David Weinberger's 'Everything is Miscellaneous' - so far, so fantastic

I'm just over half-way through reading David Weinberger's new book, Everything is Miscellaneous.

The blurb on the dust-jacket tells me that the book "shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives".

In a way that's spot on but in a way is does no justice to the actual power of the book.

Weinberger looks at some of the concepts we're currently familiar with - such as tagging images or searching for books on Amazon and arranging our favourite blog posts using del.icio.us - and links this to a much wider revolution in information production, storage and retrieval.

Working from Aristotle to the present digital environment Weinberger touches on how information production and knowledge-formation is changing dramatically and will call into question the way institutions - from businesses to Government - operate.

Indeed this may well have the potential to re-shape civil society as we know it.

Four key take-away points so far:

1. Filter [information] on the way out, not on the way in;
2. Put each leaf [of info] on as many [organising] branches as possible;
3. Everything is metadata and everything can be a label
4. Give up control

I'm looking forward to finishing the book and seeing what others make of it.

Nick Carr has already trashed it before reading all of it; but Mayfield's on with it and McIntosh is too.

Technorati tags: David+Weinberger; Everything+is+Miscellaneous; information; digital+revolution; book+reviews

Comments

[Wholesale]

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