Ontologies, Taxonomies, & Folksonomies

Clay Shirky. What a name. But he does say some things and people listen to him. Close to what I'm studying is his piece on how ontologies are overrated. The part about ISBNs, URIs, unique identifiers got me thinking. The uniquely identified item, the instance, the individual as the global entity? Hmmn. No need to abstract higher levels that will delimit groups of individuals? Link to link to link and so it will go. How do we devolve our brains to do that? But come to think of it, despite my training in librarianship, much of my most precise and relevant article retrievals come from following citations than from following a well-defined search strategy. Google Scholar actually works for me in finding relevant citations which I can then look up in the databases and electronic journals of the university.

Joseph Busch. Now there's a librarian. His Taxonomy Strategies company seems to be in good business. All kinds of structures - hierarchies, networks, tables, etc. can all coexist in infospace. Carve your niche. Depends on the purpose, I suppose. Anywho, the Montague Institute has something to say about managing taxonomies.

Folksonomies Tap People Power ... Sure, why not. There's enough structure in links and networks. Add to that the sensibility of people's tags. Fundamental categories or abstract classes are for other purposes, not for everyday objects that people interact with.

But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep. And categories to know before I rest.