Everything Is Miscellaneous

In chapter 9 of “Everything is Miscellaneous,” what really thought what was interesting was how Weinberger says medical records are a good example of the orders of information, but they are a mess of the second order.  Before this chapter, I didn’t know that each hospital and clinic has their own way of encoding patient information.  I had always thought that they were similar, with a few changes.  I thought it was shocking that doctors still send each other fax’s instead of exchanging electronic information! (Weinberger173) Additionally, when a patient moves through the system, there are no automatic ways to link records to each clinic.  Which in my experience with doctors, is kind of true, but still it really surprised me.  Also, in chapter 9, Weinberger says organizing things neatly in the first two orders requires us to make decisions about what is important (Weinberger 174).  He goes on that the first order we have to pick one way of arranging, and that one way will not work for every user and need.  The second order we are able to add a few alternatives.  The third he says is a mess from the beginning, and gives the example of what happens with Flickr and photos.  He says that photos are a mess because they can be sorted in many different ways, and says the more metadata it gets, the messier and richer potential.  In chapter 10, I found it funny that Weinberger calls Tiger Woods’ race “Blamincauthaichin,” because he is so mixed with different races.  This presents a good question; what race is he? Also race is always an essential question asked on any survey, job application, but really why does race matter?  Weinberger includes that essentialism, which is a belief that that things have a set of characteristics that make them what they are.  Essentialism is failing, that the differences are blended, for example “Blamincauthaichin.”  Also, the attributes we choose to divide up the world depend on our assumptions.  Weinberger made a funny point about Tiger Woods, but then backed up this point with points and facts.