“No longer a window” (from Montreal Tomassons, a Flicker set by grimmwire)
Leftover features that no longer serve a purpose but still occupy space within an architecture are known as “Thomassons”.
The term comes from Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei who documented these in 1980s Tokyo. It refers to a baseball player, Gary Thomasson, a record-breaking signing who struck out performance-wise. Akasegawa thought Thomasson was an analogy for "part of a building that was maintained in good condition, but with no purpose".
If flipped, a Thomasson is a fitting metaphor for the web and hopes for its future, especially those envisaged by Information Architecture (IA).
The inverse Thomasson
IA provides inverse examples - things with purpose that no longer persist. Where the outputs of IA were once prized, few people continue to value the objects it creates.
Like the useless doorway, staircase or window that characterise real-life Thomassons, the concerns of IA have faded into obscurity.
Taxonomy
The art and science of classification was once a key skill for website builders. With the folksonomy of web 2.0 and the neologisms of the social web, this is now as dusty and antiquated as taxidermy.
Metadata
Once the promise to link all the world’s data and create meaningful, structured exchanges between humans and machines, metadata is now most commonly associated with exploitative business practices and data leaks.
Linkrot
Whatever happened to the permalink, a URL that would remain unchanged guaranteeing future access? Paywalls, single-page apps and a free-for-all on domains have mortgaged that future dream of the information commons.