Image by oceandesetoiles via Flickr

I have a confession to make. I am impatient. So much so that, even though computers made it into my life two decades or so, and the web, a decade or so, I am frustrated every day with the state of computing. And something in particular has been bugging me for quite a while now. For the world of me, I can’t get why we’re still using folders to organize information. Folders force me to compartmentalize information, in an exclusive, hierarchical way. Each file or, broadly speaking, piece of content, can only be in one folder at a time, unless it’s copied twice. In fact, folders are just one very constrained type of tags. Very inefficient, very paper-like, very 20th century. Tags are so much better. And for full disclosure, I’ve been working on an idea for a while. But, as I couldn’t take any talented programmer away from the yet-another mashup or facebook app they were working on at that time, I am presenting an extended concept here, with three hopes: that it highlights some of the benefits I expect from the semantic web or from the future forms of tagging, that it guides entrepreneurs to develop new value propositions based on those early adopter needs, and lastly, maybe, that a talented programmer realizes the potential and contacts me to assess a partnership. (more…)