As we kick off the first week of quarter, I am reminded that I my mental model is *absolutely* directory structure and I have no idea how students now live their entire lives in the chaotic laundry basket that is Google Drive. This article explains it so well: www.theverge.com/22684730/stu... - ThreadSky

sarahbrayne.bsky.social • 50 days ago

As we kick off the first week of quarter, I am reminded that I my mental model is *absolutely* directory structure and I have no idea how students now live their entire lives in the chaotic laundry basket that is Google Drive. This article explains it so well: https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

Comments

colleenie.bsky.social•50 days ago

If searching in Gmail or Drive ever worked for me I’d probably do the same but alas, I’m relegated to my gen-x folder structure 4 evah!

jocibet.bsky.social•50 days ago

ifyousayso.bsky.social•50 days ago

As a lifelong laundry basket brain and an early Mac user I can assure you that Macs had file search functionality in the 1990's. I lost files because I'd run out of space and offload them onto floppies, then later Zip drives or CDs, then lose THOSE. Today's world of infinite cloud storage is heaven.

ericbrookfield.bsky.social•50 days ago

Knowing where things are on the computer seems like the dumbest superpower… but it is very much that.

eleanorb.bsky.social•50 days ago

📌

foundationsofthedigitalstate.com•50 days ago

Haunted by this tweet

https://bsky.app/profile/nianorris.com/post/3lc5b435l2227

nianorris.com•50 days ago

Currently writing the semester schedule to include an assignment where they set up their files.

foundationsofthedigitalstate.com•50 days ago

not all heros wear capes

fdoperez.bsky.social•49 days ago

I'm going to print @nianorris.com's "They live out of their downloads folder like it's a van by the river" and frame it to give to family and students. Brilliant.

foundationsofthedigitalstate.com•49 days ago

it's an astonishing turn of phrase ;-)

nianorris.com•48 days ago

Really what we need is a cartoonist to illustrate it

elmobronowski.bsky.social•50 days ago

To be fair, much modern UI seems built around insulating the user from having to think about file structure at all.

jackhistorynorton.bsky.social•50 days ago

Sweet mother of data, have none of these people ever learned about metadata (tags)? Everyone in this discussion is hearby commended to their college librarian for a heart to heart on how information is organized and searched.

arorzoff.bsky.social•50 days ago

“Chaotic laundry basket” is so wonderfully apt

cancoi.bsky.social•50 days ago

It’s my new alt rock/ska band name.

spasticthumb.bsky.social•50 days ago

I literally keep a list like this 😂

jonathanhoefler.bsky.social•50 days ago

Isn’t this akin to the generational shift from email (sortable, searchable, fileable) to text and Slack?

swbrewer.bsky.social•50 days ago

A happy medium I’ve seen in a data platform is assigning unique file ids to every file with directory structure as an associated alias. Then file refs in code can be either, so both old and new approaches work.

aggieblue.bsky.social•50 days ago

1. I feel old
2. A disorganized laundry basket sounds terrible. Perhaps folder systems matter less for some uses but essential for managing a law practice.

folletto.bsky.social•49 days ago

I find this kinda funny because I taught classes to people when the whole computer revolution started and “folder hierarchies” were the hardest part.

In a few decades we really haven’t solved the issue… the only difference is that now computers are ubiquitous so there’s no escape from ignoring it.

searle.hu•49 days ago

bullish on apps that can be used without excessive organisation, such as @obsidian.md over the next decade ... @notion.com is in an interesting spot here?

mgaldino.bsky.social•50 days ago

There are folders in Google drive. I don't understand it at all.

jeffbach.bsky.social•50 days ago

There are folders but the interface does its absolute best to deemphasize them.

sarahbrayne.bsky.social•50 days ago

There are folders, but my totally unsystematic observations suggest that non-directory (read: young) people mostly view documents in reverse chronological order and run searches to pull things up, rather than clicking through nested folders. It’s a different logic of information sorting & retrieval

foundationsofthedigitalstate.com•50 days ago

One Microsoft one drive there is a reverse chronological list of every file you have visited FOR EACH APPLICATION

So you have a Word document, supported by a spreadsheet 0800.GOODFUCKINGLUCKWITHTHAT.com

jeffbach.bsky.social•50 days ago

Google Drive is in certain ways post-hierarchical organization. It allows folders and folder based organization but deemphasizes it.

aselbst.bsky.social•49 days ago

I hated Google Drive forever because it was impossible for me to reliably find the file folder structure using the interface, until
@friedler.net
informed me that you can actually just download the desktop app and bypass the web interface entirely.

sarahbrayne.bsky.social•49 days ago

🤯

jeffbach.bsky.social•50 days ago

And, you know, I’m a fairly old user, lots of terminal and command line stuff, but for my own personal document archival I’ve moved to a few high level directories but relying on search.

jeffbach.bsky.social•50 days ago

Even on a Mac/Windows/my phone, searching for an app is usually significantly faster than drilling down through folders. And when it comes to data files it’s usually a fraction of the time.

jeffbach.bsky.social•50 days ago

I guess this long stupid thread is all to say: a directory structure understanding of local files can still be important, but it’s less so than it was 30 years ago, and there’s some benefits for letting it go and embracing the search 🙃

lizaloop.bsky.social•46 days ago

It's a problem of scale and of tools. My PDP8 didn't have a search tool. Finding a specific item in a laundry basket with 10,000 items is impossible without a search tool. That's why we sort laundry. (Well, some of us do.) The same kids don't know how to milk a cow but they enjoy milk.

jocibet.bsky.social•50 days ago

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