Metadata (Paperback)

When "metadata" became breaking news, appearing in stories about surveillance by the National Security Agency, many members of the public encountered this once-obscure term from information science for the first time. Should people be reassured that the NSA was "only" collecting metadata about phone calls -- information about the caller, the recipient, the time, the duration, the location -- and not recordings of the conversations themselves? Or does phone call metadata reveal more than it seems? In this book, Jeffrey Pomerantz offers an accessible and concise introduction to metadata.

In the era of ubiquitous computing, metadata has become infrastructural, like the electrical grid or the highway system. We interact with it or generate it every day. It is not, Pomerantz tell us, just "data about data." It is a means by which the complexity of an object is represented in a simpler form. For example, the title, the author, and the cover art are metadata about a book. When metadata does its job well, it fades into the background; everyone (except perhaps the NSA) takes it for granted.

Pomerantz explains what metadata is, and why it exists. He distinguishes among different types of metadata -- descriptive, administrative, structural, preservation, and use -- and examines different users and uses of each type. He discusses the technologies that make modern metadata possible, and he speculates about metadata's future. By the end of the book, readers will see metadata everywhere. Because, Pomerantz warns us, it's metadata's world, and we are just living in it.

當「元數據」成為國家安全局監控的新聞焦點時，許多公眾第一次接觸到這個曾經默默無聞的信息科學術語。人們是否應該放心，國家安全局「只是」收集有關電話通話的元數據 - 包括來電者、接收者、時間、持續時間和位置的信息 - 而不是對話的錄音？或者電話通話的元數據揭示了更多的信息？在這本書中，傑弗里·波默蘭茲提供了一個易於理解且簡明扼要的元數據介紹。

在無所不在的計算時代，元數據已成為基礎設施，就像電網或公路系統一樣。我們每天都與它互動或生成它。波默蘭茲告訴我們，它不僅僅是「關於數據的數據」。它是一種將對象的複雜性以更簡單的形式表示的手段。例如，書的標題、作者和封面藝術是關於一本書的元數據。當元數據工作得好時，它就會淡化到背景中；每個人（也許除了國家安全局）都視其為理所當然。

波默蘭茲解釋了元數據是什麼，以及為什麼存在。他區分了不同類型的元數據 - 描述性、管理性、結構性、保存性和使用性 - 並探討了每種類型的不同用戶和用途。他討論了使現代元數據成為可能的技術，並對元數據的未來進行了推測。在本書結束時，讀者將會看到元數據無處不在。因為，波默蘭茲警告我們，這是元數據的世界，我們只是生活在其中。