#2

Chapter 5
In "The Laws of the Jungle," Weinberger discusses the reasons why we depend on organization in our daily lives. He discusses "Delicious," a popular bookmarking website that allows us to organize by "tags" which he describes as the Web 2.0 equivalent to the Dewey Decimal System.

"In the digital age, computer s have become demonically good at sorting through gigantic, complex piles of information." (85)

"That was Schachter's first insight: Tags work as a way for individuals to remember and refind pages. His second was understanding the power of making people's lists public." (93)

When Weinberger talks about the Dewey Decimal System, it reminded me of elementary school library time when we learned how to find a book using the card catalog system. My how things changed when you need to find a library resource - you don't even have to go to the library!

Chapter 6
In "Smart Leaves", Weinberger discusses the way in which barcodes, and soon to be utilized RFID tags, came to be used by manufacturers, retail outlets, and consumers. Weinberger also discusses the way in which species are organized and why this is important for human's understanding of differences in organisms.

"The UPC number not only lets checkout lines move faster, it makes the entire inventory-tracking process more efficient, and drives down a merchant's costs because it points to a bloom of information in the merchant's database." (109)

"We don't even have confidence that there is an inarguable way to divide the world into types of things. And that's a problem, because as the world becomes more miscellaneous, if we can't pin something don, we can't coalesce information around it." (117)

This chapter reminded me of when I used to work at a department store, and they way in which we were able to look items up online, through the catalog, and in other stores was just by using the scanner to ring the barcode.