“I can think of no better use of our time and our resources than to make the images and ideas from [Iraqi] civilization, from the very beginnings of time, available to billions of people worldwide,” declares Google chief Eric Schmidt.

About 5,000 of the 15,000 treasures the museum once held have been recovered.

I am thankful for Garrett sharing this news.

(How can I get a job with a cool project like that?)

“WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.”

“The rapid rise of participatory media technologies – weblogs, social networks, microblogging, video sharing sites – are transforming the news media landscape, reshaping how ideas are spread. Much of the early research on the influence of participatory media on existing institutions focuses on specific, successful cases where media frames developed online influenced offline media. Our project seeks to complement this work with tools to facilitate quantitative analysis of the relationship between media sources. We will present our prototype system to retrieve, tag, cluster and analyze blog and newspaper data, and discuss how the Media Cloud platform will be used in our future experiments, and can be used by other researchers to analyze patterns of influence in news media.”

They are accepting public comment by Friday, 11/6. An organization called FreePress.org has put together a survey to add public comment.

“It’s puzzling that even though we named an age after information, very few people can tell you what information is. And the ones with the clearest answers are often defining information in the technical sense, which is not the sense in which the culture took it up. In this session, we’ll look back at information, trying to understand what about it led us to embrace it as the dominant — paradigmatic — way of understanding ourselves and our world. David Weinberger will present an informal sketch of a direction, suggesting that we leaped into information because it reflected a long-held but squirrely metaphysics. There will be lots of time for open discussion.”

Folks attending in person should RSVP by Monday afternoon to rsvp @ cyber dot law dot harvard dot edu. Webcast listeners should tune in around 12:30 pm Tuesday.

Addenda 11/10: Notes from the talk:

Information has become a cradle to grave problem and certainty. Despite the fact that we’ve left the Stone Age, we still use stone in lots of the same ways that we used it back then. Information is the same way. It will always exist. We will always need it.

information
sense data
sensation
…
perception

The universe itself might be made of information, according to quantum information theorists. But, really, what is information?

With the exception of the occasional computer scientist, we do not *know* what information is. We talk about it all the time, but if we try to define it, we just end up with discrepancies. 200+ definitions exist, including the technical definition, which is not what David Weinberger means with this talk.

Information theory indicates two primary kinds/definitions of information, based on Charles Babbage’s thoughts: “something you didn’t know and now you do” and “the contents of a table-standardized expression.” Claude Shannon took over the term and created a new, highly technical meaning for it. There is now a mathematical expression about information. Page 36, chapter 1 has a good definition involving transferring information. That definition is “not what the culture took up” from the definition.

Something you are about to learn -> contents of a table ->

(he’s moving too fast for me to take notes about his slides)

why?
what enabled information to take over the world?
its utility
its politics

Information theory lets us figure out how to handle information, like with computers and hard drives. Without it, our world and its devices would be very different.

Information works by reducing the amount of information associated with an object. Our current age makes it seem like information is more about overload than stipping things down to their essential bits.

“We are far better able to manage the abundance of crap than the abundance of good. … The good stuff is the challenge to our culture. … [people and institutions] assume a scarcity of the good stuff.” Many ideas are premised on the assumption that there’s not enough good stuff and people will pay for it. Institutions depending on scarcity fail. Newspapers are dealing with these challenges now and new revenue models. The amount of signal that looks like noise is clouding things.

“Of course, this requires new ways to organize things. I am not going to talk about that.”

We need to know how to enter and navigate the information respositories. Precision and recall used to be key concepts. Relevance and “interestingness” are newer concepts when dealing with search results.

Old ideas about how to enter the information space (think Tron or Desk Set) might not work these days. The newer generation is fused so well with information, they are always in the world of information.

“Bits apply to everything.” Everything has a base in information.

Information became a dominant metaphor during the communication age. At the beginning, Shannon was working with a communication theory and expressed that he wasn’t dealing with semantics. Warren Weaver wrote about similar ideas and went so far as to give a very loose, broad definition of communication. “We have a conduit metaphor for communication theory.” But why? Vibrations traveling through the air make the basics of communication, but that’s not what’s important to us. What’s important to us are the topics. Descartes and metaphysics show how people can visualize their worlds in their heads, perhaps to the point of us never being able to reach true reality. The world is something that’s interesting and relevant. Maybe one now sees the world differently because of the communication. How much do messages matter without everything that’s interesting and important?

During war time, someone came up with a theory of improvements related to the various needs of war, like having communication techniques that work through explosions, chaos, and broken communication lines.

Are links content or medium? Both? They add information to a page while supplying a path through a linked world. Generative paths. In our world, we assume information just works.

Models. Yucca Flats and atomic wastes. The financial meltdown. There are always limitations, no matter how hard we try. Purely formal abstractions leave out important pieces. It all comes back down to bits, these measurements of differences. Our ability to use and model bits comes back down to them being exactly how the world is not.

“Agree, support, dispute, discount, disagree, reject, recommend, extend, amplify, endorse, denounce, concur, connect” shown in a linking web

Fragments express differences we don’t appreciate enough.

David Weinberger is, as always, awesomely fascinating.

Q&As:

Q: A link breaks down the traditional view of information because it’s a link and information at the same time and clouds whatever information exists about sequence. Word order has information and meaning. Links change that. Should someone click the link immediately? Finish the page and return to the link or linked material? What?

A: One debate related to information theory has to do with language being a part of information and coming up with an information theory above just language theory. Lots of signaling happens all around us. It’s not all linguistic. Are links linguistic or something else? Word order is linguistic. Underlines or different colors for links.

Q: John Palfrey asked very elegantly about how David’s lecture fits with the other work he’s done. Ethan Zuckerman said he was going to ask a similar question simply as “So, what?”

A: David builds on his own intersts that might not interest anyone else. He hopes he’s contributing to the dialog.

Q: How do links work with various interoperability issues?

A: Everything is information and everything is miscellaneous. David doesn’t think it’s the age of links, but rather the age of the network. We’re rethinking everything as networks.

Q: You’ve done a great job of defining how we got to where we are. What’s next?

Q: Information is an abstraction, but tech dependent. Focusing on the tech limitations and relationship with information might help it seem more normative.

Q: When you talk about distinctions, you talk about someone how has given something a distinction. What about inserting human agency into information?

A: “Three fabulous questions and I’ll be done at some time in 2011 answering them.” We don’t know what’s next, but we can grope our way forward.

Is saying viruses communicate backreading into what viruses are doing? Do viruses really transmit information? Does a Jacard loom contain information?

Information already has a human element in it. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be information.

Ethan Zuckerman wrote about the talk, too. His thoughts, like usual, are worth a read.

“Please join library colleagues and supporters for MLA’s rally for libraries! “Don’t Close the Books on Libraries” will take place on Wednesday, November 4th at 11:00 a.m. on the steps of the State House in the “well area”. Massachusetts Center for the Book’s annual MA Book Awards will be held inside the State House from 12:30 – 2:30 p.m., so plan to attend this exciting event following our rally so that we can celebrate and support Massachusetts libraries and authors!”

If you cannot be there, contact your state rep or senator!

http://capwiz.com/ala/ma/directory/statedir.tt?state=MA&lvl=state

On October 29, Massachusetts cities and towns dodged a bullet when the Governor didn’t cut local aid. But this could still happen depending upon what the State Legislature does. The Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners have to cut 16 percent out of their FY2010 budget.

Posted by Rich

“Library closures, slashed budgets, user apathy – everything’s online, right? It’s a story many of us have heard too often or experienced ourselves, especially with the recent downturn in the economy. But many libraries are re-inventing themselves, offering new services and transforming into very different entities while still at heart performing the same role they always have – helping communities connect with information.”

Come to this NEASIS&T program to hear:

* How changes in publishing are driving changes in libraries. How can we radically change an ancient institution that evolved from providing shared print copies into one that effectively provides online content (that we often don’t even own). It’s time to get past the kludges in our processes and organizational structures and embrace our future.
* What it takes to be a librarian these days. What skills and interests are necessary? In 10 years will we be librarians or technologists?
* Success stories from libraries that have radically changed their roles and services.
* How to design your library around user expectations and keep your organization relevant.

We’ll provide breakfast, lunch, and network access for all!

Speakers:

* John Palfrey, Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School & Co-Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society
* Steven Bell, Associate University Librarian for Research & Instructional Services at Temple University’s Paley Library
* Shana Kimball, Publications Manger at the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library
* Marguerite Avery, Senior Acquisitions Editor at The MIT Press
* Cyril Oberlander, Associate Director of Milne Library at the SUNY College at Geneseo

Cost:

Students / Retirees: $50
ASIST & SLA members: $60
General public: $75

For more info:

http://tinyurl.com/yf7rjdz

neasist09

Posted by Rich

“2009 is the 100th anniversary of the Special Libraries Association, making this an ideal time to consider if there is a future for special libraries (and the skill set of librarians who work in them). Are we prepared to answer the question of whether in the struggle for our survival we will be “the fittest” or if special libraries will become a casualty of the ongoing information revolution? In exploring these questions Dr. Pearlstein will take a look at the roles special librarians have typically played as intermediaries and arbiters of information and knowledge in their parent organizations, discuss the increasing challenges to these roles from both within and outside the profession, and conclude by taking a pragmatic look at some ways to position ourselves for survival and success in a future of ongoing economic and social turbulence.”

RSVP
http://gslis.simmons.edu/signup/
by Tuesday November 10, 2009.

Posted by Rich