PhD Thesis Defence - Tony Mason

Name: Tony Mason

Date: July 21, 2025

Time: 13:00-16:00

Location: ICCS 246

Supervisor: Margo Seltzer

Title: Indaleko: The Unified Personal Index

Abstract:
Digital data overload—1.7MB generated per second, 361 billion emails daily in 2024—forces users to waste up to 25% of their time searching for or recreating files. Scattered across devices, cloud services, and inconsistent interfaces, data is nearly impossible to find, like a six-month-old document with no recalled name or location. To address this, I propose the Unified Personal Index (UPI), a system that unifies storage metadata, semantic metadata from file content, and human activity context from user interactions. Unlike siloed cloud searches, the UPI creates a single, human-centric index that transcends storage boundaries, aligning retrieval with how we remember.

Implemented via the Indaleko prototype, the UPI uses natural language processing and activity tracking to collect and query metadata across platforms, enabling intuitive searches like “find files edited on my phone while traveling.” Ongoing evaluations are validating superior retrieval effectiveness, leveraging activity context to match experiential cues. By mirroring human memory processes, the UPI simplifies finding and lays the foundation for advanced tools capable of leveraging its abilities to enable finding. The UPI redefines digital retrieval, transforming searching into finding as naturally as we recall a moment.