Palabras_

"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" - Max Weinreich

Language acts like a map - it encodes and decodes information - it traces the edges of borders and walls - it locates a subject in relation to a complex of nationalities and ethnicities, simultaneously representing and producing difference. Words name and label, order and classify, separate and differentiate. Words also connect.

Through categorization, objects and ideas, individuals and groups, races and classes are identified and determined - often over-determined. A category can both describe and prescribe a relation between the subject and objects-of-knowledge. Categorization and Classification systematize the construction of meaning, and demonstrate relations of power.

At one end of the spectrum of classification systems, Taxonomies impose a hierarchical structure or generalized interpretation on the objects they describe. At the other end, Folksonomies (folk + taxonomy) allow multiple interpretations and associations to emerge among objects and descriptors. As demonstrated by the Dispatx website, as well as online sites for sharing bookmarks (de.lirio.us) and images (Flickr), Folksonomies are generated by the creators of content when they label or describe the content they contribute to a database. These systems of content items are further developed when readers annotate any items they view.

Content creators and readers may use multiple descriptors to label a single piece of content, and/or one word to describe many different items. The labels are commonly known as tags and the process is called tagging.

As an example, a photographer may post an image of a family birthday party on a folksonomy-based photo-sharing site like Flickr and tag it with words like "family", "love" and "birthday". The photograph will immediately become associated with all other images contributed by Flickr users that are tagged with any or all of those three words. Say another contributor's photo is tagged with the words "family" and "home", but not with the word "love". The tag "love" and the tag "home", as well as all the associated content, will then become related because each is associated with content tagged with "family". Tags are highly correlated, or clustered, when they share relations to a number of different content items. Thus, folksonomic systems map an organically and spontaneously emerging network of semantic association.

Palabras_ http://Palabrastranquilas.ucsc.edu is a web application that employs tagging to generate a spontaneous or improvised map of correspondences and connections between communities in various locations.

The project was based on the concept of the community computer, first proposed by activist Bruno Tardieu. The community computer is a social and technological system much like a typical computer in which words can make things happen and associative memory evolves over time. While the personal computer provides a communications gateway to the Internet where communities of interest can evolve regardless of distance, the concept of the community computer is intended not to bypass communities of place, but rather to strengthen, enable and empower them - particularly in marginalized communities.

Unlike other Folksonomic media sites (Flickr, and YouTube, for example) Palabras_ employs tagging in the context of place-based workshops designed to allow communities that may not normally have access to the internet to use media and information technologies to represent themselves and their own circumstances. Palabras_ also adopts the tactics of Do-It-Yourself technology to provide low cost and context appropriate media acquisition tools. Through Palabras_ workshops communities not traditionally thought of as scholarly or academic, produce knowledge and interpret their own experience.