Yesterday I went to a meeting after lunch. It happens. When I got back, Matthew Hodgson had created it - a model of how people survive in rigid-taxonomy information spaces. The following flickr set shows Matt in the process of pretending to create the model - then discussing it at last night’s Canberra IA Cocktail Hour.
I think that by the time this was shown, everyone was processing the implications of his Semantic Analysis talk, and weren’t as impressed as I was. While I am happy to take co-credit for the concept (and the photos), Matt did the work.
Basically - the “Grand Unified Theory” is that when a rigid taxonomy is imposed on people, they create a folk taxonomy and thence a folksonomy to cope with it. They add personal and thence common value because they must. Taxonomies are good for absolute categorisation, but we know that isn’t the way people think (unless they are a taxonomist!).
A shortcut on a desktop to a directory hidden deep within a corporate shared drive is an ideal example. Email storage of documents is another. And who has not seen sticky notes around a computer monitor that contain other shortcuts to not-quite-accessible information?
One implication of the “Grand Unified Theory” is that in real life, the boundaries between the Taxonomy/Folk Taxonomy/Folksonomy divisions start to blur - users of the rigid taxonomically-correct organisationally structured intranet are gaining increased findability through folksonomic tagging and folk taxonomy-driven topic maps. And we’re right here doing this stuff now 
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