Now the place was spotless—and what’s more, it was 
  minimalist. The floor was not only clean, it was visible. 
  Lining the walls were translucent white plastic tubs 
  stacked to the ceiling.

  “You like it?”

  “It’s amazing,” she said. “Like Ikea meets 
  Barbarella. What happened here?”

  Tjan did a little two-step. “It was Lester’s idea. Have 
  a look in the boxes.”

  She pulled a couple of the tubs out. They were jam-packed 
  with books, tools, cruft and crud—all the crap that had 
  previously cluttered the shelves and the floor and the sofa 
  and the coffee table.

  “Watch this,” he said. He unvelcroed a wireless 
  keyboard from the side of the TV and began to type: T-H-E 
  C-O. . . The field autocompleted itself: THE COUNT OF MONTE 
  CRISTO, and brought up a picture of a beaten-up paperback 
  along with links to web-stores, reviews, and the full text. 
  Tjan gestured with his chin and she saw that the front of 
  one of the tubs was pulsing with a soft blue glow. Tjan 
  went and pulled open the tub and fished for a second before 
  producing the book.

  “Try it,” he said, handing her the keyboard. She began 
  to type experimentally: U-N and up came UNDERWEAR (14). 
  “No way,” she said.

  “Way,” Tjan said, and hit return, bringing up a 
  thumbnail gallery of fourteen pairs of underwear. He tabbed 
  over each, picked out a pair of Simpsons boxers, and hit 
  return. A different tub started glowing.

  [...]

  “Have you ever alphabetized your hard drive? I mean, have 
  you ever spent any time concerning yourself with where on 
  your hard drive your files are stored, which sectors 
  contain which files? Computers abstract away the tedious, 
  physical properties of files and leave us with handles that 
  we use to persistently refer to them, regardless of which 
  part of the hard drive currently holds those particular 
  bits. So I thought, with RFIDs, you could do this with the 
  real world, just tag everything and have your furniture 
  keep track of where it is.