Weinberger on chapter 1 elaborates on how the world is and started out being miscellaneous and we have worked hard to getting it organized. We can see how this plays out on the music industry as the world and iTunes music store being us constantly organizing it to fit our needs. He believes that everything has a place as long as we put it in the right place and take the time to do so. He states that we invest so much time in making sure our world isn’t miscellaneous in part because disorder is inefficient, but also because it feels bad. It helps to be organized if we can keep everything organized our lives can move smoothly and proficient in our fast pace technology society.
He also focuses on the Three Orders of Order: He states that in the first order of order, we recognize themselves in his example being the images and negatives of the Bettmann’s Archives. So we know that they are objects and they are organized in some kind of order that makes sense. The second order of order states that they use a catalog that points to the physical place where the first-order-of-order is stored in the back room. The third and final order consists of content being digitized and how it removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information.
On chapter 2 Weinberger starts off on how difficult it has been to come up with a universal alphabet that we can all use and understand making communication easier across cultures so to simply summarize that section alphabetization is very difficult. He focuses on how we organize our world in a natural order that reflects on our needs and our “world. Our technology and the three orders of orders help us categorize and organize the physical order to help us be more efficient though in a different way on his comparison with Amazon and Dewey's ideas. He gives a few examples like Dewey’s idea to simply to have a single, universal way of cataloging book, one that all libraries would use.
One thing that I find myself constantly organizing is my music folder. I have simply named it “My Muzik” folder I have about 14 different categories of genre. It funny if you saw it you would be like what the “F*&#” because I have weird labels like “Juzz Muzik,” Chillaxin Muzik” and “Juzz Muzik” among other subfolders. It works for me because if a song doesn’t follow on any of my genres like “Old Skoo” or Reggeaton I “juzz” hrow it on any of those folders but it depends what language it is because I also have a folder that says “Muzica Espanol” which just random Spanish music go to and vice versa with the English music. It works for me though sometimes I don’t know where to put some music though and just throw it in the “Juzz Muzik” folder. The system works every time I get a new song it has to have the artist name, the name of the song, genre and length of the song and once I have verified that I can put it in a folder. I find myself organizing my music folder a lot because I’m constantly getting new music and getting new ideas of labeling the music folders.
I found chapter 2 very interesting when they were discussing the bringing together of the alphabet and the trouble they had. In the same way, I thought Dewey's idea to simplify the organizing of books was a wonderful idea, if a bit strange when looking for books based on seemingly random numbers.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine being completely lost if I were to go through your music folder. I have trouble organizing my music by genre, I let Windows Media Player organize my music and then learn how to find the music I want. I just make sure that my music folder has the artists and the album title well labeled.
This post is well done. Your summaries of the chapters really focus on the key points, and your example ties in really well.
ReplyDeleteNot to be a pest, but I just can't identify with your music organization at all. You do exactly what Weinberger was talking about with your arbitrary lumping and splitting. When you're dividing things into big categories like "english" and "spanish" you're inherently subordinating and hiding a lot of the information. For example, you probably throw all spanish-language music in the spanish folder, but what about the hundreds of different kinds of spanish music? Not important enough to get their own categorizations, I guess? English is, though. It's also inaccurate, because while a song might not have any lyrics, it could very well be intensely spanish. You might put it in some other folder though.
ReplyDeleteWhatever works works, but just not for all of us.
I must admit that your music organization method isn't my thing, but if it works for you than good or you. I do like the categories that you put them in though.
ReplyDeleteAs for the rest, i thought it was well done. It got the major points, answered the question on the blog, and was overall a good read.