Date: 6 March 2002
Topics: "Information Communities" and "Digitization and Sampling"
Leaders: Chris Ruotolo and Geoffrey Rockwell
Information Communities
CR: UVa library working on LOFT -- Library of Tomorrow. One of the first
projects will be (virtual) information communities, one in American
Studies and one in Tibetan Studies. 5 model communities: Tibetan and
Himalayan Community; American Studies Community; Poetry; Modeling
Virginia; Architecture.
Right now, definitions of "information communities" still being debated.
Other terms: knowledge communities; information ecologies. Emphasis
shifts between people, resources, medium.
What are examples of information communities? humanist? goecities?
traditional libraries?
ask Chris to email report.
Information Ecology: full of organic metaphors; keystone species--a few
bedrock things in place will foster the "natural" growth of other pieces
Collection of tools--text analysis, communication, teaching.
BN: Value-added seems to be from the community.
BR: Another goal is to make American Studies a full-fledged program. And
this information community fits in this.
JU: Current grant-funded project that is generating an annotated
bibliography of current American Studies resources. This project will
culminate in meeting of representatives from American Studies programs
from all over the world. This census of resources might be used to direct
the activities of the information community/portal.
GR: A community is a political body. It has forms of organization. How
does this apply in the case of Web-based information communities? Is
there an applied organization here?
In the case of Web-based information communities, we try to hide the
administration. We disguise the administration, the politics. Is this
being addressed in these new communities.
CR: Participation is democratic; contribution or generation or filtering
of resources is not democratic. There will be a committee of librarians
and professors that perform these functions. There will be an explicit
hierarchy or decision-making tree. Lots of this has to do with
resources--how and where do we spend limited resources?
JM: Tension being generated here--conflict between departments and
libraries. If these communities live in libraries, they will "suck"
resources and people from departments. This will cause problems later on.
JU: Let's return to the question of "what does this have to do with a KR
course." I'll propose another definition for information communities:
group of people with a shared ontology; group of people who *think*
they're talking about the same thing. In this sense, a portal is really a
perspective. A view on a set of resources. This is also convenient from
a technological perspective--we can use topic maps, etc.
GR: What tools do you see as being specific to community-building? What
tools do you see in the American Studies information commmunity?
CR: tools that foster communication: discussion lists; chat clients;
conferences; 24-hour expert.
analytical tools: image-annotation tools; text analysis tools.
JU: Many of these activities resemble journal publishing. Will these
communities publish journals?
---------
Digitization and Sampling
Geoff distributes handout. Copied below.
******************
Digitization - Outline
Knowledge Representation and the place of Digitization
Data = something given for computer processing
Information = Data in a context so that it can be understood and verified
Knowledge = Information possessed by human
Wisdom = Knowledge that makes an ethical difference
Senses of Digitization
1. The process of representing an analogue work in digital form
(scanning?)
2. Sampling and Quantizing
3. More generally, the representing of knowledge in digital form
a. Choice of what to digitize
b. Loss of information
Digital Form
1. "Digital" = Discrete, Quantitative (Numeric?), Binary Data
2. Inscribed data that can be accesses and processed by a computer
3. Information in a formal language (discrete, unambiguous codes,
finite code set) that can be processed by a computer
4. System capable of reliable representation suitable for human access
Advantages
1. Digital media can represent other media. Thus text, images, audio,
video, and 3-D spaces can be represented by digital code on a
computer.
2. Digital media can be manipulated using computer processes. Because
the digital is numeric (each digit is a discrete number), we can use
mathematical processes to manipulate digital media. These processes
are called algorithms.
3. Digital media can be stored, accessed and copied without loss of
quality. Because the digital is discrete and numeric, copies can be
mathematically compared to ensure that they are numerically
identical. This is one of the advantages of using a formal language
to represent information.
a. Therefore, there is no authentic original to digital media,
there are only conditions for representation.
b. Therefore, there is no material presence to digital media only
the representation through an output device.
4. Digital media can be transmitted quickly (over networks) without
loss of quality. This is one of the ways we can process digital media.
a. Thus digital works have no physical location.
5. Digital media can be combined into multimedia works. Since all
digital media are sequences of bits they can be combined into
meta-media works.
6. Digitized media can be converted to other media. A text can be
converted to an audio stream and so on. Such conversion is another
way you can manipulate the digital.
*******************
GR: My thesis -- there is a physical presence to the digital that the
culture of computing brackets in order to talk about the digital as
logical. Many of the supposed advantages and disadvantages of the digital
(as compared to the analogue) come from comparing the analogue as physical
to the digital as logical.
GR: knowledge representation = information and context; artifacts
plus contextual knowledge
Digitization is first step in knowledge representation, is creating the
artifacts, but digitization already involves knowledge--choices made in
process of digitization.
When digitizing, no way to avoid losing information. But choosing which
information to lose is part of the application of knowledge.
SR: I'm not so happy with the use of "numeric" and "discrete" here.
Calculus describes non-discrete (continuous) phenomena using numbers.
GR: Right, maybe the distinction should be between continuous and
discontinuous. A slide rule would be an example of a calculation device
that uses continuous representation. The discontinuous requires a
choice--what to keep and what to lose.
JU: Replace analog with continuous and digital with discrete?
SR: But the electricity below it all in a computer is continuous.
GR: Exactly. So what I'm really interested in is how we choose levels for
discussing these artifacts. Why do we talk about digital as a logical
structure and a book as an analog structure?
One possible origin: early 20th-century philosophers and mathematicians
working on "useless" logical and mathematical formalisms. Then suddenly
it was discovered that these discoveries could compose a system, could be
made useful. Maybe this is why we still focus on the logical.
These mathematicians and philosophers were looking to create a universal
language, to elide differences.
-----
Geoff adds in post-session email:
[My thesis] led to a discussion of the analogue and problems around the
distinction between digital and analogue - a discussion that reopened the
question of what the digital is in a way that might be useful for students
to tackle in the DH program. I argued that one goal of this module should
be making the digital (and digitization) strange so that students rethink
their assumptions about what appears to be the most obvious dimensions of
computing through such a discussion of what are the differences between
digital media and other media, forms of information, and codes.
I should add that I am trying to articulate this thesis in a paper which I
would be happy to circulate once it is worthy.
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