Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder

David Weinberger

May 2007 · Macmillan

About this ebook

Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our lives Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children's teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world.

About the author

David Weinberger is the co-author of the international bestseller "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and the author of "Small Pieces Loosely Joined." A fellow at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society, Weinberger writes for such publications as "Wired," "The New York Times," "Smithsonian," and the "Harvard Business Review" and is a frequent commentator for NPR's "All Things Considered." In 1994, he founded Evident Marketing, a strategic marketing firm on technology issues, and he served as the senior Internet adviser to the Howard Dean campaign. He lives in Boston.