Rezension und Interview geführt mit David Weinberger

von Margit Link, brainGuide AG, Juli 2008

Es lebe das Chaos!

In seinem neuen Buch "Das Ende der Schublade - Die Macht der digitalen Unordnung" beschreibt der amerikanische Philosoph David Weinberger die Möglichkeiten, die dieses vermeintliche Datenchaos in sich birgt.

Die Menschen können die Wissensorganisation selbst in die Hand nehmen.

Experten oder auch staatliche Institutionen, die Informationen vorfiltern, werden überflüssig.

Jeder Nutzer kann digitale Inhalte mit eigenen Etiketten (tags) versehen, man beschriftet eigene oder fremde Dokumente, erstellt Lesezeichen (book-marking) und Listen und bringt diese in immer neue Zusammenhänge. Es entstehen bestenfalls temporäre Ordnungen.

Dem gegenüber beschreibt Weinberger die Einschränkungen unserer in Kategorien eingeteilten Welt.

Er wirft einen Blick zurück auf klassische Ordnungssysteme, wie das Alphabeth, die binäre Nomenklatur oder das Dewey'sche Dezimalsystem, nachdem heute noch Bibliotheken katalogisiert werden und zeigt die Grenzen dieser starren Systeme auf.


brainGuide Herr Weinberger, Sie schreiben in Ihrem neuen Buch, dass in der digitalen Welt alle physischen Beschränkungen aufgehoben sind. Die Benutzer werden sich aber weiterhin mit physischen Beschränkungen, wie begrenzter Aufnahmefähigkeit der Augen, des Gehirns etc., herumschlagen müssen. Ist der Mensch überhaupt in der Lage diese Informationsfülle zu nutzen ohne überfordert zu sein?


David Weinberger: Of course there is a limit to how much information we can manage. The history of the Internet is the story of our response to this problem. We keep inventing new ways to find and understand what we need from this universe of ideas and information. The World Wide Web itself was invented to enable us to recommend and contextualize sites for one another, via hyperlinks expressed in ordinary language.

The fact is that we now have far, far more information available to us than the most pessimistic of the doomsayers predicted twenty years ago, but we're managing far better than anyone thought. That's because The solution to the problem of information overload is to generate more information: information about the information. That gives us the handles by which we can find, organize, and grasp what we need.

There's too much information for the old systems of organization to work. There simply aren't enough experts to categorize and classify all we're producing for ourselves. Besides, no expert-based classification system could match the way each and everyone of us thinks about our world. We can only make this mass of information useful and meaningful by working (and playing) together. What had been the task of dedicated experts now is something we are doing for one another, socially. And this obviously has important consequences for government, education, the media, and business.


brainGuide Werden dadurch nicht wieder neue Institutionen und Experten entstehen, die zwar nicht staatlich subventioniert, sondern als kommerzielle Dienstleister diese Informationen filtern?


David Weinberger: It will certainly alter existing institutions, especially ones that have traditionally derived their authority from filtering and organizing information. That includes not only the media but also just about every business. Businesses have assumed that they are the experts in their products and services. nd they've tried to control what we know about them. Now it turns out that the great swirling mass of customers and users collectively know more about businesses than businesses themselves do.

Inevitably new institutions will emerge, although many are likely to be profoundly unlike the old ones, for we are doing socially what we used to think required a dedicated institution with a staff of experts.


brainGuide Das Überflüssigwerden von Institutionen und Experten führt einerseits zu einer Demokratisierung des Wissens, führt es aber nicht auch zu einer Banalisierung?


David Weinberger: Knowledge is being commoditized, so that it's easier than ever to learn what you need to know. But ideas and creativity are not being commoditized. They are forming and flowing more rapidly than ever.

Because we now know how much there is to know, and because we are connected to a world that differs deeply in its views and interests, we also know that knowledge isn't enough. There isn't some body of knowledge that we can master and then proceed from together. Knowledge is important -- not irrelevant at all -- but it isn't enough. We want to understand our world, not just know it.


brainGuide Bücher sind billig und Bibliotheken gibt es in jeder Kleinstadt. Führt nicht die Verlagerung des Wissens in das Internet zu einer Klassifizierung der Menschen, in solche die Zugang zum net haben und solche die diese Möglichkeit nicht haben?


David Weinberger: The digital divide is, of course, real and a real problem. Among all the divides, however, it is one of the easiest to overcome ...easier than the economic, cultural, educational, and gender divides. It will always exist to some degree, however, because even if everyone on the planet were to be connected to the Internet -- and we are a long, long way from that -- the quality of the connection and the access to information would vary widely. So, yes, as with just about every good, the Internet's benefits are and will be spread unevenly.

Even if there were universal, superb access to the Internet, differences in culture, language, economics, and education would result in uneven benefits. Knowledge isn't like gold. It is not simply quantitative.

But even having lousy access to such an overwhelming source of knowledge, information, and ideas gives people a significant boost up.


brainGuide Warum haben Sie Ihren Text als Buch veröffentlicht?


David Weinberger: The point "Everything Is Miscellaneous" tries to make is not that we're replacing one order with another, but that now massively multiple orderings can exist simultaneously. Books remain well-suited to the development of some sorts of ideas. That's why I wrote one. Then I sold the rights to a publisher because I wanted to make some money from my labor.

A quick googling of my name will show that I also contribute to the lovely disorder of the Web literally every day.


brainGuide Vielen Dank für die Beantwortung unserer Fragen!