"Information owners no longer control the organization of their information".

"As we digitize the world's information, we're discovering that the fundamental principles by which we've organized the real world don't apply very well. These principles have a long history, going back to Aristotle, and have determined the traditional shape of knowledge as a tree of categories or concepts. The digital world is uprooting the entire tree, not just changing its shape. Most important is that in the new world, information owners no longer control the organization of their information.

"Instead of building universal, definitive taxonomies, information architects are finding there is tremendous benefit to creating un-taxonomized miscellaneous pools of enriched data objects so that users can sort and organize to suit their own peculiar needs. Such systems work best if they are messy, uncontrolled, and saturated with information added by users. The result is information systems that are far more usable, more contextualized, and easier to maintain. And there's one more result--the authority of institutions and owners of information is shaken to the core."

--From the brochure for Buying & Selling eContent, summarizing David Weinberger's keynote address.