Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4
A Labor Theoretic Approach
Introduction
Although the previous chapters established the essential components
of a labor theoretic approach to information retrieval, a synthesis is
still needed. The synthesis should reveal the economy and power of the
approach by emphasizing the coherence and mutual relation of elements
such as selection power and selection labor. Emerging from the costs of
direct human mental labor and a common desire to avoid those costs,
the practices of major information systems offer an empirical illustration
of the dynamic that transfers human mental labor to machine processes.
Decision practices of major information systems embody and conform to
the strongly determining forces already identified. This chapter will con-
sider the value of the labor theoretic approach and suggest the continuing
intractability of information retrieval.
A full synthesis of the labor theoretic approach must recapitulate its
discursive development and lay bare its logical structure and progression.
The limited number of concepts and activities distinguished reveals the
economy of the approach, but its power lies in its ability to comprehend
significant empirical developments in major information systems and
selectively absorb preexisting theories.
The argument presented in the previous two chapters was a logical, but
not reductionist, approach. Concepts such as selection power and selec-
tion labor were abstracted from everyday practice—from Marx's “real life
process” (1858/1973, 706)—rather than imposed theoretically. Thus far,
we have preserved and incorporated the empirical richness of information
retrieval into a discursively expressed cohesive structure. This chapter
