Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
However, excepting sets of images produced under highly controlled
conditions and thereby effectively selected for their formal similarity to
one another, creating meaningful searchable descriptions or measures
of similarity has been difficult. Images, including photographs, received
as iconic signs with a motivated resemblance from signified to signifier
could lend themselves to iconic representation for display and retrieval,
possibly reducing image size to enable scanning. Google uses indexing
and retrieval based primarily on verbal descriptions of images, not on
matching between the graphic images; iconic modes of representation are
used to display retrieved results (Google 2007b). In contrast, written ver-
bal signs that embody the distinction between semantics and syntax are
more amenable to syntactic operations, which can partially incorporate
semantic significance.
A bibliographic record (see figure 3.3) represents one manifestation of
the product of description labor and processes, potentially open to fur-
ther transformations. Enhanced selection power, or search control, is
made possible by reducing the diversity of language in related objects for
description to canonical or standard forms. In many instances, categoriz-
ing objects implicitly or explicitly involves the relationship between indi-
vidual (or species) and genus, gathering together items related in meaning.
Collecting items related in meaning but diverse in pattern often involves
human semantic labor. Under premodern conditions, enhanced control
generally involves abstraction and loss of richness. Characteristically, the
description is briefer than the object described and also is the product of
less extensive and less intense labor, although the costs of that labor may
be recovered more directly.
Examples of significant information systems can reveal the reduction of
direct human labor and the increased fullness of descriptions. In late-nine-
teenth- and early-twentieth-century practice,
Palmer's Index to the Times
Newspaper
was created by direct human labor and assisted by current
technologies, particularly writing and printing. For instance, “Mad Dogs,”
a
Times
subheading that introduced a short paragraph beginning, “The
inhabitants of Sheffield . . . ,” would be transformed into the index entry
“Mad dogs in Sheffield,” and filed under “M” in the list of entries for that
volume of the index (Morrison 1986, 189-192;
Times
1885, 6; Palmer
1885, 60). The index, as a product and as a whole, can be read to reveal
