Tates.
(Diagram from here, I think)
- I've recently been reading about twelve different things at once. Don't worry. I do this a lot. I read through the whole YCN and D+AD brief packs, I read Longform articles one after the other, I dip in and out of the LRB and start Other People's Books. As well as that, I never really stop reading Wikipedia articles and the newspapers. And Metro, if I am on public transport. Last night, I completed a chapter on the ancient kingdoms, duchy and imperial circle of Burgundy in Vanished Kingdoms by Norman Davies.
"What once seemed impregnable vanishes or crumbles. Kingdoms, principalities and Republics are never as secure as their leaders or their people would like to think that they are" says Nicholas Lezard in a Guardian review.
This is one of those books I can't help but love, despite its love of complexity (or of trying to untangle complexity, which is even more complex than the original complications). Toward the end of the chapter, Davies points out that most, if not all historians, misrepresent the sheer scale and complexity of the multiple-kingdoms (etc) of Burgundy; over its 600-year (give or take) it went through so many changes both geographical and genealogical that it's difficult to get a handle on anything. So much, so history, amiright?
Davies laments, but similarly praises, the useful/uselessness of dictionaries, encyclopedias and, dur-dur-DURR, Wikipedia. Wikipedia, the historian suggests, is not the worst offender - its data is not fixed into an edition. Its editablity means that someone like me, who might observe a mistake based on Davies' book's 'correct' assertions, can get involved, change it until it's a little bit more correct, and then gradually, like history itself, the truth emerges. Or a truth a little closer to the real truth. Or the truth we need now.
I went from this chapter on the Burgundians to an article on Rap Genius. Or Genius, as it is now called, haivng diversified. I have no idea whatsoever how this website has to date escaped my attention. As a millenial, Generation Z data-hound, a digital tourist, obsessed with, but not (entirely) reliant on, the internet, I have found my Ark.
The diagram above describes it well. The article explains its notion and inception better than anything. Annotation, ot 'tating as it might painfully become known, is the name of the game. It seems so dastardly simple; why has this not occurred earlier? After all, this is what ever school textbook looks like. It's what notes from conferences, or exhibition catalogues, look like. Margins, I tell design students, are sacred spaces. I do not go on to say that it is where stupid ideas will find themselves scrawled in biro. Or weird thumbnails. Or phone numbers.
It's far too soon to know if Genius will 'annotate the world'. I kinda doubt it will. In 2009, Wikipedia was Genius. Wikipedia and cockroaches are all that will survive the apocalypse, such is its sheer usefulessness. What I have deduced, from cursory investigations, is that Genius is a time-filler. I would explore this without scrutiny (since it is scrutinous on my behalf) and let its knowledge do what it likes. It's a sort of 'extra' knowledge. Peripheral. Dinner Party Facts.
If someone wants to annotate a history of the Burgundies, though..