Emerging Technologies in STC

Can I organize my thoughts about Everything is Miscellaneous anyway I want?

Words the up mix what when happens if I? Not. Happens what if when the words up mix I? Nope, not quite. If when the words I mix up what happens? Hmmm. That’s semi-intelligible. What happens when I mix up the words? One limitation is that words must have a minimal degree of organization to say something meaningful. What makes words meaningful? Words are meaningful when they express something that people can understand. How many people must understand something for it to qualify as meaningful?

I think the Internet is a good metaphor for the epistemology of social constructionism. And the Wild West. There’s no center. There’s no edge. There’s hardly any laws and the authorities are indistinguishable from the rest of us. Where are the knowledge authorities out there? Who’s in charge?

Order on the Internet looks like a tag cloud. It comes from hundreds or 10 or thousands or 13 baker’s dozen individuals who read something and encode that document with a tag that says “This means this to me.” The big words in tag clouds show emergent consensus. Consensus becomes order that indicates what people have agreed they know about something. On the Internet, the social construction of knowledge is visible. Groups of us agree that something means this or that, that it’s true or false. Tag clouds illustrate the process.

Weinberger believes that how we organize the world reflects not only the world but our interests, our passions, our needs, our dreams (pg. 39). Cultures influenced by ancient Greek epistemology, such as ours in the U.S., reflect our belief in a natural order. There are laws governing the physical world. Knowledge results from discovering those laws. Our system of ordering knowledge itself reflects the physical world (pg. 6).

The problem with our epistemological tradition, according to Weinberger, is that it is subjected to the same limitations as the physical world. Material things and information we use to order them can exist in only one place at a time, they require space, are relatively unstable, and expensive and time-consuming to maintain (pg. 17).

Compare, for example, the cost of maintaining the digital vs. the print collections of vintage photos the Library of Congress just placed on flickr. Consider the issue of access: how many people can simultaneously look at the photos on flickr compared to how many can look at the prints in the library. How many people knew the photographs existed before they appeared on flickr?

Weinberger argues that we place a high value on creating order because we equate order with beauty (pg. 34) and efficiency (pg. 12). I believe that order also means control—or at least the appearance of it. Those who create order have control and control creates power.

Web 2.0 technology allows ordinary people like me to do what only experts did before. If I want, I can be a cataloger without a library science degree. All I need is access to flickr and a tutorial in tagging to start cataloging the Library of Congress photos. If I want, I can be a journalist without professional training. All I need is information and some ideas and Internet access to any of hundreds of citizen media websites or a blog.

Using Web 2.0 technology opens new possibilities for how we order information and knowledge itself. It’s creating sort of a bloodless but not painless revolution: citizen librarians and citizen journalists threaten the experts. And the experts are used to having control and the benefits that come with power—mainly in the form of jobs.

I am still overwhelmed by the infinity of the Internet. It’s counter-intuitive to me that the answer to too much information is more information, as Weinberger suggests (pg. 13). I feel daunted by a tag cloud like ours on deli.cio.us. For me, the information is too flat, too diluted. I want to narrow the subjects so they are more focused. Or what about receiving 4,872,399 results on a Google search? To use that information, to find what I need its necessary to narrow the choices …

On the other hand, I appreciate the value of organizing books, photos or music however I want because the order meets my personal interests. I’m sure it’s good for business too. But in those cases, I don’t have to think about anyone but myself. It doesn’t matter if the order I’m creating is useful to others. Ironically, it seems to me that the need to share contradicts the highly custom ordering Web 2.0 technologies make possible. How do we collectively create and share information effectively and efficiently?

Now I’m back to my initial pondering about meaning. Meaning happens when people share an understanding. As the Web 2.0 revolution continues, I think we’ll need to find a good balance between the personal and the collective, the amateur and the expert even as we reconsider the definitions of those roles.

Sara