Honestly, this wont change until we drop the skeuomorphing of paper...
Someday, someone will build something where "documents" may look like little blocks, with little indicators on them as to which data-streams they connect to live and how much social activity is happening about them - their popularity, their rated completeness, how many links to that info, security level, capabilities etc.
Take the whole idea of an entire stack and call it a "document" when you open it - it may contain whole DBs, connect to N other things and be able to produce X based on Y input from you or others. They may be intelligent enough to know to ask you to input a certain set of content before they can move onto the next phase of becoming complete, even with training information inside telling you how to enter into them the info they need to realize completeness.
Compressed abstraction and virtualization into a single finite functional datablock that can be moved sent secured monitored etc... just as much as any other stack/cluster....
It's not a skeuomorphism. Some people actually print out these word processing documents onto actual paper, so they need to be able to see what the document will look like on paper before they print it.
As an aside, I typically use word processors in "Web Layout" (as MS Word calls it) mode until I get to the point where I'm starting to think about print layout. Only then do I switch to "Print Layout".
Someday, someone will build something where "documents" may look like little blocks, with little indicators on them as to which data-streams they connect to live and how much social activity is happening about them - their popularity, their rated completeness, how many links to that info, security level, capabilities etc.
Take the whole idea of an entire stack and call it a "document" when you open it - it may contain whole DBs, connect to N other things and be able to produce X based on Y input from you or others. They may be intelligent enough to know to ask you to input a certain set of content before they can move onto the next phase of becoming complete, even with training information inside telling you how to enter into them the info they need to realize completeness.
Compressed abstraction and virtualization into a single finite functional datablock that can be moved sent secured monitored etc... just as much as any other stack/cluster....
/daydream...