I realize this isn’t a book review but, I must vent a bit. I found “Everything is Miscellaneous” extremely difficult to get through! I also realize the topic of “digital disorder” isn’t especially interesting to me which may have thwarted my acceptance of this assignment. Although I found the historical information on organizing data interesting, I felt Weinberger elaborated on the “third order of order” after each topic to the point of redundancy. “Okay, I get it!” I said out loud to myself more than once.

That being said, I am a huge fan of “order.” For my birthday one year, my mother hired a Feng Shui consultant to examine the flow of “Chi” (the energy that connects all things) in my home. It was fascinating to discover how arranging, eliminating and adding specifics objects to certain spaces changed the way things felt and attracted some interesting experiences into my life. “Creating order and using the correct enhancements has had wonderful results," states Taylor Vance. (Website) Feng Shui takes care of the first and 2^nd orders of order by organizing objects to specific locations (categories) in or around a property. However, it doesn’t quite cover the third order of order.

While having a Feng Shui expert examine, and recommend changes to my order, this consultant was the only resource I had on the topic. Suppose I question her knowledge? When I Google Feng Shui, there are about 8,530,000 links on this topic. There are 1,300,000 results when adding “kitchen” is added to the search, 2,300,000 when ”office” is added and 9,400,000 when adding the word “bedroom” behind Feng Shui. By adding more miscellaneous information to the search, “Feng Shui home office desk placement” narrowed the search to about 85,700 results. This miscellaneous information is what Weinberger defines “the third order of order” and claims; “instead of relying on experts…users invent their own ways of discovering what they know and want.”

Apparently Twitter users know what they want. Twitter website has been redesigned “so in less time you can get more information", claims Twitters CEO, Evan Williams. The new design offers easier ways to locate author information, to follow user conversations, and to view photos, videos and links. Read the NY Times story HERE. ~ Kim Evans