Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
approach. Selection of elements of materiality from existing sources
ensures theoretical consistency, which itself promises the further possibil-
ity of final simplicity and analytic value.
Conclusion
We used the labor theoretic approach to identify specific changes in
description process and search labor located precisely within the cat-
egories offered by that approach; further development can be obtained
by dialectical departure from sources already recognized as relevant. We
still need to develop a fuller understanding of the inescapable elements
of semantics and syntax common to both library and information and
Internet cultures. The understanding can assist the theoretical integra-
tion that might provide a basis for informed practical action. We aim to
develop a positive account of the production of meaning and the occur-
rence frequency of words and phrases, which can be exploited deliber-
ately in searching and may also suggest teleological limitations on system
development. While the account of meaning and of frequency will be con-
gruent with the practical understanding revealed in known and widely
diffused patterns of exploitation, it should yield fuller and more fully
articulated understanding. Enhanced understanding should yield value
for library and information and Internet discourse and practice. The lim-
ited sophistication of discussions detected here could be enhanced. In par-
ticular, theoretical constraints for future developments could be detected
from the analogy of the syntagma with the message and the paradigm with
the messages for selection. Linguistics could contribute an understanding
of the role of the syntagma and paradigm in signification and information
theory of the combinatorial possibilities of the messages for selection into
the message.
We can now anticipate subsequent chapters concerned with full-text
retrieval. Drawing on Saussurean linguistics, chapter 6 provides a materi-
ally embedded account of the production of meaning from written lan-
guage. Chapter 7 discusses the recurrence frequency of words and of
phrases. Chapter 8 synthesizes the insights obtained from both linguistics
and information theory, particularly directly informed by an understand-
ing of the computational process.
