2006 Henderson Lecture: Dr. David Weinberger
What: “Everything is Miscellaneous,” the UNC/SILS 2006 Henderson Lecture
Who: Dr. David Weinberger
When: 2 p.m., Thursday, December 7, 2006
Where: Murphey Hall Auditorium (room 116), UNC-Chapel Hill. A reception will follow.
Abstract
Ever since Aristotle, we have organized knowledge according to some basic principles. By odd coincidence - that is, by no coincidence at all - these are the same principles that guide how we organize objects in the physical world. The most common structure of knowledge is the branching tree, found in everything from books (volumes, chapters, sections…) to the tree of life (animals, vertebrates, mammals…). We’ve assumed that to know a field is to see how everything has its unique place.
Then the digital revolution happened, eliminating the restrictions of physicality. For example, a real world librarian has to put a book on one and only one shelf whereas Amazon files books under as many different categories as possible. And, while traditionally the owners of the information own and control the organization of that information, in the digital realm, the users own the organization.
You can’t make changes in the basic principles of organization without changing the nature of knowledge itself: What knowledge is, who gets to decide, what constitutes a subject or topic, where does knowledge’s authority come from? We are in the midst of this revolution that touches how we organize our businesses, our customers’ control of the information they touch, and the “who” and “what” of trust.
November 1, 2006 at 1:04 pm
I will have to be there. How does this fellow’s views compare with Berlin, Rosch, Lakoff, et al? I.e.; that there are “basic level” objects which comprise the genera we all agree on, and that cognitively we determine hierarchical relationships from there?
November 2, 2006 at 8:28 am
Well, I’m not totally sure. The best I can offer is my recap of his talk at the IA Summit:
David Weinberger’s keynote asked “What’s up with knowledge?” He took a (humorous) sledgehammer to the foundations of information and library science, including the infamous DIKW (data - information - knowledge - wisdom) model. In his view, DIKW gets causality backwards–one needs knowledge and wisdom to get useful information, not the other way around. At the same time, he argued, traditional sources (the New York Times serving as poster boy) favor authority over transparency, whereas the new open, collaboratively-created sources (Wikipedia, standing in for a host of “social media” sites like Digg, del.icio.us, and the blogosphere as a whole) favor transparency. In particular, Wikipedia represents “publicly negotiated knowledge” as opposed to the private (elite) construction of knowledge by mass media instiutions and traditional publishers.
There is a dramatic change building: the ability of institutions to impose authority through carefully-constructed representations is dissipating, soon to disappear entirely. Peter Morville noted in the Q&A that large corporate and government sites often seek to express authority through IA. But next-generation IA is radically decentralized, incorporating many points of view expressed through blogs, del.icio.us tags, and so forth, thereby pushing authority to the edge of the network. As a result, IA’s need to expand their scope to consider the broad, socio-cultural impact of their design work.
As Weinberger noted, Dewey thought he was doing God’s work through classification, representing one true view of the world. The current landscape of IA, on the other hand, is distinctly postmodern, recognizing many socially-structured views. Despite many efforts to make IA into a postivist, quantified science, it appears the future may be resoutely interpretivist–understanding how the organization and representation of information intertwines with culture.
November 10, 2006 at 11:30 am
Hmmm… IA as a quantified science? I don’t believe tihs is what LIS folks intend to do. Cutter (yes, that’s the Chales Amni Cutter, who developed the dictionary catalog and wrote his rules famous rules for a dictionary catalog in 189?), emphasized that cataloging is an art, and that the cataloger should use his/her discretion. In other words, one should think about the user. AND — if one is thinking about the user, they need to be always thinking about represetnation and how it “intertwines” with culture. Sam (I think it’s the Sam I know), I appreciate your questions and your thoughts, and hope to see you there! all good wishes, jg
November 10, 2006 at 11:30 am
a p.s. Good luck on usability day Abe. this is fantastic. jg