Just found this on this fascinating blog about the hows, whats, whys, and whatthefucks of online tagging. It may sound boring, but people creating their own taxonomies is pretty radical. You create the hierarchy or refuse to. You ascribe meaning or deny it. You shhh those rowdy kids in the corner or you join them. We’re all librarians now.
And as for the Presidential speech tag cloud (what an ingenious visual metaphor, by the way), you can scroll through the years and watch the shifting patterns of light and shade, slavery and territory, war and economy, family and debt, strength and freedom. It’s an almost-visceral experience that left me curiously moved.
check out Todd Bishop's Cloud Tag on MSFT over at the PI. http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/tags/