The following is a story of the Second Law of Thermodynamics* as it applies to human efforts to represent knowledge in ontologies or classification systems...But with a twist...Because knowledge rarely exists in a closed system, because all things are never equal, the best laid plans for orderly arrangements of information disintegrate into disorder. The very structures we build to make Sense of our data turns into Nonsense when, as The Dude (aka Jeffrey Lebowski) would say, "New sh#$ has come to light! Man." And in our unending quest for more information and more knowledge, "New sh#$ is always coming to light...Man" faster than our stiff-legged classification systems can handle. As a result, the systems ultimately reject the new data and what we're left with is a regurgitated mess of bits and pieces strewn across the landscape of your variegated and uncoordinated information gathering and storage devices: email clients, web mail clients, documents, pdas, paper calendars, sticky notes, notepads, envelopes, napkins, the back of your hand and last but not least, your brain.
*The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy or the measure of disorder, always increases. In other words, the end is nigh, so stop filing your email!
