Context in Action, Apples & Oranges

To show you Context Concepts, we start with Apples & Oranges.

You know Apples & Oranges is the gold standard in things that are completely different? That’s not actually true, but people like it and you know that’s all that matters!

The idea of context is establishing a consensual meaning. Apples & Oranges are many things, some of which agree. To illustrate the concept, we build a list.

We start with

• Apple

Is that a fruit, or an iPhone color?

Now, we add another item to the list

• Apple

• Orange

These could be tags to this post (they are). Together, we see the context as Fruit, or Tree Fruit or Orchard

Looking at the posts they appear together in, we see them as an example used to describe tags and Context. So, in this site, they are not fruit. So here we introduce the concept of Scope.

Lets add more concepts to the list

• Apple

• Orange

• Juice

• iPhone

• County

• Disneyland

My oh my. What do we have here now. Adding more tags didn’t make things clearer, did it?

Well, if those are tags on a post in a website, it could be a post about many different things, making the post Divergent. Just remember, it makes sense to the writer.

Since we have a confusing structure, it’s now time to check the content of this imaginary site, IloveTheWestCoast.com. Featuring Washington Apples, Valencia Orange Juice, Disneyland, Apple Inc, the maker of iPhones to make sense of those tags.

The Website name & tagline gives further context, and though it does not have to, it does make the clearer why all those tags are juxtaposed.

Further exploration yields a post about the author’s visit to Disneyland with photos taken from her iPhone. Or why she loves her Apple laptop. Or why Pink Lady apples are better than Fujis. Using ASTRA interface to browse the site.

My goal is to create trees based on those tags, reprsenting chains of context as branches, creating pathways inside a website.