Kibs Yahya

The folder is one of the oldest interface metaphors we still use, and one of the few that has survived without being rebranded as something else. We have, at various points, tried to replace it with timelines, with streams, with infinite tagged spaces, with graphs.

And yet the folder persists, because it does something none of the alternatives do: it lets you defer the question of what something is until you know what you want to do with it.

A folder is a refusal. It says: I will decide later. I will gather these things together first, and figure out what they have in common after I have looked at them for a while.

Filing is a kind of patience. Tagging is a kind of certainty.

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