A new world disorder

I've just finished reading David Weinberger's new book "Everything Is Miscellaneous." This was one of those rare books that challenged the way I think and made me want to share it almost immediately. You can read the prologue and first chapter for free on his site.

The book deals with man's tendency to want things neatly classified into categories, explaining how different ways of organizing information have evolved over time. Weinberger romps through the history of thought, moving from Aristotle to the future of the internet, by way of such classic "organizers" as Linnaeus, Dewey, and Amazon.com. Along the way, he covers elements of philosophy, biology, and library history, ultimately defining what he refers to as the three orders of order.

Oversimplifying a bit, think about it this way:
The "first order" of order is about organizing things. We put books on shelves, clothing in closets, and our music CDs in cabinets.

The "second order" of order is about making it easier to find the stuff we've organized. We sort books by type and then by author, and we store winter clothing separate from our summer clothes. We categorize and file CDs as Jazz, Classical, or Rock. Then the whole thing falls apart, when we find that Moody Blues album made with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. Is it Classical or Rock? It can only be filed in one place, so where does it go?

Both the first and second orders of order deal with organizing physical things in space. The third order deals with our brave new digital world, where information can be organized free from physical constraints.

The "third order" recognizes that knowledge doesn't necessarily fit into a top-down view that's exactly the same for everyone. Computers free us to sort and categorize things in a way that makes sense to us. When I visit an online store, I want to see products categorized by the manufacturer. You might prefer to see them organized by price. You say toMAYto, I say tomAHto, and we can both be right.

This is where Weinberger really take flight. "Everything in its place" is no longer valid. It's now "Everything has its places." As he points out, you can "hang a leaf on many branches" in the trees of knowledge. And you can do this because "we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established categorizations with ease."

Weinberger says, "Knowledge - its content and its organization - is becoming a social act." (Let's pause a moment here to think about Wikipedia.) Ultimately, it's OK if everything is miscellaneous, because we can find - and structure - it the way we want.

We now accept that "Knowledge comes in gradations and varieties." It's messy, it changes, and we need to learn to deal with that. Using a computer, you can identify that CD as both Classical and Rock.

This book will make you think; you should come away from it wanting to discuss it with a friend. It's intelligent, readable, and even funny, and it describes how we will need to rejigger the way we think about information in the future.

Think playlists, think Flickr, think hyperlinks, think tagging, think taxonomy. Think about what search approach and which way of organizing works best for you. Chances are, you'll be able to use it soon on your favorite web sites.