Slightly Surprised
This photo is of my friends and myself when visiting Chicago in the summer. I enjoy it mainly because of the city itself but the statue is of Harry Carry one of the great baseball broadcasters. I love playing and watching baseball so this photo really helps define who I am.
It is amazing when using Flickr how instantaneously you can connect yourself with a wide network of people. I am also surprised I was able to do this assignment with very few doubts about what I was doing. Folksonomy, as I understand it, allows users to create their own community by allowing them to decide what is important or relavent in classifications. To be able to classify and re-classify items we are can draw up our own social definitions of objects, words, or in Flickr's case, pictures.
I really enjoy the concept of allowing users to create communities based on their own preferences and ideas. As I stated previously the ability to connect with others who may identify with you is immediate and extremely beneficial. Who knows how many networking opportunities you may enevitably use with finding others with a similar interest.
My only question on the system itself is the overuse of classification of objects. If there are too many definitions for items are we decreasing the value of the current words used to define our surroundings.
Comments
I enjoy playing and watching baseball as well! I liked your explanation about how users create online communities based on their own preferences. I think this is very true and how the online community is growing tremendously everyday. Networking oppurtunities come about as well with connected to people that you may not know can help you, this is a good point. I also agree with you that there is too much classification going on with object and that sometimes there just is just too many definitions of items that we see on a daily bases.
Posted by: Harpal Thind | January 24, 2007 11:51 PM