A hierarchical means of organizing data is intuitive to most people because it is a method that allows data to be organized in a way that can be easily visualized and implemented in the physical world. Whenever I hear the word "hierarchy," I think of something being nested within something else. While this approach is valued for its simplicity, its two flaws are caused by the encapsulating nature of hierarchical organization.

The first of these two flaws is that each element can only exist in one location. This approach to data organization works for some kinds of data, but fails to optimally organize data that should simultaneously live in multiple locations. For instance, a note on one's experience with ADHD could be categorized as both a neuroscience note and an introspective one. 

The second of these two flaws is that each element is hidden, requiring you to remember what lives where or routinely check each encapsulating location to determine what — if anything — is in there. This isn't a problem in situations where you know exactly what you're looking for, like when you're looking for a file in macOS' Finder file manager app. Where this becomes problematic are in instances where you're not looking for something in particular, but rather trying to determine what deserves your attention.

The advent of computers grants us the freedom to not be confined to the organizational methods of organizing that work in the physical world, like a folder structure. Data can exist in a nodal network whose connections are managed by a computer, which paves the way for reusable data; whenever a data object is in need of information contained in another data object, that other object can be referenced instead of copied. Reusable data is an essential component of a scalable system, which practically any project intended to endure needs to have.

Original Date: November 5, 2022