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.