I had never heard of this before:
| LIBRARY CULTURE | INFORMATION-RETRIEVAL CULTURE |
|---|---|
|
Careful selection
a. quality of editions b. perspicuous description to enable judgment c. authenticity of the text |
Access to everything
a. inclusiveness of editions b. operational training to enable coping c. availability of texts |
|
Classification
a. disciplinary standards b. stable, organized, defined by specific interests. |
Diversification
a. user friendliness b. hypertext–following all lines of curiosity |
|
Permanent collections
a. preservation of a fixed text b. browsing |
Dynamic collections
a. intertextual evolution b. surfing the web |
It is clear from these opposed lists that more has changed than the move from control of objects to flexibility of storage and access. What is being stored and accessed is no longer a fixed body of objects with fixed identities and contents. Moreover, the user seeking the information is not a subject who desires a more complete and reliable model of the world, but a protean being ready to be opened up to ever new horizons. In short, the postmodern human being is not interested in collecting but is constituted by connecting.
The chart is from an apparently unpublished lecture by computer scientist extraordinaire Terry Winograd; the commentary is by Heidegger scholar extraordinaire Hubert Dreyfus.
3 comments
I printed that article out, too, & read it over lunch. And that chart totally made my Carmo-dar go off 😉
Did your Carmo-dar also help me format this table? 🙂 Never would have thought of the paragraph tag. Thanks. (Unless it was Matt. Thank you, Matt.)
Shhh. It was the HTM-elves.