The Internet Needs a Dewey Decimal System

Long ago, our ancestors lived in caves and devised crude, rough tools to help them get through the day. One of those crude, rough tools was human language. Sure, language gave us such things as civilization (which at times comes in handy), but language is woefully inadequate for many of our modern needs. I can't be the only one repeatedly thinking: “Words fail me. They're not precise enough.”

By Phil Shapiro
Mon, September 27, 2010

PC World — Long ago, our ancestors lived in caves and devised crude, rough tools to help them get through the day. One of those crude, rough tools was human language. Sure, language gave us such things as civilization (which at times comes in handy), but language is woefully inadequate for many of our modern needs. I can't be the only one repeatedly thinking: “Words fail me. They're not precise enough.”

Here is why. A few months ago I was trying to buy inexpensive USB flash drives that I could make available to low-income youth and adults who use the public library where I work. I was looking for 256MB USB drives that would sell for about $2 each. I'm pretty good at finding merchandise on the Web, but I spent more than an hour fruitlessly looking.

Then all of a sudden the other day--a few months later--I come across this vendor sellling a $2 USB Flash drive.

That's exactly what I want. I need for people to be able to carry to the library the word processing they've done on donated computers to print on our library printers. These $2 flash drives are ideal for that. The fact that these flash drives come with a bootable version of Linux, well, that's even nicer.

What I needed in searching for these flash drives was not the words: “256MB USB flash drive.” Those words failed me. What I needed was a Dewey Decimal code for a 256MB USB flash drive, or even a Dewey Decimal number for the concept: “Flash drive that is small in storage capability and that is very inexpensive.” Vendors selling such flash drives could easily add that numerical code to their product metadata, quickly connecting them with people looking to buy those products.

Similarly, a few years ago I wanted to find an author writing books on using Google SketchUp with elementary school students. It took me six months to locate Bonnie Roskes, who coincidentally lives about 10 miles from where I live. The social bookmarking Website Delicious connected me with Bonnie, but I ought to have been able to search the Web using a “Dewey Decimal number” for "SketchUp book author kids." And when I was looking for such a book author, I didn't care at all whether they had published any books or were simply interested in publishing such books. I wanted to be in touch with them.

As it happens, Bonnie Roskes writes SketchUp books for kids as well as SketchUp books for intermediate and advanced SketchUp users. I spent far too much effort and time tracking her down, though.

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Originally published on www.pcworld.com. Click here to read the original story.

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