The Ontology Debate

August 9, 2005 at 2:15 PM

Those of you outside of the IA and LIS loops may have missed this thread, everyone else, well, I am sure you have read about it. It all started out from a post by Clay Shirky called Ontology is Overrated... simple enough and to the point. Not so fast, Peter Merholz followed it up with a humorous post entitled Clay Shirky's Viewpoints are Overrated... a bit austere I suppose, but good points all the way through. Then Gene Smith followed it up with, well, his Ontology is Overrated follow-up post. This is where I really love Gene's writing style and use of colorful ...umm, nouns. And if that doesn't turn your stomach wait until you read the debate about Web 2.0. Some days I wonder if we all spend too much time disagreeing with each other and not enough time, well, as Gene put it, helping people find shit.