{"id":289,"date":"2007-07-30T18:42:42","date_gmt":"2007-07-31T01:42:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/2007\/07\/30\/everything-is-toothpaste\/"},"modified":"2008-04-13T20:14:51","modified_gmt":"2008-04-14T03:14:51","slug":"everything-is-toothpaste","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/2007\/07\/30\/everything-is-toothpaste\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything is toothpaste"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine my surprise when I read the following paragraph on pages 196-197 of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.everythingismiscellaneous.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Everything is Miscellaneous<\/a> by David Weinberger:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>For example, when Flickr automatically splits photos tagged &#8220;Capri&#8221; into photos of the Italian island or of the Ford car, it also shows the additional tags associated-sort of, kind of-with each of the two groups.  Thus, next to the Capri island cluster it lists &#8220;italy,&#8221; &#8220;sea,&#8221; &#8220;island,&#8221; &#8220;water,&#8221; &#8220;Italia,&#8221; &#8220;blue,&#8221; &#8220;naples,&#8221; &#8220;Napoli,&#8221; &#8220;Europe,&#8221; and &#8220;boat.&#8221; The first three in the list are in boldface to indicate that the statistical correlation is particularly strong-&#8220;73 percent in a category,&#8221; in Schachter&#8217;s terms.  Likewise, if you browse all the photos at Flickr tagged &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/tags\/italian\/\" target=\"_blank\">Italian<\/a>,&#8221; you&#8217;ll see photos of Capri, the Colosseum, a plate of roasted pork loin on top of asparagus, an Italian plant manager in what seems to be a motorcycle factory, a red beverage, a high-voltage sign in Italian, and <a title=\"the *only* photos of Italian toothpaste on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/toothpastery\/tags\/italian\/\" target=\"_blank\">a glamour shot of a toothbrush loaded with toothpaste<\/a>.  Such a cluster of photos is not a true case of a family resemblance, because all of those photos do indeed have one characteristic in common: Someone has tagged them &#8220;italy.&#8221; But, like a family resemblance, there is no single explanation of what makes &#8220;italy&#8221; an appropriate tag.  It&#8217;s obvious why the photo of the Tuscany landscape was tagged that way.  We can guess why the photo of the pretty, dark-haired woman was tagged &#8220;italy,&#8221; although we can&#8217;t be sure if it&#8217;s a photo of an Italian or of a visitor to Italy. . . .There are relatively few photos at Flickr tagged &#8220;italy&#8221; and &#8220;toothbrush,&#8221; but many tagged &#8220;italy&#8221; and &#8220;rome,&#8221; so it would not be hard for Flickr to isolate some photos as likely to be prototypical of &#8220;italy.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/207003307_6557a0f4e1.jpg\" alt=\"Toothpaste, 31 July (PM)\" \/><\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s me.  That&#8217;s <em>my toothpaste<\/em>.  While there were a lot of points that I tried to make about tagging with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/toothpastery\/\">toothpastery<\/a>, Weinberger does hit one of my main points.  And, I couldn&#8217;t be happier.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.marvismint.com\/\">Marvis<\/a> &#8211; the Italian toothpaste &#8211; is the most fantastic toothpaste I&#8217;ve ever used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Imagine my surprise when I read the following paragraph on pages 196-197 of Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger: For example, when Flickr automatically splits photos tagged &#8220;Capri&#8221; into photos of the Italian island or of the Ford car, it also shows the additional tags associated-sort of, kind of-with each of the two groups. Thus, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photographing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joanna.briggs.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}