While uploading photos recently, I got to think about tagging, for obvious reasons. When choosing to tag content, I find that I really have to stop and think about what words or short phrases really constitute the basic nature of whatever it is I’m putting out there. It’s almost like writing poetry, particularly haiku (without the standard syllabic format). Tags can be for yourself, but they generally aren’t. They’re used to share and essentially sell your content to others. How can you describe a thing in a way that people will want to look at it? Rather than sticking to a set vocabulary, forms of folksonomy are instead collaboratively generated and known by the participants. This seems to tie in well with notions of social constructivism. Is this perhaps an example of how a smaller-scale practice reflects bigger changes in our views about the nature of knowledge?
I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: I’m not a huge fan of the term Web 2.0, but I find it to be a really useful metaphor: while the infrastructure of the technology has remained relatively stable, our thoughts about it and our application of it have radically changed. I think social tagging is just one more drop in that particular bucket.
So many times we find the best examples of our biggest ideas contained in the smallest examples. I enjoyed this observation, and I’ll never take tagging for granted ever again!