I'm Impressed with "Everything is Miscellaneous!"

I am very impressed with the thinking of David Weinberger. I love his new book, "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder." David really helped me to think and the book left my head reeling.

David mentions something I’ve heard in several presentations lately. He mentions that the more “mess” you have the more valuable the data becomes. For example, if you have a tool like Flickr that stores information from every picture we upload, results can be clustered in ways that are impossible in the first order world (the physical world).

Throughout the book, Weinberger uses Wikipedia as an example of how the third order of order has been successful. On page 208 he makes a great point:

The Britannica includes references at the end of articles to remind us that topics are related to other topics, literally afterthoughts. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is besotted with links…These links are not even bread crumbs, for with two clicks we well may be going down a path no one has trod before and that no one anticipated…In the miscellaneous order, a topic is anything someone somewhere is interested in. Anyone an pull a topic together by contributing to Wikipedia, writing a blog post, creating a playlist, or starting a discussion thread.

While researchers question the accuracy of Wikipedia (and rightly so) it cannot be dismissed as a powerful research tool. I enjoy researching on Wikipedia and following the links to find additional information. As an educator, I have introduced this tool to my students. They are very familiar with Wikipedia. However, I have taught them to research the topic further using additional tools to confirm accuracy – but if I hadn’t used Wikipedia in the first place I may not have ended up down the path I did.

I appreciated how Weinberger commented on the future of the ebook. He mentions how we could collect data from how people read books, the passages they highlight, where people read books and so much more using wireless enabled ebook readers (p.222) – and while it sounds like science fiction – we’re almost there. Kindle has the power of wireless technology – meaning that in theory, Amazon could connect to our readers and collect data. W hile this sounds scary and like a huge invasion of privacy – imagine the power that this data could provide. Some examples Weinberger has is that you could create a list of books that people most often read at the beach or a list of books people stopped reading halfway through – how cool would that be?

So, like I said at the beginning – my head is reeling with information and I’ll probably have to read this book again to get a real hold on some of the theory involved, but I loved the book! I think it’s a great read for anyone interested in learning more about the new digital order.