To illustrate this claim, I
selected examples from Burke’s book. The problem of organizing and tracking
knowledge, so that it can be put to use, is no new product of the Web’s
‘information overload,’ but is in fact a challenge people have met for
centuries with efficient cataloguing and storage systems. The use of
‘metadata,’ a buzzword of the moment in the revelation of the NSA spying
scandal, goes back to scientists labeling their specimens and librarians
devising indexes, among other things. Burke quotes Hermann von Helmholtz saying
that a society’s level of advancement depended on how many ways they had to
make knowledge ‘immediately accessible.’
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