It's a strawman argument -- tags do not replace library science, film at 11 -- but she does say some interesting things along the way. If you replace "tags ought to do" with "archival systems ought to do" it's an interesting meditation.
Although, her notion of encoding potential narratives into images seems like the old AI dream. Like you could somehow query "triumph against adversity" and get a picture of a schooner crashing through a wave. I think after the last 50 years we have to be more humble about what machines can achieve.
P.S: this is the fault of the hosting magazine, Tekka, but they are certainly failing even at elementary archiving and contextualization duties here. The date of publication is not noted, nor is there any link to describe who Cathy Marshall is. There's an issue/volume header at the top, without any other context. They're thinking print, not web. The tagline of "serious hypertext" is silly.
> Flickr tags are by people categorizing their own photos (that is, publisher-generated categorization.) Not people categorizing things they've found or aren't theirs. This leads to radically different behavior. Given this is a librarian, the second case is much more relevant and interesting.
Well-written, but it ignores that the main use of tags are for individual users. I tag my photos in Flickr so that they're sortable within my photos. So Flickr.com/unalone/tag/mike (that's not the actual URL) gets me every photo that I've taken with Mike in it. No, it doesn't help the omnipotent Mike searcher - perhaps I'm mucking data up - but it means that as I continue to photograph Mike, I get a quick pool of photos that revolve around that theme.
Not everything is about creating an indexable, searchable database. If anything, I'd think that some level of user moderation for searches would be more logical than tag sorting. No - tags are best used as a more flexible version of taxonomy, for localized sorting and filing.
Although, her notion of encoding potential narratives into images seems like the old AI dream. Like you could somehow query "triumph against adversity" and get a picture of a schooner crashing through a wave. I think after the last 50 years we have to be more humble about what machines can achieve.
P.S: this is the fault of the hosting magazine, Tekka, but they are certainly failing even at elementary archiving and contextualization duties here. The date of publication is not noted, nor is there any link to describe who Cathy Marshall is. There's an issue/volume header at the top, without any other context. They're thinking print, not web. The tagline of "serious hypertext" is silly.