SV: [Sigia-l] Classification is an essential skill

[Gunnar Langemark]

> In my experience, to be able to classify (categorize) well is an
> essential
> skill of the information architect.

It's an essential skill of being human. How would anybody make sense of the
world without distinction!
Kinds - Genres - they are all categories.

This fact does not negate another fact, that categories have both social,
cultural and other "contextual" aspects to them.

Example:
What I call the color "orange" my mother would have called "red" or if
lighter in shade "yellow" (all in Danish though). It is not because my
mother didn't know colors or wasn't able to distinguish (she was a
professionally trained graphics artist), but because the cultural setting
was different when she formed her "color categorization system". For
instance oranges were not that common in Denmark at that time, and the
influence from other languages like English was not as profound in the
thirties and forties. The point of this example is not that a distinction
has changed labels. The point is that a "new" label is introduced into the
color-continuum - wedged in between two older labels.

Another color example:
A new standard for wireless is called "Bluetooth" after a Danish Viking
king. He was called Bluetooth because he had a black tooth. If you don't
believe me, I can ad that the Vikings called the Africans "Bluemen"! So they
actually did not distinguish between blue and black. Why not? Perhaps
because blue was a very rare color before artificial colors were invented by
the French and the Germans, so you did not have much need for this
distinction.

:)

Gunnar