re: Taxonomy in a Digital World Part 2

John O'Gorman — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 00:19:39 GMT

Hi Mark;

I'm one of those people who has struggled with many of the conceptual underpinnings of information systems for a long time. Parent::child, hierarchies, trees, and object:entity class relations - the whole shootin' match has caused me to doubt my intelligence and sanity almost since day one.

I'm convinced that a large part of the disconnect between 'business' and IT is due to a sort of linguistic impedance which manifests itself in all sorts of strange ways.

I agree that the primary difficulty with applications - from directory structures to SAP - is the relative rigidity of the concepts listed above when contrasted with the fluidity of reality.

Thanks for describing the problem and some possible solutions in a much more elegant way than I can.

By way of being part of the solution, I have developed what I hope will become a more natural, multi-dimensional knowledge naviagation framework than is currently availaible. It uses faceted classification which on one hand makes use of predictable dimensions and relationships to help the lumpers, but supports combinations of existing values to keep the spitters happy as well. Discovery and retrieval all based on very natural categories.

Great site - I now have it bookmarked and will visit often!

John O'

re: Taxonomy in a Digital World Part 2

bowerm — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:21:25 GMT

John - I won't take the credit here. I am just the summarizer. Thanks for the compliments anyway.

Taxonomy in a Digital World

Mark Bower — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:05:09 GMT

Amazon delivered me a copy of David Weinberger's Everything Is Miscellaneous at the weekend. I love the