Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

Last updated
Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages
Glut cover 100.gif
Author Alex Wright
CountryUnited States
Language English
Genre Non-fiction
Publisher Joseph Henry Press
Publication date
2007
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages296 pp
ISBN 978-0-309-10238-4 (hbk.)
OCLC 85692734
020.9 22
LC Class Z666.5 .W75 2007

Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages is a 2007 book written by Alex Wright, a writer and information architect for The New York Times. Wright's intention is to provide a broad historical overview of the development of information transmission and organization systems.

Contents

Chapters

Wright asserts the idea that while networks are currently an en vogue topic of discussion, frequently framed as being in opposition to hierarchical systems, that each co-exists and has always done so. He posits that:

"The fundamental tension between networks and hierarchies has been percolating for eons. Today, we are simply witnessing the latest installment in a long evolutionary drama." [1]

Wright goes on to discuss various aspects of evolutionary learning in numerous contexts. This ultimately leads to the question of whether man's information systems are still evolving, or did they simply stop when we reached our current evolutionary state. Wright looks for a possible answer in the work of sociobiologist E.O. Wilson and his theory of gene-culture co-evolution and 'epigenetic rules':

"Epigenetic rules come in two flavors: primary epigenetic rules govern our immediate sense perceptions, such as our universal tendency to perceive the color spectrum in four basic color groups...; secondary epigenetic rules operate at a higher level of abstraction such as the tendency for all human beings to classify objects into opposing pairs like black and white, life and death, heaven and earth—notions that have no physical component in the human brain, yet seem to recur across human cultures." [2]

That is to say, we are predisposed toward classification.

Wright discusses the evolution of symbolic communication and the use of external symbolic objects as a unit of cultural exchange. Wright contend that primitive symbolism in all its forms drove the development of larger, more complex social networks and eventually make way for the evolution of writing. [3]

Traces the development of print technology and the subsequent spread of written literacy. The chapter also addresses the role of religious texts and their impact on Western thought. Wright quotes author John Lothrop Motley:

"The eerie conjunction of the printing press, steeply rising literacy rates, religious wars and the witch craze seem significant." [4] [5]

Discusses the evolution of classification systems including the Systema Naturae of Carl Linnaeus, which was hierarchical in nature and standing in opposition to the work of French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, who contended a more holistic approach would be better, taking into account that despite environmental similarities, different regions have distinct plants and animals. He made the suggestion that species may have both "improved" and "degenerated" after dispersing from a center of creation. The chapter title makes reference to the 7 foot moose Thomas Jefferson had shipped to Buffon after Buffon contended that no American animal could be compared to those of the old world. [6] Wright contends that Jefferson to a large degree is an unsung hero of information science, due to his support of the Linnaean hierarchy and his adaptation of table of science originated by Francis Bacon for classification of his personal library. [7]

Brief historical record of the development of the modern library and classification systems by Charles Ammi Cutter (Cutter Expansive Classification system, which was the basis for the top categories of the Library of Congress classification) as well Colon classification developed by S. R. Ranganathan, an example of a faceted classification system and perhaps the most prominent classification system in the Western world, the Dewey Decimal System created by Melvil Dewey.

Traces the evolution of the modern day web. Notable discussions include:

Reviews

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Engelbart</span> American engineer and inventor (1925–2013)

Douglas Carl Engelbart was an American engineer and inventor, and an early computer and Internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on founding the field of human–computer interaction, particularly while at his Augmentation Research Center Lab in SRI International, which resulted in creation of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to graphical user interfaces. These were demonstrated at The Mother of All Demos in 1968. Engelbart's law, the observation that the intrinsic rate of human performance is exponential, is named after him.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dewey Decimal Classification</span> Library classification system

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. It was first published in the United States by Melvil Dewey in 1876. Originally described in a 44-page pamphlet, it has been expanded to multiple volumes and revised through 23 major editions, the latest printed in 2011. It is also available in an abridged version suitable for smaller libraries. OCLC, a non-profit cooperative that serves libraries, currently maintains the system and licenses online access to WebDewey, a continuously updated version for catalogers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hypertext</span> Text with references (links) to other text that the reader can immediately access

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer display or other electronic devices with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access. Hypertext documents are interconnected by hyperlinks, which are typically activated by a mouse click, keypress set, or screen touch. Apart from text, the term "hypertext" is also sometimes used to describe tables, images, and other presentational content formats with integrated hyperlinks. Hypertext is one of the key underlying concepts of the World Wide Web, where Web pages are often written in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). As implemented on the Web, hypertext enables the easy-to-use publication of information over the Internet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Memex</span> Hypothetical proto-hypertext system that was first described by Vannevar Bush in 1945

Memex is a hypothetical electromechanical device for interacting with microform documents and described in Vannevar Bush's 1945 article "As We May Think". Bush envisioned the memex as a device in which individuals would compress and store all of their books, records, and communications, "mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility". The individual was supposed to use the memex as an automatic personal filing system, making the memex "an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory". The name memex is a portmanteau of memory and expansion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ted Nelson</span> American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist

Theodor Holm Nelson is an American pioneer of information technology, philosopher, and sociologist. He coined the terms hypertext and hypermedia in 1963 and published them in 1965. According to a 1997 Forbes profile, Nelson "sees himself as a literary romantic, like a Cyrano de Bergerac, or 'the Orson Welles of software'."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperlink</span> Method of referencing visual computer data

In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference to data that the user can follow or be guided to by clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks. The text that is linked from is known as anchor text. A software system that is used for viewing and creating hypertext is a hypertext system, and to create a hyperlink is to hyperlink. A user following hyperlinks is said to navigate or browse the hypertext.

Glut or GLUT may refer to:

This article presents a timeline of hypertext technology, including "hypermedia" and related human–computer interaction projects and developments from 1945 on. The term hypertext is credited to the author and philosopher Ted Nelson.

Intertwingularity is a term coined by Ted Nelson to express the complexity of interrelations in human knowledge.

A faceted classification is a classification scheme used in organizing knowledge into a systematic order. A faceted classification uses semantic categories, either general or subject-specific, that are combined to create the full classification entry. Many library classification systems use a combination of a fixed, enumerative taxonomy of concepts with subordinate facets that further refine the topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Otlet</span> Belgian entrepreneur (1868–1944)

Paul Marie Ghislain Otlet was a Belgian author, entrepreneur, lawyer and peace activist; predicting the arrival of the internet before World War II, he is among those considered to be the father of information science, a field he called "documentation". Otlet created the Universal Decimal Classification, which would later become a faceted classification. Otlet was responsible for the development of an early information retrieval tool, the "Repertoire Bibliographique Universel" (RBU) which utilized 3x5 inch index cards, used commonly in library catalogs around the world. Otlet wrote numerous essays on how to collect and organize the world's knowledge, culminating in two books, the Traité de Documentation (1934) and Monde: Essai d'universalisme (1935).

NLS, or the "oN-Line System", was a revolutionary computer collaboration system developed in the 1960s. It was designed by Douglas Engelbart and implemented by researchers at the Augmentation Research Center (ARC) at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). It was the first computer system to employ the practical use of hypertext links, a computer mouse, raster-scan video monitors, information organized by relevance, screen windowing, presentation programs, and other modern computing concepts. It was funded by ARPA, NASA, and the US Air Force.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mundaneum</span> Institution aimed to gather together all the worlds knowledge founded in 1910

The Mundaneum was an institution which aimed to gather together all the world's knowledge and classify it according to a system called the Universal Decimal Classification. It was developed at the turn of the 20th century by Belgian lawyers Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine. The Mundaneum has been identified as a milestone in the history of data collection and management, and as a precursor to the Internet.

<i>Computer Lib/Dream Machines</i> 1974 book by Ted Nelson

Computer Lib/Dream Machines is a 1974 book by Ted Nelson, printed as a two-front-cover paperback to indicate its "intertwingled" nature. Originally self-published by Nelson, it was republished with a foreword by Stewart Brand in 1987 by Microsoft Press.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of the World Wide Web</span> Information system running in the Internet

The World Wide Web is a global information medium that users can access via computers connected to the Internet. The term is often mistakenly used as a synonym for the Internet, but the Web is a service that operates over the Internet, just as email and Usenet do. The history of the Internet and the history of hypertext date back significantly further than that of the World Wide Web.

Tinderbox is a personal content management system and personal knowledge base.

Traction Software, Inc. is a software company headquartered in Providence, RI. It is the creator of Traction TeamPage software for action tracking and collaboration. Traction Software products are used as project management software, quality management software, knowledge management software, competitive intelligence software, as well as other collaborative software applications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">History of hypertext</span>

Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks) to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress sequence. Early conceptions of hypertext defined it as text that could be connected by a linking system to a range of other documents that were stored outside that text. In 1934 Belgian bibliographer, Paul Otlet, developed a blueprint for links that telescoped out from hypertext electrically to allow readers to access documents, books, photographs, and so on, stored anywhere in the world.

Alex Wright is an American writer and Information Architect. He is the author of two books: Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (2014) and Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages (2007). Wright is also a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City and head of User Experience research at Etsy. Many of his writings examine the current state of information transmission and organization through a historical, scientific, or cultural context.

The ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media (Hypertext) is one of the oldest international conference series on the crossroads of Human-Computer Interaction and Information Science. The full list of conferences in the series can be found on the Association for Computing Machinery Hypertext Web page, and papers are available through the ACM Digital Library.

References

  1. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 7
  2. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 20
  3. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 45-47
  4. Motley, John L. "The Rise of the Dutch Republic" in The History of the Netherlands, Complete, 1885
  5. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 119
  6. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 159
  7. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 161-163
  8. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 214
  9. Nelson, Ted "I Don't Buy In
  10. Wright, Alex (2007) Glut: Mastering Information Through The Ages, page 227
  11. Jefferson, Thomas. "1783 Catalog of Books".