Take a look at the source of most any webpage on the internet. Chances are, buried in the <head> tag is something like:
<meta name="keywords" content"jr conlin,jrconlin,blog,humor,geek,writing,sock monkey,who uses keywords?,tagging is the new keyword">
Oh, sure, maybe it's changed a little from when it was first introduced, (see section 5.2.5 of Mr. Berners-Lee's document) , but fundementally, it's the the same technology that was introduced with great wonder and excitement…
…that lasted about as long as it took for some other idiot to figure out that you can stuff darn near anything you like in it and have Alta Vista index your page whenever someone typed in a query for "Beaver".
Tags are merely the latest version of that.
As much ballyhooed as they are everywhere, i really don't get them. Well, not in their current state at least. i mean, sure, i might use a common word or phrase with a picture then again, i might use a phrase to remind myself of what makes a nice lunch but honestly, of what use is that to you? If you were doing a search for that because you needed an image of meat like lunch foods for a dying orphan, would you find that picture useful? What if i were to use a tag like "fleshy fun bags" to describe another page?
i mean, sure, some of you may know me and trust my judgement in regards to "hot pussy licking action", but what's stopping someone less reputable from abusing it? Say, by basically uploading an ad that uses the most popular keywords in a weird attempt to garner eyeballs.
Yeah, there are ways to deal with this, but honestly, it's tall the same problems we've seen before. i'm just not convinced that somehow we're going to magically solve them all now.
But damn if some pretty smart folks don't get all wrapped up in it anyway.
