I may be Slightly Autistic
Let’s talk about relationships. Not boy-girl relationships, but the relationship of everything to everything. Where do I start?
I don’t think I would do autistics proud with my inability to quickly organize and categorize my daily life existence. Yet. There is no doubt I’m driven, if not consumed with keeping things organized. It may be why I enjoy Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and data reporting.
As I peel back the layers of the onion in web development and chase elusive search engine placement goals, the secret of structured data becomes a critical component to the task.
Where does it all begin? I find that taxonomy holds one key. If you dig into this subject it leads to Linneaus. His work in taxa produced the well-known phylogenetic tree, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species. His binomial nomenclature of two-part names for every species is another of his many contributions to this area of science.
What does this biological categorization system relate to SEO? Well, what does it have to do with being organized in my daily life? Everything of course. And by everything, I mean that everything can be organized through categorization.
The way things are organized is taxonomy and its purpose is to assist in making things more discoverable. Labeling things openly or sorting them creates a pattern to which you can often intuitively understand how those items are sorted through their visual context.
The naming convention of the types is where the fun comes in. My goal is always to find a pre-existing standard. Without one, I tend to wander. That can be trouble later, but it often leads to my own new homologous understanding.
If you have a Netflix account or Spotify, a taxonomy is in play behind the information architecture you are sorting through. This goes beyond browsing. The machine learning aspect is how these services suggest things you may like.
For me, all of this is related in ways that push me to create my own taxonomy in my daily life. Worse yet, it makes it hard for me to look at anything I see and not subtly analyze where it belongs in life. Yeah. Autistics would welcome me to their club only to kick me out for being the worst organizer they know. But it makes me wonder.