David Weinberger\’s Blog: My Comment on Metadata and Creativity

In keeping with my plan to make this my Comment Week, this morning I visited a great blog, Knowledge Jolt with Jack (by Jack Vinson). There I found a link to an intriguing Feb. 8 posting by David Weinberger.

I left this comment there…

Interesting posting, David. Metadata has been much on my mind lately. (See my recent posting.)

In the case of Ford, do you know whether they’ve considered the folksonomy approach? I know it wouldn’t replace structured metadata, but it might be a good-enough supplement to structured metadata in some cases. (In other words, it might be better than nothing — and less tedious.)

Also, you wrote above: “Humans are amazing pattern-detecting machines but we’re terrible at exploring alternatives. Eric suggests selective breeding: make new combinations, look at the results, pick the most interesting results, recombine them, etc.”

…Regarding that, this may sound a little weird but in my own life I’ve found that using symbol-rich card sets (such as tarot or oracle cards) can help me think creatively about complex situations. What makes this technique/hobby so valuable to me is that it allows me to look at the symbols and consider “How might this relate to situation X?” Sometimes the result is gibberish, but surprisingly often this gets me thinking in new directions, or helps me see a context I hadn’t considered before. Randomness and symbols can be surprisingly powerful in both creativity and interpretation. (And no, this isn’t about fortunetelling, just thinking creatively.)

I wrote more about how randomness and symbols can aid creativity and might be incorporated into content management systems in this article.

By the way, I found your article via Jack Vinson’s blog.

Thanks very much. I enjoy your work.

- Amy Gahran
Editor, CONTENTIOUS

As I wrote that comment, I realize that I’ve learned several techniques about using blog comments to foster conversation and make connections. My comment above puts some of those into action. Later on, I’ll write up a list (or maybe a series) on effective and constructive blog commenting.

However, for now, I’d like to highlight David Weinberger’s rules for commenting to his blog:

“Rules: Criticize ideas? Yes. Criticize people for holding those ideas? No.”

Brilliant, succinct, and elegant. I love it. I might adopt that for this blog. What do you think?

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Post meta

This entry was written by Amy Gahran and posted on February 14, 2005 at 10:45 am and filed under Amy's Adventures, Conversations, Labels and Metadata, Voices: Blogs, etc.. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Comments are closed, but you can leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

3 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Ditto what Jack said. Thanks.

I don’t know anything more about Ford. In fact, I found out the day after posting this that the conference was in fact off_blog. Whoops. Anyway, I think a lot of companies are going to try out tagging over the next couple of years, although I’d guess that it won’t be quite as free as it currently is; that is, I bet companies put in fielded tag spaces as well as free tagging spaces, with “Place” being one of the first categories. But I’m just making this up.

As for how one stimulates creativity, I say: Anything that works and doesn’t require you to stuff towels under your dorm room door Why not?

[Reply]

1. David Weinberger on February 18th, 2005 at 4:14 pm
Amy, thanks for the warm fuzzy about my blog. It’s always fun to know that people I read also read me…

[Reply]

2. Jack Vinson on February 16th, 2005 at 12:16 am
Amy, ideas are the true assest of any person or corporation !! The IETF has something like,
“be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you receive” !!

[Reply]

3. /pd on February 14th, 2005 at 11:32 am