Spaghetti on the Wall

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• 22 Oct, 2025 *

I have this urge towards early-era GUI computing that really tried to create a physical desktop metaphor. I want a physicality to my digital spaces that feels missing right now. I want rooms, and desks, and folders. I want my things to stay where I put them.

I’m so tired of my message threads moving around based on who I last chatted with. Everything digital gets arranged into lists, sorted by Recent or Alphabetical or “Relevant”. Recently ordered lists are like ever-shifting disordered heaps. Alphabetically ordered folders stay in place a bit better, but still encourage the disordered heaps metaphor. Everything in my digital life tends towards disordered heap upon disordered heap.

I have this dream of arranging my folders in a house-and-rooms metaphor. I open my home folder, and it’s either my entryway or my bedroom (I start the day in my bedroom, or I enter the house through the entryway. Take your pick). Let this entrypoint be the root of a folder tree that describes the room-graph of my digital “house”. I can go from the bedroom, to the hallway, to the office, and I can work there. I can go from the office, back to the hallway, to the sitting room, and I can browse my photo albums and favorite music and art there.

Everything in a physically-oriented place, so that I can build bodily intuition and bodily contexts for where things are. Physical spaces as physical context, so I can feel and inhabit what I’m doing in any given space.