Taxonomies, structure, and information theory

Bob Larrivee of AIIM asks,

If the perceived purpose of taxonomy is to provide structure to the unstructured, helping us gain and maintain control over our information, does it not then stand to reason that taxonomy creates an environment that is anti-intellectual? 

Does a structured classification framework with controlled vocabularies that limits users abilities to apply metadata descriptors to information go against the growing trends for use of folksonomy and the concept of collaborative tagging across an enterprise for the purpose increased flexibility in information sharing?

His point seems to be that by reducing the cognitive load on searchers a taxonomy reduces the need to think through conceptual categories. The worry seems to be that by reducing the need to think through conceptual categories certain domains of knowledge will go under-appreciated or un-inspected, and that some side-channel knowledge transfer will not occur if the taxonomy is centrally maintained.

I think Bob Larrivee may be using a popular but problematic theory of information, which suggests that information restriction will lead to knowledge restriction. This isn't always the case, and to flip the situation on its head we see examples of innovation, discovery, and sharing when certain domains are restricted. When domains are restricted it is not merely bringing the cream to the top, but instead it is reconfiguring the information itself. I don't yet have all the details worked out between bridging new (post-Shannon) theories of information and the professional applications of it, but I think it is fruitful to employ a broadly materialist theory that recognizes the impermanence of knowledge as situated in documents as "meaning", which ultimately discards the idea that taxonomies only structure content for retrieval.