I spent a fascinating day at the BBC yesterday, and much of the day before, researching an article for Wired. There is so much stuff going on there, both technically and culturally. The Beeb is making a serious effort to serve its constituency by moving beyond the traditional broadcasting model. Wherever it can, it’s using the digitizing of content to give control back to their audience: Control over the when, what and where of listening/watching (on-demand, interactive, on multiple devices)and control over what you can do with their content (remix it, redistribute it non-comercially). Rather than feeling beleaguered the way so many big media companies do when they look out over the Internet sea, the BBC-ers use words like “liberated.” Invigorating, to say the least. (Now all I have to do is figure out how to turn 75 pages of notes into a 2,500-word article.)

Today, after meeting with another BBC’er, I join a tour of the Linnaeus Society headquarters in Piccadilly. This is for my book (about which I’ll post some news tomorrow), which has something to do with what happens to how we organize stuff when we snip the connection to the physical. Linnaeus, the great classifier, had a sample specimen for each of the species he categorized, which is a very definite tie to the physical. But I’m not sure what I’m going to learn there. Which is why I’m going.

Tonight I fly home. Good. I miss my family. [Technorati tags: Linnaeus BBC taxonomy]

Categories: Uncategorized dw