(Self-published, 26 August 2001)

on metadata, and how we would have a utopia if everything existed in a searchable database. but we can't get there because:

1. people lie;
2. people are lazy and omit metadata;
3. people are stupid (misspellings, etc);
4. people don't know themselves very well (see: programmer time estimates);
5. hierarchives are subjective and thus it's impossible to create a common ontology that everyone agrees on;
6. people won't agree on a common yardstick;
7. there's more than one way to describe something.

on the other hand, some metadata is useful (e.g., pagerank, though ofc that has lots of problems of its own and he doesn't address them at all)