There’s a lot of talk about annotation and tagging (for example, Rashmi’s excellent post) in the digital world these days but we mustn’t forget that it happens in physical space as well — and not just on paper. I realized that I pass these spray painted markings in the street all the time and never really pay attention to them. But the other day I was really grabbed by how complex some of them are. What do they mean? Who put them there? Is there a standard set of symbols or is it more ad hoc?

Later that same day, I saw a woman walking through the neighborhood checking some sort of meter buried in the ground at each house. I noticed that there was a spray-painted mark like a “|” on the road to point out where the meter should be. At one point there was a mark on the road like “|||||” right in front of a multi unit building.

This isn’t an earth shattering discovery but it is a reminder that even the hot new behaviors on the internet (e.g. tagging) have important precursors in meat space.