#4: Organizing The Web

I understand that this blogpost has little to do with the focus of my blog site; however, the subject matter of the article I read was very interesting. The article, found on Digg, was originally written by Marion Jensen for the technical site TechConsumer and was titled “The Next Big Thing: Why Web 2.0 Isn’t Enough.” The article talked briefly about the new realm of the social web and the sites that have become popular because of it and why they are so. Jones relates the popularity of these sites to real estate. What is the most important part of real estate? location, location, location. These sites’ ability to give the user what they need in one location has been a saving grace for many. But it opens a can of worms: if these sites can control the information and in an organized way, why can’t we do that with the rest of the information on the Web? That’s right – the organization of the Web as a whole. Right now, as we all know, information on the Web is just pages of information, unorganized, uncategorized, and messy. People have been talking about organizing the Web for years, but there is no simple and easy way to do it. Metadata tagging and organization is just a job that nobody wants. Even if it could be done, it seems that deciding on a set of rules for organization, not unlike that of a library’s AACR2, is a mountain that may not be able to be climbed.  My biggest doubt, other than the obvious talk, talk, talk, rather than work, work, work that is the librarians’ mantra, is the method of organization. I have come to believe that no matter which way someone tries to organize anything in the library world, it fails over time. It simply fails to classify all information needed to be classified, whether its the Dewey Decimal System or anything else. If you are going to organize the Web, it has to be lasting, or everything else will be lost. And with the ever-changing environment of the Web that is not going to be possible.