Social constructionism states that the reality we perceive is constructed through social interactions. In education, constructionism has been used to support a curriculum emphasizing learning by doing, with interdisciplinary projects forming the foundation. Students, the theory goes, learn more effectively when they learn on the basis of experimentation, in particular when their gained knowledge finds a direct and immediate application.
The emphasis on the the individual project, revolving around a particular theme or set of themes, is familiar in higher education, as well as certain professions, including the museum curator and gallerist. Yet today, with folksonomies becoming increasingly popular in computing, theme-based learning has moved into the mainstream. Those of us who are participants in this still recent phenomenon of formalized and individualized sense-making, are settling into our roles as knowledge curators, in which, by creating personal taxonomies, we are aestheticizing an individual interpretation of reality. Where previously perception of reality was based largely on societal myth, perpetuated by cultures at all scales, we may be entering an era in which it is constructed at the level of the autonomous individual.
In other words, by allowing us to create semantic linkages between objects, these formalized taxonomies become tools with which we construct our perception of the world in a targeted, self-directed way. While in the past such tools were confined to specific and controlled contexts, they are now accessible to a mainstream audience, in relation to the broadest possible range of knowledge. While taxonomies are still linked to knowledge existing on the Internet (and they are mediated by the Internet), they are not confined to objects existing online, as many or most of the items we tag are references to objects existing in the physical world.
The visualization or exposure of semantic linkages, exemplified by del.icio.us, becomes a medium through which we define our identities based on similarity and difference, in relation to the objects that surround us. The tag cloud is one method by which to visualize folksonomies. Yet while it is a literal container of meaning, it is not free of metaphoric meaning. As a targeted and mediated construction, it not only conveys identity, but also suggests on behalf of its users an interest in expressing their own identity, as well as in crafting it through careful curation of categories and objects. Involuntarily, it expresses and demonstrates aspects of social constructionism.