textual metanoia

The final chapter of Stewart’s Building Enterprise Taxonomies is (comedically) about the red-headed step-child of information architecture, folksonomies. Stewart had already stated his opinion, perhaps somewhat implicitly, about the value of folksonomies vis-à-vis controlled taxonomies, that folksonomies are left to a final short chapter is confirmation of his opinion. Stewart does provide some helpful insight about the potential value of folksonomies, which is to say that, like everything, in the right situation a folksonomy can be a powerful tool. Prior to reading this chapter I had never heard of “desire lines” being associated with folksonomies, but it’s actually a brilliant way to conceptualize the workings of a folksonomy. As Stewart explains, desire lines are the paths that human predilection establishes, such as viewed by the dirt paths through grassy fields rounding out sidewalk corners. The brilliance here is that folksonomies are best used in situations where desire plays a large part, so, libraries, enterprises, and the like are not a good choice, but sexy social websites that have a large and committed audience are a great place to use folksonomies.