I can’t help thinking the information world has become very morbid. There was Green Chameleon’s Dead KM Walking debate, CMS Watch’s Taxonomies are dead punt, and now keyword search is dead, according to the Enterprise Search Center (via Taxonomy Watch).

Stephen Arnold says “Established system vendors and newcomers promise silver bullets that will kill the werewolves plaguing enterprise search. Taxonomies resonate in some vendors’ marketing spiels. Others focus on natural language processing… ” This makes taxonomies sound like they are some new fangled techie trick, rather than the traditional sorting out we’re all used to. He then states that users expect “a search system to … Offer a web page that gives users specific suggestions and options with hotlinks to topics, categories, and key subjects … provide the user with point­ and-click options … Allow the user to drill down or jump across topics.” Are those not taxonomies for navigation?