'Revolution in order' changing our lives

Published 27 May 2007 in Winnipeg Free Press:

Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder
By David Weinberger
Times Books, 260 pages, $31

Reviewed by Michael Stimpson

Internet guru David Weinberger contends in his new book that we are in the midst of a "revolution in order."

Everything is Miscellaneous isn't perfect by any means, but it will make a good beach read for techno-geeks.

Weinberger's revolution is changing the way we manage information, how we view the world and what we think of as “knowledge.”

“Revolution in order” sounds like an oxymoron, so some explanation is required at this point.

Weinberger says the digital age has given rise to a “third order of order” – a new way of keeping information for future reference and retrieval.

The first order of order is the physical arrangement of things themselves – placing widgets and doohickeys in separate aisles and ordering them according to size, for example.

In the second order of order, records are kept about specific characteristics of things – like the widgets’ and doohickeys’ respective manufacturers, place of manufacture and colours – and where to find them so that people can get what they want when they want it. A library’s card catalogue is one example.

The third order of order comes from the digital bits of information attached to items on the Internet – keywords and creation dates, for example. That information can be used by each person to arrange digital photos, documents and other things in numerous ways according to individual needs and interests.

Organization in the third order of order isn’t top-down, says Weinberger, a Harvard academic who was senior Internet adviser to Howard Dean’s run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004. (The Dean campaign used the Internet extensively for input and support from the grassroots or “netroots.”)

Gone are the days when a small few imposed on everyone else the way information is to be organized. Now we all can make those decisions in the digital world.

As well, the digital revolution takes away the power of a small few, such as the editors of newspapers and encyclopedias, to decide what information the masses get to see.

Blogs and Wikipedia are two of the vehicles through which everyday people may post information for all to see.

Weinberger previously co-authored a book about how the Internet is transforming business, The Cluetrain Manifesto.

In Everything is Miscellaneous, he makes his case persuasively and for the most part engagingly with anecdotes and side trips to illustrate his points.

Readers will be amused by his description of a decidedly first-order Massachusetts gift shop, and by his look at the peculiar world of 19th-century library organizer Melvil Dewey.

But occasionally Weinberger falls flat in his attempts at telling an interesting story. Much of his chapter on alphabetization is excruciatingly dull, and his explanation of one psychologist’s theory of understanding through prototypes is simply eye-glazing.

Weinberger seems a little too optimistic in his “social knowing” chapter, in which he lauds Wikipedia for discussions that lead to agreements on what is true from a “neutral point of view.”

But is it really a triumph in knowledge-seeking when (to cite an example in this book) partisans “negotiate” with each other to a “neutral” way of saying John Kerry was awarded medals for military service during the Vietnam War? That seems more like a triumph in jackass-ery.

In the same chapter, Weinberger gets so carried away in his aw-shucks enthusiasm for all things digital that he makes this unsupported statement: “One thing is for sure: When our kids become teachers, they’re not going to be administering tests to students sitting in a neat grid of separated desks with the shades drawn.”

He doesn’t let us know what he supposes Elroy Jetson’s classroom will look like.

But these are, in the end, fairly minor quibbles. Everything is Miscellaneous is generally entertaining and presents intriguing ideas about where digital technology may be taking us.