Prologue, Chapter1, and Chapter 2 of Everything is Miscellaneous

Prologue

The prologue begins with a detailed description of a Staples store layout. Weinberger is trying to explain why it is that Staples or any other physical store would create a layout the way that they do. When people walk in to a physical store they are hoping that there will be some sort of sign to point them in the direction that they need. Once aimed in the correct direction it is important to have everything organized in a fashion that is easily accessible to the customers. Weinberger also descirbes the difficulty in organization as many items fall into more than one category, and belong in more than one place. This past Christmas I had an interesting shopping experience as I was trying to find things for my two sisters at Toys 'R' us. I noticed that I had been walking around in a circle forever and that I had past some of the same merchandise more than once, making me think I had been around the circle again. In all actuality they had placed the same stock in more than one place so that consumers had a higher chance of finding the toy.

"Having to come back: the victory of space and time over the human ability to remember what goes with what. Many of us find it unreasonably irritating to have to make a second trip to pick up what we forgot the first time—what we forgot because the store-as-information failed to help us remember. Information is easy. Space, time, and atoms are hard."

Chapter 1

Chapter one begins to dive into how humans like to have a certain order to everything. Each persons ordering methods might be different but there is always a rhyme or a reason for the method. Everything has a place. Weinberger also discusses the three orders of order, a very important concept in organizational strategy. Three orders of order are:

The First Order of Order: In the first order of order, we organize things themselves—we put silverware into drawers, books on shelves, photos into albums.

The Second Order of Order: separates information about the first order of order from itself. Keeps a more information catalog of the things themselves.

Third Order of Order: The third order removes the limitations we’ve assumed were inevitable in how we organize information.. "For example, the digital order ignores the paper order’s requirement that labels be smaller than the things they’re labeling. An online “catalog card” listing a book for sale can contain—or link to—as much information as the seller wants, including user ratings, the author’s biography, and the full text of reviews. You can even let users search for a book by typing in any phrase they remember from it."

I often am trying to remember the name of a song, but forget the title, the album, and the artist. In these instances I most generally remember a small fraction of the song. I use the third order of order to find what I am looking for by typing into my web browser the small fraction of lyrics I know. The third order has allowed me to find what I am looking for by organizing the data in a way that can be easily shuffled through.

"The digital revolution in organization sweeps beyond how we find odd photos and beyond how we organize our businesses’ information assets. In fact, the third-order practices that make a company’s existing assets more profitable, increase customer loyalty, and seriously reduce costs are the Trojan horse of the information age. As we all get used to them, third-order practices undermine some of our most deeply ingrained ways of thinking about the world and our knowledge of it."

Chapter 2
Weinberger discusses organizing by alphabetization. This method is commonly used but unfortunately not always completely effective. In school people are organized this way, but stores would never properly function if organized in this manner. I know that when I was in school I had a love hate relationship with alphabetical order. I loved it when I did not have to go first in presenting in front of the class, and I hated it when I was last to go to recess.

I also know that a store or website would not make sense to be organized this way. People need order that is logical based on need, and that is by corresponding items.

“The great joke is, of course, that Adler’s projects already feel hopelessly outdated. From the selection of the Great Books to the 102 Great Ideas to the confident way the Propaedia divides and links topics, it all seems so clearly rooted in one man’s vision of knowledge”