Folksonomies

Wikipedia is characteristically a-historical when it defines "folksonomy" accordingly:

Folksonomy (also known as collaborative tagging, social classification, social indexing, and social tagging) is the practice and method of collaboratively creating and managing tags to annotate and categorize content. Folksonomy describes the bottom-up classification systems that emerge from social tagging. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, metadata is generated not only by experts but also by creators and consumers of the content. Usually, freely chosen keywords are used instead of a controlled vocabulary. Folksonomy (from folk + taxonomy) is a user-generated taxonomy.

Moreover, this description is fundamentally incomplete for failing to acknowledge the crucial importance of standardized spelling in humanity's communication success.

The process of organizing definitions of words is one that goes back millennia. For western society, however, the most comprehensive, universally accepted and reliable work was A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson, published in 1755. Two hundred years have also gone into developing top-down taxonomic and library classification systems. Unique today is the advent of the user authority and bottom-up classification. (This blog will not be able to address all the nuances of this situation; please see: Noruzi)

Notable about dictionaries is their organizational structure - usually alphabetical. With a folksonomy, by contrast, this is not necessary. Standardized spellings and meanings, however, are.

Thus while lexicographical errors are remedial in a published dictionary, they can be fatal in an electronic context.

Whether it's color or colour, judgement or judgment is minor when rationalized by software that has been programmed to correct simple errors or lexicographical variances. Orthographic differences like "plain" or "plane" can have more significant consequences to meaning. (See Orthographic Errors in Web Pages.)

More insidious than these are the malapropisms – or words that are incorrect. How can this be regulated?

Web 2.0: A Tower of Babel?

Andrew Keen summarizes the main theme of his most recent critique of web 2.0:

The cult of the amateur is digital utopianisn's most seductive delusion. This cult promises that the latest media technology – in the form of blogs, wikis and podcasts – will enable everyone to become widely read writers, journalists, movie directors and music artists. It suggests, mistakenly, that everyone has something interesting to say.

A little harsh considering he himself owes his livelihood entirely to web 2.0 technologies. In fact, he helped devise them!

That said, Keen’s comments do hold a kernel of truth. If we are not careful, if there is no natural Darwinistic selection process available, we run the risk of collapsing, like the biblical story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis. When the edifice built up to glorify humanity’s achievements but confused by the multiplicity of a single voice, it is doomed to collapse.

An interesting parallel …


Reference:

Keen, Andrew. 2007. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing our Culture. Doubleday Business.

Image:

Brueghel, Pieter, the Elder. The "Little" Tower of Babel. Rotterdam: Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, c. 1563.

Panopticon and Social Control

English philosopher, jurist and social reformer, Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) devised the original Panopticon in 1785 as a utopian model for prisons. Part of the humanitarian, administrative and legislative tendencies of the late 18th century, Bentham and others sought to bring moral reform and the education of prisoners to the penitential system. Central to the structure’s conceptualization was the idea than inspectors could observe all (Greek: pan- all + optikon- observe) the prisoners without the latter’s knowledge. The effect was one of “invisible omniscience." According to Bentham, the Panopticon would be a “new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."

In the 20th century, the concept of panopticon has become a paradigm of “disciplinary societies.” Based on an Bentham's architectural model, the notion of panopticism became inexorably bound to notions of criminal psychiatry and psychology. Its paradigmatic usefulness was most succinctly analyzed by Michel Foucault. Characterizing the emergence of disciplinary techniques from a traditional punitive society in which offenders physically punished to one where they were controlled and normalized, panopiticism relied on a principle of constant inspection rather than ex post facto inquiry.

Our society testifies to the wholesale acceptance of panopticism. According to Nate Kavanagh, Britain has an estimated 25 million surveillance cameras (one for every two citizens). While North Americans don’t endorse the use of closed-circuit cameras to this extent, surveillance is routine on a more grass-roots level: vigilante groups are publicly encouraged to uncover and shame deviance on national television (cf. To Catch a Predator on NBC). Whether it’s regulated by (“objective”) government or fired by (“subjective”) public prejudice, the effect is the same: while some genuine criminals are brought to justice (and others are not or are wrongly accused), general social behaviours are modified and controlled.

References:

Albrechtslund, Anders. Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. First Monday, 13:3 (3 March 2008). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2142/1949

Bentham, Jeremy. Panopticon (Preface). In Miran Bozovic (ed.), The Panopticon Writings, London: Verso, 1995, 29-95. http://cartome.org/panopticon2.htm

Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison. Second edition. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1995.

Kavanagh, Nate. 2006, But Has 1984 Finally Arrived? IndyMedia UK. September 19, 2006. http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/09/351051.html

Marwick, Alice E. To catch a predator? The MySpace moral panic. First Monday, 13: 6 (2 June 2008). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2152/1966

Panopticon. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

Piñero, Verónica B. On panopticism, criminal records and sex offender registries. First Monday, 11:12 (4 December 2006). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1420

Rajagopal, Indhu. Cons in the panopticon: Anti–globalization and cyber–piracy. First Monday, 9:9 (6 September 2004). http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1174/1094

Robins, Kevin and Webster, frank. "Cybernetic capitalism: Information, technology, everyday life," The political economy of information. Vincent Mosco and Janet Wasko, editors. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998: pp. 44–75.