Metacrap in the Metautopia - a Snarky Look at Meta Data

Karen Lopez - karen@Infoadvisors.com — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 18:22:22 GMT

Cory Doctorow is an activist, a writer, a blogger, a public speaker, and a technology person. He writes science fiction normally. He is also on the masthead of Wired, Popular Science, and MAKE. He freelances for the New York Times and Salon.

I found a great web article of his about Metacrap in the Metautopia. I think it is spot on.

If everyone would subscribe to such a system and create good metadata for the purposes of describing their goods, services and information, it would be a trivial matter to search the Internet for highly qualified, context-sensitive results: a fan could find all the downloadable music in a given genre, a manufacturer could efficiently discover suppliers, travelers could easily choose a hotel room for an upcoming trip.
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities.
2. The problems
There are at least seven insurmountable obstacles between the world as we know it and meta-utopia.

If you have read any of my writings, you know that I love snarky writing. Take a couple of minutes to check out his rant.

Reading, Watching and Listening

Metacrap in the Metautopia - a Snarky Look at Meta Data

2. The problems