(source: youtube)
ALL available meta data should be exposed and forced into tags, categories and folders. File meta data should be updated with meta data from the file system.
Move everything file-like into the file system. Make emails into folders with tagged files. Link Torrents to their files and folders. Treat zips like folders. etc
Now for the truly ingenious, as from I experience I know having thousands of tags in a category is as good as having non:
Have 2 sliders to set a date range. The first range is for tag creation dates, the second range is for last use.
That way you can select tags created from 2004 to 2006 last used 2017 to 2018.
Use colors for hand populated tags, machine populated (based on file extensions, meta data, file names etc), crowd sourced tags and tags for which you've hired someone.
While it makes sense to use text for files, tags, labels, folders, categories, drives etc it is entirely possible to use all files as tags as well. The simple example: If application FOO can open BAR files all BAR files can be tagged with application FOO. Eventually in the future a crowd sourced database with 3d models can be used to associate all Guitar tags with a 3d model of one.
While it doesn't seem to make much sense to organize files in a 3d environment the reality is that humans can absorb terabytes of data in minutes if it is provided spatially.
Further reading:
https://www.nayuki.io/page/designing-better-file-organization-around-tags-not-hierarchies
comments on the above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16763235
