Is Everything Miscellaneous?
If you have ever visited a museum, the first thing you’d likely look for is a map. The map provides you with a guide for where to find objects of a similar theme. If you went to the National Museum of American Museum of Natural History in New York City, you would notice that parts of the museum are divided by continents; you’d be able to check out North American Mammals or South American Peoples.
David Weinberger calls this hierarchy the first order of order in his book Everything is Miscellaneous. The first order of order deals with putting objects in places. The map of the museum might classify as his second order of order. The second order of order is information about first order objects; it is essentially meta data or information about information. The second order or order includes things like maps, catalogs, and other indices.
With the advent of digital technology, however, Weinberger describes a third order, which paradoxically, ushers in no order at all. The third order represents a shift from atoms to bits, from the physical to the virtual and according to Weinberger, from order to the miscellaneous.
Throughout his book, Weinberger weaves what often appears to be a miscellaneous web of arguments to challenge what he sees as the presumptuous nature of order. He looks at everything from the structure of the Dewey Decimal System to how celestial bodies are (or are not) classified as planets to question established notions of order. He makes a bold conclusion: the third order not only changes how the world is organized, it challenges the authority of those who do the organizing.
Weinberger’s world praises the individual’s view of “order” over that of experts. He believes the advantage of the “digital opportunity” is to destroy “the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.”
Whether looking at atoms or bits, the concept of the miscellaneous holds some value. After all, not everyone organizes his linen closets the same way. Given a hundred sock draws, you’d probably find a significant number of different combinations.
The point is that the individual has some say in the organization of first order objects and second and third order information. Well, that at least works in the cases where the individual owns the objects or information. The individual’s “order” might only make sense to him. But can the individual’s or even groups of individuals’ miscellany continually prove relevant in the public forum? The answer to that question is critical to Weinberger’s claims; the third order does not always exist.
For example, how does the third order apply to the physical Museum of Natural History? Even a virtual museum would need some sort or first order of order. Before an object could appear in the virtual museum, it would need to be qualified. A curator, someone trained and knowledgeable in a particular element of natural history, would be required to inform the process of choosing what should be included in the virtual tour of the museum. That’s the first order of order at work; putting objects in places. Yielding to miscellany, to individuals or groups of individuals, could create a natural history museum filled with everything from Walt Disney DVDs to empty plastic bottles of water.
In a truly miscellaneous world, there would be little to no common experience to understand existence. First and second orders are responsible for everything from language and currency to menus and encyclopedias. Are they perfect? No. But they do establish a basis to communicate and even to disagree. And that is something that’s difficult to do with Weinberger’s ideas about everything being miscellaneous.
October 25, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Ken, thanks so much for the thoughtful review.
To answer your last question: The physical Museum of Natural History is a first order collection, so the curators will organize it in a sensible way…as always. I’m not saying in the book that the first and second orders have no value. They are required for organizing physical things. But if the museum posted info about its collection on its Web site, it could use third order principles to highlight multiple and interesting relationships among the pieces.
As for the objection you raise in your last paragraph: It’s not as if the digital world has wiped out everything we ever learned and every structure of society. The first and second orders will always be with us because, well, we’re atoms in a world of atoms.
I hope that clarifies what I meant. If I’ve misunderstood your point, please let me know. And thanks again.
October 26, 2007 at 2:59 pm
David, appreciate you stopping by…and for the clarification.
My point of contention still speaks to the very bold statement of the “digital opportunity” and how it can destroy,
“the idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world.”
That premise seems to be a big theme of the book.
The title of the book starts with the word everything — that everything is miscellaneous. It seems to me that you prefer the miscellaneous to the first and second order. That is, you prefer a world without hierarchy and others assuming they know how to best organize things (whether it’s encyclopedias, planets, etc.)
There seems to be a contradiction between acknowledging and embracing the first and second order and making the sort of statements I note above. Doesn’t destroying the “idea that there’s a best way of organizing the world” in fact imply that the first and second order are not to be respected?
October 26, 2007 at 3:31 pm
Ken, you’re definitely correct that “There is no one best way of organizing the world” is a big theme of the book. It’d be safe to say that it is THE theme of the book. But that doesn’t mean that all ways are equally good. How we organize it (physically or conceptually) depends on what our project and background are. “Planets with atmospheres” is useful if you’re studying weather. “Planets with water” is useful if you’re studying the possibility of life on other plants. “Planets we can see with an amateur telescope” is useful if you have an amateur telescope. There is no one best way INDEPENDENT of what we’re trying to do, and independent of our language, culture and experience.
IMO, just because the nature of matter forces us to pick only one way of organizing physical stuff, we should not impose that limitation on how we organize ideas and information. You’re right that I prefer the third order way because it’s usually more convenient but, more importantly, because it frees us from a physical limitation that we never should have thought was a limitation on our ideas. So, an online museum (for example) can (and should) feature the sorting and ordering created by expert curators, but it can also let us sort through it in ways that make sense to us at that moment (”Show me all the weapons that come from tropical countries”; “show me all the small animals that are carnivores”). Since the third order is additive — it includes the experts’ ways of organizing — I think it is generally to be preferred.
Your final paragraph gives a reason why it should not be preferred. Perhaps we’ll be thrown into chaos, with each person ordering the world the way she wants. Because I don’t think we’re fundamentally individual, I’m not worried about the extreme form of that, in which each person organizes the world totally differently and we can’t even talk with one another. I do think there are real concerns about whether this is going to fragment us into chunks that are more isolated from one another than we are even currently. I give some reasons in the book to think that that’s not what is going to happen, but I agree with you that it’s certainly something to be concerned about.
Thanks again for the push-back.
October 26, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Ahh, I like what I read there, esp. that you see the third order as additive. My fear was that you advocated throwing the experts completely to the side.
I also was encouraged by,
“..I don’t think we’re fundamentally individual, I’m not worried about the extreme form of that, in which each person organizes the world totally differently and we can’t even talk with one another.”
If that’s a correct assumption (re: that we aren’t fundamentally individual), this makes much more sense…thanks for the subsequent thoughts.
October 26, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I wish I had been clearer about that in the book :(
So, thanks again for forcing some clarity out of me!