Everything is Miscellaneous
November 13th, 2007by David Weinberger
ISBN:9780805080438
Weinberger is known for his ability to write about what’s happening on the web for an intelligent but not necessarily technical audience — first with others in The Cluetrain Manifesto, and then on his own with Small Pieces Loosely Joined. He’s got a knack for figuring out what’s important about how things on the web are moving and articulating why those things matter. He might be (judging from his conference speaking gigs, at any rate) a geek’s favorite web theorist/philosopher. See, we could give his books to our smart non-geek friends and then maybe they’d know why get so excited over what sounds, to them, like confusing jargon or Charlie Brown grownup-speak.
While not as passionate as Cluetrain, Miscellaneous still delivers a key message: the need to rethink atom-based assumptions about information, now that we’re living in the bit-based digital age. Michael Wesch, a digital ethnography professor, does a great job of explaining the book in his Information R/evolution video.
If you’ve been immersed in this world for awhile now (hint: you have a point of view on using folksonomies, you’ve had more than one fiery discussion on the merits of tagging) there won’t be much new here, but you’ll probably nod your head in agreement with Weinberger most, if not all, of the time. Recommended for info geeks (if for no reason other than everyone will expect you to have read it) and folks who are interested in the theory side of how/why tagging works and the challenges of information management in the the digital age.
