The pile analogy implies that all interaction with the computer takes place using a visual metaphor, rummaging through the pile.
I like folders just fine (exactly because they let me pile arbitrary things together however I feel like), but not having some facility to search for things is just as bad as not having folders.
One nice thing about database style systems is that they don't actually have to own the canonical version of some information in order to be able to index that information. So let's keep our folders, but let's also have nice search facilities that let the user drill through the filesystem analogy and find their data using some other criteria.
I like folders just fine (exactly because they let me pile arbitrary things together however I feel like), but not having some facility to search for things is just as bad as not having folders.
One nice thing about database style systems is that they don't actually have to own the canonical version of some information in order to be able to index that information. So let's keep our folders, but let's also have nice search facilities that let the user drill through the filesystem analogy and find their data using some other criteria.