{Ethan stars as Pinocchio}
An Extremely Elongated Nose-stick is Speechless
A play by P. Nocchio
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Pinocchio: (Talking with a short ruddy nose) In Ambient Findability, Peter Morville, drawing on the concept of pace layering, talks about tagging as a “fast layer” of information architecture. According to Morville (2005, 141), user tagging will influence with increasing momentum the underlying makeup of websites, which change at a slower pace layer. “[O]ver time,” Morville writes, “the lessons learned at the top are passed down, embedded into the more enduring layers of social and semantic infrastructure” (Morville 2005, 141). So, user tagging will influence the development of websites. This is good because, as Morville (2005, 53) states, “[m]etadata tags applied by humans can indicate aboutness thereby improving precision."
A Short Ruddy Nose: Uh, I’m skeptical. Can user tagging really improve the precision with which you can find a digital object?
(Pinocchio grabs his entourage and together they walk to youtube)
Pinocchio: Of course it does. Just look here:
(Pinocchio reveals a funny video of the
Pinocchio: (Talking with a medium sized nasal protuberance) We can easily find this video by searching the tags: “George” or “W” or “Bush” or “funny.” There are multiple tags to increase precision!
A Medium-Sized Nasal Protuberance: (Sounding a little bit stuffy) You are telling me that the tag “W” is precise? No. Tagging a video of George Bush as “George” or “W” or “Bush” or “funny” isn’t precise. What would be precise is “George Bush” or better yet “Bush, George W.” and…
Pinocchio: (Talking with an extremely elongated nose-stick ) No, like anything entrusted to a torch wielding, unwashed mob of people, precision will exist! “Mob indexing,” “free tagging,” whatever you call it, it works well.
An Extremely Elongated Nose-stick: (Is speechless).
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P. Nocchio’s Work Cited
Morville, Peter. 2005. Ambient Findability.
