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Amazon 2007). In contrast to the specificity obtainable from syntactically
generated descriptions, deliberately human-assigned descriptions may
offer generic power and control. For some systems (for instance, Internet
search engines) semantic description labor used to assign metadata cannot
necessarily be exploited directly and separately in searching. Distribution
of description products reveals continuity with premodernity, and modu-
lation emerges when machine processes supplant clerical labor to inte-
grate products into intrainstitutional catalogs. We can characterize these
practices as distribution of the products of human semantic description
labor. The costs of that labor are thereby shared and we can understand
the dominance of WorldCat in simple economic terms.
Inheritance of the absence of precise coding for oral speech and non-
written graphic forms implies a limitation on the effective extension of
established syntactic procedures to such forms. For searching and retrieval
but not inspection of results, Google's image search relies primarily on
descriptions generated from written verbal forms discovered in proxim-
ity to the images (Google 2007b). Other characteristics of computer-held
images (for instance, type of file) amenable to automatic exploitation also
can be searched. Retrieved results are presented iconically; the reduced
size of the display images enables further scanning. The contrast between
the treatment of symbolic and iconic graphic signs implies a connection
between labor and epistemology, where written language embodies accu-
mulated or universal human encoding labor (for instance, standardized
orthography and clearly marked boundaries between words).
Box 4.1
Difficulty of Analyzing or Segmenting Oral Speech
Here, written communications present one kind of problem and voice com-
munications another—generally considered more difficult. To sort out the
second type requires a “word-spotting” capacity—essentially a computer
program that can distinguish between spoken words in a multitude of lan-
guages . . . Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, a longtime director of the American
codebreaking and Comint efforts as chief of the National Security Agency,
once admitted in public that word spotting for voice systems remained a
dream. “I have wasted more US taxpayers' dollars trying to do that,” he
said, “than [on] anything else in my intelligence career.” (Powers 2005, 22)
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