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steadfastly refuse to exercise care and diligence in their metadata creation. 
 
Take eBay: every seller there has a damned good reason for double-checking their listings for typos and misspellings. Try searching for \"plam\" on eBay. Right now, that turns up nine typoed listings for \"Plam Pilots.\" Misspelled listings don\'t show up in correctly-spelled searches and hence garner fewer bids and lower sale-prices. You can almost always get a bargain on a Plam Pilot at eBay. 
 
The fine (and gross) points of literacy -- spelling, punctuation, grammar -- elude the vast majority of the Internet\'s users. To believe that J. Random Users will suddenly and en masse learn to spell and punctuate -- let alone accurately categorize their information according to whatever hierarchy they\'re supposed to be using -- is self-delusion of the first water. 
 
2.4 Mission: Impossible -- know thyself 
 
In meta-utopia, everyone engaged in the heady business of describing stuff carefully weighs the stuff in the balance and accurately divines the stuff\'s properties, noting those results. 
 
Simple observation demonstrates the fallacy of this assumption. When Nielsen used log-books to gather information on the viewing habits of their sample families, the results were heavily skewed to Masterpiece Theater and Sesame Street. Replacing the journals with set-top boxes that reported what the set was actually tuned to showed what the average American family was really watching: naked midget wrestling, America\'s Funniest Botched Cosmetic Surgeries and Jerry Springer presents: \"My daughter dresses like a slut!\" 
 
Ask a programmer how long it\'ll take to write a given module, or a contractor how long it\'ll take to fix your roof. Ask a laconic Southerner how far it is to the creek. Better yet, throw darts -- the answer\'s likely to be just as reliable. 
 
People are lousy observers of their own behaviors. Entire religions are formed with the goal of helping people understand themselves better; therapists rake in billions working for this very end. 
 
Why should we believe that using metadata will help J. Random User get in touch with her Buddha nature? 
 
2.5 Schemas aren\'t neutral 
 
In meta-utopia, the lab-coated guardians of epistemology sit down and rationally map out a hierarchy of ideas, something like this: 
 
Nothing:  
 
  Black holes 
 
Everything:  
 
  Matter: 
 
    Earth: 
 
      Planets 
 
      Washing Machines 
 
    Wind: 
 
      Oxygen 
 
      Poo-gas 
 
    Fire: 
 
      Nuclear fission 
 
      Nuclear fusion 
 
      \"Mean Devil Woman\" Louisiana Hot-Sauce 
 
In a given sub-domain, say, Washing Machines, experts agree on sub-hierarchies, with classes for reliability, energy consumption, color, size, etc. 
 
This presumes that there is a \"correct\" way of categorizing ideas, and that reasonable people, given enough time and incentive, can agree on the proper means for building a hierarchy. 
 
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Any hierarchy of ideas necessarily implies the importance of some axes over others. A manufacturer of small, environmentally conscious washing machines would draw a hierarchy that looks like this: 
 
Energy consumption: 
 
  Water consumption: 
 
    Size: 
 
      Capacity: 
 
        Reliability 
 
While a manufacturer of glitzy, feature-laden washing machines would want something like this: 
 
Color: 
 
  Size: 
 
    Programmability: 
 
      Reliability 
 
The conceit that competing interests can come to easy accord on a common vocabulary totally ignores the power of organizing principles in a marketplace. 
 
2.6 Metrics influence results 
 
Agreeing to a common yardstick for measuring the important stuff in any domain necessarily privileges the items that score high on that metric, regardless of those items\' overall suitability. IQ tests privilege people who are good at IQ tests, Nielsen
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