Better Retrieval Systems…

I’m visually impaired. It isn’t that I have trouble seeing or that I need a new prescription. My corrected vision is more than adequate.

That isn’t the problem. The problem is if what I’m looking at isn’t in plain sight — If it isn’t someplace I can see it — It doesn’t exist!

That’s one of the reasons I’m certain the problem with filing stuff away isn’t the systems we’ve created. The systems are more than sufficient. The problem is the retrieval systems we’ve built to find those files once they are hidden away!

I spent hours this morning searching for one such file. A digital image of me at our service station in Santa Monica somewhere in the early ’70s. It’s one of my favorite images, so I know it hasn’t been discarded. I would never throw it out. The question isn’t whether or not it exists. The question is where the hell is it!

Four computers, three backup hard drives, five miles and an hour-and-a-half of walking, and more than two hours of searching and I finally found it. Or, at least, I found a bad copy. The only good news I have to report is that I’m relatively certain the original has taken up residence in our storage unit!

Of course, the bad news is that I can’t really go there to prove I’m right…

In the meantime, I’ll just have to whine about the need for better retrieval systems and hope that one of the first benefits of Artificial Intelligence will be the ability to find the lost treasure people like me misplace every day.