The Ghosts of Metadata

Metadata is defined as “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.”

Most people associate metadata with digital photos. When you take a picture with your iPhone for example, a lot of additional information is saved along with your photo. EXIF metadata includes the settings of your camera, like the shutter speed, whether or not you used a flash, and the focal length. GPS metadata includes the latitude, longitude, and altitude of where you took the picture. TIFF metadata stores information about the make and model of your camera, the picture’s original resolution, and any software used to edit the picture. (Some websites, like Facebook and Twitter, strip the metadata out of your photos when you upload them. This prevents people from downloading your photos and determining where you live.)

EXIF, GPS and TIFF are examples of automatic metadata. They are automatically generated and stored inside your pictures. There’s also manual metadata that can be added to photos. Using different programs you can do things like rate your photos, add locations and categories or tag who is in each one. This becomes very handy if you have a large digital photo collection that you would like to be able to sort or query very quickly. Given the right tags, you would be able to search for all pictures taken on beaches, for example. Like anything, manual metadata is only as good as the data and effort you are willing to input.

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While standing in my grandmother’s kitchen the day of her funeral, it hit me that the physical items we own — our “stuff” — has metadata, too. The vast majority of this metadata is stored in our heads.

I don’t even have to move for an example.

On my writer’s desk in the living room are three mannequin dolls used by artists: a small one, a medium-sized one, and a large one. As for data, you could measure how tall they are, what kind of wood they are made of, and what position they are currently in.

I bought the medium-sized one during a trip to Hobby Lobby when I was convinced I was going to become an artist. I bought roughly $100 worth of markers at the same time. The medium-sized one ended up not being as articulate as I had hoped for so I went back and bought the large one a few days later. For a while the medium-sized one sat on our entry table. Each time Susan or I passed it we would arrange him in a new goofy position. Around Christmas, Morgan went into a store and purchased the smallest one for me. It’s a keychain. He doesn’t up very well on his own but he’s probably my favorite because Morgan bought him for me as a gift.

That’s metadata, and everything physical thing I own has it. Attached to almost everything I own is how I acquired it, what I paid for it, and the last thing I did with it. The skeleton finger puppet sitting on my desk came from my mom’s house on Halloween. The videogame-themed coasters on my desk were made by my children; if I close my eyes, I can still see them making them. The marshmallow scented candle on my desk was purchased by Susan for me. We spotted it together in Big Lots once and I told her the scent made me imagine cooking s’mores with her in a lakeside cabin.

Gah, I really need to clean my desk off.

Sitting on top of my tape deck upstairs are a stack of cassette tapes. Most of them are cassettes I purchased from local bands at concerts. The stack contains cassettes from Eternal Decision, Forte’, Pitch Black, Cotton Mouth, Hollow Kriez, and several others. Another pile contains cassettes full of songs I recorded off the radio in the 1980s. Listening to them takes me back to my childhood bedroom.

Someday, when I die, someone will walk into my computer room, spy those cassette tapes, and either toss them in a donate pile or, more likely, into a trash can. To me, they are irreplaceable treasures. To somebody else, without that metadata, they’re garbage — anonymous music stored on outdated media.

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Sitting on my bookshelf is a book titled “Maybe You Should Write a Book” by Ralph Daigh. It’s a compilation of articles written by authors and editors. It was published in 1979 and, as such, contains no reference to the internet or word processors or even computers for that matter. Then again, this book isn’t about the mechanics of writing. It’s more of an motivational book.

I purchased the book in 2004 from a used book store in Tulsa. I had already begun piecing together a document titled “The Jack Flack Manifesto” which would eventually evolve into Commodork. For months I didn’t even read “Maybe You Should Write a Book.” I just put it on the shelf above my computer and looked at the cover each day before I sat down to write. Eventually I did read it. I’ve read it a few times now. Daigh’s book is intertwined with the memories of writing my own. It empowered me.

You can buy a copy off of Amazon for a penny, plus shipping. The book is literally not worth the paper it’s written on.

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When I look at my shelves of Star Wars action figures, I can tell which ones Santa brought me in 1978 and which ones I’ve picked up over the years to add to the collection. In my garage I have t-shirts I wore on dates, the old computer I used to run my BBS on, and my old Dungeons and Dragons dice. I have handwritten notes from high school girlfriends, concert ticket stubs, hats I bought on vacation, a shelf full of Donkey Kong figures and over a thousand old 5 1/4″ floppy disks.

All of it priceless.

All of it worthless.

That’s metadata for you.