Wed, May 4, 2005
Folksonomies and taxonomies are the same thing, and both have been around for 40 kajillion years
The real zinger for me was realizing that tagging or folksonomy is yet another manifestation of our evolution from hierarchical systems to more later, emergent, and empowering network/grassroots approaches.
The real zinger for me was realizing that tagging or folksonomy is yet another manifestation of our evolution from hierarchical systems to more later, emergent, and empowering network/grassroots approaches. Here we?��Ǩ�Ѣre talking about a populist approach to taxonomy: rather than fit our thinking into authoritative closed classification schemes, we can create our own through tagging, and in social tagging environments we can negotiate new, more nuanced ways to map meaning and relationship through shared, emergent classification systems.
Jon Lebkowsky on the new folksonomy blog, You’re it
Watching the debate and discussion surrounding folksonomies is like watching Marxists and Feminists disagree over class versus sex. Chicken or the egg? Who’s on first?
Tagging is not an “evolution from hierarchical systems to more later, emergent, and empowering network/grassroots approaches”. What does that even mean? All systems are emergent. All systems are hierarchical (linear time forces starting points for any experience). All systems empower. And once two people come within detection distance of one another, all systems are networks.
Humble cave men used folksonomies. The difference is where folksonomies have been exposed through conversation (and stories) for 1000s of years, we can now expose them on the web in a persistent manner after the conversation has expired. Almost like writing on cave walls.
The false dichotomy between professional and amateur tags makes me twitch, the notion that my mother’s tags for managing her household are somehow rated on a scale of professionalism, and found lacking. Or that professional crafts people fiat semantic dictatorships, ruthless, despotic, tyrannical taxonomies.
Taxonomies and folksonomies are the same beast. Both emerge from the experience of a group of people and are recorded in some manner. They’re languages. The suggestion taxonomies are top down is crap. There’s no rule taxonomies are top-down. And the notion that folksonomies linguistically empower people because they’re bottom-up is also crap. All languages empower people. Period.
And suggesting the people of the world are sitting on the bottom of some sapien heap, forced into the King Librarian’s servitude… does that not strike anyone as strange?
Likewise, taxonomies constantly evolve. Folksonomies are authoritative. Both begin an experience closed and open for modification at the end (like mental models). Taxonomies serve audiences as small as one, and folksonomies serve audiences as large as the world.
I’m glad when any thing excites people. But if we’re going to discuss lessons we can learn from folksonomies and taxonomies, then we need to focus on how these tools for meaning affect the human conversation, and not how they fit into our pre-conceived political and economic notions.
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