A Miscellaneous Mess and Marvel

Weinberger has some great phrases that aptly describe many of our mundane activities, such as the "nightly choreography", as the dance we do between washing and putting away the dishes. I could relate to the silverware debate. I too, hate to unload the silverware basket but luckily am married to a guy who loves to organize, categorize and sort. When we were first married, he would often sort my closet by colors and loves to sort through baskets of socks. He would be a great librarian.

Then there is the grocery dance that I am so weary of, put the items in my cart, them out onto the belt, then into my bags and back into the cart, then out of my cart and into the car, then out of the car and into my house, then out of the bags and into my cupboards, then out of my cupboards and into the oven/mouth etc. It is a crazy ordeal that we do over and over without much thought.

Regarding the problem that has overwhelmed my computer, the disorganization of all my documents and folders and photos! It is getting increasingly difficult to find anything on my computer; it is starting to resemble my garage! My favorite line is , "the solution to the overabundance of information is more information." There is a sad truth to that statement, that does nothing to make me feel more hopeful about getting control of my information! I have a similar problem with my paper files. The adage that 'everything should have its place", does not always work as it is often better if things can get assigned to multiple places simultaneously.

The Bettmann Archive was new and fascinating information to me. I did not know it existed and would love to see it sometime, and it was very interesting to read about the inherent problems with the Dewey Decimal system as well as the challenges with alphabetization. I had come across some of these problems when I managed a small library in a teaching institute, setting up the cross references and filing topic cards and arranging books by numbers. It was overwhelming in my small library so I could easily imagine the many larger issues in enormous libraries.

I have often wondered how Google can have so much information, billions of entries and how it sorts and classifies, " intertwingles" every piece of information. I would like to see how that works or how they can program a computer to make that work. I have often wondered how bar codes work and who keeps track of the numbers so that they are not repeated etc. It has been fascinating to read about all the miscellaneous pieces in our lives and how the new rules "are transforming the landscape in which we work, buy, learn, vote and play."