Web of Ideas: Everything is miscellaneous

Colin D. Devroe, on January 26th, 2005 at 2:07 am Said:

Pizza? Point the way!

I don’t like your use of “Everything is miscellaneous” particularly because it makes some people think that tagging makes things harder to find. When, in actuality, it makes things incredibly easy to find.

Tagging is really just mutiple categorization, which in a sense is more exacting than general or single categorization. That being said, tagging would be so far from miscellania that using that word doesn’t make sense.

Tagging “something” (photo, post, site, bookmark, etc. etc.) with misc. would actually be incredibly lazy tagging.

Wouldn’t you agree? Or am I a moron?

Good luck on the speech, I enjoy your view on things very much. However I wouldn’t mind seeing a thesis of sorts from you on how to replace the Duey Decimal system with a form of Taxonomy. I mean, since Google is going to digitize the World’s libraries, I hope they have a good way of categorizing, oh sorry tagging, things.

Richard Volpato, on January 26th, 2005 at 3:20 am Said:

Parking vs Marking ….

Back in the 1950s, I think there was a nice distinction (in information science circles in UK) between “parking” and “marking”.

Parking referred to a one-off classificaiton (and taxomony) as to “where” to put the book (on the shelf).

Marking referred to multiple tags (marks) that point to “what” was to be found in the book — rather than “where” the book was to be found

David Weinberger, on January 26th, 2005 at 7:40 am Said:

Colin, I agree with what you say about tagging. “Everything is miscellaneous” refers to the knocking apart of trees and the “discovery” that our classification schemes are tools, not mirrors. Tagging is a way of letting us put the world back together in ways that are useful and idiosyncratic. Put differently, tagging lets us postpone the moment when we go from a miscellaneous world to one that is organized the way that works for us: Rather than having to do it first and fit stuff into a pre-made set of categories, we can do it as we need to.

Fwiw, I interviewed the person at Google in charge of coming up with classifying the libraries it’s digitizing, but he wasn’t ready to talk about how they’re going to do it; they’re still looking into it.

Richard, I love the parking vs. marking. Thanks!

Colin D. Devroe, on January 26th, 2005 at 10:17 am Said:

Dave, thanks for clearing that up.

I’d still like to see something put together on how “we” could change current present-day systems into something better using these “new” ideas.

Kinda like E=MC2 but for tagging. :)

John Fountain, on January 26th, 2005 at 1:06 pm Said:

david
i listened to you rlibrary of congress prsentation and wonder if you would send me the overhead/powerpoint slides you used and, if you’re actually giving this ar a conferecne, possibly an early draft of the paper
the reason is that i am an economist in NZ who teacjes courses in information and uncertainty annd health economics – i am waht is called a bayesain statistician and i get my students to think hard, and critically, about the nature of statistical inference and its relationships(s) to subjective and imperfect knowledge
the knowledge as miscelany paper/audio/presetation is one thing i’d like to challende my upper undergad class with: how does this new way of knowing/presenting/authorizing kniowledge relate to statistical practice?
personally i think it does, and will, as authority shifts (reluctantly) asay from the epidimiologists and public health guys back to the voices/conversations of people dealing with health issues in theire own lives, esp the chrocins g health issues and disability

where is tha amzon” of the pharmaceutica world? the syrgery world? the doctor care? physio etc? the challenge to authority andexpert (and political) organisation of health (knowledge) , including so called evodence based medicine istitituions, has to come from below, and it will

cheers