Data and Information online: why I am important too.

After reading chapter 5 of David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous, I feel that the main reason such a book even exists can be found if you read between the lines on page 90. There, Weinberger describes how "The Getty thesaurus is a mighty tree but, like all such projects, it can strive for comprehensiveness only be reducing the richness of what it's comprehending." The idea that classical systems of knowledge organization are limited is addressed multiple times throughout the book, but it is only at the end of chapter 5 do we see it start to tie into What is Web 2.0.

That article, written by Tim O'Reilly two years before Everything is Miscellaneous, describes how the web is undergoing a fundamental change. Web 1.0 focused on services and products created and sold through traditional means. A baker that wished to sell bread online would make a website that listed each item he sold with a price. An option to purchase online might be available, with set shipping and handling rates. That was Web 1.0 and, for a long while during the 90's, it worked great. With the dotcom bust, a change of thinking was required. This change of thinking applied to many aspects of the digital world, one of which both authors write about: data.

Data, or information, is the new currency of the world. Unlike resources that are limited by their physical nature, data is unlimited. This becomes apparent in both texts when discussing shared or collective knowledge. Wikipedia is the example used by both to show how, unlike traditional thought, where we must rely on a limited body of experts to parse knowledge, allowing anyone the ability to write, edit, and delete articles can actually create a better user experience. Everything is now, in my opinion, best left in the control of the user. Creating walled gardens is a poor choice, as instead of keeping the 'bad' in, you are keeping the 'good' out.

Web Squared, a follow-up to Web 2.0, was written two years after Weinberger, but focuses on the same subject: information. Technology has always been improving itself, and so even now, barriers such as bandwith and storage, no longer exist in most cases. All three articles understand, with increasing accuracy, that the power once afforded only to groups of experts and those that appoint them, is now being spread out to anyone with an internet connection.

A different take on organizing

Asked to discuss how someone else might organize my room, I really don't know. Bedrooms, and all personal spaces for that matter, are something unique to the individual. To try and guess at how someone else organizes it would be to guess at the type of person they are.

I would suppose, though, that on average I am less organized overall. Looking around as I type this, I see a bunch of things that could have a 'place' but are simply laying around. I see a couple of 2 liter soda bottles that are sitting right next to my mini-fridge, for example. It will take longer to type this sentence to put them away, and I imagine anyone else would do so. I have documents from this and past semesters laying about, while a filing cabinet is literally at my knee. Small tools, buttons, and other random bits of things used recently litter my desk. Anyone would be able to pick up half my room and put it away very easily.

Does this make me a slob? I don't want to say 'Yup!' because that is certainly unattractive, but it is hard for me to say 'No' too. I think that the things I use more often are closer at hand while things less used are stored. This says to me I am about being efficient, even at the cost of aesthetics. Don't get me wrong, I will go on a cleaning binge, reorganize near everything, and be happy with the results. I just don't think constantly fighting my room is a good use of time.

Keeping it clean

After reading the first portion of Everything is Miscellaneous, I found that the idea of location is incredibly important. There are other interesting concepts, but really, I feel that everything can (and probably should) be boiled down to location. Not just real estate, although the correlation can be investigation, but rather where things are.

Where is your computer? Under the desk. Where is your monitor? On top. Where is the web page you are reading right now? ...... With digital technology, objects are no longer limited by their physical being. * The page you look at it is on your computer, in the hard drive and/or RAM, and it is also on the web, and also in many other computers. My blog is by no means popular, but what about a video on Youtube? I bet a popular video exists in millions of places at the same time.

So? Well, with the ability to have concurrent existence, we can now get around some of our biggest organizational barriers. Objects no longer need to occupy a single place and time. They can exist in multiple, by using third-order organization. A single object, even physical ones like a photo from the Bettmann Archive, can be cataloged by many many different criteria. Humans like to organize, to place things in order, and to create systems that employ this order.

______________________________                                        ________________________________

Clean your room.

The request is probably made constantly, worldwide, by parents of their children. I imagine that being a boy, I heard it more often, but really, my sisters were just as bad at keeping things organized. Why? Because it was our room and we knew were everything was. When I was a kid, I had the ability to immediately locate and retrieve anything I owned. I took pride in my possessions and while they were few, the request to clean my room always seemed silly.

Today, I really do need to clean my room. I spend almost no time keeping anything organized, but my room is the exception. It is a matter of neccesity, because while I have amazing search tools for all my digital media (regardless of properly ordered information) and don't mind going through it if I need to, a clean room is important in my daily routing. Well, my morning routine. If I wake up late and need to run, I can't spend 10 minutes looking for my wallet.

It might be silly, but even then, like I said, I really do need to clean my room.

*Technically, we are still limited by physical being. The point is minor, but computer data is not aphysical (totally made up that word). It is bits and bytes and those take physical space. Ignoring the system needed to use them, it is still a mistake to assume that we can have infinite data in finite space. Granted, it's tiny, so I wouldn't worry about your hard drive getting, you know, heavier.

Web Squared: Skipping 3.0

O'Reilly and Battelle did a great job of driving home the idea that in today's universe of amazing software and hardware, the most important key to success is data. Powerful computers and efficient programs form a necessary foundation but, to me, are rendered useless without data. With an interest in both MIS (Management Information Systems) and Game Design, the take-away is simple: Successful products rely on consumer input.

Like a Facebook, a great MIS project or game only creates a framework; it is the actors (the purchasing company or gamer) who create value. Facebook, the social network leader, relies entirely on people using the product. Unlike a bicycle that still works whether or not someone is riding it at the moment, the quality of new internet applications is more similar to a boat where everyone needs to row to get anywhere.

To me though, collective action is not nearly as exciting as AR, or Actual Reality. Now that heads-up displays are less science fiction and more science fact, overlaying information about the world around us is, put simply, cool. The technology already exists, in fact. GPS units, micro-accelerometers, compasses, and the necessary computing power, can all come together to show much more information than we currently see. We just need to make it all smaller, weigh less, and cost less. These things will come with time, but for now, apps like Layar and Darkslide will start building up the data needed.