The Anti-Mac User Interface (1996)

Applications and files alike, filed on the same bookshelf. A very easy metaphor that makes it easy to explain how computers work, but also locate files that you use often (perhaps by size, shape, colour and location) without using the part of your brain that processes language.

Humans are spatial creatures, so I'd like to think that perhaps everything being in lists doesn't make sense and that's why we hate using them to find something.

The traditional notion of the Desktop is a bit like this, but the presentation is messy. There's no nice way to order your desktop, and everything is the same size and shape. Despite this, many people work solely from their Desktop.

Edit: It would be very interesting to have a check in/check out system where you can drag files on the shelf to your "working box", or check them out, or whatever. Basically the equivalent of your desktop. This gives you fast easy access to files from a variety of locations for whatever job you're doing. When you're done working with them, you can check them out, and poof they go back to wherever you got them from. This is an awesome physical metaphor to a library where the clerk does all the work for you in returning the books. This box could also give you a good metaphor for moving files, and cut/copy/paste. Move to box -> put back on the shelf elsewhere. Or, move to box -> duplicate -> put copies back on the shelf and send the originals back.

The article might be a bit aggressive on suggesting that language _replace_ icons, rather than augment them - but it seems just as likely that we're still in the middle of the transition and assistants being built from the ground up without icon-based UIs is exactly what the article is predicting.