... Well ok, maybe not chaos - the central idea is that ordinary people, unleashed at random on the world, tagging whatever they want, however they want to do it, are the most powerful organisational force on the internet. In fact, they're the only force that comes close. Google runs off people's links, Flickr relies on tags and favourites; Yahoo shut down it's indexing program long ago, Weinberger argues, and in it's place, we've got something far more wide-ranging and useful.
I'm studying to become an information professional ("librarian" to everyone else) and a couple of my lecturers mentioned this title; they seemed to find his occasional references to traditional card catalogues infuriating, as if he was accusing librarians of advocating them and clinging to the past (and no librarian anywhere misses card catalogues), but I think he tells a great story about how the internet has reformed itself into the strangely effective mess we skim through so easily every day.
The book could do with more of his thoughts on what's going to happen next - Weinberger seems content with telling us the back-story, and doesn't attempt to make any predictions about the future development of the internet. Then again, given the nature of the beast, that's probably the wise. A fascinating book that seeks to explain how the internet got like this and how it works.