Read later Summary: Struggling with metadata is nothing new, but there's a misconception that advanced data tech and cloud storage solved this problem. That's not the case - so what is the way forward? I've been thinking about metadata. I know that's a strange thing to think about, primarily when I used to refer to it as "dead data in a drawer, neatly arranged." And it was. Our halting attempts to tag extracted data with a semblance of meaning always fell short - because it was just too hard. And it was even harder to figure out how to get application programs to use it effectively.