Chamelea's bLog

Once upon a time I penned my letters, and they disappeared into a "typing" pool. "Typing" is an old English word (more modern than 'penned') that fell into disfavor as Secretaries became 'Admins,' and typewriters became scrap!). After signing, copying and mailing, those letters disappeared into a manila folder, forever lost under a single heading.

Now I 'key' my own letters, and the problem is slightly better. My electronic documents are now hidden in some Microsoft folder, lost among magnetic gigabytes. But WinExplorer helps a lot, as a little paperclip wiggles, my drive buzzes and smokes, and Voila! Sometimes

Email is much, much better ... no envelope, no label, no postage, no drop box, paperless in fact ... instantaneous gratification, an immediate checkmark on the ToDo list! Regretably, my creative result is still LOST in one single, paperless FOLDER and filed under a single attribute, a date, or project, or target, or where-is-that? And Outlook *really* smokes the drive to find it!

If each document could be sealed to the base of an imaginary prism, and if each facet represents one of its key attributes, Date, and Project, and Target, and, and, and ... then peering through any facet would reflect the single, same original document. Every document, viewed through its prism, would appear under ALL of its headings. It's kinda' like using carbon paper to file a copy under every possible heading. But, that's too much carbon, too much paper, too many folders, too many trees, too many file cabinets, and too many Secretaries. It couldn't work unless it was paperless ...

... but, we ARE paperless, we just don't act it, yet! We only constrain a document to a single heading because our digital designs still emulate physical paradigms! Opera's M2 might improve this for us. So far, it's not too good at swallowing Express, it hasn't even heard of Outlook, we still don't know how it will handle a Gig of messages, and it remains a little buggy from my observations. But it promises the Hopes 'n Dreams of imaginary "optical" or "prismatic" filing - I hope!