(Dtc356 Blog 6) Jenkins Vs. Weinberger

After reading a passage of Jenkins book Introduction: "Worship at the Alter of Convergence" and Weinberger's book Everything is Miscellaneous, I noticed a few main points that Jenkins brought up which connects to Weinberger. 

Henry Jenkins

Jenkins Main points:

1) Convergence Culture: This concept that Jenkins brings up suggests that people are getting information is being done so on different platforms. For example, people are no longer just getting news from the newspaper, instead they might be getting all of their news from less formal sources.

2) Participatory Culture: This concept suggests that there is a shift in the production of media. Now the general public is producing media and it is no longer just for its previous formal producers.

3) Collective Intelligence: No one knows everything, but everyone knows a little. If we combine everyones knowledge we can get closer to the desired solution.  

All of these points line up with the main points of Weinberger. Convergence culture speaks on the part about how organizing data and metadata is more plausible with the innovation of the web. Participatory Culture in a sense is Web 2.0, people can now help organize as a group not an individual (i.e. flickr.com and delicious.com) or help add their own personal knowledge (i.e. wikipedia.org). Participatory culture leads to the concept of collective intelligence, this is also a Web 2.0 concept that Weinberger writes on. All three main points are reliant on one another and without the others each would not exist.

Found this funny pic on the web

(Dtc356 Blog 5) Implicit meaning

Weinberger, relying on German philosopher Heidegger, says that "the meaning of a particular thing is enabled by the web of implicit meanings we call the world" (170).


What this means to me is that the things in the world are labeled and named after what their uses are. Weinberger uses the example of a hammer, it can be described by its uses, the way it feels when you touch it, and the sounds it makes. Essentially we describe these things by the way we interact with them in our lives.


This relates to the third code in the sense that everything can be described by it's uses differently by its implicit meaning to each individual use. Take a photo for example, several people can be described differently by different people. This describes the way people tag objects for organization in the third order perfectly.


Monster- Kanye West, This is what I picture in my head. The image is organized in a hierarchy of color that this particular song gives me as well as a base reference image.

(DTC356 Blog 4) Web 2.0 organization

In chapter 5 Weinberger looks at the organization of information in retrospect to it's usability for everyone. He uses an example of Getty's Thesaurus was extremely easy to use for those who are familiar with it but to those who aren't, it is almost impossible to find anything.  The categories in which everything is organizes are too simple for the complex topics in which it is explaining and therefore makes it hard to use.  The Thesaurus example represents orders 1 and 2 (as explain earlier in a previous blog) there has to be a deciding winner, folder, or category that the information falls into.
Web 2.0 really solves this issue of over generalization of categories. Sites like delicious.com and flickr.com have proven that having a community tag images on their own organizational schemes creates a universal order that organizes metadata in a perfect fashion. This is explained as Weinberger's 3rd order.
Wienberger also gives 4 strategic ways of organization:
1)Tagging- This gives a personal user friendly way to remember how and what some thing is ex.delicious.com where people can tag previous website to remember and for others to discover.
2)Filters-With a large number of people to edit information filtering the information can keep the bad stuff out while maintaining the necessary stuff, it becomes a essential tool for web 2.0 organization. Ex. Wikipedia.com where users can edit one another articles.
3)Everything can be labeled- In completely miscellaneous the only real way to organize is to tag to help find it later.
4)Giving up control- Not one person can organize completely miscellaneous information. Web 2.0 gives use the opportunity to  compile and look through data us a reasonable means.