The death of taxonomy?
On this
first day of 2009, I thought I’d take a moment to
reflect on the CMS Watch list of predictions for
2009. Getting big play in the top 3 is “Taxonomies
are dead. Long live metadata!”
"With social computing coming to the fore, it’s never
been more obvious that everyone does not, and will
never, categorize things in the same way. It doesn’t
even matter what’s correct anymore… I will assert
that the days of the traditional, definitive, and
single-hierarchy taxonomy are long behind us."
I think that this is accurate — insofar as it uses
the traditional, definitive and single-dimension
definition of taxonomy that ought to be left in the
dust along with corded telephones and dot matrix
printers. I mean, I can’t even remember ever building
a taxonomy that was meant to be traditional or had a
single-hierarchy.
The term “taxonomy” has grown to mean so much more
than this… We use taxonomy in a very broad sense -
suggesting that all metadata comes from the taxonomy.
Everything is about classification and structure.
Certainly “taxonomy” has become an abused term. They
say taxonomy when they want their information world
to be a better place. There is a comforting, ordered
ring to the term. It sets all things in the world in
their proper place.
There's a lot more Stephanie talks about, how business people don't get metadata, and how the term taxonomy is evolving, not dying - I highly recommend reading the post and the blog when you can! There are a lot of great articles in the archives as well.