Blog Post #1

Prologue: This chapter is about an introduction to physical and digital organization. It begins with the example of Staple’s prototype lab, and how products are arranged. The lab is physical, and therefore is based on atoms – this makes space very limited in terms of shelving, store layout, and labeling of items. The people who work there study how customers wayfind. This is very important to study due to the limited physical space of the store.

The Staple’s prototype lab is then compared to the digital world. The organization of the store and the organization of information digitally can be very fundamentally different. This is because atoms no longer limit how items can be organized. This brings the author to the main concept of the book – that everything is miscellaneous.

Quotes: “Physical objects can be in only one spot at any one time” p. 5

“ As we invent new principles of organization that make sense in a world of knowledge free from physical constraints, information doesn’t just want to be free. It wants to be miscellaneous . p. 7

Examples: This chapter made me think about the organization of shelves in stores – often the most expensive items are eye-level. I also thought about the price tags on items – Not too much information, but not too little either.

Chapter 1: This chapter seems to describe the battle between the world of physical organization and the world of digital organization. It mentions the Library of Congress’s strenuous organization tactics and the Bettmann Archive’s organization of photos. From there it goes into the three orders of order – First: Organizing the things themselves, Second: Information about the objects themselves, and Third: The Digital organization where atoms are no object. The third order is the most important concept because it is a completely different way of organization. Corbis’s collection of digital images is an example of the third order of order. However, it is not the best example because it is still professionals making the organizational judgments for us.

Quotes: “The digital world thereby allows us to transcend the most fundamental rule of ordering the real world: Instead of everything having its place, it’s better if things can get assigned multiple places simultaneously.” P. 14

“The third order removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information” p. 19.

Examples: This chapters emphasis on photos made my think of my own “My Pictures” folder on my computer. I have mine organized into folders by event e.g. New Years 2009, camping trip. I thought about how the camera assigns a completely ambigious name to the photo (DCM00101). Weinberger seemed very annoyed with this, but since my computer can assign that number a thumbnail it doesn’t bother me at all. I don’t feel inclined to tag all the photos like on flickr. I wonder if this is more ‘second order’ or ‘third order.’

Chapter 2: This chapter spends the majority discussing the use of alphabetization to classify items. In the beginning of the chapter Weinberger discusses Charles Luthy, who wholly disagrees with the use of the alphabet as a way of organization. He felt that the order of letters was not natural and therefore tried to come up with an alphabet that was more natural. The main argument I saw against alphabetization was in the example with AAAAA Towing. They got to be put in the phonebook first because they ‘duped’ the system. Other than that, I had trouble drawing the problems with alphabetization. Honestly, I found this chapter rather annoying. Moving on: A guy named Mortimer Adler decided he hated the concept of alphabetization so much that he spent a large amount of time pissing off the rest of the board of Encyclopedia Britannica and trying to make them change their organizational structure. He essentially failed, but did manage to harass the board into allowing him to create the Propaedia, which organized by topic. The chapter then mentions the ‘joints of nature’ which is essentially the natural division of topics – they use the delightful topic of butchering an animal as an example. After this the chapter gets all theological with the ‘perfect order’ of things. “God left no holes in his organization.” Next, Weinberger reminds me of how the International Astronomical Union decided to kill Pluto as a planet in 2006. While it makes sense to have a classification system for planets, I didn’t like being reminded of the death of Pluto. The chapter ends with a discussion of the periodic table, and how there was a big battle over the charting of properties. In my opinion, while there were many different organizations of the periodic table mentioned, I think Moseley’s table works just fine: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Quotes: “The great joke is, of course, that Adler’s projects already feel hopelessly outdated. From the selection of the Great Books to the 102 Great Ideas to the confident way the Propaedia divides and links topics, it all seems so clearly rooted in one man’s vision of knowledge” p. 30-31.

“In the third order of order, though, ideas come unglued, Adler’s learned way of organizing the great books is of value, but other scholars shelve them differently, as may anyone who enters a bookstore to browse” p. 31.

Examples: This chapter made me think of the different ways information is organized physically and digitally. I think alphabetization works just find for some things like phone books, even if someone can ‘dupe’ the system most don’t. However this chapter made me notice how different digital organization is. For example, Amazon.com does not have topics organized from A to Z, instead they have topics and this is much more efficient for their retail purpose.