Cultural Infrastructure: The Story of How Classification Came to Shape Our Lives

Abstract

Classification is ubiquitous. It is present in almost every aspect of your life. There is the classification of your race on your birth certificate and, ultimately, the classification of the cause on your death certificate. In between you may be paid according to your job classification and the American Time Use Survey Activity Lexicon will classify how you spend your unpaid time. We also have classifications for mental disorders, for planets, for hurricanes, even for snowflakes. Of course we are most familiar with bibliographic classifications, the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Library of Congress Classification, and the Universal Decimal Classification paramount among them. What does this ubiquity mean for us and where did it come from? This paper will trace a brief history of the common structure of these classifications and their manifestations and ramifications in our world.