Re: In the absence of files...
Isn’t that the wrong way around?
For me a doc is a collection of information and that’s more important than the app used to create it.
It’s the Apps that should disappear and the files/documents should become king. A doc with sections of text, markdown, html, rtf, mind maps, images, sound, 3d vectors - and interactions that select an appropriate actor - viewer, editor, printer, explorer etc would work for me.
And multiple external orthogonal hierarchies using classified tags should replace the single monolithic directory hierarchy. Indexing by my personal arbitrary choices - as well as creation/modification, content, title, location etc. depending on how I want to find my needles. In utf8 or course.