There’s an article in the MIT Technology Review about the end of the desktop.
The article talks about the history of the desktop (it’s 30 years old!), it current limitations, and highlights a few current initiatives to start moving beyond the desktop.
It’s pretty interesting - they have some screen shots about some of the new ideas.
One of them is a 3D interface that appears to have grown out of Microsoft Bob - it’s metaphor is a house with unlimited rooms.
Users ‘hang’ their files around the house.
Interestingly, in test studies, users didn’t ever hang their files on the floors or cielings - in essence cutting their space by 1/3. Also amusing is the complaint by an engineer that idea of having a metaphor as a navigational/organisational tool is outdated - he doesn’t metaphor at all.
Which is just so engineery of him to say.