Metadata: Software The Way You Want It

Metadata: Software The Way You Want It

摘要

Metadata can be a bit of a nebulous term, so let’s start by talking about what it really means.

Everything a computer works with is data — ones and zeros — from the firmest firmware to the most ephemeral state of a pixel on the screen. By metadata, however, I’m talking specifically about data that describes or constrains the behavior of software. It’s what tells us that this byte is an instruction in the OS, and that byte is one pixel in a catchy song about cheeseburgers.

Now, let’s clear something up right away: by “metadata”, I specifically don’t mean just “additional data”, like a timestamp, or a browser fingerprint. It’s certainly not uncommon to hear people use the word that way (“I want to know what metadata these fast food companies are collecting about me …”), but that’s not at all what I’m talking about here. That’s “meta” if you’re talking about the original Greek sense of the word (“beyond”), since things like this are beyond what we usually see in the user interface. But you probably weren’t talking about the original Greek sense of the word, were you? No. So for the purposes of this article, let’s go with my definition: metadata is data that alters the behavior of software.