I.
The Rhetoric of Information Science 1945-1949
Elizabeth Losh
Researcher in Digital Rhetoric, The Virtualpolitik Project
Opening Questions: 1) How do you define information? 2) Why are you personally interested in studying it? |
II.
Disciplines, Theories, and Objects of Study
[Bracketing off Communication Studies and Digital Rhetoric]
III.
What Kind of Science is Information Science?
The Rhetoric of Science and Technology:
A professional association and a bibliography.
Speaking to popular audiences as well as technical ones.
John R. Pierce Symbols, Signals, and Noise
Laws of motion, energy, and information
Can science be a-rhetorical as Dijkstra would like?
(See Francis Bacon on the "idols of the marketplace " for more.)
Using Metaphors to Deprecate Metaphors
Poetry in Computer Science
Pragmatism and Scientific Language
Assigned Reading: "As We May Think" (1945)
Technology: dry photography, facsimile machine (television, microfilm more dated)
Optical vs. magnetic technology
"we are being bogged down today as specialization extends"
Human limitations that later studies would confirm: the 50 bit-per-second figure (input or output)
Arithmetic and formal logic as computational tasks that can be outsourced to machines
"Formal logic used to be a keen instrument in the hands of the teacher in his trying of students' souls. It is readily possible to construct a machine which will manipulate premises in accordance with formal logic, simply by the clever use of relay circuits. Put a set of premises into such a device and turn the crank, and it will readily pass out conclusion after conclusion, all in accordance with logical law, and with no more slips than would be expected of a keyboard adding machine."
Storage capacity diminished as a problem . . . or is it?
Interface prediction can be difficult to do
"Professionally our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose."
The example of Mendel
"Two centuries ago Leibniz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use."
Preserving the Past
The Memex
"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, 'memex' will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.
It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk."
Embracing complexity
The role of selection
"There is another form of selection best illustrated by the automatic telephone exchange. You dial a number and the machine selects and connects just one of a million possible stations. It does not run over them all. It pays attention only to a class given by a first digit, then only to a subclass of this given by the second digit, and so on; and thus proceeds rapidly and almost unerringly to the selected station."
Trenton, NJ Spanish speakers vs. Fingerprint analysis
Gender Analysis (to which will return later)
"The other element is found in the stenotype, that somewhat disconcerting device encountered usually at public meetings. A girl strokes its keys languidly and looks about the room and sometimes at the speaker with a disquieting gaze. From it emerges a typed strip which records in a phonetically simplified language a record of what the speaker is supposed to have said. Later this strip is retyped into ordinary language, for in its nascent form it is intelligible only to the initiated. Combine these two elements, let the Vocoder run the stenotype, and the result is a machine which types when talked to."
The Impact of the Market (to which we will also return later)
"With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population."
Note that the memex contents are "purchased"
Is this an innocent example?
"The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him."
Yet he also imagines file sharing
"And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail."
Like Wiener, Bush is interested in community memory and neurological applications
"Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race."
"We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast."
IV.
The Object of Study: What is Information?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T.S. Eliot, "The Rock"
The Information Hierarchy
Webster’s Dictionary:“communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence.”
The Oxford English Dictionary: “formation or moulding of the mind or character, training, instruction, teaching; communication of instructive knowledge.”
V. A Little Intellectual History
The word's origin in Latin: Livy, Horace, Ovid, and Cicero
Greek precursors: Plato vs. Aristotle
Which * contains more information? C-H-O-C-O-L-A-T-* C-H-O-* |
VI. A Tale of Two Cities
Bell Labs (History of Bell Labs, Claude Shannon)
MIT (Radar Training, Mid-Century Convocation, Macy Conference)
VII. Shannon's Text: A Mathemathetical Theory of Communication
The Problem of Communication through a Noisy Channel or "How can you make a cow out of a hamburger?"
How can I see this mural once it has been painted out?
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The Process (Silicon Dreams, p. 65)
Digitize --->
Compression (minimum form for storage) --->
Error Correcting Redundancy (add redundancy suitable for error correction) --->
Transmission (remove redundancy, correct errors, and reformat)
Comparative File Sizes of Text, Sound, and Image
IX. The Assigned Reading: Weaver's Introduction:
Mr. X and Mr. Y talking (page 4)
Political impacts ("the meaning to a Russian of a U.S. newsreel picture" and "propaganda theory" on page 5)
The Horses of Elberfeld (page 5)
The key research questions (page 8)
Information is "a measure of one's freedom of choice when one selects a message" (page 9)
Two messages: "yes" vs. text of King James Bible (page 9)
Information is measured by the logarithm of the number of available choices. (page 9)
The "bit" makes its entrance
Like a man picking out standard birthday telegrams (page 10)
Nesting groups: stochiastic process, Markoff process, ergodic process (page 11)
The "poll-taker's dream" (page 11)
Redundancy in English: the 50% number (page 13)
The Cmabrigde E-mail:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Trying out the generator with the work of a student In On the crluety of rlelay tinhcaeg cupitmong secince, Edgesr W. Djkritsa aegurs taht ctpnmoiug sncecie is a raacdil ntleovy and shuold be thguat as one. He satets taht tihs pniot of veiw is oeftn rjteeecd by stieocy buacese it fceors tehm to tnhik in a new way and cnaont, and sluhod not, be lkneid to tehir psat exepeiencrs and klwgdoene. Ctmipuong sieccne is a ridacal nlteovy bcuesae of its geart ctimponug pweor taht coannt be crempaod to ohter dcsiliienps. Its smnaitecs leevl is otefn far mroe cleiamptcod tahn thsoe taht msot mictaheaatml terhoies hvae to dael wtih wilhe its imltpneieaotmns rqeriue ctnecaoupl hieaeihcrrs taht hvae neevr been dleat wtih in ohter fleids. Frrmthouere, cptumroes are lagre-slcae mnhaiecs taht cnaont be veiwed altbcrtsay to the agolnay of a siplme mhansciem deivce bceusae a smlal eorrr wlil not cusae a slaml mstikae in the foemrr. A salml tochpaapirygl eorrr or eevn jsut one bit of erorr in tihs daiitgl dcieve can reulst in a mafncluiton or eevn its inatlibiy to oapetre. Drkistja aslo aeugrs taht sfwrotae einnnigeerg is ioccrnert in mnay wyas scuh as the way it sipmly rherpsaes permrrmoags as saotrfwe ennieregs, has no gsrap on how to mreause pceusvdinortes of the peamomrgrrs (i.e. liens of cedos vs. efificncey of cdoe), pievords the veiw of bgus in a paorrgm so taht it semes ratehr alsmot corrcet as osoppe to benig eunroroes, trems soatfrwe irnmtpvomees as sotarfwe mnatninecae as if it geos thorguh waer and taer, and apttemts to rtaele trems and trhoeies to waht ppleoe may adelray be faimlair wtih. He saetts taht it is a watse to try and cneonct new cncetops wtih psat ccntepos wehn tehy are dnrieefft in mnay wyas. In cnsooulcin, Drkitsja poepsors taht ciunmoptg sneicce shloud be tauhgt as a ricadal ntleovy so taht clloege fehsemrn wlil lrean tourghh the cponect of baeooln abergla and ponirarmmgg as sttnteeams wtih snmectias and poofrs as opspoe to tnyrig to lnik CS wtih waht the setutnds aerdlay konw. Aothlugh I argee wtih Dsijtkra on mnay acetsps of how cnmtuiopg scceine is a ricdaal nltovey, I uaenntrsdd why the eondiutcaal iotsuittinns tcaeh sudtntes the way tehy do (rtenailg it to smoetihng tehy aldaery konw) and aslo why the sceubjt tguhat is geerad todwars the exicatotepns of the non-sntceiiifc ceuicrcasmnts as oopspe to sceince iltsef. Ppoele do not apcect racdail caeghns eilasy; tihacneg cntoecps taht tehy cnnaot crnmheoepd nor ratele to wlil casue settdnus to gvie up mcuh eeliarr or to not eevn try. Phpreas the ieadl way to immeenlpt the caeghns in how CS is thgaut is to tecah tehm to stntdeus at a mcuh ygonuer age wehn tehy are siltl wllniig and albe to laren qukicly. |
Replicated in other languages
IM compression
TMI or LOL?
Is it worse with code-switching?
CiMi-the-Rock: Chao em
rat vui dc biet em,
sure, em join anytime, hi` hi`
Freedom and crossword puzzles (14): Wordplay
The Case of English (11, 22, 27-28)
"Do not worry about the minus sign" (page 15). Isn't that like saying "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain"?
Encoding and Decoding
Pay attention to "where the joker is" (page 19). How can there be more information in the received signal?
Note that "equivocation" is also a rhetorical term (20)
Level A, B, C
Level A and the "problem of translation" (25)
Level B and semantics: the sign/signifier relationship
Level C and rhetoric
Look at this PowerPoint slide for an example of "semantic noise"
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Information has nothing to do with meaning although it does describe a pattern.
"An engineering communication theory is like a very proper and discreet girl accepting your telegram. She pays no attention to the meaning, whether it be sad, or joyous, or embarrassing. But she must be prepared to deal with all that come to her desk." (27)
More gender analysis
Wired Love by Ella Cheever Thayer (1890)
Women and the Communications Industry
Some of these things are not like the others on the list on page 28
Should "meaning" be on the list? Does entropy speak "the language of language"? (28)
IX. Text and Context
Love of the Edgar Allan Poe story "The Gold Bug"
1945 "A Mathematical Theory of Cryptography"
Hagelbarger's mind-reading machine: penny-matching and "random" calls with eight state machine
Shannon's Theseus Machine
IX. Wiener's Cybernetics
Why read it?
Introduction:
"The central nervous system no longer appears as a self-contained organ" (8), binary impulses (14)
The possibility of slavery in the "automatic factory and the assembly line without human agents" (27)
Society "based on human values other than buying or selling" (28)
Chapter 1: "Newtonian and Bergsonian Time"
Astronomy vs. Meteorology (30-31)
clockmakers and lens-grinders
The difference between power and communication engineering
"not economy of energy but reproduction of a signal" (39)
Chapter 2: "Groups and Statistical Mechanics"
The game is like the Red Queen's game in Alice in Wonderland
Chapter 3: "Time Series, Information, and Communication"
Chapter 4: "Feedback and Oscillation"
Neurological disorders in syphilis patients
X. The Assigned Reading: "Information, Language, and Society"
Who is Plato? Who is Hobbes? Who is Leibniz?
Why is that stuff about sex hormones in there? (156-157)
Bateson and the blind man's cane
"Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage . . ." (157)
"A group may have more group information or less group information than its members." (158)
Vannevar Bush and the memex (158)
The game Monopoly (158)
Von Neumann's "picture of the player as a completely intelligent, completely ruthless person is an abstraction and a perversion of the facts." (159)
Back to the poll-taker's dream (160). Political branding.
Small, closely knit communities have "a very considerable measure of homeostasis." (160)
"acquisition, use, retention, and transmission of information" (161)
"We have a triple constriction on the means of communication . . ." (161)
The social sciences vs. "precise science"
The Social Impact from Technology / The Technological Impact from Society
Where Pacey comes in to the picture.
XI.
Eliza and back to the Horses of Elberfeld
What does this mean when "telemedicine" is a field of practice?
How different is this from marketing efforts like Subservient Chicken
The Assigned Reading: "Science and the Compulsive Programmer"
What is the significance of the automaton? (It's important to Wiener too.)
What are "abstract machines"?
What is a Weltanschauung?
Why is the quest for "certainty" so important?
