Blog #2

in the first two chapters of Everything is Miscellaneous- the power of the new digital disorder, Weinberger explains different ways of thinking about "order" or the way things are organized. In the prologue, Weinberger explained how Staples organized its merchandise in the store. They use only 3 tags for each product because they believed that the human eye with a good 20/20 vision could scan through a price tag quickly through it. If you made them with 5 tags, then it was too much information for an eye to catch. This made me think on how physical things are catalogued in a store Vs. digital things are tagged in cyberspace. Staples tagged its product they way they think its going to be easier for customers to find in the store, but it does not take in consideration that people could think differently about products.

On Chapter 1, Weinberger stated that "everything has its place". He gives us the clever example of preparing diner and the "complex dance of order" we perform in order to complete the simple task of eating. It made me laugh but he is right, we juggle multiple principles of organization without even thinking about it (Weinberger 11) and we are so used to organize things that it just come natural to us. What this makes me think of is how there is a generational gap on the way we organize things. As a person who grew up with more technology than my parents, it takes me no time to find anything in the internet. But if my mom tries to find something online, it takes her decades to find. It comes natural to me to find something in the internet because I am familiar with the way things run on cyberspace. My mom on the other hand, she tries to find things online like if they are physical things in a shelf.

On chapter 2, Weinberger talks about one of the most common ways people organize things: Alphabetization. Even though is such a common way to organize, there are not too many things that are organized like that. Peoples files in a doctors office? Large video game or movie collection? students in a class? all of these have to do with names. Alphabetization only works with letters, and its conceptually confusing because space, time and atoms are forms of information that are not complete (Weinberger 27).

My favorite quote of the reading:

The world started out miscellaneous but it didn't stay that way, because we work so damn hard at straightening it up (Weinberger 10).