Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia

http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm

RATING

Usefulness: 2/5

Interesting: 4/5

In “Metacrap,” Cory Doctorow goes on to discuss why he believes that a “meta-utopia” is not achievable, and it’s “nerd hubris” to believe it is. A meta-utopia would require reliable metadata, which he states is impossible for at least seven reasons: “people lie, people are lazy, people are stupid, people are lousy observers of their own behavior, schemas aren’t neutral, and metrics influence results.”

In other words, people are trying to compete with others in order to get their information, opinion, or product out there. The large amount of knowledge out in the world causes people to have short attention spans. In order to get views on information or sites, people lie. Others sometimes don’t put in the effort to properly label data. Either the information is incomplete, or they fail to spell correctly, etc. Also, people fail to accurately describe data, because there’s no correct way to categorize things. There are many ways to do so. Not everyone will agree on one given form of categorization. Furthermore, everyone has different ways of describing things. If everyone were to agree, there would be “homogeneity in ideas” that could create a road block for fresh and innovative ideas.

The author argues that metadata is still valuable, as it helps to organize and retrieve data. However, a meta-utopia will never come about, nor is it something we should really strive for and I think I agree. It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, if I’m looking for the official Marvel’s Avengers trailer, I want to see the official trailer. I don’t want to click on a link for ‘Avengers 2012 Official Trailer’ and find myself watching a fan-made video. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for deceptively categorized data, I wouldn’t have found that ‘obscure yet totally cool’ article I was never looking for.

While this article was interesting, it serves little purpose in informing people about how to properly label and create metadata. It is a discussion about what is wrong with metadata, not about what we can do to improve it.