CHAPTER 9

PIM Transformed and Transforming: Stories from the Past, Present, and Future

We are nearly to the end of this Part 2 to “The Future of Personal Information Management” with its theme: “Transforming Technologies to Manage Our Information.” It is time to take a broader view of the transformative power the technologies reviewed—technologies to save, search, and structure; then also the technologies for input/output. How do technologies transform our practices of PIM? And then, in turn, how might our practices of PIM transform the lives we lead?

Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider,³⁴⁸ a pioneer in computing, the development of the Internet, and the human-computer interaction, did a “Time-and-Motion Analysis of Technical Thinking” in 1957 with himself as his subject. Here are excerpts from his accounting:

“About 85 per cent of my ‘thinking’ time was spent getting into a position to think, to make a decision, to learn something I needed to know. Much more time went into finding or obtaining information than into digesting it. Hours went into the plotting of graphs, and other hours into instructing an assistant how to plot. When the graphs were finished, the relations were obvious at once, . . . .

“Throughout the period I examined, in short, my ‘thinking’ time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or an insight. Moreover, my choices of what to attempt and what not to attempt were determined to an embarrassingly great extent by considerations of clerical feasibility, not intellectual capability.”

Licklider concluded: “. . . the operations that fill most of the time allegedly devoted to technical thinking are operations that can be performed more effectively by machines.”³⁴⁹

9.1   HOW MUCH “CLERICAL TAX” DO WE PAY?

85% of the time Licklider had available for thinking—for creative activities—went instead to the “clerical or mechanical.” Call this the clerical tax³⁵⁰ on his creative time. What about us? How much clerical tax do we pay as we work with our information?

The question matters because we spend significant amounts of a typical day in information interactions—sometimes called “knowledge work”—of one kind or another.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines knowledge work³⁵¹ as “work which involves handling or using information.” The OED quotes Peter Drucker as saying back in 1959 that “Today the majority of the personnel employed even in manufacturing industries . . . are . . . people doing knowledge work, however unskilled.”³⁵² As noted back in Chapter 1 (Part 1), the number of white collar jobs exceeded the number of farming and blue collar jobs in the USA back in the 1950s, i.e., at about the time that Licklider did his study.³⁵³ Similar patterns hold true for other developed countries and, we would expect, will hold true globally as countries develop. Most of us with jobs are “knowledge workers” with “white collar” jobs. We work with information.

At play too—that is in our leisure time—much of what we do is informational whether in the form of, for example, seeing a movie, staying in touch with friends and acquaintances via Facebook, watching television, reading a book or magazine (increasingly via a digital display device), etc. We do physical activity too, of course, both for fun and health. But increasingly, these activities include an informational overlay. We wear headphones while we run or bike so that we can listen to music or a podcast, for example. Or we wear inserts in our running shoes to record how far we’ve run, how fast, and where. In the exercise gym, we watch television while using an exercise bike or we bike as part of a video game.

Similarly, at home as we manage our personal lives. Yes, we’re more likely to be a “jack of all trades” in our homes as we do manual work such as replacing light bulbs, cooking, gardening, cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, etc. But at home too, our activities are increasingly informational. We may contract some of the manual jobs out, when we can afford to, in a manner similar to the way these activities are contracted out in a workplace. Or we may use machines (including robots for vacuuming and mowing the lawn). Some activities we’ll still do ourselves because we like doing them—cooking and gardening, for example. What we are then left with to do at home are tasks involving information management. We plan meals, pay bills, plan vacations, plan for our retirement or our children’s college fund—all of it is informational.

Most of us likely spend several hours each day—8 to 14 hours or more—working with information in one form or another. Reductions in clerical tax rates matter. I write “tax rates” since different rates may apply in different areas of our lives and for different activities of PIM.

But let’s simplify for the sake of illustration. Suppose we spend an average of 10 hours each day working with our information (at work, at home, and at play). Suppose that 50% of this time is spent doing clerical activities (i.e., activities that our computing devices might do just as well or better than we do). If we were able to reduce this clerical tax rate from 50% to 40% then we’d have an extra hour in each day.

But this understates the transformative potential of information technologies. Reductions in clerical tax rate may be much greater. If Licklider spent 85% of his time on the clerical we might envision a future in which we spend as little as 5% of our time on the clerical. The savings then works out to 8 hours per day—i.e., the time spent in a working day on a typical job. It is then as if each of us were able to take early retirement.

Alas, unless our “agents” are able to make money on our behalf, we’ll keep working. But the nature of what we’re able to accomplish with our information—at work, at home, at play—will also be transformed by the technologies we’ve reviewed here in Part 2. We don’t just have quantitatively more time for the creative, but our creative activities change qualitatively as well.

9.2   TOWARD A SYNTHESIS OF THE SENSES OF PERSONAL INFORMATION AND THE ACTIVITIES OF PIM

To better understand transformative potential of information technologies, let’s make a speculative comparison between Licklider’s world of information and our own, now nearly 60 years later as of the writing of this book and then let’s try a jump into the future of 2057—100 years after Licklider’s time and motion study. Reflections and predictions are prompted and organized by the six senses in which information is personal (Table 9.1).

Table 9.1: A speculative comparison between Licklider’s world of personal information, ours “now,” and a projected world of personal information in 2057 with respect to each of the senses in which information is personal to us.

Obviously, much of what is under the “2057” column is a product of educated guessing and a little wishful thinking, too.³⁶⁰ This is especially the case with the P2 cell. Laws to mandate that companies share the information they have gathered about us and, even more so, the enforcement of these laws, will not happen except through persistent activism on our part. But we have plenty of time to make it so.

One thing in evidence in the 2057 column is the extent to which our information in its different senses merges through its integrated presence on the Web. The information we own (P1) includes, for example, a structured organization in which to place situated searches that serve both to locate new relevant information (P6) and also as filters or classifiers to sort the information directed toward us (P3) and, more generally, the information we experience (P5).

Also in P1 is a master copy of much of the information about us (P2) that others are likely to maintain. We might imagine “bots” or “agents” operating on our behalf that periodically check known databases containing information about us and that also crawl the Web in search of new stores containing information about us. We’re alerted to discrepancies between our version of “us” and the information others keep about us and can then decide whether to request an update or correction. In many cases updating/correction can happen automatically. Many agencies keeping information about us have a vested interest in updating contact information and information concerning changes in job or marital status. In other cases, we may need to force the issue. But at least we know.

There is also a merging of information experienced by us (P5) and P1 information. The item event log we maintain to record and link to items experienced or experiential (web pages viewed, pictures and video clips taken automatically or manually) is also one basis for organizing much of our P1 information. In the spirit of Lifestream,³⁶¹ we can retrieve information previously experienced based upon our (approximate) memories for when we’ve encountered the information before. Also, we can retrieve this information based upon our memories for “where” we’ve encountered the information before. (Our memories for “where” are often more precise and durable than our memories for “when”).

And finally, there is a merging of information we direct outward (P4) and the information directed toward us (P3). Information in both cases is part of an extended space of information we own (P1): Our house of information. Incoming information sits in one or another anteroom as sorted through our searching/filtering facility awaiting our attention. Outgoing information may be sent via email, tweet, or Facebook post. But increasingly this information stays in place and is shared instead (with only the notice of its sharing going out to intended recipients).³⁶² P2, P3, and P4 information is part of an ongoing dialog we have with other people, mediated by the Web.

Activities of PIM also merge as we approach 2057. Keeping and finding are part of a dialog that leverages the structures we’ve created through our activities of maintaining and organizing. Our information structures also provide a basis for the managing of our privacy and the general flow of information, outgoing and incoming. Structures also provide basis for measuring and evaluating—both our practices of PIM and our lives in general. Finally, our efforts to make sense of our information are facilitated by effective groupings of our information as viewed and manipulated by any number of applications, able to work with our information—structure and content—in place.

Senses of personal information, activities of PIM . . . as these flow one into another, we too are better able to stay “in the flow”³⁶³ and stay more fully, productively, and, even, restfully focused on the task at hand.

9.3   PERSONAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT, THEN AND NOW

Leaving aside an admittedly speculative “2057” column, let’s now compare the “1957” column with the “now” column to appreciate how different our world of information is from Licklider’s. Consider, for example, P1 information. Keeping digital information and keeping it organized is still a challenge and consumes time. But we are certainly saved the time of physically going over to a filing cabinet, pulling a drawer out, thumbing through hanging folders, etc. We’re also spared these steps later to retrieve information from the file cabinet and then later to re-file this information again (often making errors in the process).

I’m a terrible speller and am happy that the detection of (most) spelling mistakes is now automated. I can recall only a few years back spending many painstaking minutes (adding up to hours) in the entry of bibliographic information and I’m extremely happy that this is now mostly automated through the support for initiatives like COinS.

I’ve done my own very informal “time and motion” observation of activities in the completion of this book. And I’ve compared to the activities in the completion of my dissertation at Carnegie-Mellon University (CMU) back in 1982.³⁶⁴ Consider only one portion of the dissertation—the mandatory literature review—and compare with the comparable review of relevant work done throughout this book. The differences in the clerical/mechanical are profound.

In 1982, there was no web, no wireless, no laptops, no smartphones, etc. A search for relevant information almost always started with a trip to CMU’s “brick and mortar” library. For a time, I went nearly every day. When there, I accessed physical copies of the journal issues containing articles relevant to my own doctoral work. I chained forward to other articles that appeared relevant via an article’s bibliographic references. I recall occasionally chaining backward, i.e., to get “cited by” articles using the Social Science Citation index. I also heard of some relevant material through colleagues.

But, to a considerable extent, I located relevant work by browsing—as in the dictionary definition sense of the word (“To scan, to casually look through in order to find items of interest”³⁶⁵). I browsed through all the journals of relevance for my area. There were perhaps six or seven journals directly relevant. I likely browsed through each issue in each of these journals going back for a decade or more.

And with each reference found—of apparent relevance above a threshold—I needed to take a number of physical, “mechanical” steps in order to access a copy of the article for closer inspection:

1. Walk to the reference shelf housing issues of the journal in which the article was published. Some journals were on the other side of a reference desk and were retrieved only by filling out, on paper, a reference request form and giving to the reference librarian. In other cases, though the journal issues were in shelves directly accessible to me, the issue itself was missing. Or the issue was older and no longer in the shelves. In these cases, it might be on microfiche, or I might need to make a special inter-library loan request and then wait a week or more for the request to be filled.

2. With article in hand, I would then scan to determine if it was a “keeper”—i.e., an article of sufficient relevance that I might like to read and cite. Many were not. That is, I spent several minutes and possibly waited a week or more only to determine that the article wasn’t sufficiently relevant to my work to be included in the literature review. For those that were, I generally made a copy using the library’s photocopy machine. Photocopies cost money—some number of cents per page. I honestly can’t recall how this was handled since as a poor graduate student I likely wanted to avoid spending my own money for a copy. I possibly was able to charge to my advisor’s account or possibly I had a “key” (box) to plug into the photocopier to enable copying, count the copies, and debit some credit for my department. Regardless, the photocopying of an article took many minutes to complete. At the time, I thought the ability to make photocopies a tremendous innovation since otherwise I would need to take many more hand-written notes.

3. With copy in hand, I would often read the article from start to finish—carefully—to understand research methods used, results, and implications. I highlighted passages using a yellow marker.

4. And then, for keeper articles, I also generally made an index card listing authors, title, and other reference information along with a short hand-written description expressing what was relevant about the article and how it might fit into the dissertation’s literature review.

5. And finally, when back at a terminal connected to university account, I would enter reference information by hand for later electronic formatting into the bibliography.

In short, a very large percentage of my time in the completion of the dissertation literature review was spent in clerical/mechanical activities. I had the benefits of a computer-based text editor and also could use computer-based typesetting and formatting (including for references). In other areas of the dissertation I could use the computer for data analysis and to plot basic graphs. So, in contrast to Licklider’s 85% estimate, make my time with the clerical/mechanical about 65% of the total time invested in the literature review and elsewhere in the completion of the dissertation, i.e., about two thirds of my time.

How times have changed!

It has been a long time since I visited the library out of necessity to access information related to the work I was doing. Now look-up is as quick as a few words typed or pasted into the search box. Mostly I use a general purpose search service. Sometimes I use Google Scholar or the ACM Digital Library (dl.acm.org).

Logged into the virtual private network through the University of Washington means that I can generally access a PDF for a desired article without cost. I keep a large and growing collection of articles locally in my personal file system. Why not? Storage is cheap. I highlight passages in these using Adobe Reader.

For articles I mean to reference, citation information is quickly downloaded in the form of COinS information to Zotero (my current reference manager) via a simple click on a little box at the right end of the browser address well. Citations are made, in-place, in the document I’m working on via another few clicks with the help of a Zotero plug-in for Microsoft Word. With another click I can ask Zotero to assemble citations scattered though the document into a bibliographic reference list and to format these according to any of several bibliographic formats.

I’ve made back-ups of book drafts both by self-addressed email and also via Dropbox folder. I’ll also use one or the other to share drafts with the publisher and with reviewers, copyeditors, and proofreaders.

What’s my clerical tax for the writing of this book as a percentage of total time? I’ll estimate around 25%.

9.4   TAX-FREE PIM?

Would we, if we could, take the clerical tax down to zero? The initial response might be “Sure! Why not?”

But we’re reminded of Lansdale’s paradox—as we automate, we lessen our contact with our information and so reduce the chances of accidental discovery through incidental contact. Also, some of the mechanical and the clerical may actually be restful to complete “by hand.”

My personal proofreading of this book is a little of both (although I need to admit that—like many of us—I have trouble seeing my own mistakes). Researching and writing the content is the hard part. Proof reading, though increasingly delegated to my computer through facilities like “check as I type” spellchecking and grammar checking, can be restful and satisfying. I might also “delegate” to a willing friend or a paid assistant but by doing it myself I come into closer contact with the material I’ve written. As I proofread, new ways of expressing the content often occur to me. More important, new ways of thinking about the material occur to me. In other words, making (better) sense of the information is facilitated by and intertwined with the clerical task of proofreading.

But there are many more clerical tasks I’m happily rid of. The entry of reference information, for example, in a precise, fussy format (to meet the demands of one or another convention for bibliographic references) was neither restful nor illuminating. Its entry did nothing to facilitate a deeper understanding of the work being referenced.

Moreover, the discoveries and deeper understanding I sometimes gain in the course of proofreading my own work might be gained in other ways. If this book were broken into a series of blog posts, for example, and you were to post comments then we might reach a deeper shared understanding in the course of the dialog that ensued.

What’s left? The mechanics of typing, for one thing. I’m a reasonably fast typist but, like most of us, I can speak faster than I can type.³⁶⁶

There is also the mechanics of moving text around. How best to order? What to delete? Also, it’s easier for me to delete text if I know it’s “nearby” should I change my mind. For me that means pasting into a “leftovers” file. That takes time. Streamlining the leftover process might cut my clerical tax. So too might a greater use of touch to select passages to be moved coupled with gesture or voice recognition to indicate where passages should go.

Even better might be a “readability” or “logic checker” which is to the grammar checker as the grammar checker is to the spelling checker—a higher-level analysis of text that identifies possible problems in narrative flow and, better, proposes solutions that I can “accept” or “ignore.”

And then there’s the shift of attention required to go from the manuscript to the browser in order to complete a search. My word processor (Microsoft Word) provides a “look up” facility for selected text which as one option returns in-place search results in a window pane to the right of the document I’m working on. But this facility doesn’t work well for me. The space for the results listing is narrow and results are difficult to evaluate. Also, any click takes me back to the browser window anyway which has no special connection to the document window.

In the spirit of the “Taking back our information” insets of Part 2, suppose the structure of this book were first class—and that I might then use any number of applications—not just Microsoft Word—to help me in the creation and assembly of its pieces. Pieces might be “cards” similar to the paper notecards I used in my dissertation work in 1983 (or, like the cards of the commercially successful Hypercard application³⁶⁷ of the 1980s).

With structure now first class, I might still opt to see a Page Layout view in Microsoft Word just as I do today with cards assembled into a scrollable document that appears much as it will appear in “final form” formatted in PDF or for printing. But I might use the outlining ability of another application as I try to figure out how best to structure the document.

Some cards are high-level and mostly about structure—a grouping item (e.g., as a top-level heading) pointing to other grouping items (second-level headings). In line with Chapter 7’s discussion of situated searches, these grouping item cards have a centroid reflecting the contents in cards that the grouping item card points to.

Other cards at the lowest level are mostly about content. A “leaf-level” card may contain only a single thought or idea, expressed through text, a picture, a graphic or some combination of these and where possibly some elements of the card are excerpted (as an image or quote) from the Web (e.g., from an article, blog post, discussion board comment, etc.). For any such excerpt, the card keeps a link back to the element’s source as well as additional COinS citation information. If the link is clicked, the web page is displayed, with the excerpt highlighted.

I can then imagine that the book as a document might have emerged—better, faster, more easily—through a kind of dialog between the cards of the document and the Web. If I’m on the Web already and come across a web page that relates to the book, I simply highlight a portion of the page (e.g., an image or text to quote). As an option, I then add my own thoughts concerning the page and how its information relates to the book. A card is created. Also, I can choose to link from other grouping item cards to this card, aided as I do so, by a search that matches card contents to the centroids of existing grouping item cards.

In the other direction, as I’m working on the document—whether as a listing of cards, an outline, or a “page layout” view, I might select text or an image and then request to see a streamlined pop-up version of my preferred web browser with search results listed. Again, I can make a selection that is then excerpted for inclusion in the document (on a new or existing card).

Things might be further streamlined if I’m able to select using gestures or eye movements and can then add my own comments via voice. Also, portions of the document might be shared in the form of a blog post on the Web as invitation for the comments of others. The dialog then expands to connect author through document excerpts as blog posts to readers through the comments on these posts. And then, we might ask, who still needs the published book?

9.5   WHERE DO WE “PIM” IN 2057?

In the highly acclaimed science fiction animation film WALL-E³⁶⁸ the people depicted are couch potatoes in the extreme, nearly incapable of movement and almost completely detached from their physical surroundings as they view “reality” through video screens and are serviced by robots.

But an alternate future has us much more mobile with many more options to do PIM—at home, at work, and at play even as we move through and exercise in physical (not virtual) space.

There is already an increasing use of a “third place”³⁶⁹—neither home nor work but often a coffee shop—as a place to work and, more generally, to interact with our information (“do PIM”). Larson identifies the third place phenomenon as a key success factor for Starbucks.³⁷⁰ He attributes Starbucks use as a third place in part to “the increasing use of the Internet and mobile computing devices capable of accessing it.” Laptop use is so prevalent that Starbucks apparently now needs to contend with people who sit for many hours and only drink one or two cups of coffee.³⁷¹

In fact I may be one of those people . . .

I also go to the library—especially the public library of the town in which I live. I know a fellow professor at University of Washington who completed much of the writing of his dissertation while sitting at a picnic area near the “It’s a small world” ride in Disneyland in Anaheim, CA. (He lived locally and had an annual pass).

Why? Why leave a perfectly good work office and possibly another perfectly good home office to work in a public place? I do so for what I term “communitude”:

Communitude—A desired state of being and working alone but around other people or in a public place.

I like to work without disruption but can start to feel lonely and “deprived” if I work for long periods of time in my office at the university or at home. As an alternative, I may work in the living room of my home where I’m nearer to other members of my family. Or I may go to the library or to the coffee shop where I can work mostly without interruption while still having the stimulation of other people nearby. Sometimes I work even better. On those occasions when someone I know happens into the same space, it’s always a welcome and, usually, short interruption (“Great to see you! Sorry . . . can’t talk long now . . .”). If I look around, I see that I am not “alone.” I see many other people at my favorite coffee shop or in the library working on their laptops, too. Communitude.

Using the natural interfaces as reviewed in Chapter 5 we may have even more opportunities to break away from the “desktop.” Sitting for long periods of time is bad for us so maybe we stand as we work.³⁷² Or maybe we workout as we work, listening and responding to emails, for example, as we walk, run or bike.

Gaming devices, such as “omni-directional” or “360 degree” treadmills³⁷³ will give us a chance to walk or run in a virtual space. But virtual environments needn’t be purely fictional. Why not, instead, run or walk through the streets of Paris (as simulated via Google Earth, for example)—pursued or pursuing as we do, other players in our game? We get exercise, have fun, and learn more about Paris (or London or New York) all at the same time.

And then, sometime soon (long before 2057) imagine traveling through a virtual space representing a place in history—colonial America, for example or Athens in its golden age or a Jurassic period swamp? Or we might travel through a virtual space of our own information.

Real walking/running through a virtual learning space to compete in a multi-person game is an example of multi-goaling as we discussed before. We contrast multi-goaling with multi-tasking. In multi-tasking, we do an uneasy time-slice switching between several tasks (doing none especially well). With multi-goaling, one activity accomplishes several goals (the proverbial two birds killed with one stone). With synergy between goals we often do even better in the completion of one goal for the presence of the others. We run faster because it’s fun and we’re just about to catch the person in front of us. We keep walking just to see what’s around the next Parisian corner.

The larger point was made already in Chapter 3 (Part 1). PIM is everywhere. Let’s make it work for us in our lives.

9.6   CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ON TRANSFORMING TECHNOLOGIES

Will technology eliminate (the need for) PIM?

No.

Will it transform the way we do PIM?

Yes, with certainty.

For starters, we considered input/output technologies such as voice recognition, gesture recognition, zooming and animation, eye-tracking, eye glasses with small screens (or even working whole-lens as filters and overlays to our visual experience). Combine these and related technologies in support of a more natural interface. Add a ubiquity of computing and constant, high bandwidth connectivity to the Web.

The result is that our ways of interacting with our information will change dramatically. But the result isn’t an elimination of PIM.

To the contrary, we’re faced with the potential for constant interaction with and a constant need to manage our information. To the bad, we have little hope for privacy in such a world—not in public places to be sure, possibly not even in private places. Digital information is everywhere. To the good, our ways of doing PIM may be much more integral to our ways of living. No need to lug a laptop or a camera. No need to pull out a credit card or even a palmtop device. No need to use a keyboard or even a touch screen. Our interactions with our information will be accomplished “naturally” through our eyes and hands and voices as aided through accessories we can wear rather than “lug.”

Beyond the interface, we have the information itself. What if information for everything that matters to us could be saved, searched, and structured?

We started with the technical feasibility of saving “everything.” Suppose, for starters, we could make a life log of everything we’ve experienced? A reasonably detailed life log might already be constructed for most of us based upon our interactions with our various devices (laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc.) and various applications (especially web-based services such as Gmail). We anticipate life logs that are increasingly integrated (one log rather than many logs scattered across different applications) recording events with increasing fidelity (e.g., pictures, sound and video as well as text).

Life logs may help us to recollect the events of our lives, reminisce (e.g., as we relive a special event), retrieve (e.g., “the picture we took at the soccer game”), reflect (what might have gone better in that exchange?) and “remember our intentions” (“Did I do what I said I would do?”).

Assuming technical feasibility, many other issues remain. How to protect the privacy and security of a life log? How to guard against sudden loss (e.g., a virus attack) and also the gradual, inevitable degradation in the media used for storage? Technologies of storage may greatly extend a store’s lifetime. Even so, our own internal memories will fade with the passage of time and, as these memories fade, the evocative power of digital life logs also appears to decline. More relevant for many of us may be the reality of a busy schedule that leaves us little time to reap the benefits of the “5 Rs” listed above. We’re too busy living for today and tomorrow to spend much time on “yesterday.”

And then, as we store more and more information, how to retrieve the “needle” of a particular event or information item from the haystack of “everything” informational?

The question takes us on to search—a second major technology with a potential to greatly transform PIM. Search, especially as situated in a larger context, has enormous potential to help us in the management of information that is “ours” in each of the senses in which information can be personal.

Search can help us to find information that is “owned by” us (P1)—the right version of a document, for example, and representing weeks of work. Search can help us to locate information about us (P2) on the Web especially as search technologies make more sophisticated use of the context surrounding references to names such as “William Jones.” There is a natural segue from information about us (P2) to the information we send or share (P4). Search can help us to determine the impact that this information is having (good and bad). Search can help us to track the uses others are making of this information (with and without attribution).

Search can help us to filter and categorize the information directed toward us (P3) and, more generally, search can help us to sift and sort the information experienced by us (P5) and that flows by us constantly in each waking moment.

Search as a method of return to information is often placed in opposition to more stepwise navigational returns to information (a.k.a. “browsing”). However, the technology of search can work in ways unseen “behind the scenes” to make information navigation faster, easier, and less error-prone.

Situated searches can persist as a permanent part of our information landscape to help us locate information of relevance to us (P6) and our current information need. These searches—situated in connection with folders and other structuring items—may even help to improve our chances of serendipitously coming across useful information “by chance.”

But then from search to structure. Any search that we do is structured by its scope. Structure provides a basis for query constraints (e.g., not just “Harry” but “Harry as author”). Structure provides a basis for navigating to information—either as a complement to search or as a primary method of information access. And structure helps people to recognize a desired item in the returned list of results.

But then back again to technologies to save. Fast searching depends not only on the fast access/seek times of storage but also on larger capacities needed to store indexes that may be a significant percentage (perhaps 100% or more) in storage size of the collections of information being indexed. The series of inserts on “Taking back our information” considered ways to take back our structures to be “first class” with existence separate from any single application but also able to be viewed and worked on through many applications. But the practical “mirroring” approach toward making structures first class also generates a need for more storage.

Technologies to save. Technologies to search. Technologies to structure. Each needs the other.

Yes, there’s a “whole” in this bucket of transforming technologies.³⁷⁴ The good kind. Technologies complement one another. Dependencies don’t produce a flat, futile circularity. Rather, technologies interrelate to produce benefits that are much greater than what we could realize from a singular focus on just one (or another) of these technologies.

Technologies transform but don’t eliminate PIM. Instead, technologies help us to be better at PIM. Technologies can increasingly take over the clerical burdens of PIM freeing us to focus more on the creative aspects of PIM. What is our information telling us? And how can we use it to best effect? PIM doesn’t go away. Instead, PIM becomes a more integral part of and enabler of the lives we wish to live.

But, as we manage our information to manage our lives, we are not alone. We, ourselves and our information, are part of a social fabric linking us to others at home, at work, at play, and “at large.” How can we manage our information in group situations? And how can we be assisted and energized through our interactions with others? These are questions for Chapter 10, “GIM and the social fabric of PIM.” Chapter 10 is the first chapter in the final Part 3 to “The Future of Personal Information Management.” In Part 3 we have the challenge to piece together all that has been learned in our explorations of PIM so that we might—really, literally—build a better world with our information.

³⁴⁸ For shorter “web page” length biographies on Licklider with additional references see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider, http://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_licklider.htm and http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/licklider.html. Licklider wrote an influential book, Libraries of the Future (Licklider, 1965) which still makes for thought-provoking reading. See also the article “Man-computer symbiosis” (Licklider, 1960).

³⁴⁹ Licklider, 1960, p. 4.

³⁵⁰ In the Keeping Found Things Found book I also use the term “information friction” to refer to the small clerical/mechanical actions we must take as we manage our information.

³⁵¹ http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/104170?redirectedFrom=knowledge+worker#eid40033264.

³⁵² Drucker, 2009.

³⁵³ See Naisbitt’s book (1984), Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives. The reader is also invited to review for the accuracy (nearly 30 years ago) of this book’s attempts to predict the future.

³⁵⁴ The term “data base” was first used in 1955 according to the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary: “Q. Jrnl. Econ. 69 155 A thoroughgoing character classification of federal government activities, à la J. R. Hicks, would provide the data-base necessary for this kind of stabilization policy.” http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/47411. Computer-based databases were not in widespread use until the 1960s. For a brief history of databases, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database#History.

³⁵⁵ It’s tough to tell. The reader is invited to find out the extent to which for example credit card companies used microfilm/microfiche in the mid-1950s. For a starting point, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfilm#History.

³⁵⁶ A mandated right to inspect and even request changes to information kept by others about us is, of course, wishful thinking but not without precedent. We’re able today (in many countries) to request credit reports about us, for example. And we may be able to see not only the tax assessment for our property but also our neighbors. See, for example, Chapter 16 of the book, Personal Information Management (Shamos, 2007). Insurance agencies, credit card companies, advertising agencies, and Google will likely fight against such “Freedom of information” laws. But providing access via web-based databases and even supporting update requests is already technically feasible.

³⁵⁷ See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLKJFSi14gk for a 50s era video of the Hoover vacuum cleaner salesman.

³⁵⁸ http://www.movements.net/2005/04/21/who-killed-the-encyclopedia-salesman.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/14/encyclopedia-britannica_n_1346094.html.

³⁵⁹ See for example, http://www.greenstar.org/butterflies/Hole-in-the-Wall.htm, http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html.

³⁶⁰ Past predictions of the future prove often to be hilariously off course. But not always. See, for example, Apple’s vision of the future in 1987 for hints of Siri (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIE8xk6Rl1w; http://www.intomobile.com/2011/10/05/apple-concept-video-from-1987-shows-siri-style-personal-assistant/; http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/05/siri-ous-mind-blowing-video-evidence-of-apples-prophetic-past-circa-1987/. See also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Navigator and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_future).

³⁶¹ Fertig et al., 1996a; Freeman & Gelernter, 1996.

³⁶² Situated sharing of information that stays in place could work in ways similar to the way a hosting service for software development such as GitHub (github.com) or Bitbucket (bitbucket.org) works today. Information is managed by the hosting environment and subscribing members are notified of changes.

³⁶³ Many of us have experienced occasional periods of intense—almost meditative—concentration on task. We lose awareness of self and time. The experience can be restful even though we’re working hard and getting a great deal accomplished. We might think of this as a mental equivalent of superconductivity. Csikszentmihalyi uses the term “flow” (Csikszentmihalyi, 1991) (see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi). A related notion is “peak experience” as described Abraham Maslow (Maslow, 1972).

³⁶⁴ My doctoral research involved empirical studies and computer-based simulations of human memory and the potential for integrating themes to lessen or even eliminate the effects of “set size” and “fan”—both measures of information (over)load. For a write-up of this work see W. Jones & Anderson, 1987.

³⁶⁵ http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/browse#English. In the “Technologies to search our information” chapter, the term “navigation” was selected in preference to “browsing” as a better term for the purposeful activity of accessing a specific desired information item through actions such as folder navigation or web surfing in which the recognition component of the finding activity is higher than the recall component. In contrast, the specification of a search through text entered into the search box places a stronger emphasis on the recall component—what are we able to recall about the information item we seek? “Browsing”, however, more aptly describes what we do when looking through a table of contents for articles of interest without a specific article in mind.

³⁶⁶ See J. Grudin, 1988, for an analysis of the asymmetries in the cost/benefit of different modes of communication. Overall, most of us speak faster than we type. On the hand, we read/scan faster than we can listen via audio channel. With technologies of voice recognition we approach an ideal where sender can speak the message and the recipient can see and have all the affordances of a written transcript of this message.

³⁶⁷ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperCard. Hypercard was preceded by NoteCards (Halasz, Moran, & Trigg, 1987; Halasz, 2001).

³⁶⁸ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WALL-E; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/.

³⁶⁹ See for example, http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/2006-10-04-third-space_x.htm.

³⁷⁰ Larson, 2008, pp. 32–33

³⁷¹ (http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20087817-71/has-starbucks-had-enough-of-laptop-loungers/, http://gawker.com/5843279/the-great-starbucks-laptop-hobo-war-has-begun), http://www.sfchronicle.com/restaurants/article/Coffee-shops-limit-perks-to-move-Wi-Fi-squatters-4722190.php?t=586106004d8cb1714c.

³⁷² http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21583239-real-science-lies-behind-fad-standing-up-work-standing-orders.

³⁷³ See http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/22/4253698/virtuix-omni-treadmill-oculus-rift-integration-kickstarter-pricing; and, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQw1tsgrJOs.

³⁷⁴ The children’s song “There’s a hole in the bucket” tells a story of circular dependences: “Henry has got a leaky bucket, and Liza tells him to repair it. But to fix the leaky bucket, he needs straw. To cut the straw, he needs a knife. To sharpen the knife, he needs to wet the sharpening stone. To wet the stone, he needs water. However, when Henry asks how to get the water, Liza’s answer is ‘in a bucket,’” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There’s_a_Hole_in_My_Bucket.