tag clouds, postmodernism, etc.

so whilst walking my dog i was thinking and it occurred to me that the concept of a tag cloud, which has become increasingly ubiquitous on the internet in the past decade, actually represents a pretty significant paradigm shift. the traditional mode of defining things - by shoving them into boxes and set, generalized categorizations - is giving way to a new mode that is abandoning such categories in favor of “tags” or descriptors. most importantly, any one thing, rather than fitting into one category, is now described by any combination of various tags. for example, in music, a song can be tagged as chillwave, hip hop and indie pop, all of which apply, but none of which, taken on its own, quite suffices. even these descriptors have seemingly infinite subcategories and cross-references, which can be added to and invented by anyone (i saw a song by balam acab recently tagged as #witch chill). in short, strict, exclusive divisions are dissolving and being replaced by a post-modern outlook that acknowledges, to some extend at least, their futility and arbitrariness.

so yeah.

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