Classification Systems Outlive Their Design Context

Taxonomies built for one era persist long after the economic or organizational reality they describe has transformed.

SIC was designed in the 1930s for a manufacturing-dominated economy. Despite being officially replaced in 1997, it remains embedded in SEC filings, financial databases, and research workflows nearly three decades later. The system struggles to represent services, technology, and emerging industries, yet institutional dependencies make migration difficult.

The pattern repeats across domains: organizational charts, product hierarchies, and data schemas all tend to persist beyond their useful life because the cost of migration exceeds the pain of workarounds.

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