The social life of information

the social life of information, originally uploaded by JamesB.

I'm digging digg at the moment particularly seeing news 'move' in real time.  It's quite compelling - not particularly radical, in the sense that there are so many ways to see information now - search by tags; search by popular tag or post etc etc that the very life of information seems laid bare, ready for forensic examination.  In this information 'ecosystem' to what extent is the message actually the metadata, the context that we're reading?