I really enjoyed the bloggers Everything Is Miscellaneous get-together last night. About 30 people showed up at the very-inviting Yahoo Brickhouse offices. Some were friends, some were bloggers I read, some were people I was meeting for the first time.

After about an hour of everyone hanging around, Mary Hodder (founder of Dabble and the party’s co-host, along with Salim Ismail), dinged a bottle and I talked for about ten minutes. Since everyone there already had a copy of the book — we gave them away — I said I would tell them the non-marketing explanation of what the book is about: It’s an argument against Aristotle. That is, it’s an argument against the idea that there is a single, right order of the world, and that that order is defined by clear definitions. After I’d gone on for a while, someone (sorry, I’m bad at names) asked what really motivated me. Very helpful question. I said that the Aristotelian assumptions, combined with the limitations of paper-based knowledge, lead to authority over knowledge being placed in the hands of a few. The few tend to be highly qualified and often selfless, but it still is a power regime. Although I didn’t say this last night, that’s why I am so enamored of the idea that fundamentally the Internet is ours. In fact, another way to say what the book is about would be: Everything Is Miscellaneous is about meaning becoming ours.

Anyway, I had a wonderful time. I only wish I could have gone out to dinner last night with some of the folks, but I had to be in bed by 9:30 so I could get up for a string of radio interviews starting at 3:30am. All part of the glamor of a book tour. Yeah, that and the stomach flu. [Tags: everything_is_miscellaneous aristotle blogs]