Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ditions, selection labor decomposed clearly and strongly into description
and search labor.
The production of selection power by selection labor is analogous to
material implication in formal logic, with selection power implying selec-
tion labor.
Selection power
➞
selection labor.
Making an explicit analogy that links the production of selection power
by selection labor with the relation of material implication in formal logic
adds value to the discursive exposition. The relation of material implica-
tion remains valid for selection labor without selection power
1
and then
caters to the case, met in practice, that selection labor does not produce
selection power when unhelpful or inappropriate selection labor has been
applied. In material implication, the first place given to selection power
also suggests that it is possible to hide or disguise selection labor from
view behind selection power (for instance, congealed in the products of
selection labor). Disguising selection labor also corresponds to its theo-
retical neglect, despite costs and significance (Hayes 2000), and may be
partly responsible for that neglect. In the practical use of a particular
system, a searcher might have to determine the nature of selection labor
or process applied from the selection power afforded; for instance, vari-
ants and unreconciled forms of a single author's name could indicate the
absence of effective human description labor or machine processes in rec-
onciling variants.
Some further propositions illuminated the relation of selection labor
to description and search labor and the possibilities of their transfer to
technology. Concepts isolated and distinctions made corresponded to
real-world practice, suggesting their robustness. Labor was understood to
include mental labor.
Labor includes mental labor.
Mental labor shared some characteristics with physical and productive
labor. Direct human mental labor could be transferred to technology, and
technology itself was regarded as a human construction.
Human mental labor
can be transferred to
information technology.
In the intervals between direct human intervention, fully transferred
human mental labor becomes a machine process.
