Fifth enquiry: Metadata topologies
Our last stream of enquiry looks into metadata topology and into the relationship of metadata to the digital space (of the internet) and the &lsquo real;’ space of our physical body movements. The topology of metadata might be found in its underlying ontologies. More precise, it might be found in the basic operations that form these ontologies: trees, lists, and so. What kinds of operations are possible to form an ontology? Is it possible to come up with an ‘ontology of ontologies’?
On a second level, metadata also determines the topology of the web. Classically, metadata is merely seen as a form of description. However, metadata seems to now become more and more a form of relationship. As the topology of the internet moves beyond the classical hyperlink, new forms of connections such as RSS feeds or Mashups emerge. In such connections, a metadata scheme enables the flow of data, while, at the same time, metadata also starts to flows itself. How does it flow and at the same time regulate flows? What happens, when different ontologies collide? Which one is folded into the other, and what are the criteria for that? The result might be a digital space, where increasingly not only users look for data, but also data starts to look for its users.
All this is further radicalised, when we look at how these trends merge with the space of our (physical) body movements. Location-based internet services on mobile phones, as well as ubiquitous interfaces and data sources in the public sphere (from RFID chips to surveillance cameras) make the management of metadata even more important, but at the same also even more problematic. Questions of power and control gain a new dimensions, when we remember that we already constantly produce metadata about our own body movements – RFID chips are just the most spectacular example for this. With the use of wifi, bluetooth, RFID and GPS, these data networks can connect with each other to form a totality of control.
Unquestionably, this stream of enquiry is the largest of all, and we have to see how far we get here. However, it will provide a background for all other questions. All in all, we think that it is not saying too much, if we predict that the relationships between digital things and other digital things, digital things and non-digital things, digital things and users, and users and other users might change once again profoundly – and that metadata and its management has a key role in this process.