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Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, ever...more
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published
May 1st 2007
by Times Books
(first published January 1st 2007)
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Mostly I learned that Weinberger hasn't been paying attention.
Clay Shirky's article in 2005 on ontologies said it earlier, more succintly, and with less self-aggrandizement. Any man (and yes, I mean Weinberger) who gets halfway through a book that he starts by deriding librarians and then tries to reinvent Ranganathan while hoping that if he shoves in a couple of nifty anecdotes about the man librarians won't notice he's having to backtrack rapidly has missed the point, the boat, an...more
Clay Shirky's article in 2005 on ontologies said it earlier, more succintly, and with less self-aggrandizement. Any man (and yes, I mean Weinberger) who gets halfway through a book that he starts by deriding librarians and then tries to reinvent Ranganathan while hoping that if he shoves in a couple of nifty anecdotes about the man librarians won't notice he's having to backtrack rapidly has missed the point, the boat, an...more
BookBitch
added it
People like to ask me about books - I've been asked to name my favorite books, the books I would take to a desert island, and the books that have changed my life. My favorites change from year to year, I would need an entire cruise ship to fill with enough books to sustain me on a desert island, and while books in general have changed my life, I've never had any sort of epiphany while reading, at least not that I can recall. Until now. Reading Everything is Miscellaneous gave me my moment. I...more
Jenne
rated it
Recommends it for:
civilians; librarians who have been living under a rock for the last 5 years
As far as I got, anyway, the author has one thing he wants to tell you in this book: faceted classification is awesome, and now that more things are digitized, we can actually use it.
(Faceted classification is where something is categorized in more than one place, e.g. how you can put a book on more than one Goodreads shelf, as opposed to in real life where it can only be in one physical location)
I kept skipping chapters to see if he had anything else to say, but if he d...more
(Faceted classification is where something is categorized in more than one place, e.g. how you can put a book on more than one Goodreads shelf, as opposed to in real life where it can only be in one physical location)
I kept skipping chapters to see if he had anything else to say, but if he d...more
What I love MOST about this book are the AWESOMELY hysterical reviews from librarians or Information Science (IA) folk. People who subsequently find themselves more and more affected by the very forces they find so objectionable in this book.
This book deserves a read and rates almost as highly as the Clue Train manifesto. Here's a few choice quotes:
"The result is a startling change in our culture's belief that truth means accuracy, effectiveness requires adherence ...more
This book deserves a read and rates almost as highly as the Clue Train manifesto. Here's a few choice quotes:
"The result is a startling change in our culture's belief that truth means accuracy, effectiveness requires adherence ...more
If there was such a thing as a new technology positivism, then Weinberger could be painted with the label of "positivist." He is so in favor of all things "miscellaneous" - especially online - that this book almost reads like a tract in boosterism for the companies he uses as examples (a charge he tries to head off in his footnotes by admitting that he does indeed work as a consultant for many of said companies). I thought the book was easy to read and I liked Weinberger's di...more
To review this as I experienced it or as I think others would?
This book was published in 2007, the year I finished library school, and presents an overview of classification and metadata issues in a surprisingly entertaining way. It's a good introduction to what librarians actually deal with. (To wit: Not the Dewey Decimal system. Not alphabetizing or stamping anything.) The author introduces different levels of classification. First, the items themselves (say, books on a shelf). Th...more
This book was published in 2007, the year I finished library school, and presents an overview of classification and metadata issues in a surprisingly entertaining way. It's a good introduction to what librarians actually deal with. (To wit: Not the Dewey Decimal system. Not alphabetizing or stamping anything.) The author introduces different levels of classification. First, the items themselves (say, books on a shelf). Th...more
originally reviewed on my blog:
I just finished reading1 David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and I find it to be a pretty engaging description of how the state of knowledge evolved with time, and now it has given me a chance to write down some thoughts.
The basic gist of the book is that knowledge is no longer tied to the physical (e.g. books), which used to limit how one went about organizing and finding it (e.g. Dewey decimal system). Now we can attach as much meta...more
I just finished reading1 David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous and I find it to be a pretty engaging description of how the state of knowledge evolved with time, and now it has given me a chance to write down some thoughts.
The basic gist of the book is that knowledge is no longer tied to the physical (e.g. books), which used to limit how one went about organizing and finding it (e.g. Dewey decimal system). Now we can attach as much meta...more
A Celebration of Digital Disorder!
or
Hurray for Computers!
This was a pretty fun book. At time it felt not-particularly-deep, but I think that may have been mostly toward the beginning, where sure a thing makes sense.
A couple of quotes I pulled out, for whatever reason:
p. 119: The digital world... has never met a piece of information it didn't like - and couldn't put to work.
p. 197-8: Every triple, every playlist, every hyperlink adds val...more
or
Hurray for Computers!
This was a pretty fun book. At time it felt not-particularly-deep, but I think that may have been mostly toward the beginning, where sure a thing makes sense.
A couple of quotes I pulled out, for whatever reason:
p. 119: The digital world... has never met a piece of information it didn't like - and couldn't put to work.
p. 197-8: Every triple, every playlist, every hyperlink adds val...more
We as a society are still making the transition from a physical, hard copy information world, to a digital information world. Not only does this impact our ability to create and access information, but it impacts the way we organize information, and in ways that are fundamentally different from how we have organized in the past.
This is David Weinberger's theory in the book Everything is Miscellaneous. He does an excellent job of showing the ways that we have internalized the organizing of ...more
This is David Weinberger's theory in the book Everything is Miscellaneous. He does an excellent job of showing the ways that we have internalized the organizing of ...more
Amazon.com has Melvil Dewey rolling over in his grave. In the digital age, it is no longer possible or desirable to classify information in only one category. There is no longer a discrete place on the shelf for each book. Instead, we find the 'miscellanizing of information" in which information is categorized in any number of different ways for any different number of users. Instead of searching for a book in a catalog using a controlled vocabulary and author and title, the new user ma...more
This book was dedicated to librarians; today many of them employed by the variety of industries as the "Knowledge specialists". This book explains why this change in title is happening .The book is about our relation with information and how we access and categorise knowledge differently in the digital era. It is about a move from order to miscellaneous, from Dewey system to numerous databases, social networks and on-line encyclopedias. It is about chaos that creates an amazing surge i...more
An amazing journey into new ways of organizing information
More than ever, knowledge is power, and as computerization and digitalization reshape society, the way knowledge is organized dictates how people obtain it and apply it. In this fascinating book, philosophy professor David Weinberger chronicles the history of changes in access to knowledge. He shows how Internet-based enterprises such as iTunes and Wikipedia reflect new rules of knowledge organization. This intellectually pro...more
More than ever, knowledge is power, and as computerization and digitalization reshape society, the way knowledge is organized dictates how people obtain it and apply it. In this fascinating book, philosophy professor David Weinberger chronicles the history of changes in access to knowledge. He shows how Internet-based enterprises such as iTunes and Wikipedia reflect new rules of knowledge organization. This intellectually pro...more
A very interesting book.
The basic thesis is that up until the advent of digital information technology, we (humans) have ordered and organized our world either by first order rules (we put actual things in their proper places) or second order rules (we put things in their proper places and then create things like labelling systems and card catelogues to tell us where to find them. Things had one proper place in a schema — think of Linnaean system for classifying for classifying animal...more
The basic thesis is that up until the advent of digital information technology, we (humans) have ordered and organized our world either by first order rules (we put actual things in their proper places) or second order rules (we put things in their proper places and then create things like labelling systems and card catelogues to tell us where to find them. Things had one proper place in a schema — think of Linnaean system for classifying for classifying animal...more
There are some concepts in this book that I'm on board with, namely that tagging and loosely defined ontologies associated with items make those items easier to find digitally. I also think that searching for meaning, vs. information, is a great pursuit. I came away from reading this book discouraged at the thought of the Internet circa 2010 providing that sort of meaning.
Not only are semantic connections between documents on the Internet weakly established, but they are hardly used,...more
Not only are semantic connections between documents on the Internet weakly established, but they are hardly used,...more
David Weinberger is one of those rare individuals who can pull together bits of knowledge from areas most of us would consider dissimilar and show an intricate web of connection. While I picked the book up because of my fascination with the subject, digital disorder, I found myself even more engrossed in following Weinberger's ease of talking about topics as varied as Shakespeare, silverware and shopping. I find my ideas about alphabetization and the Dewey Decimal system challenged more fundamen...more
Both Nicholas Carr's The Big Switch and David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous tackle the same essential question: what happens when the whole world puts all of it's information on the same network? Carr focuses on the trend toward centralized computing to make sense of mass quantities of information as cheaply and efficiently a possible. Weinberger aims his focus at new attempts to organize, categorize, and make sense of the information. I feel that both books also share the same weakne...more
Jennifer
rated it
How is the digital world organized? Is there a set of appropriate criteria? Weinberger explains how the metadata we apply to our information with the use of tags, descriptions, and reviews like this, not only give it private meaning, but adds to the meaning of the whole. Weinberger’s style, illustrations, and wit make this topic entertaining and powerful. He illustrates how the basic rules of order have changed in the information age. The power to organize and define data, content, and context i...more
His thesis is that the information available on the web is very different that what preceded it. Partly because now more information is better---you can have more info about a thing than the thing itself, and that's still good. And that's better because each individual can arrange info to suit their own needs. Nobody's dependent on someone else to put it "right," and the physical world doesn't get in the way of putting things on the same "shelf." A long and interesting de...more
Three stars, not for content and execution of the book, but for the discussions generated. Would have given it 2 stars max otherwise. Too repetitious, should have been condensed into one article, and not really as ground-breaking or revelatory as the author seems to think. Even way back in 2006, the positive aspects of wikipedia and the internet were not unknowns. Others have covered those points already.
One of my issues with the book pertains to certain fallacies sprinkled throug...more
One of my issues with the book pertains to certain fallacies sprinkled throug...more
Absolutely ridiculous book, for exactly the opposite reason as The Cult of the Amateur. As a librarian his laissez faire approach to information categorization and storage made me physically ill.
This author makes some excellent arguments for the wisdom of the tags on the internet and the potential they have for re-ordering anything at a stroke of the keys. I really enjoyed his humor and his tales about classifiers such as Dewey (Dui to his pre-professional friends), Ranganathan, Mendeleev and Railsback. Taking organization out of a two-dimensional model on paper(s) and putting into machines with the ability to sift, sort, and amaze at the juxtapositions that come into focus by the large...more
From atoms to bits and how we all can add and retrieve information in the third order.
Dewey, Wikipedia, del.icio.us and much, much more.
Dewey, Wikipedia, del.icio.us and much, much more.
Reading this as a librarian gives it a special twist. Fascinating book with lots of insite and every page reminds us librarians that in this digital age we are not gatekeeprs or even guides, we are helpers and facilitators, and if we are anything else we will be irrelevent. Whether it is reference, readers advisory, cataloging or whatever, people now are used to having access to information, and more importantly, control over how that information is organized and presented. And there is one pri...more
I really enjoyed the book. As someone who tags everything and is really focused on keeping my iPhoto library organized the concepts presented really appealed to me. I'd jumped into tagging and never considered the fact that it does hide other information. Yet another example of extremes - somewhere in the middle is a happy medium.
A couple of things that stuck with me:
- Wikis reduce emails by about 75%; I want to test this theory in real life!
- The discussion of org char...more
A couple of things that stuck with me:
- Wikis reduce emails by about 75%; I want to test this theory in real life!
- The discussion of org char...more
Interesting, but not terrific. I guess because it was published in 2007 -- so what might have been a mind-opener back then, it is now a pretty obvious account of the "digital disorder".
The overall argument is that the new digital disorder (the third order) can bring us a lot of advantages. Very briefly, the first order is the one of the physical objects; the second order is connected to some cataloged/archived information about the object (e.g. a library card catalogue); a...more
The overall argument is that the new digital disorder (the third order) can bring us a lot of advantages. Very briefly, the first order is the one of the physical objects; the second order is connected to some cataloged/archived information about the object (e.g. a library card catalogue); a...more
from the library c2007 there is pressure on this book at the library so I will reask in 18 weeks
from the library computer:
Summary: Philosopher Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives. Human beings constantly collect, label, and organize data--but today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demand...more
from the library computer:
Summary: Philosopher Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives. Human beings constantly collect, label, and organize data--but today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demand...more
Weinberger discusses the "three orders of order" at length in this book that brings together practice and theory of knowledge management, library science, computer science, and other organizational related disciplines. These "three orders" are basically the first order of a file cabinet or archive or pile of papers, the second order of a file cabinet with an index to the files inside (or a card catalog for a library), and the third order of digital miscellany, which incorpora...more
Totally thought-provoking. My brain is full when I think about the things we deal with every day in the land of information overload...and this summed it all up nicely.
I think anyone who works with information, including librarians, software geeks, etc. would appreciate the ideas about how things are changing as we are increasingly able to manipulate information and put it in an order that makes sense to US, not necessarily how it "should" be organized.
When I w...more
I think anyone who works with information, including librarians, software geeks, etc. would appreciate the ideas about how things are changing as we are increasingly able to manipulate information and put it in an order that makes sense to US, not necessarily how it "should" be organized.
When I w...more
The internet has prompted a revolution in information science. This book is about the emerging methods of finding information. These methods are applied to locating music (iTunes), books (Amazon and WorldCat), real estate (Zillow and PropSmart), photographs (Flickr), encyclopedias of information (Wickipedia), used stuff of every sort (eBay), and the list goes on.
Weinberger sets for three orders of information. The first order is the arrangement of things (books alphabetical on a shel...more
Weinberger sets for three orders of information. The first order is the arrangement of things (books alphabetical on a shel...more
As a librarian, I try to read books about the current evolutionary changes our profession is undergoing. This book had been recommended to me by a library blogger who I frequent daily. The author was also a co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto," which I found fluffy and empty, mainly because it dealt with marketing and the "changing paradigms" of business. This book, however, was much better.
Weinberger takes us through the new digital hyperworld of Web 2.0 and...more
Weinberger takes us through the new digital hyperworld of Web 2.0 and...more
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