Volatility

Professor Henry Jones: “Well, he who finds the Grail must face the final challenge.”

Indiana Jones: “What final challenge?”

Henry: “Three devices of such lethal cunning.”

Indy: “Booby traps?”

Henry: “Oh yes. But I found the clues that will safely take us through, in the Chronicles of St. Anselm.”

Indy: “But what are they? Can't you remember?”

Henry: “I wrote them down in my Diary so that I wouldn't have to remember. “

from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

^{The amount of information that is available to us nowadays , is overwhelming. This leads to 'ad hoc' behavior . Indeed, each time we need some information, we resort to a search engine and once we found what we were looking for, we proceed without realizing we'd have to reuse this source of information again later on.}

^{This is a waste since:}

• very often the search for particular information takes a long time
• the process of going through the retained information (document) takes time and leaves impressions in our (graphical) memory. If we need this document again later on, this leads to a 'I know what I'm looking for but can't find it' feeling.

^{The use of digital information has increased the pace of information needs and intensity of data consumption. Especially if it has been a long time ago a document or particular information or link was consulted, it is difficult to remember were the documents were saved exactly, with which application (recent documents...), or where it was downloaded from. And if we get our hands on the link to an original document, chances are it is already dead.}