Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Consistent with the recognition of humanly assigned metadata as a spe-
cific historical phrase and corresponding to existing familiar (if informal)
practice, a transformed relation between assigned categories and language
of discourse could occur. In searching, chronology or temporal sequence
could change from first using metadata and then considering the language
of the original discourse to searching first on descriptions syntactically
generated from the language of discourse and then exploiting the prod-
ucts of human semantic description labor found in association with the
desired language of discourse, possibly for their generic power. An anal-
ogy exists with the established (but often informal) practice of identifying
an item of interest and then looking at items categorized close to it—
browsing enabled by collocation or human description labor. The tempo-
ral sequence of search corresponds to that of description, reinforcing the
analogy between description and searching, and is analogous to the real
historical process that moved from linear utterance to briefer descriptions
of utterances. Giving attention first to the language of discourse— the full
text of a work—exploits a resource characteristically produced by human
semantic labor of greater duration and intensity than metadata, prima
facie making it the richer resource. A crucial value for human semantic
description labor—the gathering together of items related in meaning but
dissimilar in pattern—is also exposed. Practice increasingly realizes this
form of value.
Information Society
The concept of informational labor was adopted from information soci-
ety discussions, with the intention of further differentiating the concept.
A category of mental rather than informational labor was developed, and
substantial conceptual advantages have accrued. The concept of mental
labor implies continuity with what existed before modern information
technologies, themselves produced by mental and physical labor. A sharper
distinction between human and machine processing is implied, contrast-
ing mental (specifically human) with information (human and machine).
Within human mental labor, valuable distinctions between semantic and
syntactic labor could result from coupling the concept of mental labor
with established and historically warranted distinctions between levels
of analysis. The differentiation of semantic from syntactic labor contains
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