Weblogsky: Tagsonomy and "out of control"

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Tagsonomy and "out of control"

Smart people like Liz Lawley and Clay Shirky (both blogging at Many2Many) have been talking about "folksonomy" or (as Liz labels the concept) "social tagging," and Clay makes a great point:

But this is where the �acceptance� half comes in. It doesn�t matter whether we �accept� folksonomies, because we�re not going to be given that choice. The mass amateurization of publishing means the mass amateurization of cataloging is a forced move. I think Liz�s examination of the ways that folksonomies are inferior to other cataloging methods is vital, not because we�ll get to choose whether folksonomies spread, but because we might be able to affect how they spread, by identifying ways of improving them as we go.

To put this metaphorically, we are not driving a car, with gas, brakes, reverse and a lot of choice as to route. We are steering a kayak, pushed rapidily and monotonically down a route determined by the enviroment. We have a (very small) degree of control over our course in this particular stretch of river, and that control does not extend to being able to reverse, stop, or even significantly alter the direction w�re moving in.

Cory extends the metaphor to other aspects of the evolving net-driven media ecology:

These paragraphs could just as readily apply to changes in copyright, lossily compressed music, or spam: they are characteristics inherent in the ecology itself. The discussion needs to center around how to exist in their presence, not how to change them.

One of my friends who'd done est once gave me a tape by Werner Erhard, and a comment from that tape stuck with me despite my skepticism about est in general: Erhard talked about shooting the rapids, and how you have to be "totally in control out of control." That's generally how to exist in their presence, I think. We can't control the evolving media or information ecology, but we have some control over our relationship with it, and that's significant.

Thinking about how this all relates to cointelligence , the wisdom of crowds, and extreme democracy. Also smart mobs. A common argument against democracy is about tyranny of the majority or mob rule, but there's some evidence that "mobs" can be more intelligent than their individual members. Perhaps what I'm calling media ecology is a social ecology, and the collective thinking/action that drives it is more intelligent than I often think.

jon posted this at 5:29 AM
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