The New Digital Disorder

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June 2008
Metadata DWG – The 3rd order of orders

66th OGC Technical Committee

Potsdam, Germany
Arnulf Christl
June 02, 2008

Agenda

• Introduction
• Scope of this presentation
• Three levels of order
• Physical objects, catalogs, and digital data
• OGC CSW
• The Dewey Decimal Library Classification System
• Why Categories Fail
• Extracting Knowledge from Miscellany
Copyright: WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG.
Licensed under GNU FDL http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt
and CreativeCommons 3.0 ShareAlike
Helping the World to Communicate
Copyleft © 2008, Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc., All Rights Reserved.
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Introduction

The original title of this presentation was:
A short introduction on the third order of orders, tagging,
collaborative methodology, search engine power and failure,
distributed resources and centralized registries
It was nothing but a brain dump triggered by reading:

Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. This
presentation brims with citations from his book.
http://www.everythingismiscellaneous.com/

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Scope of this presentation

This presentation shows how meta and data have merged
in the digital realm. Services, clients, software and
architecture are all in place, we have:
Structured,
Ordered,
Categorized,
Hierarchical,
Meta Data

But still we fail to get it to the people!
Web 2.0, social networks, tag clouds and the like
add value by exposing data and allowing dynamic creation of
Knowledge from Data.
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Three Levels of Order

In a nutshell the book states that:
●
The 1st order of orders is about physical things.
●
The 2nd order of orders is categories and hierarchies as
implemented by library card catalogs.
●
The 3rd order of orders is emerging right now and it
completely redefines our perception of meaning itself.
Meta data catalogs are stuck right there in the second level
of orders. Opening them to the miscellany of the third order
of orders will make them so much more useful.

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The 1st Order of Order: Atoms
Physical things (atoms) occupy space. This creates a set of
clear rules how to order (and find) things:
●
One thing can only be at one location at a time
●
One location can only be occupied by one thing
●
One thing can hide another one that is behind
●
The number of accessible things is physically limited.
In this context space is the limiting factor. The organization of
the 1st order of orders is an art of its own. An office
equipment store uses a different system than a car dealer or
a gas station. All are specialized to their products.
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The 2rd Order of Orders: Catalogs

When book printing became commonplace it was suddenly
possible to aggregate knowledge on papers between two
covers and put them in a shelf. Thus knowledge became
physical – with all its limitations.
●
Catalogs helped democratize knowledge by putting
meta data on a card making it much more findable.
●
The limited space of a catalog card entry (a few lines)
and the physical space books occupy are natural
physical boundaries to this system.

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The 3rd Order of Orders – Digital Data

The great advantage of digital data bears heavy on all our
concepts of matter:
●
Information is most valuable when it is thrown into a big,
digital pile to be filtered and organized by users
themselves
●
Instead of relying on experts, groups of users are
inventing their own ways of discovering data
●
Smart companies do not treat information as an asset
to be guarded, but let it loose to be "mashed up",
gaining market awareness and customer loyalty.
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Catalogue Services – Web

Catalogs list objects by putting them in a neutral order and
list them in categories. The order typically is:
●
Alphabetical or numerical order (start at one end and
stop at the other). No preferences, no bias, neutral.
●
Hierarchies are managed in trees (catalogs) with
branches (categories) and leaves (items). Meaning.
Catalogs overcome the inaccessibility of the information
contained in books by exposing much better accessible meta
data. The lines of text on a catalog card are limited and for
better accessibility it gets organized in categories.
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Trees, Categories and Hierarchies

In the 19th century Melvil Dewey created the three digit
Dewey decimal library catalog numbering system with 9 top
level categories.
●
100s philosophy and psychology (which in that time
were considered to be the foundation of knowledge)
●
200s religion (which in this mindset gave truth)
●
300s social sciences
●
400s language
●
500s natural sciences and math

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Categories Fail
●
600s technology and applied science
●
700s arts and recreation
●
800s literature and rhetoric
●
900s geography, history and biography
It is still being used today but in many places it is misleading
if not embarrassingly wrong. While "UralAltaic, Paleosiberian
and Dravidian" are a top level category (494) the language
spoken by 1.2 billion Chinese is not. It can be changed but –
who decides? Dublin Core, ISO Application Profile, All Fail.

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Recap our Traditional View of Knowledge

Our traditional view of knowledge goes like this:
1. There is only one reality and only one knowledge. If two
have a different view, one is right, the other is wrong.
2. Knowledge is unambiguous. If something is unclear we
have not understood it.
3. Because knowledge is so big we need experts to filter
and keep bad information away from us.
4. Experts achieve their positions by working their way
through institutions.

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New Properties, New Strategies,
New Knowledge
The potential miscellany of our digital data has tremendous
power. But to unleash this power it requires us to review our
strategy of knowledge:
1. Filter on the way out not the way in.
2. Put each leaf on as many branches as possible.
3. Everything is meta data and everything can be a label.
4. Give up control.
Don't start to argue why this does not work.
Think what good it can do.
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New Properties, New Strategies,
New Knowledge
The potential miscellany of our digital data has tremendous
digital
power. But to unleash this power it requires us to review our
review
t
strategy of knowledge: a n a g
n g
1. Filter on the way out not the way in. o t e d
a &
t e
2. Put each leaf on as many branches as possible.
possible d

3. Everything is meta data and everything can be a label.
4. Give up control!
Don't start to argue why this does not work.
work
Think what good it can do.
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Now What?

As so often these days, we will not know what happens when
we do that. But as every other so often we will be surprised
at what can be done.
Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap are just flimsy examples
compiled by civilians.

Imagine to what power these technologies and concepts
would rise if they were let loose in the hand of
experts and professionals!

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Discussion

Thank you for your attention.

Copyright: WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG.
Author: Arnulf Christl
WhereGroup GmbH & Co. KG
This presentation is dual licensed under GNU FDL and
Siemensstr. 8
Creative Commons 3.0 Share Alike. Choose the one that fits
53121 Bonn your needs best. The presentation master, cover pages and
Germany last page (this one) are what the GNU FDL refers to as
http://www.wheregroup.com/ invariant sections. Please do not modify these pages without
getting written permission by the author. Find the full text of
the GNU FDL at: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl.txt

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