September 23 - 29

For this week's blog post I thought that I would share some thoughts on perceptions and the commodification of 'information' in the digital age which come from an article that I have been reading.

Over the last couple of days I have been reading "What is Information? The flow of bits and the control of chaos" by David Sholle, which appears in an anthology of essays entitled Democracy and New Media.

In his article, Sholle gives a Marxist analysis and critique of just what it is that we talk about when we talk about "information" in the context of an "information society."  Sholle's article is driven by a set of implicit assumptions that the "information society" discourse is built upon, such as: an economic philosophy that posits information as the source of value in a global economy;" and "a business logic that focuses on the accumulation, production, and management of data;" as well as, "media claims that availability and access to information technologies represent an increase in choice and freedom" (pp. 343). Sholle's goal in the article is then to sort of deconstruct these assumptions and analyze the way in which information is being sold to us as something that is essential and has a real definite market value.

Sholle suggests that meaning of the word "information" (from the Latin informare, which means "to put into form"), has been entirely removed from the phrase information society (pp. 345).  So what is the new meaning for the word in this context? First, Scholle points out that to the average person, this information society is one where "the average citizen has access to knowledge, meaningful dialogue, and information essential to everyday decision making" (pp. 344).

Doing this requires advertising and propaganda tantamount to identifying information as having almost mystical properties to enhance our everyday lives, making things and people that are more intelligent, responsive, and fulfilling. A perfect example of such fetishistic fantasies is captured in the "Human Network" marketing campaign implemented by Cisco (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwNMMiHVXg).  The ads focus around the incredible connectivity possibilities made possible at a global level by the spread of and accessibility to information and information technologies, and it is something so fundamentally basic that even a child can narrate the transformation. "Welcome to the human network," it is beautiful and it is bringing the world together. If you are not already on board with the program then you are falling behind, missing out not just on profits but on connections and cultural knowledge from around the globe.

So, where did all of this information talk come from?  "Knowledge" and "understanding" used to be the zenith of  the human intellect, why the shift to "information?" Sholle suggests that the use of "information" emerged in the mid-twentieth century "as industrial capitalism grapple[d] with the incorporation of intelligence into its machine tools" (pp. 346).  Information, in this sense, is the way in which knowledge is seen broken down into bits in the digital age and incorporated into the machines.  What we have now is a "flow of information" that has been digitized and so can take on any form, almost independent of its content. Information is a measurable and containable pulse that is transmitted across networks. The actual "information" itself isn't nearly as important as its capacity to be a commodity.

So what is information as commodity?  Sholle states that "in an information society, the dominant conceptualization is one where information work and information products have replaced the industrial form. . . . [I]t is the vast array of information commodities produced within the information economy that is the key selling point of this digital age" (pp. 356).  Further, an information economy depends upon the ability of information to "float free of any specific medium and thus become transferable into as many context as possible (pp. 357).  And so, in an information society we come to expect pure versatility out of our information. It must be able to take on the form of print, audio, video, and graphic representation fluidly and effortlessly.

Sholle goes on to lay out some of what he finds to be the "strategies to control the exchange of information," which include (pp. 358):

• Standardizing the various products. For instance, cell phones / smart phones or e-readers and tablets. By creating different standards and tiers for these products, consumers can have some projected value of what these technologies cost.
• Sell the information flow, not the specific content.  Sholle sites the World Wide Web as a prime example of this--or Internet access in general can also fit the shoe. You pay for the service and experience of using it, though nothing specific.  
• Redistribute the information as many times as possible.
• Produce ephemeral information that must be consumed over and over.
• Process the consumer's behavior.

One could argue that there is nothing on Sholle's list that is new, or even unique to marketing information.

Sholle concludes that "ultimately, the complex processes and problems of the information economy are clouded in a veil of fetishism" (pp. 359). A fetishism that heavily involves marketing information as an unstoppable force, and one that gives us unique insights into the reality out there at a global perspective and at the speed of now.

By labeling our culture and time as an "information society" we are led into the belief of the inevitability and naturalization of such technologies and ideologies.  We are led to believe that this information has at all times been embedded in all of the normal items of everyday life and only await some technology company's benevolent decision to unlock these hidden potentials.  Everything that falls outside of this web is boring, outdated, and unintelligent--out of step with the times.



Sholle, D. (2003). What is information? The flow of bits and the control of chaos. In H. Jenkins & D. Thorburn (Eds.), Democracy and New Media (pp. 343 - 364). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

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Theater as Information

An article that I have been studying has discussed research in information behavior (or information practice) and its role in studying Shakespeare for researchers, actors, directors, and anyone else who professionally studies the Bard.  Not only has this gotten me on board, but has also got be thinking about plays in general, as it relates to information in a very contextualized and cultural way. The whole production is really just a vehicle -- a container and its contents, the passions of the particular actors, director vision, set pathos.  But its contents are also of a fluid variety. They are not the same for everyone who 'receives' the performance.  Each of the audience members has their own horizon -- they are each 'experts of their own worlds' which the performance is an outsider. It is a rather complex and social process of Socratic midwifery between work (artist vision), script, director, production, set, theatre, actor, audience -- and it can continue long after the performance is over in dialogue about the performance.

Sept 16 - 22

All this week I have been absolutely fascinated with Dervin's Sense Making Methodology chart.  For starters, I did not know it was possible to create a post-modern / existential graph before, but alas here one is! Secondly, the graph is filled with wonderful ideas and each one says considerately more than what is actually depicted on the graph itself. Whereas most chart are in the business of portraying 'objective' data so that everyone can benefit from them just by a careful analysis of the trends that they project; this chart has a certain esoteric value to it that results in a greater appreciation the longer a time spent studying it.

The graph itself portrays a cartoonish scene of an purposefully ill-defined squiggly-man approaching a bridge in order to cross the gap from uncertainty (ignorance) where he currently stands, to some unforeseeable conclusion on the other side.  Unlike some other charts in information behavior, Dervin's is not overly optimistic about the outcome of the information seeking process.  Her chart clearly illustrates (and labels) the possibility of failure, hindrances, and other possible consequences that could be the end result of an information seeking event.

The chart itself names a number of possible causes for such failures, and these possibilities arise right from the beginning of the process. Firstly, the squiggly-man himself carries with him a large umbrella, labeled Context.  This umbrella that the squiggly-man is constantly holding with him at every stage of the information seeking event consists of things such as power dynamics, cultures, and ideologies that will shape and manipulate the information that the seeker comes into contact with and processes.

The point at which the information seeker sets out can be a problem in itself. This point is named by Dervin as the Situation, a name that reminds the reader of Sartre's influential work, Being and Nothingness.  As such, a Situation resonates with ideas about subjectivity and a "resisting world," but also a heavy resistance to the fixity of truth.  Indeed, the Situation is characterized by Dervin as consisting of experience, history, barriers, horizons (recalling Heidegger), and constraints.  It is no easy process of merely knowing the topic you need information on and receiving that information in some instantaneously enlightening experience.  There are entire worlds to be considered.

Sense-making and un-making is what facilitates crossing the gap. According to Dervin's chart, sense-making is made possible through an active process of "verbings", procedures, and strategies.  This makes the information seeker something like an experimenter, trying different active methods in order to discover and process information.  The bridge itself is made up of different sources (media, institutions, people) that might produce or solicit the information, as well as "relevances" which indicate the ways in which we evaluate the usefulness or trustworthiness of a source.  The gap itself consists of our own questions, confusions, riddles, and angst, or the ultimate impossibility of grounding any of our sources on an external truth.

Finally, on the other side there is the outcome, and as already mentioned above, these outcomes are not always positive.  Perhaps the seeker was helped or perhaps she or he was made more confused or left with more questions.  Perhaps the information received was more negative than positive.  Whatever the case may be, the squiggly-man has made it to the other side and must now deal with whatever consequence or impacts arise from the change.

From the stand-point strictly of a librarian working with individuals to assist them in finding appropriate information sources, I think that the most important thing to gain from Dervin's idea is the uniqueness of every situation and the opportunity that each different situation presents.  The squiggly-man on Dervin's chart is made up of a flexible squiggly line for a reason.  That reason is to present the idea that she or he is not some rigid, already predetermined and predefined person.  We should attempt as much as possible to let go of our presuppositions and actually listen carefully to the needs of each patron.   The more we know about the individual and her or his needs, the better equipped we are to find the appropriate resources for them. 

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Sept 9 - 15

Scanning in the Library

Although on an average day of working at the library I am faced with at least a couple of questions about operating the scanner, that is not the kind of scanning that I want to get into right now.  The kind of scanning I have in mind for now is information scanning and how people ordinarily go about research.

When I started at the Kent University Fashion Library, I had no idea what a fashion library was.  In fact, getting the student position at the fashion library here at Kent was the first exposure I had to a library this specialized and specific.  Also, I really have no history with fashion. I do not speak the lingo or know the trends; I do not know the brand names or the top designers; I do not frequently shop or even browse online for clothes.  All in all, my exposure was low and my knowledge was far lower.

Now, I really cannot say that I have become an expert in fashion in three weeks, and I must admit that I have been devoting most of my energy toward learning the library processes more than the fashion industry, but still I feel that our class lecture on information scanning resonated on this topic.

As discussed in class, Francis J. Aguilar’s environmental and information scanning consists of the following linear stages:

·         Undirected Viewing

·         Conditional Viewing

·         Informal Viewing

·         Formal Search

On my first day of starting at the Fashion Library, I was strongly involved in stage one: undirected viewing.  In this stage, characterized by a “general exposure to information,” I found myself walking through the stacks scanning the titles of books and trying to get a general land layout of the rows and the subjects they contained.  Through this general exposure I began to see that the stacks were divided into sections by topics including retail management, history of costumes, designers, colors theories, apparel and jewelry, ethnic fashion, ecology in the fashion industry, and some works on philosophic ruminations.  

Not all of these divisions always seemed perfect to me, as books on some topics seemed be spread out in multiple spots, like books on color could be in fabrics, or patterns, or ethnic, or with other books on color. Further, there was a section for reference, a display section for newer books, the general stacks, large items, and magazines.  For some reason, there are some magazines and periodicals on the main stacks.

But this undirected viewing went beyond only getting a feel for the way the library was divided and subdivided.  I was also exposed to the patrons, and by observing them I slowly learned who they were, what they used the library for, and what I would need to know in order to help them.

Conditional viewing, or a more “directed exposure” probably began over the next couple of days at the library.  I began to understand a little bit more about the function of the fashion library after more exposure to the patrons and attempting to answer their questions concerning the library resources.  From becoming more familiar with the frequent questions I started to get a better idea of what I needed to know more about in order to be more useful.  The number one thing that I needed to start becoming more comfortable with was answering questions related to technology: how to print, how to load a flashcard, how to install a VPN, and related questions.

From here, I believe I entered stage three, the “informal search.” This stage was defined in class as a “limited and unstructured effort to obtain specific information or information for a specific purpose.” My purpose here was to better learn the technology aspects of the fashion library so that I could better serve the patrons.  My methodology was trial and error.  Rather than finding web resources or documentation on the devices, I spent some time playing around on the computers and seeing what worked and what did not.

Finally, after I felt as comfortable as I could feel by learning through that method, I entered the last stage, the “formal search”.  Also, I believe that I am still in this final stage.  Now, I refer to web pages for answers, if I have time, or I ask a supervisor.  As well, my attempt to map out the layout of the library has gotten more formal as time has gone on. I have gotten a better idea of common class topics after attempting to help multiple students with their research needs.  I have tried to remember these common areas of research and to track down their positions in the stacks so that I can more quickly show students to the location that they can begin browsing.

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September 2 - 8

1. "Inherent in all things to be learned we should be able to find inherent connections." 
     -Mortimer Adler

• What happens when the "natural joints" are questioned or discarded all together?

 The quote by Mortimer is revealing as to his philosophical principles, specifically his allegiance to Aristotelian principles and ideals.  According to a certain school of thought, human beings are very capable of knowing about "objects" in a disinterested manner. This way of objectively knowing an object should be sufficient to give the Knower some privileged access to the nature of the object, and to place that object in some taxonomy according to its relationship with other objects of knowledge. 

This view is highly flattering of the human senses, in particular those basic five senses identified by Aristotle, as well as lending un-do credit to human rationality.  There are, however, many pitfalls to this standpoint, the sum of which make this sort of idealism feel highly outdated and imaginative.

• According to this viewpoint, there is a 1:1 ratio between human representations of the world and the world outside of us. 
• Humans are capable of knowing the world and the objects as they are.
• This way of thinking pretends that communication is such that one person is actually capable of representing their knowledge in some form to another human being; one who is then capable of consuming that communication in an identical manner. In other words, it overlooks basic problems with communication.
• It ignores biases and prejudices that exist in the creation of human knowledge.
• Generally commits the hubris of believing that humans are capable of knowing the order of the universe as was intended by God.
• Under this view we might think that knowledge is not something created by humans, but rather, that knowledge is something "out there" waiting to be observed and labeled. 

Around 1640, the French philosopher and mathematician Rene Descartes wrote Meditations on First Philosophy. In this work, Descartes questions the biases of knowledge that he found had clouded philosophy for centuries in the European education system.  In this early break from Aristotle, Descartes posits his new methodology for truth exists in his own cogitos (his thinking stuff). A later Dutch philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard took Descartes ideas much further.

Kierkegaard wrote on subjectivity and negative communication, as well as heavy criticism of the Christianity being practiced in his time, and is now identified as a founder of existentialism. Existentialism inspired French philosophers and thinkers such as Sartre and his major work Being and Nothingness, as well as theorists like Derrida, and Foucault, and so post-modernism took off.

The point of this very brief (and highly selective) progression is to show how far we have come from accepting outdated notions of things having a natural order that is accessible to the knowledge man. Today, we tend to see views such as those held on to by Adler's as being highly Euro-centric, Christian, narratives of how man was able to rationally categorize all of the world's knowledge--as originally intended by the All Mighty.

Instead, the "natural joints" of the world are recognized as being convenient means of humans to communicate their own knowledge, as gained from a certain perspective, analyzed in a certain way, and thought about through a certain perspective. Humans create the categories and humans decide what goes in them. It is up to humans to debate over the subtleties of these systems we invent by our all too human means.

So, in the words of Nietzsche in Beyond Good and Evil, we are far more likely to accept the notion that "my judgment is my own and you are not entitled to it."  Truth and knowledge is created in my own world and makes the most sense there.  It is in the communication of those truths is where problems tend to arise.

This is really just an effort to say that the relationship between objects ("the inherent connections," as Adler put it) only actually exist when we agree upon them. As long as we agree upon terms and divisions, this system works fine, but we should not mistake ideas and representations with the real thing.

2. The joints as I see them.

“I believe I am a reflection, like the moon on water. When you see me, and I try to be a good man, you see yourself” (Kundun, 2007).

The above quote is from the character of the Dalai Lama from the 2007 Martin Scorsese film, Kundun.

The joints of nature are more like mirrors that reveal the connections (the "nature") of our inner-worlds.  When we find one of these joints for ourselves, our response should not be to be filled with a sense of enlightenment towards the world, but rather bewilderment at ourselves.  When another reveals one of these joints to us then we may begin investigating the differences of our two worlds.

These joints are areas of power and struggle, both internally and externally, and an examined life should never be too comfortable with where these joints are located or what it is they are reflecting.  The mistakes of settling for a finished product of knowledge is the focus of Kierkegaard’s vehemence towards Hegel and much of Christianity. Truth is a becoming and these joints are full of uncertainty.  It is an uncertainty that keeps us striving toward more truth, a greater understanding, a finer granularity of knowledge.  I think a scientific age could come to appreciate this take on the joints of nature every bit as much a spiritual one.

These joints are revealing of political affinities, psychological fitness, and spiritual make-up.  They are abstractions of things that we allow to represent the whole structure of our horizons. They are imbued with cultural ideologies, zeitgeist, and personal convictions.  They are our habits of thought and associations that provide an order and functionality to things.  They make it possible for a Master Signifier to exist at all.  But they are more like scotch tape than like duct tape--not only are they frail and lose their adhesiveness over time, but they can also be transparent to others.

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