Paul Kedrosky: The Zen of Searching Nothingness

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December 5, 2004

The Zen of Searching Nothingness

Now that I run Copernic's search as a background process I see a steady list of "what's new" on my computer. For example, until I actually search for something, all the new emails are listed on the main screen as they arrive (or are sent); all new files appear on another screen.

So here is the interesting thing (at least to me): There aren't very many new files. Most of the new stuff that appears on the search-enabled computer comes from email traffic, not files per se. Sure, there are lots of files on the computer -- I do write columns fairly regularly, plus work on papers and articles now and then -- but the ratio of new files to new emails isn't 1:10, it's more like 1:100.

Part of the reason is that I'm not an MP3 kinda guy, and I don't save movies etc. Nor am I a student busily preparing assignments for a class. And while I have a fair number of Powerpoints and such for the many talks & lectures I get tricked into doing, I don't add to that list as often as you might think.

All of this is a long way of saying that one thing I have discovered in making my computer more searchable is how slowly I add to my list of files. The combination of Microsoft's lousy search tool in Windows XP, and my own sloppy filing system, had me thinking that there were millions of files here, and that I was adding tens of new files by the day. There isn't, and I'm not.

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