Information. continued - Sept. 30, 2002

Overview of lecture:

1. Continued discussion on ways to organize INFORMATION so that it can be retrieved (case studies of writing and the printing press) AND the effects these new technics have on us:

1. How did oral cultures organize information so that it could be retrieved? - e.g., redundancy - one effect-conservative society

2. How did WRITING change the way we organize information? (see Luria's experiments) - one effect - leads to abstract thought

3. How did the PRINTING PRESS help us organize information? - leads to propensity for "linear thought" - effects society in economic, social and political ways

*********

Ong’s (1982) schema designates different periods

How was information retrieved without writing it down? (see Ong, 1982, chapter 3 of Orality and Literacy)

What happened to humans when we moved from orality to literacy?

Luria, (a psychologist in the 1930’s in the former Soviet Union), showed illiterate peasants:

4 pictures (of a hammer, saw, log, and hatchet); then he asked them to group them.
--> they responded concretely (responding to situations they had been in); we respond to the same task abstractly

anecdote of “white bear”
(a syllogism:
In the far north, where there is snow, al bears are white.
Novaya Zembla is in the Far North and there is always snow there.
What colour are the bears?) We know the answer is “white” but illiterates replied “I don’t know I’ve never seen a white bear”)

This is evidence that being literate (going to school to learn to read and write) changes the way humans think

- when writing became the preferred mode of communication for important information, the message got separated from the sender and receiver

(s) --> TEXT --> (r)

text becomes much more important; techniques evolve to aid in gathering, storing and retrieving messages. (problems with manuscripts)

With printing press FORMATTING possibilities allow for information to be stored and retrieved relatively easily.

What is the format of the non-fiction book that allows us efficient access to information? (compare with manuscript format.)

· space between words
· paragraphs
· pagination
· Table of Contents
chapters with titles
· different Fonts (Helvetica)
· subheadings with different font sizes
· conventions of bolding, italics, underlining
· Index (keyword alphabetic search)
· footnotes and/or endnotes (for extended analysis + citation purposes)
· Bibliography
· maps, charts, graphs, pictures
· author’s name/publisher/date of publication

Why could we argue that the Index is the most important organizing feature?

Effect of the printing press:

- we became “linear thinkers”—went from left to right (depending on writing system), we lost sense of community, only relied on our eyes for primary intake of information (see McLuhan’s work)
-world changed:
- democracies developed because people could read for themselves
- private property now included one’s ideas (emergency of plagiarism)
- emphasis on literacy meant development of universal schooling
- implemented rise of Protestantism
(see Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 1979)
etc.