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02/03/2005 Archived Entry: "Tags"

Tags Run Amok
Short note by Shirky at Many-to-Many on tags. If I understand this note, it's a critique of the rise of the tag for how it can encourage spam. That in itself, however, isn't really much of a critique. The example, which no longer comes up through its link, reveals the potential for spam (if we want to engage in a critique of waste/unsettling the system/etc), but it reveals much more. The little I read by Shirky tends to expose a limited view of emerging systems, understanding their capacities only via the logic of usability, manners (?), civility, standards. This “thing” thing be dangerous is a recognizable trope in technology critique. But that this “thing” might push us into new areas of perception (good or bad) is not. Value judgments are important in this kind of critique: Tag = bad. Or: Tag = good (as I noted on Derek’s blog, McLuhan’s interest in technology is not one of liberation but exploration: “what the hell is technology doing to us?”). But maybe we can suspend value for thought, at least for a second or two. What are the implications of an organizing system which is difficult to pin down because its markers (the tag) are shifting, multiple, contradictory, associative, and often have little to do with one another outside of the whim of the one who does the marking?
There is, no doubt, more than one answer to this question. That some folks in the upscale end of Web critique/commentary avoid the possibility of questioning/answering is not too surprising; web presence depends on its own stability of meaning (some blogs known; some not – reputation as critique; I remember Rebecca Blood’s advice about being consistent in order to be a “good” weblogger). But even this response hints at possibility: the emergence of Warhol/Mailer self-proclamation. A bad thing? Who cares? Should we not consider the possibility of self-reproduction (some kind of Kroker fantasy of biology/technology future?) as much as we have considered textual reproduction (Benjamin)? Increase my presence through the tag, in contradictory and stable ways. . . the tag as technical machine of the alter ego. A DNA writing machine where identity depends on the words one chooses to place between a set of brackets (and a set which closes off the identity though the backslash).