>From The Filter, a publication of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
at Harvard Law School, December 2006
===================================================================================================================
>
> Folksonomy as Symbol
> ~David Weinberger
>
> It's easy to minimize the importance of folksonomies. These bottom-up
> taxonomies are just another tool in the kit. Besides, they've been
> around for a while, well before Thomas Vander Wal gave them a felicitous
> name. For example, at eBay a sellers' preference for 'laptop' over
> 'notebook' has emerged all by itself. In fact, isn't language itself the
> first folksonomy? Words evolve based on bottom-up usage. So, taxonomies
> are nothing new.
>
> If that's so, then we're led ever more forcefully to ask: Why the fuss?
> If folksonomies are old hat, why are we treating them like something
> fresh and important?
>
> Certainly, in part it's because folksonomies are particularly useful
> when there are lots of people trying to communicate about a shared set
> of resources and when there's no central authority that can stipulate
> the accepted vocabulary and canonical taxonomy. The Web is just such an
> environment. So, even though there have been folksonomies in the past,
> the Web has given them a big, whopping, important problem to solve. But,
> there are lots of innovations for dealing with the Web that have not
> excited the same degree of enthusiasm. Listmania at Amazon is new and
> interesting, but not spurring academic conferences. Ebay's trust system
> is important, but is generally being taken as a useful mechanism, not a
> change in how we think or how crowds operate. Something about
> folksonomies has struck a chord, generating interest beyond their
> benefits as navigational tools. Folksonomies seem to have a symbolic
> value.
>
> If a folksonomy is a symbol, what is it a symbol of?
>
> First, folksonomies stick it to The Man. We don't need no stinkin'
> experts to organize ideas and information! There is, of course,
> inefficiency built into expert-based taxonomies because they have to
> choose one way of ordering, and that one way is necessarily infested
> with personal, class, and cultural biases. As Clay Shirky says,
> "Metadata is worldview." But beyond the inefficiency, simply having
> someone else have the authority to say 'It shall be filed thus' is a
> statement of political authority. Even when the experts do a good job?as
> they usually do, because they're experts?it is still an implicit
> statement that someone else's way of thinking is better than yours.
>
> In the face of this, folksonomy says not just that we each have our own
> way, but that something useful emerges from it. Folksonomies are proof
> of the power of emergence. Emergence is a fascinating phenomenon because
> it explains complexity through intrinsic simplicity. For example,
> termites build complex towers by following rules so simple that they fit
> in a termite's brain. But there is also a political side to our interest
> in emergence, beyond its explanatory power. Emergence is hope. It says
> (or we take it as saying) that left to ourselves, without extrinsic
> structuring or regulation or governance, we will be magnificent. This is
> beyond the hope implicit in democracy that says a group will be able to
> live together if all are given equal power. We won't just live together,
> but something far beyond the capabilities of any of us will emerge.
> Simply by being together, cathedrals will emerge...
>
> The rest of Dr. Weinberger's essay can be found here:
> <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/home?wid=10&func=viewSubmission&sid=2541>
> ===================================================================================================================
>
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