad couldn’t believe it had so many artificial limitations.
@SwiftOnSecurity counterpoint: filesystems are just bad databases. The true crime was the introduction of them as a primary interface for user manipulation of data instead of exposing relational databases directly and devising record interchange standards between databases. The fact that WIMP could represent a file tree is an accident, not some greater truth.
@SwiftOnSecurity as an old man who first organized his files by physically placing the 5" floppy disk in labeled storage boxes (like folders), I see I'll have some hard work and need lots of patience to make sure my lil one learns that stuff. Good tip.
@SwiftOnSecurity yes it is indeed very true that everything companies now days do is towards controlling their users/client/customers more and more.
That said tho fostering kids' brains shouldn't be a task left to a device or it's file system, it should be something their parents do every moment.
@SwiftOnSecurity 🤔 most UX/HCI research and designs on that topic (that I am aware of of) is from the mid nineties to early 2000s and seems to focus on office work, organizing complex data structures and difficulties of loosing relevant files in heaps of irrelevant ones.
@SwiftOnSecurity that's not decided on the designer's level, but way higher up, where some exec decided to reduce all computers into a 24/7 shopping cart from a powerful tool of creativity
@SwiftOnSecurity I didn't read all the responses, but in case nobody mentioned it, https://yewtu.be/watch?v=bSNda9EzNOI a respectable bunch of folks describe their research project that ditches filesystems completely, a cool idea if you ask me.
@SwiftOnSecurity I teach college game art classes and it is true that younger people often need to be taught to use a file system. I also think that the Google map style waypoint systems in modern games make it so that people are getting worse at holding spatial awareness in their heads.
@SwiftOnSecurity Best training I received in years in public service was Introduction to Filing Systems. Predated introduction to PCs or use of desktop computers. Still immensely helpful and gave me insights into Enterprise Architecture decades later!
Yes, I'm old but I can still hold my own discussing UX and UI and more with younger people in the system.
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