Based on what they show so far[1], I'm not really convinced tasks are the solution. The UI they present seems really clunky for 2021.
> He means we need something richer, that we should be collecting information by “task” or another word he brings up again and again, “context.”
Yes, context makes sense. But it needs to be context over time. Context that evolves and can be searched and revisited. You should be able to pull up the context of last month, or the 2nd week of May of last year.
> “If you think about it, Google does a good job giving us thousands of search results,” says Kittur. “But that entire process after search results is being done pretty much entirely in our heads.
Precisely. Fixing tabs is not about the browser at all. It's a problem with search. Search begins and ends at Google. What we really need is a search that starts global and integrates personally. Think of tabs as a sort of cache of what you have brought in from the broader internet. This "cache" should have a simple search interface (think Slack's search, vim Ctrl+P, fzf, Command+Space/Spotlight, etc.) but also have the ability to pull up some sort of window that you can navigate context by other means. Such as date, device, location, etc. "Show me what I was looking at on my phone when I was at Starbucks last Wednesday" kind of thing.
Tabs are the fear of losing context. Make context durable, transparent, holistic (i.e. you can zoom to either the trees or the forest), and global (sync across all devices) then you will have largely solved tabs.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90635776/the-twisted-psychology-...