everything is miscellaneous

Overview• The author• Key messages

– Discussion about the book• Implications for education

– Discussion• Conclusion and activity

About• Co-author of the best-seller The Cluetrain Manifesto, The author of the critically-

acclaimed Small Pieces Loosely Joined: A Unified Theory of the Web. • He has a fellowship at Harvard Law's Berkman Center for the Internet & Society• Has been published in a wide variety of journals, including Wired, Harvard Business

Review, The New York Times, Smithsonian, The Guardian...even TV Guide.• Was Senior Internet Advisor to the Howard Dean campaign• Called a "marketing guru" by the Wall Street Journal• Is a strategic marketing consultant to big name companies, as well as to small,

innovative ones.• Wrote gags for Woody Allen for seven years• Has a Ph.D. in philosophy and was a college professor for 6 years• Has been a frequent commentator on National Public Radio's All Things Considered• Writes a column for Knowledge Management World and Il Sole 24 ore • Is a well-known blogger • Has been a dot-com entrepreneur and serves on the advisory boards of some well-

known and some not-yet-known tech companies• Is frequently cited by national and international news media • Lives in Boston

Hello

“Hello! Thanks for discussing my book. I'm eager to see what you makeof it, especially since it is fairly open-ended. (My  email isself@evident.com. Don't hesitate!)

Best,

David W.”

Key messages

• The laws around things change when they become digital

• Filter on the way out, not the way in• Categorisation is doomed• Bottom up is the only way to cope

Information & the physical

“In a physical store, ease of access to information can be measured with a pedometer”

Cf.

Things we take for granted

• In physical space, some things are nearer than others• Physical objects can only be in one place at one time• Physical space is shared• Human physical abilities are limited• Organisation needs to be orderly and neat

The music industry analogy

The music industry analogy

"For decades we've been buying albums. We thought it was for artistic reasons, but it was really because the economics of the physical world required it: Bundling songs into long-playing albums lowered the production, marketing, and distribution costs ... As soon as music went digital, we learned that the natural unit of music is the track.

What does the record company do?• Market• Find/Filter• Produce physical product• Handle logistics required for physical product

And when it goes digital?

Users handle logistics

Users share

Artists produce cheaply

Artists sell directly

Social services provide filter function

Conc: why do we need a record industry?

The importance of categories

In the physical world categories matter

“We invest so much time in making sure our world isn’t miscellaneous in part because disorder is inefficient”

“We’ve been raised as experts at keeping our physical environment well ordered, but our homespun ways of maintaining order are going to break”

Scale changes things

Conclusion: “The solution to the overabundance of information is more information”

Things in multiple places

1st gen – we mapped physical, we put files in folders

2nd gen – we use multiple terms to describe files and search

The same thing can be in several places at once

Libraries – books can only be in one category, because they’re physical

The order of order

1st order – need to organise the objects themselves

2nd order – physical objects separate info from actual object, e.g. catalog

3rd order – digital, content and its info

“We have entire industries built on the fact that the paper order severely limits how things can be organised. Museums, educational curricula, newspapers, the travel industry, and television schedules are all based on the assumption that in the 2nd order world we need experts to go through information, ideas, and knowledge and put them neatly away”

Amazon vs. Libraries

The absurdity of the Dewey system

There is no perfect classification

Physical limitations

Have to learn a system

A whole range of metrics and paths

There is your classification

No limitations

The system learns about you

New classification

“Classification is a power struggle – it is political – because the first two orders of order require that there be a winner”

Tagging – use any terms that are useful to you

Folksonomies – bottom up taxonomy

Data mining – we find relationships between item

Four new strategies

Filter on the way out, not the way in

Put each leaf on as many branches as possible

Everything is metadata and everything can be a label

Give up control

Discussion

Michael Wesch video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CV05HyAbM

Do you agree with Weinberger’s analysis?

What are the important messages?

For education

Wikipedia vs Britannica

Digg vs Newspapers

Stumbleupon vs Journals

Is it an either/or?

Granularity

Size of courses

Size of publications

Socially constructed knowledge

“Our children are doing their homework socially even though they’re graded and tested as if they’re doing their work in isolation booths”

Assessment

What are we teaching?

Messiness

Education is about order, filtering stuff out

But in the 3rd order the more you add the greater the value, because you can’t predict use

What sort of content do we produce, promote, reward

Authority

The removal of the filter

Democratisation of authority

Can the new metrics be cheated?

Are they more reliable than the old ones?

A small example

Weinberger, D. (2007) Everything is miscellaneous: The power of the new digital disorder. Times books.

““Classification is a power struggle – it is political – because the first two orders of order require that there be a winner”

ISBN-13 9780805080438

Discussion

What do the four strategies mean for education:

Filter on the way out, not the way in

Put each leaf on as many branches as possible

Everything is metadata and everything can be a label

Give up control

ActivityWrite 3 words that describe the book

Social construction via Twitter

Let’s cloud tag it! http://tagcrowd.com/