Information Technology Reference
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Thus, the labor theoretic approach is both comprehensive and, to a cer-
tain extent, analytically revealing for full-text retrieval. Comprehensiveness
was revealed by understanding that full-text retrieval is a product of the
desire for selection power, enabled by modern information technolo-
gies. Human selection labor remains inescapable for producing selec-
tion power, and selection labor is concentrated increasingly in searching.
Analytic power was revealed by precisely locating the primary dynamism
for change and its secondary effects as a quantitative change in description
processes that give rise to qualitative changes in human semantic search
labor. Therefore, particular aspects of information retrieval identified by
the labor theoretic approach have assumed particular importance (see
chapter 4 conclusion). Within the identified locations for change, contin-
gent and variable practices could be separated from inescapable elements,
both in a synchronic analysis of current practices and from a diachronic
perspective on historical inheritances. The labor theoretic approach was
comprehensive in identifying the inescapability of selection labor and ana-
lytically revealing for isolating the focus for prospective attention, assist-
ing the separation of inescapable from contingent elements.
For our purposes here, technological constraints on the quantitative
scope of descriptions, often received as universals, have already been
identified as transcended or no longer immediately relevant; we can ana-
lytically exclude them from the prospective discussion.
Prospect
We can maintain consistency with established theories for enveloping
context as well as the specific approach to information retrieval, with
a continuum between them. With regard to the broader context, the
significance of the material basis of being to the making of human his-
tory, to consciousness, and to the possibilities of retrieval continues to
be acknowledged. The material basis of being emerges specifically in the
materiality of communication, particularly as a line of writing extended
across a surface. Current transitions in information technologies are
understood as a rematerialization and not a dematerialization of commu-
nication. With direct reference to the labor theoretic approach, selection
power continues as the primary value and remains inescapably produced
by selection labor, although human description labor is transformed
extensively into a machine process and selection labor is concentrated
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