Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Times Books (2007), Edition: First Edition, Hardcover, 288 pages
Description
Philosopher Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives. Human beings constantly collect, label, and organize data--but today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Everything is suddenly miscellaneous. Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. He examines how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children's teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future.--From publisher description. From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think - and what you know - about the world. Includes information on alphabetical order, Amaxon.com, animals, Aristotle, authority, Bettmann Archive, blogs (weblogs), books, broadcasting, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), business, card catalog, categories and categorization, clusters, companies, Colon Classification, conversation, Melvil Dewey, Dewey Decimal Classification system, Encyclopaedia Britannica, encyclopedia, essentialism, experts, faceted classification system, first order of order, Flickr.com, Google, Great Books of the Western World, ancient Greeks, health and medical information, identifiers, index, inventory tracking, knowledge, labels, leaf and leaves, libraries, Library of Congress, links, Carolus Linnaeus, lumping and splitting, maps and mapping, marketing, meaning, metadata, multiple listing services (MLS), names of people, neutrality or neutral point of view, New York Public Library, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), order and organization, people, physical space, everything having place, Plato, race, S.R. Ranganathan, Eleanor Rosch, Joshua Schacter, science, second order of order, simplicity, social constructivism, social knowledge, social networks, sorting, species, standardization, tags, taxonomies, third order of roder, topical categorization, tree, Uniform Product Code (UPC), users, Jimmy Wales, web, Wikipedia, etc.… (more)
Media reviews
"Anyone who has ever seen a computer program will know how much work is involved in creating the modules and functions through which the ordering is accomplished and this is the real big story: not that 'everything is miscellaneous', which is a pretty trite observation, but that disorder can be
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managed by software." Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member PhoenixTerran
Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing, has declared David Weinberger to be its patron saint. And I, as a self professed LibraryThing addict, of course had to read his book Everything Is Miscellaneous. Plus, it's right up my professional alley of information science. In fact, it could have very well
Weinberger outlines three "orders of order." The first order is how we organize objects themselves; where and how they are placed physically. The second order is select information about those objects that is gathered and organized physically (an example being the good ol' library card catalog). In the third order, this information has become digital and is no longer subject to physical constraints; it has become dynamic.
From the book's title, I expected Weinberger to focus more on this third order than he did. Although it was helpful, and even important, to explain and give concrete (and anecdotal, for that matter) examples of the first and second orders, he seemed to get kind of stuck there. All very interesting, rest assured, but not exactly what I was hoping for or expecting. Instead of giving in-depth information on what the third order can do, it seemed to me that he spent most of his time detailing what the second order could not. He also isn't very specific in how the third order is accomplished in a useful way. He does give some general examples, and alludes to what it could all mean, but I didn't find much new or concrete in his arguments.
I wouldn't describe his writing as witty, but it was certainly approachable and at times even amusing. A fairly decent overview, certainly nothing too terribly in-depth, and fairly quick and easy to read. I had a little trouble at times knowing exactly what he was talking about because he didn't always define the terms he was using very well. Overall though, pretty good and worthwhile; I'll be holding onto my copy.
Experiments in Reading
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been an overview of many of the concepts covered in my foundation courses at the University of Michigan's School of Information. That being said, it isn't really an introduction to those concepts; unless readers already have some subject familiarity, they probably won't find the book to be particularly enlightening, but instead confusing (especially as he doesn't always define his language very well).Weinberger outlines three "orders of order." The first order is how we organize objects themselves; where and how they are placed physically. The second order is select information about those objects that is gathered and organized physically (an example being the good ol' library card catalog). In the third order, this information has become digital and is no longer subject to physical constraints; it has become dynamic.
From the book's title, I expected Weinberger to focus more on this third order than he did. Although it was helpful, and even important, to explain and give concrete (and anecdotal, for that matter) examples of the first and second orders, he seemed to get kind of stuck there. All very interesting, rest assured, but not exactly what I was hoping for or expecting. Instead of giving in-depth information on what the third order can do, it seemed to me that he spent most of his time detailing what the second order could not. He also isn't very specific in how the third order is accomplished in a useful way. He does give some general examples, and alludes to what it could all mean, but I didn't find much new or concrete in his arguments.
I wouldn't describe his writing as witty, but it was certainly approachable and at times even amusing. A fairly decent overview, certainly nothing too terribly in-depth, and fairly quick and easy to read. I had a little trouble at times knowing exactly what he was talking about because he didn't always define the terms he was using very well. Overall though, pretty good and worthwhile; I'll be holding onto my copy.
Experiments in Reading
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LibraryThing member johnxlibris
I think the following quotation from the end of the book captures the spirit of Weinberger's work and illustrates the Internet's effect on knowledge, information management, and implicit meaning.
"For the first time, we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established
If that quotation excites you, then I recommend you read this book.
"For the first time, we have an infrastructure that allows us to hop over and around established
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categorizations with ease. We can make connections and relationships at a pace never before imagined. We are doing so together. We are doing so in public. Every hyperlink and every playlist enriches our shared miscellany, creating potential connections that we can't often anticipate. Each connection tells us something about the connected things, about the person who made the connection, about the culture in which a person could make such a connection, about the sorts of people who find that connection worth noticing. This is how meaning grows. Whether we're doing it on purpose or simply by leaving tracks behind us, the public construction of meaning is the most important project of the next hundred years" (221-222)If that quotation excites you, then I recommend you read this book.
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LibraryThing member kristykay22
Weinberger proposes that the possibilities for ordering information in the digital and networked world can completely change the way we approach knowledge and learning. To make his point, he nicely summarizes organizational schemes of the past including the alphabet, good old Mevil Dewey, Linnaeus,
This is all pretty heady stuff, but Weinberger is a very readable philosopher who gives his readers plenty of concrete examples to latch onto. Occasionally I found myself getting a little huffy (why, oh why, does he constantly use the card catalog as his illustration of how libraries organize things and never mention the OPAC? Why no mention of brick and mortor libraries that are incorporating Web 2.0 into their cataloging and public access? Why are libraries implicitly lumped in with "the man" who is keeping information out of the hands of the masses? How would he handle providing access to collections that are both physical and digital?). But once I calmed down a little, most of my qualms ended up being addressed elsewhere in the book, or could easily be dismissed by the fact that Weinberger isn't writing a book about libraries or archives, there is just a lot of overlap in what we are trying to accomplish.
This is a great book to read if you are a librarian, a library-wanna-be, an archivist, a techie, a scholar, a Flickr user, a philosopher, or just some jerk who likes to find things on the Internet.
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Ranganathan (woo!), the card catalog, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and many more. His overviews are fun to read, well-researched, and deep enough to make his point without getting sidetracked. He then contrasts these traditional methods of organization with the Web 2.0 variety, leaning heavily on Flickr and Wikipedia as examples of tagging and social creation of content. In the end, he points us in the direction of a world filled with user-generated content and context where the interconnections are as important as the information itself, and where creativity and knowledge are found in the spaces between my ideas and your ideas.This is all pretty heady stuff, but Weinberger is a very readable philosopher who gives his readers plenty of concrete examples to latch onto. Occasionally I found myself getting a little huffy (why, oh why, does he constantly use the card catalog as his illustration of how libraries organize things and never mention the OPAC? Why no mention of brick and mortor libraries that are incorporating Web 2.0 into their cataloging and public access? Why are libraries implicitly lumped in with "the man" who is keeping information out of the hands of the masses? How would he handle providing access to collections that are both physical and digital?). But once I calmed down a little, most of my qualms ended up being addressed elsewhere in the book, or could easily be dismissed by the fact that Weinberger isn't writing a book about libraries or archives, there is just a lot of overlap in what we are trying to accomplish.
This is a great book to read if you are a librarian, a library-wanna-be, an archivist, a techie, a scholar, a Flickr user, a philosopher, or just some jerk who likes to find things on the Internet.
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LibraryThing member Foxen
This was a fun book. Its central idea is that digital information can be organized in fundamentally different ways than previous information formats. Basically- before, with what Weinberger calls 1st and 2nd order organization, everything in an organizational structure can only exist in one place,
This book said a lot of the things I've been wanting to hear in library science. There is a lot of potential in this type of thinking that has not really been explored. Moreover, it was a fun read- very entertainingly written, with examples made from most of the interesting websites I could think of. And, hey, LibraryThing gets a mention, although just for the barcode scanners. A fun an interesting look at digital organization, or, if you want to look at it that way, and interesting tour through the more innovative corners of the internet. Four stars.
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a book can only have one Dewey Decimal Number, an animal can have only one place in a taxonomy. This is a limitation of physical media - a book might be about five different things, but you can only put it on the shelf in one place. With the digital medium, however, information can be categorized much more messily, comprehensively, and on the fly. Tagging is the best example of this: you can "categorize" something an indefinite number of times just by affixing tags to it that others can search for. The searching process calls up everything within a category without it having to be stored in category order.This book said a lot of the things I've been wanting to hear in library science. There is a lot of potential in this type of thinking that has not really been explored. Moreover, it was a fun read- very entertainingly written, with examples made from most of the interesting websites I could think of. And, hey, LibraryThing gets a mention, although just for the barcode scanners. A fun an interesting look at digital organization, or, if you want to look at it that way, and interesting tour through the more innovative corners of the internet. Four stars.
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LibraryThing member ssd7
This was an enjoyable and easily read book. While the explanation of contemporary technology and tagging seemed pedestrian to a child of the information age, the author presents enough history and philosophy to put these new innovations in context and provides interesting fodder for an armchair
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philosopher. Show Less
LibraryThing member sarahdeanjean
David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous is an entertaining and superficial examination of the characteristics of information and how it has been organized by people historically, as well as in today’s world, and potentially in the future. The ways in which information has been stored and
Weinberger wanders through time and place in his book, recalling the origins of modern organization, such as the alphabet, Dewey, Ranganathan, Mendeleev’s periodical table, and even as far back as Aristotle and Plato and their philosophical ideas about classification. In doing so, the author illuminates several behaviors inherent to human organization and the limitations of the physical items people have attempted to sort. Throughout the book Weinberger touches on dozens of different topics to defend his thesis. He jumps from century to century, from country to country, all in an attempt to provide examples of the history of information organization and the potential for organization in the future. The author uses practical, fascinating real world examples of many aspects of organization. His enthusiasm is sincere, which makes his argument very convincing. Although the examples are very helpful, they seem to be strung together with little effort to provide context or to defend an ultimately fuzzy thesis. Unfortunately, the book as a whole is too superficial to create a sustainable argument, especially for the library field.
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manipulated in the past are used by Weinberger as evidence that humans have been bending and shaping information to fit our limitations as atom-based beings. The author believes that in the new digital world information no longer needs to be contorted to fit human behavior and abilities; rather, information can be collected digitally (where it has fewer atoms) and left uncategorized. Weinberger wanders through time and place in his book, recalling the origins of modern organization, such as the alphabet, Dewey, Ranganathan, Mendeleev’s periodical table, and even as far back as Aristotle and Plato and their philosophical ideas about classification. In doing so, the author illuminates several behaviors inherent to human organization and the limitations of the physical items people have attempted to sort. Throughout the book Weinberger touches on dozens of different topics to defend his thesis. He jumps from century to century, from country to country, all in an attempt to provide examples of the history of information organization and the potential for organization in the future. The author uses practical, fascinating real world examples of many aspects of organization. His enthusiasm is sincere, which makes his argument very convincing. Although the examples are very helpful, they seem to be strung together with little effort to provide context or to defend an ultimately fuzzy thesis. Unfortunately, the book as a whole is too superficial to create a sustainable argument, especially for the library field.
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LibraryThing member alexdaw
Okay - prepare yourself for a rave. To say I loved this book is an understatement. I couldn't get enough of it. You simply must read it. I flagged just about every page with a yellow sticky until it got embarrassing. If you are wondering what all the fuss is about when it comes to digital or social
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media or the power of the world wide web, this is the book to inspire you. Weinberger tells a good story, lots in fact. He pulls everything together seamlessly and, it seems, effortlessly. He is my new personal hero. As you can tell he has reduced me to a blithering devotee. Oooh...and he's a Librarything author....off to check out his collection of miscellanea..... Show Less
LibraryThing member dvf1976
Yet another book about the future of disintermediation.
I'm going to use some of the examples in this book in my recent crusade for tagging at my company.
I'm going to use some of the examples in this book in my recent crusade for tagging at my company.
LibraryThing member jaygheiser
Always gratifying when an author uses many of my favorite sources, such as Chandler. This is a very interesting read with significant implications for our culture, how we deal with our own computers, and especially, what is going to happen to Gartner. As
LibraryThing member tgraettinger
Worthwhile reading, though there are some folksy anecdotes and asides that can easily be skipped. The historical references to the likes of Dewey, Mendeleev, their contemporaries and intellectual descendants are illuminating. The various attempts (in a wide array of fields) to put knowledge "in its
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proper place" have been fraught. One of the messages that came across to me is that in the "third order" (his phrase), the connections between bits of knowledge, and the meaning that can be derived from them, are as or even more important than the bits themselves. Show Less
LibraryThing member ath64
The third order of data described in this book by David Weinberger is adding "Consciousness" to the world of Knowledge just as the human mind ads Consciousness to the physical world
LibraryThing member danielbeattie
A really good book about classification of information, and how it is done in the age of modern information technology. By looking at attempts to classify all known information (Dewey decimal etc) or parts of it (alphabet, table of elements) Weinberger shows the impossibility of that task, and how
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knowing is a dynamic and collective proces. There are a few places where he isn't that convincing, but all in all a thought provoking book, and you can't ask for much more than that. Show Less
LibraryThing member fxm65
This books insights on just using the metadata or information was great. It's o.k to have everthing which in the end we pick out what we neeed. It's like a tax drawer which you place all your tax stuff and at the end of the year, you pull it all out...Yes, this is a great read..
LibraryThing member davidloertscher
You think you know how to catalog a book. Think again as that book relies first on metadata to describe its contents or then goes digital where hundreds of tags may be assigned by readers who are trying to make sense of their information world. Our clients are cataloging now and they are not using
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Dewey, Sears, or LC. What does the Internet do to the organization of information? Worth thinking deeply about. Show Less
LibraryThing member libri_amor
David Weinberger has once again tackles the rapidly changing digital world and brings his illuminating insights to our complex digital environment. Dave combines these insights with an easy to read style that sometimes belays the significance of his messages.
Many times reading this book I found
Thus, my highest recommendation if you are interested in where we're going with the internet, blogging and "Everything" digital.
Many times reading this book I found
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myself pausing to contemplate the implications of the message. Thus, this book is not one to be breezed through in a few short sessions but rather savored thoughtfully. So heed this warning. You will find yourself regularly doing a mental "So that's what's going on", or Wow!, or "Now I get it" throughout this book.Thus, my highest recommendation if you are interested in where we're going with the internet, blogging and "Everything" digital.
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LibraryThing member egoldblum
Weinberger presents a useful paradigm for viewing the way we order things and how it is changing in a digital world. While rife with examples and mini history lessons, the author loses focus and rambles more as the book progresses. Concluding remarks do not the rest of the ideas presented in the
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book justice. Show Less
LibraryThing member paghababian
A very interesting and easy to follow look at how information is being described and used on the web. We've come a long way from the early days of cataloging, as this book traces the development of order to the "third order of order", where data is just lumped in a big pile and pulled out piece by
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piece as needed (think of your own tags here on LibraryThing). Show Less
LibraryThing member Black821Library
thought provoking book on how the human brain filters and catalogues, then moving that process into ways to get the world organized.
LibraryThing member marnattij
Why do libraries still catalog and think about information the way they did 50 years ago. Metadata is more flexible and opens up enormous opportunities for community investment in libraries.
Have to go back and reread this one. Fabulous.
Have to go back and reread this one. Fabulous.
LibraryThing member nicole_a_davis
A good popular non-fiction explanation of how digitization has changed the information science world. I might recommend that my brother and dad read it so they understand what I'm studying in school.
LibraryThing member red.yardbird
Interesting and enjoyable read, but short on big ideas.
LibraryThing member kristenn
This was remarkably fun for being work-related. A lot of familiar names from library school -- Linnaeus, Mortimer Adler, Valdis Krebs. Lumpers and splitters. We didn't learn about interwingularity, though. Or, sadly, Freiherr Samual von Pufendorf. The 'it looks like chaos but it still works' angle
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was reassuring. Show Less
LibraryThing member Placebogirl
This book was an interesting look at how the digitisation of information reduces the need for formal classification skills, because we classify things in the way that makes sense to us in the moment. Information is moving away from a tree structure and toward a graph structure. This book was pretty
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good, but the authors tributes to miscellany at the end were a bit...corny. Show Less
LibraryThing member rocketcitymel
This is the most entertaining book on the evolution of information organization ever. If, as you discovered in the course of your education, every piece of information is connected to every other piece of information, this book provides an illuminating view of the future and the infinity of digital
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organization. Show Less
LibraryThing member dremsen
Excellent book. Lots of inspiration.
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2007
Physical description
288 p.; 9.4 inches
ISBN
0805080430 / 9780805080438
Similar in this library
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