Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder (Weinberger, David)

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.

Key Features

• Information is now a social asset and should be made public, for anyone to link, organize, and make more valuable.
• There's no such thing as "too much" information. More information gives people the hooks to find what they need.
• Messiness is a digital virtue, leading to new ideas, efficiency, and social knowledge.
• Authorities are less important than buddies. Rather than relying on businesses or reviews for product information, customers trust people like themselves.

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.