I have a question for Liz and Clay. (Each of the sentences in the next paragraphs should be taken as an assumption of mine that need questioning.)

People tag either so they can find stuff or so that others can. (A non-exclusive “either/or”, of course.) The homogenizing of meaning that Liz so brilliantly points to works against both goals. E.g., let’s say del.icio.us tells me that the most popular tag for Powerline.com is “republican.” If I am a Republican, that tag isn’t going to sufficiently differentiate for me the clumps of my bookmarks. Likewise, if I really want that page to be found by others, a tag as generic as “republican” ensures it will be ignored in the Niagara of pages with that tag. Won’t those irritations rub the lamp sufficiently to summon the genius of the market?

For example, as Liz points out, social networks can help get relevant results out of folksonomies; tags and folksonomies are already intersecting social networks, as at Flickr,. And a table of synonyms that’s compiled manually and/or automatically by doing clustering analysis can enable us to tag local but search global. Or if generalized tag sets emerge (and I think they will, albeit not truly globally), we can use them as well as our local tags. For example, if a tag set called “AmeriTag” emerges, we could tag a photo as [ameritag:hotdog food_eating_contest obscene_idiots], where the second tags are purely our own. (Namespaces to the rescue!)

Aren’t we going to innovate our way out of this? I agree with Clay that we’re paddling a kayak in a stream that can’t be stopped. But are we really kayaking over the falls? Isn’t it more like the Nile that, overflowing its banks, fosters emergence? (And can I stop with the river metaphors now? :)