Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
in searching. The labor theoretic approach identified the significant loci
for change. Practical understanding remains valuable, and the articulated
theory is deliberately congruent with the practical understanding of how
to use systems effectively, particularly accounting for the perceived effec-
tiveness and widespread use of phrase searching.
Congruent with a focus on the inescapable elements of information
retrieval, some methodological restrictions are imposed. Human descrip-
tion labor and its products are deliberately and analytically excluded;
similarly excluded are their analogs in generic capacity and the order-
ing of records or documents produced computationally by Internet search
engines. Boolean operations for selection, highly common across systems
and including the crucial factor of cutting a segment of written utterance
from its line, are assumed. Methodological exclusion of the contingent
enables focusing on the inescapable elements common to library and
information and Internet cultures. At a further level of analysis, such
exclusion could reveal the particular value added by contingent elements,
thus explaining the transcultural analogs.
The selection of sources for understanding qualitative changes in the
possibilities for semantic search labor is guided first by their promise of
analytical insight. Existing sources acknowledged as relevant to under-
standing information retrieval, such as the work of Augustine and of
Saussure, remain relevant and can be incorporated into the fuller under-
standing developed. In their current development, these resources have
been exploited primarily for the negative antithesis to the nomenclatur-
ism evidenced by Augustine and critiqued by Saussure, rather than a posi-
tive account of the production of meaning from written language. The
danger of extreme relativism that might follow from a purely negative
antithesis was emblematized in the fragile authority of Humpty Dumpty
(box 5.1).
We require a fuller understanding that moves beyond predominantly
antithetical contrasts to language as nomenclature and constructs a
positive account of signification, or the production of meaning in writ-
ten language. Understanding can be developed by a dialectic with exist-
ing sources recognized as relevant, particularly Saussure and Shannon.
Aspects of their work can be synthesized, stressing materiality of com-
munication and its current rematerialization and also stressing the signifi-
cance of practical understanding already recognized in the labor theoretic
