One Nugget: Naming Things

The facilitators at Connected Course ask us to find a “nugget” or idea from one of the many fine resources they are sharing for this push into thinking about the World Wide Web. I read through Jon Udall’s piece, Seven Ways to Think Like The Web, and I found this snipped about naming things pretty interesting.

The-webs-supply-of

 

When we think of the “tagging” and “categorizing” of information on the Web, we often think of the Wild West metaphor. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. There is an architecture of ideas, or content, that can be collected and gathered and shared through hashtags and category containers and how we name things to make them meaningful.

I noticed this the other day when I was searching within my own blog for an old post. Using a keyword that was a tag, I quickly and rather effortlessly found what I needed to find, and it reminded me of the importance of those few minutes when I add those elements to a post. I have this visual of my blog as an entire mapping system that lies hidden from my eyes, in the underlying code, but it still requires me to name it each time.

And beyond that, as Udall notes, my own personal invisible blogging map is connected the larger invisible blogging map of the Internet, so that my tags and my categories and my keywords become part of the larger dictionary of infrastructure. Sure, we might worry about that from time to time (what is that Webcrawler doing to me? Do I want my words to be part of this larger system?) But the architectural frame of the Internet, and the systems that are in place through some choice labeling, is a pretty amazing thing to think about.

Peace (in the thinking),
Kevin

2 Comments
  1. I like this nugget a lot Kevin. Made me think about the power involved in naming: as you say, naming helps us “create the web” and we also get to stake our claim in the territory.

    kj

  2. Once again thanks for pushing my thinking. I never got into evernote or diigo, but I am trying to be better on my own blog with tagging.

    My real push will be in tagging other blogs in my rss reader. Instead of rubricizing blogging I want to create a collection of mentor posts.

    Tag different types of blogs with an amorphous and infinite, but logical set of tags.

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