When both Oprah and Lifehacker, two of the most respected names in Life Advice, both recommend not labeling things “miscellaneous,” a lonely-yet-proud voice must speak up. (I mean me, by the way.)

First, telling us to “banish” the miscellaneous is silly. We have miscellaneous drawers and bins because classification schemes are imperfect. Go ahead and try to follow Oprah’s and Lifehacker’s advice on your kitchen’s miscellaneous drawer. You’ll either have to create so many ridiculous sub-divisions that you won’t remember them, or you’ll have to force objects into categories so thinly related that you can’t remember where you put them. That’s why you have a miscellaneous drawer in the first place.

Second, their complaint is about the use of the the miscellaneous category for physical objects. In the digital world, giving objects multiple categorizations and allowing multiple classification schemes — what I mean by the miscellaneous in that book I wrote a couple of years ago — makes more sense than trying to come up with a single, perfect, fits-all-needs, univocal classification system.

Viva la miscellaneous!

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