Shirky: Ontology is Overrated -- Categories, Links, and Tags - 0 views
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there is no shelf, and that there is no file system. Google can decide what goes with what after hearing from the user, rather than trying to predict in advance what it is you need to know.
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Carla Arena on 27 Jun 08This is exactly the idea of the Third order, the digital world, that things don't have the constraint of being in one single place. It can be in many different places at once. That's one there's no file system. Our "categories" are much more fluid.
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The signal benefit of these systems is that they don't recreate the structured, hierarchical categorization so often forced onto us by our physical systems. Instead, we're dealing with a significant break -- by letting users tag URLs and then aggregating those tags, we're going to be able to build alternate organizational systems, systems that, like the Web itself, do a better job of letting individuals create value for one another, often without realizing it.