Chapter 5:

This chapter has two main topics: tagging and knowledge. Weinberger talks about the revolutionary concept of tagging particularly through del.ici.ous which tags web pages for sharing. Tagging shows the vastly different way of organization in the third order of order. The author uses the example of trees, branches, and leaves once again, but this time he says that digitally, an item can have many places, or leaves. Thus, the concept of tagging. Wikipedia is one of the greatest example of tagging, due to any user being able to add an html link into a page. This can move the user from place to place in a manner completely different from alphabetical order.

The next section of chapter 5 discusses the concept of knowledge. Previously, there have been four concepts of knowledge: That there is just one reality, knowledge is not ambiguous, no one person can comprehend knowledge, and experts achieve their position through working their way up through social institutions. The new knowledge has four very different concepts: filter on the way out, not in, or the changes blogging has done to publishing; put a leave on as many branches as possible, or tag as many items as possible so they show up on different search terms; everything is metadata and everything can be a label, or how labels can exceed the information itself, so to better find something label it extensively; and finally, give up control, or letting users divide information themselves. These four concepts are greatly different from the original concepts of knowledge and exemplify the miscellaneous.

Quotes:

“Likewise, in classification systems, an overstuffed miscellaneous category can be a sign that the system isn’t using all the relevant information” p. 87.

“These physical limitations on how we have organized information have not only limited our vision, they have also given the people who control the organization of information more power than those who create the information” p. 89

“Classifications make strange bedfellows” p. 90.

“Together these links constitute a web of knowledge, communally constructed, ever shifting, and frequently extraordinarily useful” p. 100.

Examples:

Even though one of the main examples of this chapter was Wikipedia, I still thought about this concept the most, particularly about how many professors hate Wikipedia and think it’s an awful source of information. The concepts of the miscellaneous seem to contradict this way of thinking immensely.
I also thought about how Twitter has exemplified the concept of ‘flagging’ and creating tags. This book was originally published in 2007, so maybe it was before Twitter became known.

Chapter 6:
This chapter seems to focus on how the miscellaneous is organized and categorized. It begins with a discussion of bar codes, which revolutionized grocery stores in the 1970s. They allowed for more efficiency and easy identification of the ‘miscellaneous’ items on the world. The bar code has now moved to a new technology – the RFID tag. These tags become the third order of order because they can hold so much more information than a bar code can.
The next section focuses on three main concepts. The 2-pronged strategy for going miscellaneous: include and postpone, and essentialism. The first concept is based in science because while everything is included, some information is postponed simply because there isn’t an agreement or consensus on it. Essentialism is the idea that everything is defined by clear and knowable traits that make it into what it is.
The chapter continues with books, particularly with a book ISBN. This is connected in many places from libraries to Amazon. The ISBN is a universal code that can be used in a variety of places. Finally, the chapter ends with a look at the potential future, with Microsoft’s AURA project. This project focuses on people being able to take a picture of a bar code and then get information from it via the internet that goes far beyond what the bar code’s information initially has.

Quotes
“And that’s a problem, because as the world becomes more miscellaneous, if we can’t pin something down, we can’t coalesce information around it” p 117.

“People keep pretending they can make things deeply hierarchical, categorizable, and sequential when they can’t” p. 125.

Examples
This chapter did not really inspire me to think of examples that weren’t already mentioned. I used to work in a grocery store as a checker, so it did make me think of how much easier my job is because of the invention of bar codes. I thought of RFID tags in clothing, particularly the ones with the ink in them to prevent stealing.