DO TAGS WORK?

Tag! You’re it!

It seems that everywhere I go on the Web these days is tagged.

When I login to Flickr, the first photo I see— an artistic effort that looks to be a study of a sturdy dandelion growing from a crack in the curb—is taggedflowers,spring,scenery,lapsana,great,fotolog,ThinkFlickrThink,SuperShot, and1mill.

I like the photo, although it calls to mind dozens of inspirational posters, the province of the over-earnest, the literal, and the hapless striver. Flowers? I can see only one. A lapsana. Who knew? Is it scenery? Well, it’s not a dog, although I think of scenery as grander in scale and as less ambiguous in its beauty than a lone dandelion. Is it great? According to his comment, Blue Cockatoo thinks so. How thick is the stem? Oh, I’d say it’s about 1mill.

Heckuva job, tags!

EvenThe New York Times, bastion of old media order and civility, is more than willing to present you with a tag cloud view of the news. Is that a deluge of bobby fischer news I see on the horizon in the wake of his untimely demise? Or perhaps it’s more like a fine mist of bobby fisher rumors. There must be a review of a japanese cell phone novel about modern love among the gay ufos in the news today too. If we believe the cloud, Hilary Clinton is becoming more and more like Madonna and Cher, so recognizable that she no longer needs a surname.

And then I think to myself, “suzanne pleshette”? What’s Suzanne Pleshette doing there? Did she die, or has she entered the presidential race?”

With tags I’m right on top of the news.

Continues @http://www.tekka.net/10/tags.html

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