Everything Is Miscellaneous-Response Ch. 5 & 6

Chapter 5

Chapter 5 focusses on the ways in which organization can begin to breakdown and become useless over time. Like most organizational levels, as new technology emerge, old technologies become outdated and further from regular use. What chapter 5 talks about is the way in which this happens.

Quotes: “That’s why its so powerful to let users mix it up themselves.” (Talking about metadata organization). pg.105

“Tagging grew out of a very personal need.” pg. 92

“The new rules of the information jungle are in effect, transforming the landscape in which we work, buy, learn, vote, and play.” pg. 106

In chapter five I enjoyed the part where Weinberger talked about going into a clothing store and sorting the items in your size all at once. While this would be the logical way to do this, this is clearly not the way it is set up and can therefore make it difficult to rationalize any order from shopping.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is based around bar codes and their uses. It discusses the ways in which they were initially implemented and the ways in which they have served an organizational purpose. It goes into the parts of store organization and the ways in which bar codes made them more efficient.

Quotes: “But putting the “universal” into UPC requires some work.” pg. 109

“A world of ideas and knowledge, more than we could ever absorb, is waiting for us, carefully indexed in those neat rows of drawers.” pg. 118-119

The part of the chapter that talked about taking a picture of a bar code with your phone reminded me of the iphone app I have that lets me do that. I think that this is one of the greatest technologies relating to bar codes on a consumer level. It allows me to access prices and reviews so that I can compare them with the product I am looking at.

Everything Is Miscellaneous-Response 1

Prologue: The prologue starts the book out with a conversation about store layout. This leads to information organization, a point which seems to be the header of this chapter; Information organization and layout in a digital world.

Favorite Quote: A quote I found interesting was what Medill said about customers movements with the store. "In a physical store, ease of access to information can be measured with a pedometer, and each step i precious.

This introduction to information layout reminded me of when I was in staples last week and literally did the exact steps Medill described. I walked in about 9-12' and then stood and scanned the area for the most relevant information.

Chapter 1: This chapter talks mostly about understanding the new order of a digital world. It discusses the way we through out old notions in order to bring new ones into our digital lives.

Favorite Quote: "The digital revolution in organization sweeps beyond how we ding odd photos and beyond how we organize our businesses' information assets."

This chapter reminded me about how I organize my digital life. When I was a sophomore in college I used to spend hours organizing my itunes library so that it was both well organized and visually stimulating. I found it interesting to see the way that order makes so much more sense to me personally than most other formats.

Chapter 2: This chapter is mainly focusing on alphabetization and how it became what it is today, and further more, the way it effects our lives in both the physical and digital world. The chapter discusses the origins and meanings of our well know alphabet.

Favorite Quotes: "Arbitrary organizational schemes such as alphabetization make a virtue out of ignoring the joints. But our categorizations of animals into species, species into races, animals into sexes, heavenly bodies into planets, and atoms into elements reflect real, existing joints in nature..."

This reminds me of when I am trying to organize random files for the semester that I cannot categorize due to there lack of reference to any other files I have. It seems that I tend to take them from miscellaneous to alphabetical in order to make them referenced later.