Folksonomy

This is a great new word, obviously related to the word taxonomy. It is a way to describe the natural way people classify things when given the opportunity to assign keywords and very little feedback. This blog for instance uses categories for posting. Those categories exist in a flat namespace without hierarchy. Some of the categories are very descriptive, like “Movies to see” while others are hodge-podge like “Current Events” which is meaningless a few days after it is written. Yet, mostly it works, for fun examples see web services like flickr and del.icio.us the current darlings of the blogging set.

Last month someone tried to insult me by calling me a blogger. I found that to be extremely amusing.

Why was the fact that I blog supposed to be insulting? I think it’s because bloggers, it is supposed and probably substantiated, that by and large bloggers have a certain kind of network sized egotism that makes them believe that the little bits of text, graphics and audio they publish on the web are of interest to the world.

What can I say; it’s both a curse and an awesome responsibility to have such a gigantic ego.