Everything is Miscellaneous
I just finished reading Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder by David Weinberger. It’s quite a hot book around the office here. No surprise given our unique selling point is being able to tag products as part of the review process.
Basically the author argues that tagging will be the new way of organizing information. No more categories. While I agree with his basic idea, I’m not willing to write off the idea of categories just yet. Why not? Well, here’s a telling quote from Amazon:
“Finally, he shows how by “going miscellaneous,” anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.” (italics added by me)
The author posits that the power now lies in with the masses in that they decide how information is organized and they decide what information is important to them. However, I immediately thought of the deluge of information and the time necessary to find and parse all of it. While I enjoy exploring the internet, I readily admit this kind of activity takes a lot of time. Most of the time I don’t have the luxury to take all the raw data and organize it in a way that’s meaningful for me. I want information and I want it fast. I don’t have time to read 20 news articles and decide what’s most important. I like having The New York Times decide what’s the most important news story for me by putting it on the front page.
What are your thoughts on this book/theory?
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