Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
description and search labor, and its syntactic aspects have transferred
to technology effectively compelled by the high relative costs of direct
human labor compared to machine processes.
Chapter 4: A Labor Theoretic Approach
The labor theoretic approach to information retrieval that informed
chapters 2 and 3 is made fully explicit in chapter 4. The labor theoretic
approach has qualities usually desired for a theory that couples com-
prehensiveness with economy— parsimony, power, and final simplicity.
Although the focus is on the computational mode, it acknowledges inher-
itances from orality and literacy, and the theory can also comprehend
oral and written modes. The labor theoretic approach absorbs library
and information and Internet activities into a common schema within the
computational mode; different aspects of the schema become prominent
for each set of activities. The schema developed within the theory is eco-
nomical, explicitly reduced to a short sequence of clauses, and also rep-
resented in diagrammatic form that includes elements of iconicity. A very
powerful analysis results from making fully explicit the dynamics that
are strongly implicit in current information activities. Once grasped, the
theory becomes simple.
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Chapter 5: Retrieval from Full Text
The labor theoretic approach can account for the existence of full text
retrieval, precisely locating significant changes in description and search
labor and processes. However, its analytic power is more fully demon-
strated in accounting for the existence of changes and precisely specifying
their location than by a fuller understanding of those same qualitative
changes. As evidenced by the provision and use of phrase searching, practi-
cal understanding of transformations of word meaning and the frequency
of word sequences has tended to run ahead of theoretical understanding
and articulation. Sources acknowledged in retrieval as relevant to under-
standing word meanings have exposed a misleading concept of language
as a nomenclature but have not fully articulated a positive account of the
production of meaning in written language. Therefore, fuller and delib-
erately articulated understanding requires further development. Ideally,
further development should remain consistent with the labor theoretic
