(2007-01-02) Meat Meta Data

David Weinberger on Meta Data labelling for food (Transparent Society). But, because of the nature of non-digital reality, taking up label space with a notice that the meat is cloned would itself be metadata indicating that the government thinks such information is worth noting. Metadata in the physical world is a Zero-Sum Game... It would be expensive to do a cholesterol count for every slaughtered cow (assuming that cows have cholesterol) simply to gather information that so far nobody cares about, but there's plenty of information that we're gathering anyway or for which there is predictable interest - e.g., cloning - that we could make available online (via a unique identifier (Digital Identity) for each slab of flesh). I Commented about ERP tracking of prepared-food components, and potential for Framingham development.