i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

September 15, 2010

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.