Information Evolves and Other Stuff

I've learned to avoid precategorizing anything in my bookmarks.

I don't make a category unless it is necessary, unless I am using it. For example, I need to bookmark Amazon web services, so I create an Amazon Web Services folder, but I don't create a Web folder, with a Web Services folder inside, which I then put the AWS folder in. I don't have any other web services bookmarks yet in Google Chrome so I leave this for later. It just creates more folder depth to dig through before it's needed.

I also try to avoid adding a bookmark just for reference. That just leads to clutter, where I can't find the bookmarks I use on a daily basis, because when you categorize information according to its classification or how it relates to other information, you lose how it relates to you, to useage. For example, if in browsing the web I find a half dozen interesting resources on manual focus lenses, but for cameras I don't use, the bookmarks will obscure the resources I use for manual focus lenses for cameras I do use. What I do now is add bookmarks only when I use the content or need the content now, not for reference or anticipating future use, placing them in the categorized heirarchy. The others I place in Uncategorized (what a wonderful idea, that Uncategorized anti-category!) awaiting the day they become useful and can be categorized, or I place them in a special heirachy called Reference. I don't know if a parallel heirarchy will work but it does keep them out of my way.

I hate digging through deep categories. Yet, for proper categorization to find things later, when you've forgotten where they are, they need deep categories. If I have have five different web services providers, each one needs its own folder and there will be clutter if I just create them all at the same level. So I need to create a Web Services folder, which then adds another annoying, slowing, confusing layer to finding what I want and to my thinking. I want Amazon Web Services when I want it, not digging through Web, Web Services to get to it. What if I use it every day? I have to dig each time.

This brings up another issue: information structures evolve.

One of the problems library scientists create is through this need for pre-creation of categories. They must predict every category that will be needed ahead of time. I was once told I needed to create "name authority records" for every photographer in a database I envisioned of 19th century photographers, before a database collecting names from old card photographs could be built. At that rate, the database would never be built and besides the whole purpose of the project was to collect the names so we could see who was doing what and look for patterns. If we had an authoritative name for each one, we wouldn't be doing the research.

Don't engineer. Evolve. Evolve. Evolve.

We don't need architects and engineers, we need some new job description with a new name, evolvineer or something, for the person who creates a framework for information evolution (maybe like the game Spore?). Perhaps databases like multivariate or Lotus Notes will help get us there.