Post #2-Weinberger Ch. 5 and 6

Chapter 5:
Main Point:
Humans feel the need to make sense of big piles of information.  This chapter talks about how at times letting information stay seemingly miscellaneous can actually be helpful.  This is shown in the cases of websites such as flickr and wikipedia.

Quotes:
"If anything, it's reality that's obsessive-compulsive"
"The third order takes the territory subjugated by classification and liberates it"

Connection:
The part about flickr and wikipedia reminds me of how sometimes it's easier to look things up from sources like that because it leads to more of the type of information I'm looking for, such as when you hear a slang word you've never heard before and you turn to something like urban dictionary instead of Webster's.


Chapter 6:
Main Point:
The main point of this chapter is that there needs to be a definition for something in order for it to be classified.  Leaves can't hang off a particular branch unless it has a concrete definition.  In the third order, a lot of things don't have this definition so you have to work around the typical tree to organize it.

Quotes:
"Kroger estimates that RFID tags attached to temperature sensors could cut spoilage in half"
"But cancer now seems to be a collection of hundreds of diseases"
"It may be harder for our computers to assemble all the leaves that talk about something as loosely defined as Hamlet or diabetes, but we're only going to get better at this. We have to."

Connection:
When he talks about how it's comforting to see card catalogs, it reminds me of how sometimes a book seems like a more legitimate source than a website, even if it's not necessarily more credible.

Blog #1

Prologue:

Summary:

Throughout history, physical limitations guide how information is organized.  Now, the digital world is allowing us to completely reorganize the way information is stored.

Quotes:

 “Information is easy.  Space, time and atoms are hard.”

“Human physical abilities are limited, so the amount of information provided to us is constrained by our ability to see,”

Real world connection:

When they talked about “sales assistants” instead of “associates” reminds me of saying delayed success instead of failure-it’s really the same thing but calling it something else makes people feel better.  Also it reminded me of walking through a grocery store trying to find things like spaghetti sauce-is it by the pasta, the cheese or canned tomatoes?

Chapter 1:

Main point:

This chapter was about how data is organized in the digital world.  It discussed how things are changing now that there’s so much more stuff-digital pictures, digital music, etc.  The chapter talked about how we are going to have to change because methods of organization have changed so much.

Quotes:

“You browse when you intentionally ignore the organizational structure the store has carefully imposed on its stock,”

“To get as good at browsing as we are at finding…we have to get rid of the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.”

Real world connection:

When they talked about information being bits that hit you like a ton of bricks that reminds me of the first time you go into something like iTunes or Wikipedia or Netflix and there’s just so much stuff you don’t even know where to begin.

Chapter 2:

Main Point:

This chapter talked about the alphabet and how it is organized as well as the idea of a universal alphabet.  It also talked about how definitions of things like planets and what was powerful in the world-cosmos and then god-have changed and how their places have changed.

Quotes:

“Precisely because alphabetical order is unnatural and arbitrary, it took a long time to be accepted.”

“Even though the harmony of the spheres and the Great Chain have fallen out of favor, we still believe there is an order to nature waiting to be discovered,”

Real world connection:

While they were talking about huge encyclopedias, I thought of how much easier it is now to look things up on online encyclopedias rather than the ones in books where you might have to check two or three entries if not more to find what you’re looking for.