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Computer Files Are Going Extinct

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Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#231

Post by acolumb »

pointerpointer wrote: post #141

I can imagine corporations totally like the idea of users not being able to save their own precious data to a file. In the end they want to own and control your data as much as possible for profit and power. And they sell that idea by telling you it's more convenient. As if it were not possible to create great file management tools or maybe even your own files as a database that you can manage easily. Same with the '…

With the advent of database-managed, self-hosted personal clouds (i.e Nextcloud/Droppy,) the difference is even smaller. It's developing into a self-hosted "just works" personal cloud ecosystem.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#232

Post by wlesieutre »

jacobolus wrote: post #229
unqueued wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but what if you are grading papers, do you want to mark up bitmaps? People need to learn that there is more than one way to do something.

> if you are grading papers do you want to mark up bitmaps? Why not? Get a tablet with a stylus and draw your commentary directly on the image. That is the way teachers have always marked up student work, just now without a paper copy or a physical red pen. Trying to mark up documents using MS Word or Google Docs or whatever is a horrible experience in comparison.

iPad OS’s new “full page screenshot” feature for webpages kicks out a long PDF (no page breaks, it’s one long scrollable page like the actual webpage was) and sends it straight to the markup view. You can draw on it just like marking up an image, but the text is still selectable and searchable.

It’s a nice example of software recognizing how people want to work and building to support that.

And one more for the people with Pencils - you can drag from the bottom corner upward to take a screenshot in any app with the same markup tools. Works on either side, so the lefties aren’t left out here.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#233

Post by ryacko »

wlesieutre wrote: post #232
jacobolus wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you are grading papers do you want to mark up bitmaps? Why not? Get a tablet with a stylus and draw your commentary directly on the image. That is the way teachers have always marked up student work, just now without a paper copy or a physical red pen. Trying to mark up documents using MS Word or Google Docs or whatever is a horrible experience in comparison.

iPad OS’s new “full page screenshot” feature for webpages kicks out a long PDF (no page breaks, it’s one long scrollable page like the actual webpage was) and sends it straight to the markup view. You can draw on it just like marking up an image, but the text is still selectable and searchable. It’s a nice example of software recognizing how people want to work and building to support that. And one more for the peopl…

>nice example of software recognizing

the software just writes itself?

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#234

Post by raxxorrax »

scarface74 wrote: post #66
ACS_Solver wrote: post #12

One of my greatest culture shocks in terms of technology was around 6 years ago when I received an iPad, having no experience with Apple products. After the initial setup, the first thing I wanted was to transfer some files - TV episodes and PDFs - to the device. My first attempt was to SSH into it, only to discover that's not an option, and would require a third-party app store and jailbreak. Then I just connected t…

While I agree with the sentiment, it’s a few years out of date. Starting with iOS 8 - 5 years ago, Apple has had extensibility points where third parties like Dropbox and OneDrive could be used to store documents and used in the common places where you would want to save and upload files across apps. - of course the Files app was introduced two years ago. - there have been third party document providers that exposed…

While I appreciate all these great apps to provide me with a backdoor to the actual file system essentially, I would rather prefer to just put them there with the file browser of my choice. That is also true for "normal users" in my experience.

Not accusing Apple here, there are countless other offenders. There just isn't a convincing argument to restrict the access through conventional channels in my opinion.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#235

Post by csomar »

nostrademons wrote: post #96
unqueued wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very similar anecdote. I had a long conversation with a friend who is a high school science teacher. She told me that computer literacy has plummeted in the last ten years. She has her students go into the field and collect data in the form of photos, spreadsheets, and typed reports. She wants students to bundle these files in zip files, and email them to her. Students have no idea how to do this. Some of th…

I'm curious if this is actually computer literacy plummeting or if it's a wider population of students being expected to understand computers. When I was in high school the vast majority of my peers understood how to bundle up a bunch of photos, documents, etc. into a zip file and e-mail them. This is because my peers were nerds, and we were excited about this new computer technology and eager to learn everything we…

> I'm curious if this is actually computer literacy plummeting or if it's a wider population of students being expected to understand computers.

I don't think that's the reason. I did study with non-nerds and they had to deal with computers because they wanted music, or to read an article in the internet or print something with Word/Windows and install the printer drivers.

What changed now is that things are more "streamlined" and all the complexity is abstracted. Software companies have figured out that people struggled with files, so they removed them. This can make the average person less computer-literate since he doesn't have to learn much to be able to handle the computer.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#236

Post by jacquesm »

Of course they are. That's just part of the pendulum swinging towards centralization. Files, your files, are an obstacle to centralization so you should lose your ability to access them.

So no more books in your library, just access to books through a device under the control of some large - usually American - entity. No more music collections, just access to someone else's music collection. Ditto for movies, you don't have your own copies, there is just access on a pay-per-view basis.

And of course only the 'proper' artists, movie production houses and writers will be available.

I refuse to play this game. I have my own collection of music, books and movies. Yes, it takes up space. But that's fine with me, at least no billionaire will be able to dictate what I can read, view or listen to.

Extending this to your personal files was an obvious move.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#237

Post by robocat »

perl4ever wrote: post #139
nostrademons wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious if this is actually computer literacy plummeting or if it's a wider population of students being expected to understand computers. When I was in high school the vast majority of my peers understood how to bundle up a bunch of photos, documents, etc. into a zip file and e-mail them. This is because my peers were nerds, and we were excited about this new computer technology and eager to learn everything we…

I think vastly more people are reading and writing due to modern computer literacy, and I can't stand the way they are changing the meaning of words because they don't read books . It appears vocabulary is increasing, but people get their vocabulary from inadequate online dictionary entries and/or peers that don't read books either. So to me, because I grew up reading books, it's incredibly aggravating because it see…

I love the renaissance of language, the minting of new words and concepts, the remixing of our heritage words with new Unicode characters and the mashing of new syntax.

I see it as progress - which destroys meanings as much as liberating new meanings. A word becomes a poetic palimpsest of needlessly complex layers.

I am an engineer-type, I like concrete words with focused meanings, I failed English at school while excelling at the hard sciences. The loss of meaning disturbs me, but I value the gains, and I accept that new language requires freedom from old dictators.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#238

Post by JulianMorrison »

Files were an abstraction that appeared as well as disappeared in my lifetime, at least on home computers - before them, you were saving direct to the medium which was mostly audio magtape. And I've honestly never really liked them.

Files get lost in the clutter, get overwritten or corrupted, don't get saved when you crash, are on this computer and not that one, don't make it across when you transition to a newer box, have to be mailed around or put on (gasp) physical media and passed around like a crude lump of plastic. And then your media gets a virus, oops.

It was an improvement to autosave. It was an improvement to version. It was an improvement to distribute across redundant backups. It was an improvement, to be able to get at it from anywhere.

There's UI issues in the new way of doing things, but that seems likely to shake out with experience. Files were often clunky at first too.

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#239

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

dangus wrote: post #34

The article just felt...unjustifiably alarmist to me. Most non-technical people I know cannot manage files even after decades of computing experience. I understand why many services try to abstract or simplify the concept. For example, Google or Apple is processing the crap out of your email attachment image because they know you don’t understand the idea that trying to send five 10MB photos likely will not fit in an…

Rings very true. The alarmist views expressed in the article sound like the tale we have been hearing for the past 1-2 decades that desktops and powerful computers are going away, and everything is going to be in the cloud, everyone is going to use thin clients to access everything. It's 2019, where are all the thin clients? I mean I know they exist, but they are not anywhere near becoming "the main way the computing is done".

Re: Computer Files Are Going Extinct

#240

Post by scarface74 »

raxxorrax wrote: post #234
scarface74 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the sentiment, it’s a few years out of date. Starting with iOS 8 - 5 years ago, Apple has had extensibility points where third parties like Dropbox and OneDrive could be used to store documents and used in the common places where you would want to save and upload files across apps. - of course the Files app was introduced two years ago. - there have been third party document providers that exposed…

While I appreciate all these great apps to provide me with a backdoor to the actual file system essentially, I would rather prefer to just put them there with the file browser of my choice. That is also true for "normal users" in my experience. Not accusing Apple here, there are countless other offenders. There just isn't a convincing argument to restrict the access through conventional channels in my opinion.

The built in Files app is the file browser that lets you browse files stored locally on the device, any installed cloud storage providers, attached USB devices and network shares. It’s not a “backdoor”. It’s built in.
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