Why my messy apartment is like Wikipedia

Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder - David Weinberger
New York: Holt, 2007

The semester starts later this week. I guess I don't mind, but it's not something I'm looking forward to in the way that I used to look forward to the new quarter and my new classes. Maybe because I'm only taking one class, and because I'm doing it during my busy time at work. Anyway, to prepare, my professor asked us to read the book above, in order to get a perspective about the possibilities for information in the digital age.

Weinberger's got a little Malcolm Gladwell in him; he likes to use interesting anecdotes to illuminate a broader theory. In this case, the theme is that instead of having an order of a single place and category for everything, we can now assign things multiple places and categories, sorting and resorting them according to our own individual needs and wants at that moment. (Note to self: should tag blog posts and photos better)

This argument necessarily embraces a seeming paradox about the desireability of having a glut of information. For example, "if [businesses] make their information messier, it'll be easier to find" and (italics Weinberger's) "the solution to the overabundance of information is more information."

While talking about some of the most popular Web 2.0 sites out there (and the way other sites have incorporated similar strategies), Weinberger has also reminded me about how exciting it will be to be a social historian of this era, sorting through this messy and miscellaneous pile of information about ourselves and what we deem important. Flickr alone could keep a researcher going for years. (Of course, what a historian leaves out is almost as interesting as what she includes, and with all this information, there will be an awful lot to leave out.)

What will be truly interesting will be to see how Weinberger's analysis stands up over time, as the trends towards miscellany continue and shift, and maybe reverse. What will the online world look like in the future?