John Dvorak: "Get a life folks(onomy)"

John Dvorak really dislikes social software, blogging, and folksonomy:

Enter yet another more baffling attempt at tagging. This one is fascinating since it's been gussied up with a new name, and for some unknown reason been given the blessing of a bunch of brain-dead bloggers. This is because a few of the favorite sites that the bloggers love have tacitly approved of the so-called—get this—"folksonomy tags." Oh, a new term! This one is a laugh riot, since there is nothing new here except the new name: Folksonomy. I mean even in HTML there was the "metatag."

No, no. This is different because, uh well, uh, lemme think. It just is!

The current fave sites amongst the cognoscenti have adopted the idea of public tags, and a number of influential bloggers have jumped on board pumping up the concept and re-promoting that old rusty saw, "the semantic Web." The semantic Web is a dead duck, let me assure you. You can look it up on Google and roll your eyes on your own time.

And why has this bad idea gotten traction? It's those darned "influential bloggers:"

These are people whom you've never heard of, but whom other influential A-list utopianist bloggers all know. I reckon there are about 500 of them. He (or she) influences other like-minded bloggers, creating a groupthink form of critical mass, just like atomic fission, as they bounce off each other with repetitive cross-links: trackback links, self-congratulatory links, confirmations, and praise-for-their-genius links. BOOM! You get a formidable explosion—an A-bomb of groupthink. You could get radiation sickness if you happen to be in the area....

Apparently it's lost on all of them that the term "tagging," in popular parlance, refers to the worst form of public graffiti. These people don't get out much, it seems.

I wish I had time to write a lengthy retort; for now, I'll hope that one of those 500 writes one that I can (self-referentially) link to.

Comments

[xman]

Why write a retort? He is right! The semantic web has never been a viable idea and so-called folksonomies go a long way to demonstrating why. He's also right about the inter-linking hype that goes on about it.