Glenn on Search in The Economist

D3805Tq2I've been saving up the news until it actually hit the stands (and Web): my first article in The Economist is out! I wrote "Death to folders!", a piece about the future of desktop search and the end of the tyranny of manual and self organization. I spoke to folks across a spectrum of academics and business, and received tremendous insight into the current state of things and the near-term future.

Turns out that many ideas on search have been bubbling up since about 1990, but they've only inserted themselves into operating systems and commercial programs lately. Several academics, including two quoted in the article, have wonderful visualization ideas that really need to be turned into desktop layers.

The Economist doesn't run bylines, so many colleagues have been joking with me that I could, of course, say I wrote everything in the issue. But I did write this really. It's for paid subscribers only for the first week; then the Technology Quarterly section is freely available.