townx

Listened to a very interesting talk by Dave Weinberger this morning, which he presented at the Library of Congress. The basic theme was around how knowledge has shifted from "objective" authoritative sources (e.g. printed encyclopedias) to a plurality of subjective sources (he gives the example of buying electrical goods, where these days people commonly rely on the web for personal opinions, rather than the manufacturers' sites). Apart from anything else, he does a good job of potting the history of Western epistemology.

One of the central points (and the reason for the title of this entry) is that traditional models of knowledge are based around trees: this is an inflexible and imperfect model, as lots of things don't fit into a single node of a tree and end up being treated as "miscellaneous". Electronic media are more fluid and can be reorganised on the fly more easily (unlike books on shelves, for instance). We don't need one classification system, like Dewey Decimal; we need many, and the potential to add more as they are needed. It is impossible to guess the uses to which data will be put in the future.

Very thought provoking, and made me think that maybe we're seeing the Death of the Author playing out in politics, the media and advertising, as well as literature.