alt Hacker NewsIncredibly beautiful, possibly because it maps so well to the mental model we typically use to organize knowledge in our heads. I don't know how we lost the folder/container vs. document/content iconography, and other things (like layout of items, sorting) during the shift to web applications.
Replies
I agree, for some reason I have always alternated between wanting not just the universal search box but a browsable hierarchy to mentally run my fingers over and discover in a structured way.
We let go of the the manual index somewhere along the way since it doesn’t scale like search, obviously, but for the same reason I keep a library and enjoy traversing others’ private ones and visiting public ones, I keep coming back to browse.
This is why I frequently post about how I miss Gopher. It kind of forced this hierarchy.
I guess this model doesn't maximize engagement
I dunno, I never had a "Sheep Looking at Viewer" category in my mental model until I randomly clicked around the media folder.
Knowledge doesn’t neatly align to a nested hierarchy. Especially written knowledge.
Language is an imperfect means to convey knowledge, and people store that knowledge in subjective and highly personal ways.
You may mentally recall balloons within “entertainment” or “party”, whereas I might store that knowledge under “horror”.
Add onto that the massive focus on using graph theory to scale social networking technologically, and you effectively lose any motivation for rigid hierarchy.