Other articles by Richard Pachter:

Put your 401(K) to work, or adjust how you work 2 authors come up with disparate views on the value of branding Randomness, the unexpected often can lead to new perspectives Author: Uncertainty part of life these days – deal with it Rise of Clear Channel signaled commercial radio's decline Real estate tycoon's book a good read for investment pros Persuasion the music to which successful enterprises of all types danceWhen going gets tough, Americans innovate – here's how Three eye-opening looks at how Asia affects U.S. economy 3 books analyze labyrinth of government spending

Trades/Construction
Jacobs Electric
Electricians & Helpers General
Prestige maintenance USA
Custodian Mechanical
Pioneer Landscaping
Diesel Fleet Mechanic Trades/Construction
Pioneer Landscaping
Yard Person/Loader Operator Administrative & Professional
Tucson Symphony
Teleservices Sales/Courtesy Rep Trades/Construction
Lectra-Serv, Inc
Electricians & Helpers Trades/Construction
Pioneer Landscaping
Yard Person/Loader Operator

If you go to a store to shop for an item, assuming you are doing so on purpose and not just to kill time, you have already limited your search to a specific geography and the set of things that are in that building. Once you enter the store, a variety of other factors will come into play that affect your choices and decisions.

Though in some cases you can also request things that are not on hand for delivery at a later date, the same limitations apply when you visit other brick-and-mortar places full of stuff, like the library, for instance. The items are organized in a rather linear fashion, to use the space efficiently and for the sake of finding and retrieving things easily.

But author, consultant and Harvard Law School Fellow David Weinberger points out that the Internet requires a redundant type of sorting that would simply be impossible in the physical world. It not only requires it, he says, but by allowing items to be "tagged" with a seemingly endless variety of labels — including inexact, inaccurate or misspelled ones — a larger and wider audience can find an endless array of information. This, in turn, allows the spread of knowledge, ideas and opinions (more about that later) and enables commercial opportunities that were previously impossible.

He writes: "We have entire industries and institutions built on the fact that the paper order severely limits how things can be organized. Museums, educational curricula, newspapers, the travel industry, and television schedules are all based on the assumption that in the second-order world, we need experts to go through information, ideas and knowledge and put them neatly away.

"But now we — the customers, the employees, anyone — can route around the second order. We can confront the miscellaneous directly in all its unfulfilled glory. We can do it ourselves and, more significantly, we can do it together, figuring out the arrangements that make sense for us now and the new arrangements that make sense a minute later."

Indeed. In addition to being able to buy almost anything from anywhere, almost anyone can express an opinion or "report" news. But some critics and pundits are distressed about the democratization of their heretofore-privileged domains by fans and informally trained (if at all) bloggers.

Weinberger also presents an interesting history of the Dewey Decimal System (really!), its relevance to contemporary culture and commerce, as well as other historical and philosophical asides in this imaginative and provocative book.