LIKE

LIKE11 Taxonomies in an open world.

On the eve of LIKE’s first anniversary 22 LIKE devotees assembled in the Bloomsbury Lounge of The Perseverance. The questions up for discussion were: How can we use knowledge systems such as taxonomies to create common ground so that we understand each other and share information effectively? At the same time how can we make knowledge systems flexible enough so that we can all use terms we want to use?

I am in no doubt that Fran Alexander explained how to make that work better than anyone in the field. Apart from being a taxonomy expert, she is an expert speaker who managed to make a technical topic interesting and even entertaining.

She started by taking us on a quick tour through the long history of taxonomies. It’s been a relatively uneventful history, until developments picked up speed with the arrival of the internet, and then went into overdrive when Web2.0 came along.

Whereas before full-text searching, preferably via Google, seemed to be the solution, nowadays this is no longer true. Google is only useful when we already know what we are looking for, but falls down when we want to get an overview of a certain topic.

Nowadays taxonomies have to be able to deal with the modern day internet and social networks, where everyone contributes, including metadata. For me, the introduction of hash tags in Twitter, no matter how crude, has shown that, not only do we need metadata, but we are eager to create our own, just as we want to create our own content.

Despite the enormous intellectual efforts poured into traditional classification systems and taxonomies, they are no good without the collaboration of users in today’s web environment. That is exactly what Fran is arguing for: open up our carefully-crafted taxonomies to our users and let them add to them and we’ll improve their user-experience. The central ‘high brow’ taxonomy will function as the backbone of the system: strong, but flexible enough to be able to bend in all required directions, just like a body’s backbone.

Linking other taxonomies to the central one allows everyone to search a large collection or archive (like that of the BBC) from different angles, whether that’s sport, politics, or from a child’s point of view, and we’ll increase our chances of finding exactly what we need. My hope is that this in turn will lead to a higher usage of the collections and archives taxonomies serve, now so often being criticised for gathering dust and not being worth spending money on.

Growth will be organic and taxonomies will become three-dimensional, because we can move deep into them and out again. Fantastic!

The taxonomies of today are the best proof that opening up systems to the outside world strengthens, not weakens them. It is again the power of Web 2.0 with its interactions between people that’s the driving force behind all of this. We can only dream of what Web 3.0 will bring us.

After a brief Q&A session dinner was served. The menu had been expanded significantly and soon both wine and conversation flowed abundantly! It was one of the best LIKE events I have experienced, thanks to taxonomies and their champion Fran Alexander!

Marja Kingma 28-02-2010