Students don't organize files anymore | Boing Boing

Young students don't remember a world without a search function. Teenagers likely completed high school assignments on cloud storage, not on local files. If they needed to access a report they wrote on the mitochondria, for example, the search "mitochondria" would yield files more easily than navigating folder organization systems. Gone are the days when carefully named files and meticulously organized folders were necessary. According to The Verge, organizing files into folders and subfolders is an increasingly lost art.

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Thanks for sharing the article.

I personally have a different experience though, as the people I know that usually tend to have millions of files spread around all over the place, including usually a 100% packed desktop, are those over 60 and 70 rather than the younger ones :sweat_smile:. I know this very well, because I've been helping quite a few seniors with their computer problems on a regular basis.

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If everything is on the cloud, this can be done, just like the current Internet search engines. And through the two ways of directory organization and optimization of search algorithms, it has been proved in the Internet dispute between Google and Yahoo that smart search can be better done manually. Having said that, using the form of directory organization is conducive to the formation of a tree of knowledge, rather than a pile of scattered points.

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As a student born in 2002 I saw both phases in my own life
I have kept a backup of the whole file manager in the hope that someday I will look back at it and appreciate the nested and carefully named folders.
abundance of internet and storage might be the Reasons for the lack of motivation to organise files in such way.
Sometimes I find re-downloading the file easier than to search for it in my file-system.
If the old me time travels to these days He will be surely disappointed by looking at the wastage of storage and data I am doing. :sweat_smile:

Hmm, you will be born next year? Interesting. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Nah, the time traveler will marvel that you were able to get anything done with such primitive equipment. If you live long enough, zettabyte implants will become the new normal and nested hierarchies will just be another automatically created presentation aid for old-timers.

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