This very interesting paper looks at the findings of a project comparing culture as expressed in the meanings of words. The proposition expressed and supported by the author is that a culture cannot be defined by a set of things known or remembered by its members. It is not a "check-list of knowledge." Rather, we see culture expressed in associations embedded in culture, semantic representations, context, connotations of words, and much more. These are the sorts of things I have tried to cast light on with respect to the metadata debate, and underlie my opposition to the idea that there could be a single standard. Cultural differences - even within societies - permeate down to the level of meanings of words, and so, to insist on a single metadata standard is to create some sort of cultural authoritarianism.
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