Everything Is Miscellaneous (eBook)

The Power of the New Digital Disorder

David Weinberger (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2007 | 1. Auflage
288 Seiten
Henry Holt and Co. (Verlag)
978-1-4299-2795-6 (ISBN)

Infos

Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our livesHuman beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children's teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by 'going miscellaneous,' anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world.

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Business visionary and bestselling author David Weinberger shows how the digital revolution is radically changing the way we make sense of our livesHuman beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place-the physical world demanded it-but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children's teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "e;going miscellaneous,"e; anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think-and what you know-about the world.

Textauszug

Prologue

Information in Space

'Absolutely not.'

I've apparently begun by asking Bob Medill the wrong question: 'Don't you put the most popular items in the back?' He could have taken it as an insult, for it's a customer-hostile technique many retailers use to force shoppers to walk past items they hope they'll buy on impulse. But the soft-spoken Medill is confident in his beliefs. Besides, he's been asked that before. It's a rookie question.

'No,' he says, looking out over the Staples office supply store he manages. 'In front are the destination categories because that's what our customers told us they want.' His arm sweeps from left to right, gesturing to the arc of major sections of the store: 'Paper, digital imaging, ink and toner, business machines, and the copy center.'

It's two o'clock in the afternoon, but we have the place to ourselves. Even if a customer wanted to buy something, no one is at the cash register. If you need help with your purchase, no 'associates'—,Staplesese for 'sales assistants'—,are available. Medill is unconcerned. That's the way it's supposed to be. We're in the Prototype Lab, a full-sized store mock-up at the company's headquarters in an office park in Framingham, Massachusetts.

The site has nothing of a Hollywood set about it. It's all real and fully stocked, from the twenty-four-pound paper marked on sale to the blister-packed pens hanging neatly side by side. Eight people work there full-time, which is less than a real store's typical complement of twenty-nine but still no small expense. Yet it's worth it because, despite the aisles of pens and the pallets of paper positioned by forklifts, the Prototype Lab is actually about information. Every day Bob Medill and his staff work on strategies to overcome the limitations of atoms and space so customers can navigate a Staples store as if it were pure information.

That's not the way Medill would put it. From his point of view, the Prototype Lab is a testing ground for making shopping at Staples easier for customers. That by itself puts him in the vanguard of merchandisers. More typical merchandisers use physical space against customers so that customers will spend more money than they intend. It's a science retailers know well. Supermarkets stock popular items, such as milk and bananas, in the back of the store to take advantage of the way physical space works: To get from area A to aisle C, we have to go past shelf B, which just happens to have a sign announcing a special on something we didn't come in for. Likewise, you'll find doggie treats below eye level because it's something kids are more likely than their parents to put in the cart. When Medill talks about making it easier for Staples' customers to get out of the store fast, he's a bona fide revolutionary.

'Customers fall into two buckets,' says Liz McGowan, Staples' director of visual merchandising. 'People who feel that asking for help is a personal failure and those who don't.' Despite what comedians tell us, the dividing line is not based on gender. 'My mother is in the first bucket,' she says. McGowan is data-driven, so she knows the precise volume of the buckets. 'Thirty-two percent ask associates. Twenty-four percent use signage. Forty percent already know where things are.' It's the 60 percent who need help that determine the informational layout of the store. In the Prototype Lab, that's known as 'way-finding,' and it's where how people think meets the way their bodies deal with space.

'We learn by watching our customers' eyeballs,' Medill says. Customers enter the store and move nine to twelve feet in, and then...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.5.2007
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Web / Internet
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Marketing / Vertrieb
• ISBN-10: 1-4299-2795-X / 142992795X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4299-2795-6 / 9781429927956