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posted by Jay on December 5th, 2006
in on words, data, information architecture, metadata, taxonomy
Technical conversations about information and data can sometimes include the word “metadata,” which commonly gets defined as: data about data. It’s a fancy word, and I’ve seen many cases where there’s a need to think in terms of meta-ness about data.
But, as a practice, I find that talking about just plain-old data is not only sufficient most of the time, but prevents conversations from degrading into murkiness around which data is about data, and which isn’t. (From experience, I wonder: is there actually any data that isn’t about data in some way?)
I often think food works in analogies about information and data. So, let’s imagine we have “metafood,” defined as: food made with food. And then, it’s easy to come up with examples of murkiness: is peanut butter a food or a metafood?
In this context, the meta modifier stands out—if you have a techno jargon warning light, it should be going off. But, when you’re new to talking about technology and information systems (and, even what you’re not so new), the unfamiliar jargon can suggest something more important than it really is.
A lot of concepts of data and information are actually familiar concepts to a lot of people. What, professionally, I might call a “taxonomy”, you might call an “outline” or even just “categories”. Sometimes it’s important to be precise and use technical language—a taxonomy is more than just an outline. But, you need to keep a jargon warning light around that goes off when the techno babble gets out of hand.
Just think about it like food: you probably want your dinner made by someone who can describe what their making in terms of cooking food. If they’re making you a cup of soup, they probably shouldn’t be cooking any metafood in the process ;-)
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In your analogy, the data would be the ingredients, while the metadata would be the recipe itself. Or, the data might be the prepared dinner, while the metadata would be the menu.
Once its ripped down to 1s and 0s, everything is data of course. What defines whether it is meta or not depends on whether the data is meant for “final consumption” (data) or is meant to facilitate “final consumption” (metadata).
IMHO.
Thanks Mark, good comment. Your comparison between “final consumption” vs “fascilitating final consumption” is a much clearer distinction than what some suggest when they talk about “data” vs “data about data.”
I’ll add one thing to what you said: the ability to distinguish between what is meant for consumption and what is meant to fascilitate consumption is dependent on context.
For example, the context of a restaurant allows us to distinguish, in terms of which is meant for consumption, between the dinner and the recipe. Without that context, we could have a restaurant with diners who consume dinners, or a cooking school with teachers who “consume” recipes. Or, we could have both.
Becuase data on the web (and, in other systems) can be published in one context and used in another, one context’s metadata can become another context’s data.
But, practically, in the process of web or system design, we often do focus on a single context at a time. And, in that context, we can and often need to make the distinction between data (for consumption) and metadata (for fascilitating consumption).