Pretty perceptive post from Ray Ozzie, 640KB ought to be enough for anyone, about the significance of efforts like Microsoft's WinFS file system that will be part of their Longhorn OS (via Marc Canter). Ray eloquently elucidates on a number of themes that happen to be near and dear to the heart of the iCite net, like:

Imagine what "content management" might become in an era where collections of objects can be created, retrieved, cached, replicated, published in conjunction with service-oriented systems, yet one in which a variety of content creation and manipulation applications can effectively leverage common storage and synchronization mechanisms.

I am sure that it is good that smart folks are thinking about a file system that might look like this, but I actually think it is easier to just generally forget about "files" in this vein.

Or, put another way (unfortunately filled with buzz words, sorry), files are generally a legacy concept in the context of service-oriented microcontent management (and, IMHO, including what some call the semantic web).