nothing new under the sun

[anotheranon]

What do Elizabethan fencing treatises have to do with programming? Rather a lot, surprisingly - or not, as the discipline of of naming and organizing knowledge to make it easier to understand and use wasn't the invention of Victorian-age librarians.

I admit a particular affection for the link above (swords AND software!) but it's just an extension of my nascent interest in information organization/retrieval beyond the web/digital realm. I've been working with the latter for years but only of late have I started investigating the history of how people get data and organize it into something meaningful/useful. My latest reading on this is Alex Wright's Glut which demonstrates that there have always been ways and means, even when they aren't obvious to modern observers.

Food for thought...