Tags & Bookmarks

Frederico Oliveira writes an interesting article about Tagging and Social Bookmarks that finally motivates me to retort. I, too, have been thinking about the different ways of organizing things and have yet to draw a clear conclusion. Not being able to finalize my stance on this matter has been both frustrating as well as invirogating.

My response to his article is on his site, but I’ll go ahead and throw it in here as well:

It’s been hard NOT to think about tags lately, huh? At any rate, I see this issue as somewhat of a behavioral continuum. Let’s consider two different people and their two different ways of “organizing their things.” On the one hand, we have the librarian with the clean desk – pencils sharpened, a real “everything-in-it’s-place” kinda person. She (well, I’ve never met a man librarian) is quite familiar with ISSN, ISBN, and she’s just nuts about the Dewey Decimal System. Her hobbies include coffee table books on taxonomy, organizing her neatly-folded t-shirts by color (R O Y G B V), and making sure everything on the coffee table lines up at 90º angles. Ok, you get the point, she’s a category kinda gal. One reason she’s motivated to use this system of categorization is it’s a standard, something bigger than her – it makes sense to conform to this methodology because many people can learn it, use it, contribute to it, and so forth.

On the other hand, we have a young gun – born and raised in an environment of 800 TV channels, e-mail, internet, radio, cell phones, etc. He basically lives in a bee-swarm of media from the time he wakes up to the time he falls asleep in from of the TV (with 4 remote controls lying on the floor). The thing is, it’s pretty normal for him, he hasn’t really “adapted” to these things like his parents. So, this dude is our tagger. He sees a site online he likes, he tags it with whatever he wants. Remember, he’s listening to music, the TV is on, his Mom is telling him to clean his room, and his mobile phone is ringing (the latest Nelly ringtone), so he’s being bombarded from all angles here. Tagging is a down and dirty way of organizing things. It’s true, we can carry over some of the more rigid formalities of categorization, but tags at its core is a Post-It note of sorts.

I’m well aware that our naughty librarian and punk rock Johnny couldn’t be more stereotypical, but the most important thing about this tags and categories thing is that people’s behaviors are scattered like crazy between the two extremes. Personally, I aim to be more like the librarian, but sometimes I lack the time or resources to make everything fit perfectly in a nice, clean row – so I tag! Maybe we shouldn’t be posing this as an “either – or” debate, perhaps people should be encouraged to “tag first, categorize later!” or just do both in any order?

In general, it’s safe to say that using computers everyday has made all of us a bit more neurotic than before. I noticed a few years ago that every time I reinstalled my operating system, I devised a “NEW & IMPROVED” file structure an nomenclature. And I did, although it’s always temporary – there’s always a better idea around the corner, things change. And I still haven’t figured out a satisfactory way of organizing my iTunes library in regards to Genre and country of origin (I like a lot of music from different countries). So for now, I have a ton of music in the “Brasil” genre that covers the gamut – from hip hop to punk rock, pagode to bossa nova, chorinho to pop.

That would be a prefect scenario for tags, right? So, Marcelo D2 would have these tags: brasil brazil “hip hop” rap samba “rap samba”(or whatever else you like). So, what if I ran a music store – one with bricks, mortar, and a street address – where would I put this CD? In the “World Music” section (damn, I always hated that nomenclature)? How about “Hip Hop”? See, we’re back to where we started.

This is a tough riddle we have before us, worthy of thought. I unfortunately don’t have a solution to offer, just this little bit of wordy commentary.

date Posted on Monday, 17 Oct 2005
tags Tags: ,

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