Embedding Metadata: Exploring the Ontology of Hybrid Digital and Material Objects

• Main Author: Camisso, Jamon
• Other Authors: Hockema, Stephen
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: metadata; critical making; 0723
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/27325

This thesis discusses the design of three systems that were built using Critical Making as an investigative method. The systems are: an RFID antenna that links ISBNs to online metadata; metamash.org, which aggregates ISBN metadata; and doitag.org, which allows users to associate tags with DOI numbers. Each system was designed to interrogate issues related to identification, categorization and the institutional foundations of, and individual practices surrounding, information systems, providing levers to get at deeper ontological issues. Each investigation points in its own way to a profound lack of understanding about the ontology of digital, or hybrid material/digital objects. David Weinberger's ordering scheme for material and digital objects is used because it allows for a discussion of ordering systems in general. However, focusing solely on categorization systems masks more important questions about the ontology of such objects and how building and using such objects fundamentally defines what they are.