Islands ?
Islands of meaning in the sea of information ?!
Is that what we ( should ) want ?
Can't we do better than that ?
Shouldn't we do better than that ?
Can we afford to do not better than that ?
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
----- Original Message ----
From: Weinheimer Jim <j.weinheimer_at_AUR.EDU>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Mon, February 21, 2011 9:55:50 PM
Subject: [NGC4LIB] How We Know
Concerning an article in the March 10, 2011 NY Review of Books: "How We Know" by
Freeman Dyson http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/mar/10/how-we-know/
(reviewing the book: The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood / James
Gleick. Pantheon.
This is a very interesting article; I guess I'm going to have to buy yet another
book(!), but a couple of points jump out at me:
"Telescopes and spacecraft have evolved slowly, but cameras and optical data
processors have evolved fast. Modern sky-survey projects collect data from huge
areas of sky and produce databases with accurate information about billions of
objects. *Astronomers without access to large instruments can make discoveries
by mining the databases instead of observing the sky.* [my emphasis--JW] Big
databases have caused similar revolutions in other sciences such as biochemistry
and ecology."
and the final part:
"The consequence of this freedom is the flood of information in which we are
drowning. The immense size of modern databases gives us a feeling of
meaninglessness. Information in such quantities reminds us of Borges’s library
extending infinitely in all directions. It is our task as humans to bring
meaning back into this wasteland. As finite creatures who think and feel, we can
create islands of meaning in the sea of information."
My own opinion is that any library selector has known this for a long, long
time. They, more than anyone else (probably) have seen the immensity of the
"information universe". That is their job after all: to take "the best" (however
that is defined) from the totality. But it is nevertheless the selector who is
supposed to have one of the best ideas of that "totality". I suspect that the
reason why the amount of information/noninformation/disinformation is growing so
outrageously today is mainly because what in the past would have been thrown
away as trash is now being retained. I wonder how much of this incredible sea of
so-called "information" are those pictures of young, drunken students in
mid-debauch, or an almost infinite number of exact reproductions of videos of
out and out pornography, IM chats that consist almost exclusively of "ummm" "er,
..." "what the ....!", thousands of blog posts that repeat links to the same
items, and other things that would be much better d!
iscarded. Just imagine all of those Twitter messages that are being saved at the
Library of Congress! In this regard, I am reminded of Seneca in his "On the
shortness of life", where he discussed similar concerns:
http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/seneca_younger/brev_e.html
"It would be tedious to mention all the different men who have spent the whole
of their life over chess or ball or the practice of baking their bodies in the
sun. They are not unoccupied whose pleasures are made a busy occupation. For
instance, no one will have any doubt that those are laborious triflers who spend
their time on useless literary problems, of whom even among the Romans there is
now a great number. It was once a foible confined to the Greeks to inquire into
what number of rowers Ulysses had, whether the Iliad or the Odyssey was written
first, whether moreover they belong to the same author, and various other
matters of this stamp, which, if you keep them to yourself, in no way pleasure
your secret soul, and, if you publish them, make you seem more of a bore than a
scholar. But now this vain passion for learning useless things has assailed the
Romans also. In the last few days I heard someone telling who was the first
Roman general to do this or that; Duilius wa!
s the first who won a naval battle, Curius Dentatus was the first who had
elephants led in his triumph."
and then goes on:
"...does it serve any useful purpose to know that Pompey was the first to
exhibit the slaughter of eighteen elephants in the Circus, pitting criminals
against them in a mimic battle? He, a leader of the state and one who, according
to report, was conspicuous among the leaders of old for the kindness of his
heart, thought it a notable kind of spectacle to kill human beings after a new
fashion. Do they fight to the death? That is not enough! Are they torn to
pieces? That is not enough! Let them be crushed by animals of monstrous bulk!
Better would it be that these things pass into oblivion lest hereafter some
all-powerful man should learn them and be jealous of an act that was nowise
human. O, what blindness does great prosperity cast upon our minds!"
Just because data can be saved does not mean that it is transformed into
"information" or that it should be saved. Seneca's discussion here reminds me of
"Buffy studies" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffy_studies and all kinds of
similar endeavors.
It seems that instead of a quest for some indefinable "meaning", the subtext of
the NYRB article is actually a cry for selection. How the selection will occur,
either manually or by automated means or a combination, remains to be seen.
James L. Weinheimer j.weinheimer_at_aur.edu
Director of Library and Information Services
The American University of Rome
Rome, Italy
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Received on Mon Feb 21 2011 - 16:50:55 EST