Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
We can locate the dynamism for change in relation to the categories
offered by the labor theoretic approach. The primary location for imme-
diate change lies in the intersection between syntactic machine processes
and the description of objects (lower left section, table 5.2). The enhanced
scope for machine description of objects obtained has had secondary
effects on other aspects of information retrieval. The common source for
change has been mediated by contrasting and sometimes antagonistic
cultures of library and information science and Internet search engines,
resulting in different secondary effects and practices.
For library and information cultures, the dynamic has flowed predomi-
nantly in two directions: toward the intersection between human seman-
tic labor and the making and distribution of description products, and
also toward invoking machine syntactic processes in searching (repre-
sented by the upper left quarter and the transition between the upper and
lower right quarters of table 5.2). Producers of library and information
resources have been reluctant to exploit the potentialities of describing
the full-text of documents, although this was identified earlier as a pos-
sibly transitional stage that was no longer compelled by the storage or
processing constraints of technologies. Therefore, only limited excursion
has occurred into human semantic search labor, both in practice and in
Table 5.2
Distribution of human labor and machine processes between
description and searching under modernity
Description
Searching
Human
semantic
labor
Continuity and modulation
(distribution of products of
semantic description labor).
Generic capacity.
Consequential (from increased
scope of machine syntactic
description practices) increase
in possibilities for exploitation.
Need to understand production
of meaning and patterns of
occurrence, in order humanly to
exploit.
Machine
syntactic
process
Increase in scope of
resources covered. Strong
continuities in description
techniques.
Invoking of machine processes
(copying and sorting) rather
than direct human syntactic
labor/without syntactic labor
conducted.
