March 19, 2005
Wordsmith Hipsters
Over three years ago, I wrote about seeing Erin McKean, lexicographess extraordinaire, speak at a local bookstore.
Well, reading the NY Times today, I see that she's now editor-in-chief of the Oxford American Dictionary. At 33! And still very crush-worthy. Anyway, a decent article on how young'uns are storming the castle of words.
Folksonomy Talks: Information Architects Surpass Techies
Yes, I'm biased, but, based on the notes I'm reading about the folksonomy discussion at ETech, the IA Summit panel on Social Classification was a far richer and more robust discussion (note: I was on the IA Summit panel).
The etech discussion didn't really get beyond what you can read on blogs.
The IA Summit discussion had delightful grenades lobbed by Peter Morville(PDF), and a good question and answer, where we actually bothered to be critical of folksonomies (discussing how many women with social science backgrounds (Shelley, Liz, Danah) have taken strong issue with the folksonomy-utopianism of all the young white guys), talk meaningfully about extending them (integrating them with other modes of classification), and recognize the visceral poetry of free-tagging (it's all about me).
It's worth noting that the folksonomy discussion emerged from the information architecture community -- a group of people obsessed with issues of structure, shape, accessibility, meaning, utility, and other facets of information. Folksonomies aren't interesting from an "emerging technology" perspective -- they're interesting from a social and cultural perspective. And it seems that Etech is lacking that breadth in perspective in spades.
