Everything is Miscellaneous
I’m about halfway through David Weinberger’s book, Everything is Miscellaneous, and love the way it is helping me re-evaluate the way I think about order and hierarchy in the digital world versus the physical world. And though I’ve read as much in one week for my new courses at Wesleyan than I had done in a month at Tunxis (seemingly, anyway), the fact that I keep making time to read Everything is Miscellaneous — for pleasure, not homework — should tell you something about the quality of the book.
It’s great.
It’s also a constant reminder of my New Media class, and specifically the principle of modularity. In chapter 5, Weinberger briefly describes how Wikipedia articles are assembled on request, digitally constructed out of data residing on multiple different computers pulled together and displayed in a uniform and readable format. When you special-order a Whopper at Burger King, all the ingredients are in the same kitchen. Ask the manager where all the Whopper fixins are, and he or she can not only tell you, but show you. But when Weinberger asked the chief technical officer of the Wikipedia organization to tell him where the information that comprises the entry on “elephant” is stored, his answer was “god only knows. On the disk somewheres.”
And it doesn’t matter where it’s stored, because it doesn’t have to fit on a shelf, inside a locker, or anywhere. It also doesn’t matter how many people want to read it at the same time, because the information is digital (another principle of New Media) we don’t have to look over each other’s shoulders to simultaneously read the wikipedia entry about elephants.
Whoa. Is it any wonder that I find to be just as fascinating as my school work? So why doesn’t Wesleyan teach a New Media class? I’d love to transfer those New Media credits over from Tunxis.