3 tagging conclusions
I’m in San Francisco for a TTI Vanguard conference. I’m doing the first presentation, and if you look at this list of Vanguard “digerati” in the room (not to mention the other 150 attendees) you’ll see why I’m a tad nervous. So, of course, I spent three wee hours this morning rewriting the presentation I’d rewritten on the plane, that I’d rewritten…
I’m talking about taxonomies and tagging, and at the moment I’m planning on ending with three conclusions about the potential significance of tagging:
1. Rather than knowledge ending where the miscellaneous begins, now it’s beginning with the miscellaneous. (In your face, Aristotle!)
2. In the continuing battle between the forces of neatness and messiness, tagging advances the cause of messiness. (I think that’s a good thing, but you’re talking to a guy who last night was given the employees discount at a food stand at the airport because the cashier just assumed I worked there.)
3. We are owning not just our information but the organization of information. This is part of the project of re-meaning the world – make meaning ours – in which we’ve been engaged for decades.
Too late to tell me that those are ill-thought and I’m about to make a fool of myself. I have to give over my slides now, the moment of commitment. Oh, how I hate it.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
It’s o.k., David, I looked at the list of digirati, and you’ll be fine; white men can’t tag.
Tagging
Tagging seems to be the new hype-able buzz worthy “technology” of the moment, at least according to the people quoted in this salon.com article (which includes David Weinberger who also posts about tagging here). By tagging is meant the process of…
Ha! Karen beat me to it. That’s a pretty homogenous group, indeed. Not that there aren’t many wonderful people on the list, of course. But they couldn’t have found a way to include some wonderful women? Or wonderful people of color? <sigh>
Elusive synchrony is okay
Dave Rogers writes: While we’re not yet at the place where the innate wisdom of users blends seamlessly with the work of trained professionals, it may be closer than we think. The problem with folksonomies, as the self-organized taxonomics…
I tossed your three observations to my class last night, and this was some of what we came up with. (The “obsolescence, reversal, retrieval, enhancement/enablement” language refers to Marshall McLuhan’s tetrad of four media laws.)
Are your slides published somewhere?
okay, got the slides – but can you explain what the socks in the laundry basket and sock drawer metaphor? Is it the making remeaning?
It’s an example of how we get trees: We lump and split piles. Trees of ideas reflect this physical behavior.