More is Less: Use of Tags As Information Coping Skill

David Weinberger wrote posted this interesting twist about information overload:

The power of tags shows that the way to manage information overload is more information. That's what the doomsayers of the 90's — Information Anxiety! Information Tidal Wave! — didn't foresee.

So, guess he is saying more is less? There was an excellent point in one of the comments from Jon Husband:

It's (the flow) not gonna stop, and the traditional ways information and knowledge have been classified, ordered, made accessible, distributed and stored have had major change visit, as you have pointed out many times. We now need to become, and feel, adept art skimming, dot-connecting, pattern recognition, and deciding well and wisely when to delve more deeply and in more concentrated ways into issue X or issue Y. Actually, as I read the above phrase, I realized tagging addresses rather neatly large parts of these processes pre-hyperlinks and tagging ... "classified, ordered, made accessible and stored", doesn't it ...

Technorati just announced today that there are: One Million Distinct Tags, 14 Million Tagged Posts . The post also provides some tips for automating the use of technorati tags in your post using ecto.

Hmm .. time to really re-think, update my information coping skills curriculum to include how to tag ... maybe it isn't crap. Haven't decided right now.

Comments

[Ed]

Tagging's definitely not crap, Beth. Not nearly as user-friendly as it needs to be to be ready for prime time, but I'm starting to use it, and it's starting to change the way I think about the web and knowledge management in general. It meshes nicely with lots of other interesting current ideas about user-generated metadata, too, so I think its usage and impact will only continue to grow--but it'll be faster if they make the tools better (e.g., auto-integrate Technorati pings in TypePad, to take one small example).

[Beth]

I've been excited about tagging, but some of the people I'm teaching to use delicious aren't convinced. I'm on the tagging is fabulous side of the fence. Tonight I'm hoping to get to a Berkman thursday night blogger session that is a discussion about this very issue. Hopefully, will leave with a more informed opinion ....