The example of dominant paradigms in any area going in circles with time is evident in several spheres of lives. Recently, was thinking about this in terms of content organization.

In particular the swing between tagging and searching. Tagging appears to be the buzz-phenomenon of these days. There was a time, when search held the same position. Now, come to think of evolution. People find that there are too many things lying around. If they are to be used when needed, they must be organized. So, some kind of manual categorization comes into the picture. Bookmarks, favourites etc. But then number of things, amount of content just goes on increasing. It is not possible to organize them all manually. So, comes the concept of searching. Looks great, but then the realization comes that machines are not yet in a position to substitute human judgement. There comes back the manual categorization. However, taking a slightly different form. "Social Bookmarking" - one person can not do it all, but several people together can do it! And there will be a phase, when even this model will face problems. Why? Since the judgement of one person will not really be relevant to someone else. And a common problem with all community efforts - how to control? How to ensure that no one is maliciously categorizing wrong things at wrong place? A "port site" under the tag "Family"?! What will be the next step then? A search in an improvised form? Most likely. But the other possibility is that the cycle will break altogether and some new thing will come to start a new cycle altogether.

Categories: Thoughts