While this review is real and I wrote—it exists at goodreads—this post is primarily a test for John Miedema of the newest version of the OpenBook plugin.

The lover’s dictionary

David Levithan; Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2011

WorldCat•LibraryThing•Google Books•BookFinder

I, too, have seen this in assorted places but once Sara brought it home from the library I chose to read it. Took about an hour and a quarter maybe.

Beginning with “aberrant, adj.” and ending with “zenith, n.,” it charts the course of a relationship through the alphabetic conceit of a dictionary.

My favorites were “punctuate, n.,” “rest, v. and n.,” and “sacrosanct, adj.”

I must admit, I was let down by the ending somewhat. I could see it coming but wanted it to end on the other cusp of the arc.

Anyway, quick read and if you are a ‘wordie,’ as many of us are, then you may enjoy it.

I have decided that I will not write my thesis and thus will not finish my Certificate of Advanced Study (CAS) from UIUC.

Earlier this morning I emailed my Dean, who is also my advisor, with my decision.

As some of you know, circumstances arose almost exactly 3 years ago that, at the time, I was considering a temporary derailment.  I had just finished my course work towards my degree and was registered for my 8 hours of thesis credit to be completed in the spring semester of 2008.  But I found myself unable to process the things I had learned, and unable to get them down on paper.  I was burned out after 10 years of mostly full-time education.  In consultation with my faculty, we decided I would take a break for a few months and then write the thesis.

Many things happened in the intervening months, some bad, most good. Some even extraordinary. Many have been mentioned on this blog. I now find myself up against a university imposed deadline of defending before the spring 2011 semester is over.  While I would like to finish, and have always intended to do so, I find my heart is simply not in it.

I know that many would counsel that I buckle down and “just do it.”  And while that is a strategy, it is not one that will work for me; not any longer at least.  It has been a couple of years now since I wrote anything “academic” and I am finding it more than difficult to pick up where I left off.

And, No, I did not leave this until the last minute. I have been re-reading and re-familiarizing myself with my materials and my argument for the last several months. This fall I had set myself two tasks. First, draft one, preferably two, chapters and send them to my advisor. It would have been nice to do more but I figured that if I could get that far—back into the groove, so to speak—then the remaining 3-4 chapters would come fairly easily. Second, write an article for a major journal based on my concluding chapter. In fact, if done correctly, it could then easily be retrofitted to serve as the conclusion. The article could have been simple or detailed. It certainly wasn’t a given to have been accepted for publication, but it was semi-invited.

I tried to work on these two tasks but I got nowhere. I put myself in anguish, I tortured myself, I scolded myself. I chastised myself for doing anything besides them, and I generally made myself feel miserable, all the while getting nowhere on them.

This needs to end now!

I even forewent taking any of several classes that I was seriously interested in this current term (Dec-Feb) at Briar Cliff with professors whom I want to study with. A couple of these are nearing retirement, also, so that was a tough decision.

Pros of not writing the thesis

• Can stop causing myself so much anguish and other negative feelings, all of which have real consequences in my life.
• Can move on with the many other interests and passions that are calling to me.
• Will perhaps be freed up mentally and emotionally to finally write one or more papers on my topic, when I am good and ready to do so.
• I still received—as in took—a great education at UIUC GSLIS.
• I have the required professional degree required to be a librarian.

Cons of not writing the thesis

• May need to get a 2nd masters. This assumes I get back in the academic librarian game, at a place with tenure and at one requiring a 2nd masters for tenure, and one which would have accepted my CAS as equivalent.

In a perfect world I would prefer to have finished this degree. While it was a struggle coming to realize what it was that I was going to do and that a decision had to be made, after a while, the decision was an easy one. Taking care of myself is what matters most.

I am still fully coming to grips with the decision but I do know that it is the proper one for me. I already feel a great sense of relief, and release, because this educational journey (the CAS) has been a huge part of my life for almost 5 years now and will take some time to fully process its end.

Thank you to everyone for your encouragement and support over the last several years.  It has meant a great deal to me!  I am still highly interested in Integrationism and issues of language and communication within library and information science. So you may well see more from me on these topics.

In Fall 2005 I took a class with Prof. Chip Bruce on Pragmatic Technology. One of our assignments was to:

Produce an analysis of one keyword of your choice (see Raymond Williams, Keywords A vocabulary of culture and society. Revised edition. New York: Oxford University Press) for examples. This keyword is not just an index term as in the bibliography, but a core concept for the field. The analysis is a short essay (1-2 pp.) on the definition, history, and multiple uses of a term, which is central to understanding a text or a field of study.

I chose “technology.” This assignment represented 10% of our grade.

I found this little piece the other day while poking around my hard drive and decided I was going to put it here for assorted reasons, if only primarily for myself so I might find it easier in the future.

LIS590PT Fall 2005  Keywords Assignment  Mark Lindner  14 Sep 2005
“Technology,” definition, history, and multiple uses of a term

Plato distinguished Techne (art) from empiriae (knack) as having a logos, a rationale which “necessarily includes a reference to the good served by the art” while knack consists of “rules of thumb based on experience but without any underlying rationale” (Feenberg).

Feenberg argues that we moderns have lost the connection between techne and the good.  “We can still relate to Plato’s emphasis on the need for a rationale, a logos, but we’re not so sure it includes an idea of the good. In fact, we tend to think of technologies as normless, as serving subjective purposes very much as did Plato’s knacks” (Feenberg).

What is the history of technology in between, and is Feenberg correct?  The OED lists several senses of technology that are of relevance to us:

1. a. A discourse or treatise on an art or arts; the scientific study of the practical or industrial arts. (1615 BUCK Third Univ. Eng. xlviii)

b. transf. Practical arts collectively. (1859 R. F. BURTON Centr. Afr. in Jrnl. Geog. Soc. XXIX. 437)

c. With a and pl. A particular practical or industrial art. (1957 Technology Apr. 56/1)

2. The terminology of a particular art or subject; technical nomenclature. (1658 SIR T. BROWNE Gard. Cyrus v.)

Oxford American lists the etymology of technology as from the Greek, tekhnologia systematic treatment, from tekhnê art.

Thus, as far as standard English usage goes technology was earliest applied to language about, or the language of, the practical or industrial arts.  Over time this meaning shifted to the practical arts collectively, and then finally as a referent to any of the individual practical arts.

It seems to me that in American usage that technology has come to shift meaning over the last half-century or so from referring primarily to technoscience or applied science to the machines produced and used by such to primarily refer to the electronic gadgetry of everyday life; personal computers, iPods, DVD players, etc.  Most “normal” Americans think of technology as normless, as Feenberg said.  Atomic bombs, depleted uranium shells, land mines—it all depends on what you do with them.  Their development and existence is morally neutral according to this view.

Philosophers of technology use technology differently than in standard usage, but even there the meaning has shifted over the last sixty or so years.  Classical philosophers of technology (Ellul, Mumford, Heidegger; et al.) thought that technology “…must not be thought of as applied natural science, that is less an instrument than a form of life, and that it must be understood as a “system” (in Ellul’s word) or as a “megamachine” (Mumford)” (Achterhuis, 3).  Ellul uses the French word technique specifically due to the narrower connotation of technology with machines.  For Ellul, “technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity” (xxv).

Newer philosophers of technology (Noble, Hughes, Scwartz and Thompson; et. Al.) have pointed out the intertwining of technology and society as “technosociety,” “technoculture,” “network of technological affairs,” and as a “social process that is extraordinarily inaccessible to us because we are so much a part of it” (Achterhuis, 6-7).

Pacey points out in Meaning in Technology that technology has both social and individual meanings.  He also points to the difference between the “political economy” of the use and development of technology and its wider role in society and, the “social construction” of technology through a “variety of “actors” responding to a complex of social pressures” (4).  Pacey’s point about the shift from the “political economy” of technology to its “social construction” is similar to the shift from the early focus on the material and historical conditions for the rise of Technology as a system to the more recent focus on technologies that impact society while being influenced by the same society.  Pacey’s book is an attempt to redirect some of the focus back onto the meaning of technology created by the individual’s experience of technology, not just of society’s experience.

Sources Cited

Achterhuis, Hans, ed. American Philosophy of Technology: The Empirical Turn. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001.

Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books, 1964.

Feenberg, Andrew. “Can Technology Incorporate Values? Marcuse’s Answer to the Question of the Age.” Paper presented at the conference on The Legacy of Herbert Marcuse, University of California, Berkeley, November 7, 1998.

Oxford English Dictionary, 2^nd ed. online, 1999.

Pacey, Arnold. Meaning in Technology. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999.

“Technology.” Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

I read this at the coffee shop one morning a couple of weeks ago and, as usual, was quite impressed. She shows that a model of communication is mandatory for information science but that one of information seeking is optional. She also critiques the overuse of ‘information’ and makes the “radical suggestion” that we need a whole new language for library and information science (143). Yes, yes, and yes! [Was cited by Dick 1995; see below for citation. Or this blog post: 2 articles by Archie Dick]

Based on a linguistic analysis of phrases including the word ‘information,’ randomly sampled across a 20-year period from Library & Information Science Abstracts (LISA: 1969-Sep 1989), “establishes three predominant cognitive models of information and the information transfer process” (130, abstract).

Outline of article:

• Introduction
• Related Cognitive Models
• Method
• Results
• Analysis
  • Focus of models
  • Compatibility of models
  • Direct communication model
  • Indirect communication model
  • Information-seeking model
• Discussion
• Conclusions
• Appendix A
  • A. Direct communication (DC) model
  • B. Indirect communication (IC) model
  • C. Information-seeking (IS) model
• Appendix B. Syntagms evoking general frames
• References

Introduction

In trying to determine the cognitive models within the field the author made two basic assumptions: “(1) the literature of a field incorporates the cognitive models common to the discipline; and (2) linguistic analysis can be used to ferret out what those models are” (131).

Related Cognitive Models

Green discovered three models, two of which take the perspective of the information system and one which takes the perspective of the information user. The first two fall under the critique of

“the traditional paradigm of information transfer criticised by Dervin. In what she refers to as a positivistic or information-theoretic framework, information is perceived as a self-existent and absolute entity, independent of human minds. Information is stored within a variety of types of information systems, which users may approach in order to extract information relevant to their needs” (132).

Method

Pointing out that the phenomena of the information transfer process “is the key event around which library and information science is built,” Green states that

“If the positivistic model of information transfer observed by Dervin is truly representative of the thinking of the profession and if that mode of thinking is as dysfunctional as Dervin suggests (which, no doubt it is), library and information science educators and researchers would have some serious overhauling and restructuring of their cognitive models to accomplish” (132-33/133).

I adore her all over again for that “which, no doubt it is” aside.

There are a couple limitations of the method used that are listed (134). One of them, which is only a possible limitation or less of one than is suspected, would be partially answered if this study were repeated for the period 1990-2010. I would love to see that comparison.

Analysis

As one can guess from the outline of the article above, the three models found are: Direct communication (DC) model, Indirect communication (IC) model, and the Information-seeking (IS) model (135). I will leave it to the interested reader to delve further into this paper on their own if they are interested in these models and the specific support found for them via Dr. Green’s analysis.

Discussion

“As noted previously, communication models and information-seeking models are not inherently incompatible. Given that information transfer is the basic phenomenon around which library and information science revolves, the discipline must have a model of communication from information source to information user. Since the information user is often the initiator of the information transfer, we may have (and in general we would like to have) information-seeking models, too. Thus, a model of communication is mandatory; a model of information-seeking, although desirable, is theoretically optional. The upshot of this recognition is that the discipline’s models of communication are more crucial than its model(s) of information-seeking. … Sadly, our models of communication provide little insight as to how information transfer is actually effected” (141, empahsis mine).

While I will leave the concept of “information transfer” stand for now, this idea of a “transfer” is also to be rejected. Nonetheless, whatever fills the role of this so-called “information transfer” will still be “the key event around which library and information science is built” (132-33). Thus, a proper theory of communication is the basis for all that we do in library and information science, whether theory or practice.

Did the information-seeking model that was discovered accomplish its aims? No, it did not. Although ostensibly focused on the user, the IS model still emphasized the information system far too much, along with paying more attention to quantity vs. quality of the information retrieved (recall vs. precision) (141-42).

The issue is that

“the cognitive models of the user are not considered. Moreover, the cognitive models embodied in the information retrieved are also ignored; the relevance of information to a user’s need is defined solely in terms of shared ‘aboutness’, without respect to compatibility of underlying cognitive frameworks. Consequently, matching information retrieved to information needed is perceived mechanistically” (142).

This provides a an exceptional argument for domain analysis and a focus on epistemological relevance and viewpoint. Just because some source is ‘about’ a topic does not mean it will meet the needs of a user; any user much less a specific user.

The next paragraph warmed my heart to no end:

“Unfortunately, such a view of information retrieval, which is in the same vein as the positivistic or information-theoretic framework as criticized by Dervin, is, one may argue, built into our understanding of the word ‘information’. … This leaves us with the question why we have adopted such heavy use of the word ‘information’ throughout our discipline when the cognitive models associated with it are in at least some respects incompatible with what we are trying to accomplish” (142).

Conclusions

“Shortcomings discovered in the analysis … highlight the areas where our focus of research should be: the cognitive structures of texts; and how readers perceive them, re-mould them, and integrate them with the cognitive models they possessed at the outset of the interaction” (142, emphasis mine).

The question of integration is actually the foundation of all of these questions, as it is of the question of communication.

“A second recommendation stems from the observation that the word ‘information’ predisposes us to think of the retrieval process in a mechanistic sense, which goes counter to our modern understanding of how the process should be viewed. (Ironically, the word ‘retrieval’ also carries this bias.) … The recommendation offered here is a radical one: we need to change the basic inventory of words we use to communicate about our field. We should be more concerned with learning and knowledge than with retrieval and information” (142-43).

Change our language? Yes, yes, yes!

This article provides me the following:

• A theory of communication is mandatory for LIS
• A theory of comm is prior to a theory of information-seeking
• An argument for domain analysis and epistemological considerations
• A critique of ‘information’ as the basis for my discipline
• A call to radically change our language within the field

This is my 2nd book review for 12 Books, 12 Months Challenge although it is the 3rd book I’ve finished. I’ll be writing some comments on the other book shortly.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I will admit that the explanations sometime bog down a bit. Once you get the method of their analysis you can probably do some of it on your own and thus the repetition gets a tad pedantic. All in all, though, it is an excellent introduction to how our language and thought processes work, showing that metaphor infuses worldviews.

One must be somewhat careful coming to this book with the expectation that it is entirely about poetic metaphor. It is not. In fact, the bookseller categories on the back cover are: Literary Criticism / Linguistics / Cognitive Science.

That said, it does address metaphors in poetry, but its larger task is explaining how metaphor works and arguing for a specific theory of metaphor, based on the Grounding Hypothesis versus most other theories of metaphor based on variations of the Literal Meaning theory.

This book came in handy for my Madwomen Poets class last week as I had just decided to write about Plath’s poem, “You’re,” and I then read the section on global readings of a poem.  I was noticing something in the structure itself similar to what I decided the poem was about and this book gave me the language to explicitly state what I intended.

About a fifth of the book is dedicated to the Great Chain metaphor, in both its basic and extended versions. This section is quite interesting and provided me a far better appreciation for the depth and prevalence of this metaphor. One of the more interesting uses of this section is in their explication of proverbs.

I highly recommend this book as an introduction to metaphor. I have previously read both Metaphors We Live By and Women, Fire and Dangerous Things and no doubt they helped me in reading this book. But I honestly think this might be the best one of the three to begin with. Then move on to Metaphors We Live By, and if you are still interested in the research, and cognitive aspects, of metaphor and concepts then have at Women, Fire and Dangerous Things.

I found this article on the main page of Library Quarterly‘s website as one of the most cited when I went looking for Archie Dick’s 1988 article on epistemologies in LIS [to be discussed soon].

I quite enjoyed this article as for me the upshot, in essence, is that they align information literacy with a domain-centric viewpoint.

The authors, whom I have read several papers by, whether together or with other authors, are social constructionists.  I am not quite sure how this theory and its close “rivals” fit in with my work. They all have distinct advantages to their way of looking at the world, but none of them focus on all that is relevant. As of now, I am a pluralist as far as these theories go. I feel that slavish adherence to one and only one would cause one to miss other relevant and important ways of viewing the world, or the slice of the world one is trying to analyze. [See my upcoming comments on A. Dick's holistic perspectivism.]

As it stands, social constructionism seems only slightly orthogonal to Hjørland’s domain analytic view.

Let me state up front that information literacy (hereafter IL or info lit) is not my arena.  Also, this paper is 5 years old so some of the critiques that it makes of our professional organizations’ formal statements on IL may have been addressed. Then again, as fast as our professional organizations move I would not count on that either.

Outline of article:

• Introduction
• The Background of the Information Literacy Movement
• The IL Debate
• Conceptions of Information and Learners in the Generic Skills Approach
• The Social Context of Information Literacy
• Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Problem
• Conclusion

I am not going to cover much in the way of their critiques of these formal statements. But I will say that I fully agree with them.  I guess I’ll quote this passage as a reasonable summation of their critique but be aware it is more varied and detailed than this makes it sound:

“The IL movement has not often seriously attempted to call its own premises into question or to suspend the obvious and, as a result, has been preoccupied with the binary logic of discerning facts from nonfacts and biased from nonbiased information. Such dichotomies reflect the values of traditional print culture, however, rather than the social and multimodal networked technological environments. In interactive digital environments, actors can simultaneously be readers and writers, consumers, and producers of knowledge. Knowledge is not located in texts as such—or in the individual’s head. Rather, it involves the coconstruction of situated meanings [33, p. 48] and takes place in networks of actors and artifacts” (337-8).

[33] Kapitzke, Cushla. (see below)

The authors’ critique of info lit comes from the literature on “The IL Debate.” It begins with a simple but important observation attributed to Mutch. “The difficulties with the IL concept stem partly from the fact that it marries two concepts (information and literacy) that in themselves are ambiguous and resist exact definitions [29]” (332).

[29] Mutch, Alistair. “Information Literacy: An Exploration.” International Journal of Information Management 17, no. 5 (1997): 377-86

That simple critique, in and of itself, ought give one pause regarding any attempt at defining “information literacy.” [Damn! I know I written about definitions on my blog in the past but I cannot find anything useful. I really and truly need a powerful blog search engine for my own blog; natively, that is. Anyway, this reminds me that I really need to reread Harris and Hutton on definition and write a one-page statement of my views on the topic.]

“The term “practice” shifts the focus away from the behavior, action, motives, and skills of monologic individuals.  Teams, groups, and organizations can be seen as the entities that become information literate in a specific knowledge domain, that is, they enact information practices and use suitable technical tools. Seeing IL as consisting of sociotechnical practices that differ from one knowledge domain to another mandates empirical research efforts that concentrate on actual organizational environments and on routine and mundane ways of performing situated actions and interactions with and through social and technical resources needed for their accomplishment.

What we propose here is that as practices give rise to individuals as epistemic subjects in the fist place, they are primary in understanding the acts and deeds of individuals” (339).

There is much more in this article that should help one rethink, or think about for the first time, the traditional, and mostly implicit, assumptions of information literacy. This view does, in fact, complicate IL but then many of our concepts need a little (or a lot of) complication.

I find it powerful and useful in that it makes IL more about the actual processes of human communication; more social, as literacy is; and firmly situates IL in domain practices.

Highly recommended.

I read this book over the last 9 days and I loved it.  I have previously read one other McNeill book and have had another that I have meant to read.  The other book was The Pursuit of Power and I read it for one of Dr. Stivers’ grad seminars and did my book review essay on it.

This book is divided into 3 sections: Truth, Myth, and History; The Need for World History; and Masters of the Historical Craft. It is a collection of essays and lectures dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. The first one is McNeill’s presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1985 and is entitled, “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians.” I believe this was an excellent choice to open the book and set the stage for his views.

I especially like McNeill’s emphasis on  world history, his scolding of his fellow professional historians and his ethical stance regarding the need for world history and responsible mythmaking.  I particularly adore his views on language and human communication. His main effort in this book is a rehabilitated view of myth.

I want to provide some quotes from the book to, hopefully, whet your appetite.  I may or may not expound further on them, although I hope to allow most to speak for themselves.

“Really important texts are those susceptible of being richly and diversely misunderstood. An author can always aspire to that dignity” (ix).

Part One: Truth, Myth, and History

From “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians”:

“The principal source of historical complexity lies in the fact that human beings react both to the natural world and to one another chiefly through the mediation of symbols” (6).

This may well be the principal source of complexity in much of human life and living. The amount and sheer range of symbolic mediation is primarily what differentiates humans from other animals.

“Shared truths that provide a sanction for common effort have obvious survival value. Without such social cement no group can long preserve itself. Yet to outsiders, truths of this kind are likely to seem myths, …” (7).

“The liberal faith, of course, holds that in a free marketplace of ideas, Truth will eventually prevail” (9).

This is one of the most sincere beliefs we have inherited from the Enlightenment. But it is also one that causes the most tension in our views of ourselves and the market as paragons of rationality as we see over and over that it is not necessarily the case that the Truth will win out.

“Group solidarity is always maintained, at least partly, by exporting psychic frictions across the frontiers, projecting animosities onto an outsider foe in order to enhance collective cohesion within the group itself” (16).

“We need to develop an ecumenical history, with plenty of room for human diversity in all its complexity” (17).

He claims that this is exactly what professional historians have shied away from.

“If we can now realize that our practice already shows how truths may be discerned at different levels of generality with equal precision simply because different patterns emerge on different time-space scales, then, perhaps, repugnance for world history might diminish …” (18).

“The result might best be called mythistory perhaps ( … ), for the same words that constitute truth for some are, and always will be, myth for others, who inherit or embrace different assumptions and organizing concepts about the world” (19 my empahsis).

From “The Care and Repair of Myth”:

Argues that public myth provides the basis for collective action:

“A people without a full quiver of relevant agreed-upon statements, accepted in advance through education or less formalized acculturation, soon finds itself in deep trouble, for, in the absence of believable myths, coherent public action becomes very difficult to improvise or sustain” (23).

Equates all forms of knowledge, to include scientific knowledge, with his rehabilitated view of myth:

“It may seem whimsical to equate scientific theories to myth, but if one accepts the definition of myth offered at the beginning of this article, surely the shoe fits” (26).

Argues that we need generality, not more detail, and that all of the detail generated by microhistories has undermined inherited myth.

“They have consequently undermined inherited myths that attempted to make the past useful by describing large-scale patterns, without feeling any responsibility for replacing decrepit old myths with modified and corrected general statements that might provide a better basis for public action” (36).

Encounters with strangers, and the assorted things that implies, is the driver of history:

“… troubling encounter with strangers constitute the principal motor of change within human societies” (37).

On comradeship and relating to the Other:

“The most problematic of all these human aspirations is how to define the limits of comradeship, This, indeed, is where humanity’s myth-making and myth-destroying capacity comes elementally and directly into play by defining the boundary between “us” and “them.” Broadly inclusive public identities, if believed and acted on, tend to relax tensions among strangers and can allow people of diverse habits and outlook to coexist more or less peacefully. Narrowed in-group loyalties, on the other hand, divide humanity into potentially or actually hostile grouping” (41).

This serves as another reason for broadly general world histories.

To counteract these tendencies, he argues that:

“What humanity needs is balance between a range of competing identities. A single individual ought to be able to be a citizen of the world and hold membership in a series of other, less inclusive in-groups simultaneously, all without suffering irreconcilable conflict among competing loyalties” (41).

From “The Rise of the West as a Long-Term Process”

Early in this essay are several pages on varied aspects of language:

“The main function of words is to generalize experience, imposing categories and classes upon the flow of sensory inputs, and thereby allowing us to recognize useful objects, e.g., “table,” in innumerable and sharply different encounters with things. Beyond that, our words create the social world we live in to a very large degree, permitting us to recognize and respond appropriately to a policeman, a professor, a foreigner, or a fellow citizen as the case may be. …” (46).

“Symbolic discourse thus gives human being their extraordinary capacity to transform the natural worlds by collective effort. It is, indeed, what makes us human” (47).

He argues that microhistorians use the language of those they write about while macrohistorians need a specialized, but generalized, language that still needs to be developed (50).

“Social process” as a topic for macrohistorians, and his primary view of “social process” and how that view has has changed in the 20 years since The Rise of the West was published occupy several pages at this point. His basic argument was and is that contact with strangers, especially those possessing superior skills, is the principal impetus to change in social life.

“A world history should, accordingly, focus special attention on modes of transport and the evidences of contact between different and divergent forms of society that such transport allowed” (57).

His updated view includes a greater role for communication. Intensified communication and cheapened transportation heightens the impact of tensions in social processes.

Part Two: The Need for World History

From “A Defense of World History”:

On the importance of language groups:

“Since shared meanings, disseminated through communications networks, are what shape and govern collective human behavior, historians ought always to take language groups seriously into consideration” (73).

While discussing the quest for precision and exactitude he tells us:

“Epistemological exactitude is unattainable. To insist on it is an excuse for not thinking. For only by using inexact words to organize confusion, lumping together a range of particulars that differ from one another in some degree or other, can the intellectual enterprise proceed at all” (84).

I fully agree with these  statements and they, in fact, clearly elucidate my concerns and doubts about ontologies and similarly highly structured abuses of words and concepts. This is not to say that they are not of use in limited, highly constrained, domains and contexts but that we must be careful of ontological “creep.”

“Beyond Western Civilization: Rebuilding the Survey” is a call to reform the then dying (now dead?) Western Civ course.

Part Three: Masters of the Historical Craft

In this section, McNeill discusses 4 historians he has known in various ways and that have affected his views in 5 chapters. I am not quoting much from these but they do add another kind of value and dimension to the book as a whole.

“Lord Acton”

“Basic Assumptions of Toynbee’s A Study of History”

“Historians I Have Known: Carl Becker”

“For myth-making is a high and serious business. It guides public action and is our distinctively human substitute for instinct. Good myths—That is, myths that are credible, because they are compatible with experience, and specific enough to direct behavior—are the greatest and most precious of human achievements. Why should we not aspire to make such myths? No nobler calling exists among humankind” (165-65).

“Historians I Have Known: Arnold J. Toynbee”

There is a fascinating section in here on not taking notes (192-94).

“Historians I Have Known: Fernand Braudel”

I highly recommend this eminently readable and erudite book.

Yesterday I finished reading Walt Crawford’s “Zeitgeist: hypePad” article in the newest Cites & Insights.

Walt did a fine job of summarizing a lot of blowhards and a few sane persons. But. The further along I got the stronger my apprehension got. Was Walt going to notice something I was noticing or was he buying into a certain rhetoric and, if so, why?

Here’s the thing. Many people, people on both ends of the iPad hype spectrum, are claiming that it is purely a content consumption device and not a content creation device. And that, my friends, is pure horseshit.

While there are some serious issues with how proprietary the device is, the limits of the iTunes/app store model for acquiring software you need/want, and the rampant DRM, and these certainly deserve some critical ink spent on them, this in no way makes the device a “consumption only” platform.

I am not sure what constitutes content creation for the technophiles and Wired editors and the likes but I believe that Walt knows better. Almost no one is producing fancy, professional-quality, full-color glossy Web magazines. We are writing blog posts, interacting in Facebook, conversing in friendfeed, posting pictures to Flickr and other image sites, writing documents and reports that end up on the Web, and so on.

The iPad will not only allow but enable one to do the vast majority of these things! Sure, you won’t be able to run Dreamweaver or QuarkExpress or … but these are NOT the only things that generate “content” [By the way, let me go on record here as to how much I dislike this usage of "content."].

According to the iPad features page it includes Safari, Mail, Notes, Keynote, Pages and Numbers, along with, of course, access to the App Store. While most of us probably do more consuming with our web browsers we also do creative work. This critique may be minor and it may not be very creative but I am not consuming it and I am creating it in a browser. I could have written this on my Touch.

The other programs are even more heavily toward the creation side of this supposed dichotomy. There are also apps for painting and drawing and many other forms of creative activity. Famous artists have even used their iPhones to create and share art.

Walt does say that “the iPad will succeed or fail largely on its own merits. While those merits may not meet my needs—and while I do believe you’re better off thinking of the iPad as an appliance, not another kind of computer, and that the closed model is dangerous—there’s no doubt its merits are real” (p. 30). Yes, I think the appliance label is useful. I certainly do not think of my Touch as a computer except in a generic sense.  I certainly do not confuse it with my MacBook and what it can do.

I am intrigued by the iPad but I highly doubt I will be buying one any time soon. I do my best not to buy 1st generation hardware/software from anyone. And I have serious concerns with the many other issues around the iLine of products—closed systems, DRM, etc. I also do not know where the iPad would fit into my way of being.

Walt finds the closed model dangerous and so do I; especially if it proliferates and closed systems become our only choices. But I also find lots of room for the closed appliance model of computing. There are an awful lot of people who could benefit from a device like this who are simply overwhelmed with a standard computer and all that that entails. Of course, most of the people Walt cited—the pundits anyway—probably cannot begin to relate to that thought.

So while the kinds of content that can be created on an iPad are reduced from what one could do with a full general-purpose computing device and appropriate software and input/output devices, it is not non-existent. To call an iPad—in general, irrespective of any particular use cases—a content consumption only (or primarily) device does more to show us what the commentor thinks they value over the truth of the matter.

For instance, Walt cites Lauren Pressley’s thinking (p. 16) “that things on the web are shifting from mass creation to primarily consumption (that is, “regular folks” are mostly tweeting, not contributing long-form content) with organizations creating more of the content ….” But since about Day 2 of the Internet that has probably been the case with organizations creating most of the (long-form) content.

Also, since when is Twittering not content creation? There seems to be a real discrepancy between what people consider not only “content” but “creation.” Until those nuances are pulled apart it is nonsensical to make such statements and to apply such labels to our devices.

In the end, I do think that devices like the iPad are restrictive in the way of content creation. But then so is my $2000 laptop. My laptop cannot help me paint a picture in oils on a real canvas, nor can it help me build a fancy gingerbread house. Now just hold on! If you want to tell me that I can find all kinds of good info on the web on how to paint, where to buy supplies, etc. that is only consumption towards a creative goal (under the current model). If you tell me I can find designs for gingerbread houses on the web then same thing. And I could do all of those with an iPad.

One thing to notice here is the complex issue of just when and how does consumption lead to/change into creation. There are no acts of immaculate conception in art/creation. It all comes from some influence; an influence that was consumed at some point, whether one knows it or not.

There are also larger issues of just who is doing content creation to share on their computers anyway. And of what we are calling content creation. Sure, precede it with long-form content, if you like. But you cannot separate long-form content until other kinds until you have delineated what content is, period.

In summary, while there are many issues surrounding the closed appliance model of the iPad to call it a primarily content consumption device, all the while ignoring what is or is not consumption vs. creation, ignoring other use cases than ones own, ignoring who is creating vs. primarily consuming, is simply to show ones biases.

In the end, once/if all these ideas are teased apart we might still label the iPad and similar devices as primarily consumption devices. I am perfectly fine with that, because then we will know what we are actually claiming.

Do I expect any of this to happen? At least on a broad-scale? Nope. No hope whatsoever. Academics will pull some of it apart, if they aren’t already, but little will filter down into the mainstream any time soon.

Unfortunately, this is an area that is rife with hype and I do not see it changing any time soon. But I intend to stay alert for this kind of framing—if one can call something framing which lacks much structure—and rhetoric so I can better assess the tools my society makes available.

Disclaimer: I am not an Apple fanboy although I am an Apple user. I have a 30GB photo iPod, a Touch, and a MacBook. I also have a 12″ PowerBook collecting dust until I possibly get around to totally reinstalling the OS and software.

But ask me about my 1st computer purchase years ago only to have Apple kill the Apple II line once they decided everyone had to have a Mac. My next and 3rd and 4th and 5th and … computers were all DOS/Wintel-based, for years after.

I think that, for now, Apple computers offer a good bargain; quality hardware and software for a reasonable price. Is there a premium? Sure there is. But I do not mind paying for quality in my important purchases. But, although far less than when I had Windows machines, I still yet at my computing devices on occasion, just as I frequently curse Steve Jobs and his (peoples’) design decisions that baffle me.

As April is National Poetry Month, April is also National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo) [or see Wikipedia].

We have a good friend who has committed to NaPoWriMo and her email alerting us to this and to the blog she will be using to do so awakened our thoughts. So this morning Sara and I decided to participate in our own NaPoReMo, National Poetry Reading Month. We plan on reading & discussing a poem we like each day. Not sure if that means a poem each each … or a poem … but we’ll figure it out.

I doubt I’ll commit to NaPoWriMo but setting aside a couple of hours each week to devote to writing poetry is on my list of “Important Things.”

I have been reading a fair bit of poetry lately and even started jonesin’ for more Mary Oliver after finishing everything I got for Christmas/birthday. Ordered 3 (2 poetry/1 hdbk) from amazon and about to jump in but reading something else right now. Soon. Like in April. Mary Oliver will supply me lots of poems to love and discuss with Sara. I read lots of Oliver poems to Sara.

As to the writing … well, I’ll be happy if I can start dedicating the couple of hours per week I said I want to commit to it.

Please consider this a sort of thought experiment. And, please, I beg you, do not do this to any one!

Need to either train or assist someone in training themselves to do Slavic/Cyrillic cataloging?

Do NOT:

• dump, without warning, a cataloger of Western European languages into Slavic/Cyrillic cataloging.
• give them, willy-nilly, a complete mixture, randomly assorted, of Slavic languages to catalog.
• give them absolutely no training.
• provide absolutely no feedback.
• give them pre-revolutionary materials so they have additional characters to consider.
• give them materials that need original cataloging.
• give them materials by authors with no authority records.
• expect the work to be done quickly.
• give them translations; especially those from one Slavic language to another.
• forget that the issue is “simply” language and script but that a host of other rules and other knowledge is required.

Now all of these things are not of the same importance, nor do they all need sequenced at the same time. If you are going to provide some honest and quality training and feedback then many of them recede to be of much less importance.

But if you are just going to dump this sort of cataloging on someone and you expect quality results then you had best pay attention to the above list and give them plenty of time to learn on their own. And, if you do dump this kind of work on someone then, except in the rarest of circumstance, you are not qualified to be a supervisor of catalogers.

And here my little thought experiment ends.