Cultural Formation
In many foundational theoretical debates, the term, “cultural formation” can be located at the center of disagreements regarding the precise relation of the cultural domain to economic, political, and . . . [read more]
Rhetorical Situation
In the broadest sense, inquiring into the “rhetorical situation” of metadata and new media composition requires approaching the problems and affordances of social tagging systems . . . [read more]
Serendipity
One aspect of recognizing the affordances of text requires our availability to move through text or move text serendipitously. Serendipity is the practice of stumbling across standards. In our discussions of . . . [read more]
Archive
Given that this multi-authored investigation of the contexts and practices of social tagging began with a group analysis of the Flickr Commons digital photo collection, it is no wonder that . . . [read more]
Affordances
If this investigation has had a centralizing impulse at all, it has been to construct an analysis of the multiple “constraints and affordances” involved in making media with metadata in mind. Therefore, each of our different lines of . . . [read more]
Composition
Our method to this point has been to approach questions of tagging, digital archiving, folksonomies, and new media from a variety of disciplinary angles to see what “emerges” both in terms of our group’s standards . . . [read more]
Standardization
In a “Standards in the Making” (SITM) approach, standards emerge and are contingent. The keyword “standards” that compose this layer of our project are certainly no different. Here we have drawn from our . . . [read more]
Collaboration
Collaboration from a SITM perspective involves the collective efforts of humans and machines. Each of our writings describe this collaboration, whether between humans, machines, or humans and machines. In . . . [read more]
Platform
The platform is the vehicle through which a standards in the making (SITM) approach materializes. Here, we speak of the various code-work, software and hardware configurations . . . [read more]
Contingency
We have described standards in the making (SITM) as a process, as a method for critical inquiry and production. Across these two thrusts of SITM, the notion of contingency highlights . . . [read more]
Protocol
Standardization is a theme found throughout our writings of standards in the making (SITM), as part of the new work of composing. Standards are provided through some sense of a protocol, whether written in the actual . . . [read more]
Materiality
It is tempting to treat metadata merely as information. As Jentery shows, metadata does enable some distance from artifacts, and that distance is often empowering. For one, it allows people to wrangle . . . [read more]
Miscellaneous
In keeping with the most basic premises of our SITM approach, we have set out in this webtext to reveal contingency and process in the construction of metadata standards while. . . . [read more]
Synthesis
In this layer, the work previously generated in the “Analysis” stage is enlisted in an attempt to define the work of SITM in practice. Here, each author synthesizes the insights of the group in order to pursue of a particular . . . [read more]
Analysis
The entries in this layer consist of our individual analyses of the folksonomic tagging system used in the context of The Flickr Commons Project. At this stage of the project, our goal was to . . . [read more]
Introduction
This chapter is an investigation of metadata through what we call a “Standards in the Making” (SITM) approach. But what is “Standards in the Making”? What does it entail, and . . . [read more]