Bookmap: Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger

I've just finished David Weinberger's Everything is Miscellaneous. From the opening story about the prototype shop stationer Staples uses to design more effective experiences for shoppers to the final coda about the lack of structure in an ephemera shop, Weinberger tells thoughtful stories to outline his ideas, most of which I hadn't heard before.

Weinberger's point is that multiple viewpoints result in multiple categorisation systems, all of which are equally valid from their own point of view. He talks about the shortcomings of attempts to categorise using Linnaean classification and the Dewey Decimal system as examples, and about the three orders of organisation: of physical objects, ideas and metadata, and the relationships between them.

I'm not blowing the final conclusion, but there are three paragraphs on the final page which seem to me to sum up the power of social computing perfectly:

"It's not who is right and who is wrong. It's how different points of view are negotiated, given context, and embodied with passion and interest. Individuals thinking out loud now have weight, and authority and expertise are losing their gravity.

It's not whom you report to and who reports to you or how you filter someone else's experience. It's how messily you are connected and how thick with meaning are the links.

It's not what you know, and it's not even who you know. It's how much knowledge you give away. Hoarding knowledge diminishes your power because it diminishes your presence."