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When you think about all the conventions in all the devices we use today, it becomes painfully obvious just how much is tradition and concepts based on very old thinking. Not all of it has to be bad, of course, but for a lot of things it's a kludgy mess with more inelegant solutions than should be allowed in this modern day.

One thing I had hoped for would abolish the need to "think with files" was the explosive rise in mobile devices; a platform incredibly apt for dropping old conventions with. To some extent, that has been the case. But for a lot of actions we humans, rather than the machines, fall back on wanting to shuffle files between our devices. Granted, many manufacturers have made it painfully hard to hand over data from one device to another, and I do wish that would improve faster than the speed of thought.

It's an archaic concept that really should have been done away with by now. Now, don't get me wrong, I see the ease of use and the nearly ubiquitous utility of easy data transfer. I just don't see the blob-of-content metaphor that is "files" as the ultimate pinnacle of doing it. As it was once said; surely there must be a better way? I mean, seriously? It's the year 2012, we really should have dirt-easy ways to do the most basic and essential of things with our devices, right?

Why not let the apps deal with that and let us humans be the lens through which we view our data? Instead of looking at a bunch of files, we see documents, songs, videos and all other manner of data we might have stored on our devices. For beginners, this would definitely be a huge boon, as they wouldn't have to learn decades of poorly explained conventions before they could dive head-first into actually doing anything. As I'd like to consider myself as someone who knows a fair bit about computers, I'd be happy as can be over dropping a lot of this legacy stuff in favor of a much more up-to-date and contemporary solution.

Naturally, this is something that "power-users" don't like. Time and time again I have tried to make the point that just because something is new and does away with conventions, it's not a bad thing. Just as often do I get the same old "well, that's not what power-users need" argument tossed back at me. What is it about being a self-described power-user that makes you unable to do things in new ways? That some old skills and workflows become obsolete? Last time I checked, that happens in the rest of the world too, not just computing.

Can't we just let go of the wall, get on the ice, and play the game? I have a hard time that the step is too big for a power-user to start thinking with documents, rather than the abstraction of files.

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine. (But you won't find him on Facebook!)

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Robert Falck

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