Why can't Johnny file?

I'm not going to comment much on Tim Berners-Lee's talk (semantic web, blah blah blah). It was ok, but I wanted to be wowed.

4 folks came together to toss out oturageous statements about why we are bad at filing. Gary Marchionini was really the only person that rose to the task. He said: "Why bother?"

His take-home message was that systems are getting awfully clever, and that we are approaching the point where we won't need to file anymore.

Of course, everyone took him to task for ignoring the fact that filing, sorting, and organizing are all things that help us to think. He's too clever a guy not to have had an answer to that prepared: we need to be anticipating ways to teach those thinking methods once index cards, building blocks, and file folders stop being usable metaphors for our digital objects.

Marcia Bates and Carol Kulthau didn't really take the ball and run. Mostly they summarized their (considerable, respected, and well researched