Since I finished reading “Everything is Miscellaneous” by David Weinberger, I have been trying to figure out how the third order of things and information in the digital age will change things. I already wrote some pieces here on tagging and how it changes the way we structure information. But, so far, I have struggled to explain easily the digital order and its implications. So here is my attempt. (Attention: simplified!)
First order
This photo represents pretty much the first order, where I simply sort things – cutlery in three different boxes: forks, spoons and knives.
Second order
In the second order I can go a step further and use a table or list to sort information out by topic. If you want to present relevance from this listed points to many existing information, one way to do this would be to make another table for spoons and forks. You could go on and make a fourth list, which explains how and when these different cutlery was used. Whereas this approach is finite in the physical world, in the digital one it is infinite.
Third order
Now, in the digital age, all this information can be sorted out in infinite possibilities. So, imagine hundreds of lists for each unique perspective from a user. Imagine all sorts of lists are connected to one another. If somebody is a collector of ancient spoons, he will sort them out differently (era, types of usage, material, culture etc. ) than a table etiquette expert (position of spoon on the table, sorts of food for each spoon etc.) However, through the internet, it is possible to link everything to give it a broader meaning, to change perspective. The social web is actually about that — users worldwide tagging the web to give it meaning or link articles in wikipedia.
This collective constructed network of knowledge free us from the boundaries and limitations in the physical world. Go to a library and research about a certain question; you will find out how you have to wander from book to book, from advice to advice. But even the digital world is still loaded with this dream second order categorization.
But why are we then still sorting out our information in the first order?
Because the physical world is full of hierarchical structured (ordered) things . One example are organizations.
In the digital world, information is not structured that way. And certainly an organization cannot work that way in the web.
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I tried to explain the third order or everything is miscellaneous and its implications. Attention simplified.
http://tinyurl.com/2ws5qa
Talking of tags, what do you think about enlisting a specific pilot area of the gtz knowledge online into a social bookmarking service which we could then “misuse” for creating a tagged directory? I call it the one stop resource…
In general I very much agree. However, one challenge that prevents organisations to work in the ‘third order’ is, that sometimes the organisations needs to make sure that users find a “specific” document which is of certain importance to the organisations (e.g. a policy). Tagging as well as text search might lead to a situation where users don’t find the doc, because tags are often used inconsistently and the usefulness of keywords in text search engines dependt on which terms users use. In this case there is a need for a structure that enforces as much as possible a situation, where the document cannot be placed (and found again) anywhere else than in the particular place.
This is a great discussion and a good question. I would say that the reason enterprises are still operating in the first order are because:
- end users are so comfortable with the first order construct (because of education, experience, etc) and this will be the biggest barrier to change.
- Software is still primarily database driven vs. index driven but this is starting to change. Part of the reason Microsoft bought Fast Search for over $1B is that the ability to store and access unstructured information is the next huge growth in software.
- Information overload is a big issue and we still are collectively working on best practices in filtering relevant information to individuals. Pagerank, social networking, and other tools are all attempts to get users only what they will find relevant vs. all the world’s information.
It is a hot space to watch and will be interesting to see how it evolves. Thanks for the great post!
@JKE I wish we had that.
Do you have a concept or idea how that could look like?
@Johannes yes I agree there are documents, which are clearly more important and those one could be offered in a classical website. Although I believe that documents most wanted by employees are still hidden. Only the “strategic” and supposedly important docs are at the front page. Tags could also be built partly by scanning the automatically from documents.
@Rachel yes I agree with your points. Especially information management through repository such as databases with search function have been been highly praised in the past and did not full fill the promises yet.
A key challenge I often encounter with colleagues is that they rightly fear information overload from their past experiences (e.g. email) when it comes to social media. Hope we can change the impression!
This collective constructed network of knowledge free us from the boundaries and limitations in the physical world.
Conceptually, yes … but / and the impacts from this will slowly .. but surely .. weave their way into more and more human-based organized activities (work in organizations, busines models, the operations of institutions and the connections between constituents, customers, colleagues, etc.
In the digital world, information is not structured that way. And certainly an organization cannot work that way in the web.
Nor are the activities that flow form or are based on the information flows and how they are filtered, clustered and connected (let’s say through social computing).
I have been suggesting for a while that a new organizing principle is emerging .. my working definition is “a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results, enabled by interconnected people and technology”
People to date have tended to think in terms of networks, and network dynamics. I have called this (in my opinion) emerging organizing principle “wirearchy”.
Honest, I dislike “pimping” my ideas or work, but your post was quite interesting, and your interest in the issue(s) is obvious .. so I thought I’d drop in and offer my $0.02.
@husband thanks for your interesting remark and concept. Yes I agree it will take time because thinking in the third order is unusual, maybe sometimes even frightening but certainly very creative and a confession to our growing complexity. Is the two-way dynamic flow meant to be between authority and power? Would you conclude that we need to give up control in order to cope with changes that are transforming the way we work?
Did you mean “confession to our growing complexity” or “concession to our growing complexity” ?
Either could work, but either one would change the sense of frightening and creative as context
I see the “dynamic two-way flow” as (in a simplistic sense) between the up or top opof traditional hierarchy and the down or bottom of the mass of almost everyone else.
Think of it also in the oft-discussed one-way dynamic of traditional broadcasting, publishing and many other sorts of businesses .. the gatekeepers, the hierarchy know what is “best for you”, and that’s what you get.
Much has been written and spoken about users / consumers / citizens having more power, more input, more participation now.
So yes, a dynamic two-way flow of power and authority .. the more the “top” listens effectively and in ways that add to the trust and the sense of being heard of the / by the “bottom”, the more power the bottom has … there’s an old adage from the OD (organizational development) world that “to get power you have to be willing to let go of power” .. the interlinked infrastructure of the participative Web makes that dynamic more accessible and clearer.
extrapolate out 20 or 30 years and .. if you still believe that “Knowledge is power”, then we will be living in quite a different world from what we know today as traditional hierarchy.
It (20 – 30 years from now) will be either much flatter, networked and negotiated amongst participants, or else it will be more authoritarian and controlled (electronically) through surveillance and control bottlenecks from electronic money and identity management by the state .. etc.
At any rate, I suspect / believe there will be an ‘archy” due to / derived from being “wired”.
very interesting discussion …
I personally find folder tree structures a perversion going against the natural way our brain categorises things …
Nothing scientific here … just a raw feeling …
I still remember the first period i intensively used PCs (Win 3.1) I constantly had nightmares with folder structures and loss of information…
I guess over time I got used to it but I still find folder trees to be a poor compromise in categorizing knowledge …
Your way of viewing an issue over time changes as your understanding evolves …
This means that the descriptors you once intuitively used to classify a piece of information might not even come to mind when you look for this information some months – years later … meaning you lost it !
(well there is still google desktop thank god!)
The reason why large organisations are still operating in the first order is in my view because the first order was the only possible in the paper only world … (well almost)
The introduction of ICTs was done without any concern whatsoever to re engineer any thing !!
They just duplicated the limitations imposed by the physical world on the digital one …
This is how, today, in 2008 we still have huge organisations working with the traditional (over 50 years old) filing systems even for the information now electronically produced and exchanged…
Mails are still printed and put in Binder folders along with their digital equivalent in the windows folder …
The responsibility of the big ones that have digitized the workplace in the early times (…) bear a huge responsibility to this in my view…
They now try to make up for the mess created through multiple parallel folder tree systems they imposed (mail, documents, favourites etc) , by offering integrated (finally) web solutions …
@ckorakas thanks for this interesting remark. It reminds me of a presentation I heard recently on the re-publica.de conference about a system called DeepMehta (http://www.deepamehta.de), which basically gives up the desktop model and connects all things such as contacts, websites, email, documents as an own personal knowledge web.
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