[Sigia-l] Google vs. Knowledge Management

[Jonathan Broad]

On Thu, 2003-01-30 at 23:31, Derek R wrote:
> Ziya Oz responded:
> >| Nail. Hammer. Direct hit --> This is the ultimate objective:
> >| end the tyranny of rigid categorization by the end user
> 
> That's right. Are we not yet tired of doing all this work 'computers'
> are supposed to be doing in the first place? 

I'm beginning to think some people on this list were beaten up by
librarians as children. :)

Stipulated: over-rigid hierarchical categorization, usually originally
intended to be used by a highly trained (under-paid) professional
"information gatekeeper", such as the Library of Congress Subject
Headings, isn't very friendly to street-level end-user.  

O.K.?

Please attend to the qualifications in that stipulation, though.  You
are beating a straw man otherwise.

Computers are mind-numbingly categorical (0 or 1 is the essence of a
category boundary).  How are computers to do their work if we do not
tell them what facets of the digital objects we want them to manipulate
are important?  Or related to what other facets?

> If we are 'evenly derived' and resist mis-appropriations (brought about
> by the affections) to mean more than we meant in order to facilitate
> 'finding' disproportionate to such knowledge (like Ziya's OS example) we
> will leave fanaticisms like categories, directories, and hierarchies
> behind and move forward, with confidence, being both real and natural.

Non-sense.  Categories are nothing but attributes of an object shared by
at least one other object, i.e. the label of a set.  The "affections"
you deride (with affectation) are the same "dispositions" you
mis-appropriated from Bordieu when you introduced yourself to this list.

Onanism. I'll grant that your philosophandering makes some sense when
designing information for the use of one person of whom you have perfect
knowledge. You can sit in the corner of your bedroom and say, with
reality and naturality, "Don't touch anything!  I know just where
everything is!"

Fanaticism?  Enough said.

> Everyone needs to ask themselves regarding 'categorical zeal' -- Who is
> running whom? Who is master and who is slave?

Don't bring Hegel into this.  It's pedantic.

> I don't want to have to 'alter' my behavior in order to use what the
> Internet/WWW promises. Freedom of information should be just that --
> freedom of information. Stop trying to 'help me' along!  I'm on to you!

How naive.  How useful would Napster be, if not for the category
"filename"?  Or the ad hoc *categories* and *naming conventions* that
sprang from milliard ripping software and user choices?  Users love
categories, love sorting and ordering.  Of course we should find ways of
supporting that organization, but there's a balance!  

Topic maps, for instance, will prove a powerful way of balancing the
idiosyncracies of individual mental models and the need for a lingua
franca.  Chock full of categories, are they.  But flexible!

> Only those wishing to create *industry for themselves* at the expense of
> relevance, pleasure, or utility for the user/person would wish such a
> bureaucratic monster into existence  -- i.e. making users
> jump-through-hoops like categories/directories/hierarchies.

You sound a bit like a Foucault-bot.  Stop fretting about the
disciplining and punishing!  Sure, technology is going to help us make
categorization more "user-friendly" and adaptive.  Is that your only
point?

> Information Architecture *must be* a fulfillment of revelation -- not an
> elaboration or complication.

Your tent-revivalism is at odds with your post-modernist stylings.  We
information architects are neither gods nor prophets.  We are craft
people.  There will always be those we fail to please, or inspire.  But
we concentrate on the many we can, using the same tools for
understanding that everyone else uses--categories.

> For me, this is what we know as 'truth' -- that a natural-occurring
> language/behavior is always the most adequate language/behavior, the
> most appropriate language/behavior. Nothing can be more exact and
> perfect than 'what is' -- which is to say that 'what is' (the sloppy,
> for instance) is 'purity' of language/behavior -- logically -- because
> it is true (observably so).

Very revealing.  All your utterances presuppose a singular encounter
between language and language-user.  Are you incapable of appreciating
the qualitative leap in complexity when you multiply language-instances
and -users?

> This is why Google and peer-to-peer
> work so well. Because nobody is monkeying with the content --
> you-get-what-you-asked-for. All-ways. Nothing has been orchestrated to
> some 'glorious' end (like Yahoo! directories, for instance). 'What is'
> is what is contemporaneous/available, namely, what has been *presented.*

Again, very mistaken.  Why do you think Google works?  Its strength
isn't as a full-text search engine.  Its genius is that it parasitizes
the insight of the individual human judgments of the link-makers who
created the page.  Let me repeat in case you missed
it--individual...human...judgments.

And peer-to-peer systems are steeped in metadata.  ID3 tags, anyone? 
Indeed, could be said that lack of metadata validation is one of the
choke points of the systems, as the RIAA hopes to exploit...

Tilting at windmills, you are.

Jonathan Broad