i202 Fall 2009 School of Information, UC Berkeley

21 September 2009

The words people use to describe things or concepts are "embodied" in their context and experiences and these  naturally-occurring words are an "uncontrolled vocabulary."  As a result, people or enterprises often use different terms or names for the same thing and the same terms or names for different things.  These mismatches often have serious or even drastic consequences.   It might seem straightforward to control or standardize terms or names, and much technology exists for attacking the "vocabulary problem," but technology alone is not a complete solution because language use constantly evolves and the world  being described does too.

Link to the podcast:  (if you click it, it should play in the browser, but you can also right-click (or Ctrl-click) and save to your local machine)

http://courses.ischool.berkeley.edu/i202/f09/files/202-20090921.mp3