Background:
Over time, old files tend accumulate on one’s computer. However, cleaning out a computer is an annoying and time-consuming task.
In the past, storage increased at a rate such that old files could be safely ignored forever. But modern laptops may actually have less (although faster) storage than ones from five years ago. Now it’s important to be able to tell which files are old and which are not!
The proposal:
Here is an example of a normal file (Fig. 1):
Fig 1: A standard file, modified recently. Nothing remarkable about it!
We don’t really need to pay much attention to this file; we used it recently, and may want to use it again.
But an older file (which we should probably either archive or delete) could be called out by using an old computer font and icon, as seen in figure 2.
Fig 2: This older file is visually apparent, thanks to the classic font and pixelated icon.
Fig 3: Even older files may be marked with different fonts, as seen above. The hieroglyphic font (of randomly-chosen hieroglyphs) could be reserved for the very oldest files on the system.
Fig 4: Finally, some files are accidentally set to a “future” modification time. Although this is currently impossible with our understanding of physics, these files nevertheless brazenly display a creation / modification date far in the future. We assume that robots will rule the earth in the far future, and thus have chosen a barcode font to represent the data for these files.
PROS: Accurately displays computer file age in easy-to-read visual form. Assists in freeing disk space.
CONS: Historical accuracy is questionable; hieroglyphs were not in widespread use during the early days of computing in the 1970s.
WorstPlans: updated every Monday since July 2014! 
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