BWF Metaedit

Metadata is integral to version and integrity control on the internet.  The Internet is of course the largest most efficient copy apparatus in existence. Digital objects are particular in the fact that when they are duplicated, divided, they retain value without diminishing. Digital objects are distributed through division. In fact, the properties of networked systems in the digital domain are, that a particular object's value is enhanced or multiplied by duplication and circulation. Economists call these network effects. Compare this to a piece of chocolate or oil--the more the chocolate is divided, the more exclusive and expensive it becomes. And after a while, it either disappears, or becomes largely irrelevant as a social artifact. This is a function of scarcity. The only scarcity on the internet is fabricated scarcity derived through public goods problems.  In other words the only reason scarcity exists on the internet is because our current economic model demands it so that people can extract the most value possible from the digital wares in their control. With all this in mind, metadata allows digital objects to retain integrity despite infinite duplication. I imagine there is an existential inquiry lurking somewhere in this discussion.

Metadata can be manipulated and deployed in many ways and through various schemas and standards. It can be confusing and overwhelming. So, it is nice to have a general metadata editor in BWF Metaedit. The program consolidates many metadata fields and presents them for easy editing. And it is open source. I talked about open source in my last blog. This program is a obvious product of that type of development method. It fills a need in a simple efficient way--substance over style. It has a few bugs. I had difficulty displaying some metadata fields and some issues with the program retaining and writing my inputted data. The particular recalcitrant was the ICRD (date created) field. But the fix was as easy as restoring program defaults. That tells me something minor needs to be tweaked. I am unfamiliar with the particulars behind the BWF program, and there are as many open source development models as there are grains of sand on the beach, but the strength of the model is that development is nimble, flexible and, generally, distributed. Another merit to open source, is that the model provides for, well...openness. Generally speaking, these types of projects are very receptive to input. The developers are the users and the users are the developers. And even if you are not a user who can write code, when you discover something broken with the program or something it is lacking, or even something that it would be nice to have, your comments are being  received by your own peer group. My point is, if this is v1.1 (early in is release cycle), I can only imagine how good its later versions will be.