MetaFlickstr

The other day the term metadata came up at the casual roundtable. Of course, most everyone understood what was being talked about, and it's the sort of thing anyone intuitively imparts meaning to, however someone asked what it meant.

So it's essentially data about data -- data that describes and assists in contextualizing other data. Social networking applications are filled with metadata. Of course, the barrier at which one crosses from true data to metadata is somewhat blurry (intentionally so for many reasons). However, if we go on the basic assumption that the most crude, emprical indentifying information is about us, then quite a bit fits into the other bucket. So, as I've stated before, You Are Not Your Khakis, erm, Your Profile.

However, those snapshots are valuable -- especially considering our memories highly consist of snapshots with some connective tissue. Unlike real memories though, which can be filtered and otherwise polarized, today's methods of persistence have much more stickiness.

Which brings me to the main point -- how much metadata can we handle. There are two perspectives I think worth mentioning. On the one hand, we've got the summary effect -- the total memory we have available to us. On the other hand, there's the runtime memory -- the memory that is swapped into and out of our active memories.

This arrangement is very powerful and extremely efficient. It's no wonder that we've modeled computers, and software systems to boot, to mimic this natural behavior. Recently, we've seen a slew of tools that are aiming to extend our contextual, runtime understanding of information. Multimedia (how old does that word seem these days?) promises to enrich our lives and "store" more and more than we ever realized was possible.

Stowe Boyd points out hooks in the Picassa/Blogger integration that promises to build storylines while Ross Mayfield comments on Flickr Notes, a new metadata system designed to spur not only runtime but also associative memories.

These happenings are not new and will continue to be outdone as we embark on the next phase of social mapping.