David Weinberger on how to order information in a digital world
On the Dutch blog of a fellow student, Maarten Mansszat, I found this nice link. It’s a lecture of David Weinberger on how to order information in a digital world.
http://webcast.oii.ox.ac.uk/?view=Webcast&ID=20051130_109
Abstract from site:
“..David Weinberger proposes that in the digital world, the most “natural,” efficient and responsive way to manage knowledge is to create huge, distributed piles of leaves, each tagged with as much metadata as possible - including treating the content as metadata - and postponing until the last minute the taxonomizing of the information. What will be the social effects as we move from trees to piles of leaves?”
I agree on Weinberger’s view on information ordering. Nesting makes sense in the real world, but tagging makes more sense in the digital world. Also, the multi-subjective quality is really important in creating what he calls “good enough” information. It’s not perfect objectivity, but who’s to say what objectivity is?
The experts are the most valued and trusted persons to give near objective information. The problem is, there are not enough experts to check every charity in the world. I want to be able to search and find a small charity that fits my intentions. And when I find it, I’d like the multi-subjective quality assessment of the community to give me some “good enough” information on the trustability of this charity.
Helpalot must thrive on this multi-subjectiveness and for findability it needs to include (some sort of) tags. Next month I’ll have a clear concept, including more details about searching and tagging on the site.
Link: Blog of David Weinberger