IS218: Concepts of Information
Syllabus
Spring, 2009
Paul Duguid and Geoff Nunberg, instructors
Jan 20:
1. Intro
Readings
none
Background:
Capurro, Raphael & Birger Hjorland, 2003. “The Concept of
Information,” Annual Review of
Information Science and Technology 37:
343–411
Cleveland, Harlan. 1985. "The
Twilight of Hierarchy: Speculations on the Global Information Society,"
Public Administration Review 45(1): 185-195.
Frohmann, Bernd. 2004. Deflating Information: From Science Studies
to Documentation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Machlup,Fritz. 1983. "Semantic Quirks in Studies of Information," pp.
641-71 in Fritz Machlup & Una Mansfield, The Study of
Information: Interdisciplinary Messages. New York: Wiley.
Machlup, Fritz & Una Mansfield (eds.). 1983. The Study of
Information: Interdisciplinary Messages. New York: Wiley.
Miller, Gordon L. 1998. "The Concept of Information: A Historical
Perspective of Modern Theory and Technology," Information and
Behavior, 2: 27-53.
Schrader, Alvin M. 1984. “In
Search of a Name: Information Science and
Its Conceptual Antecedents,” Library
and Information Science Research
6: 227–7
Toulmin, Stephen. 1972. Human Understanding: The Collective Use
and Evolution of Concepts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton.
Tuomi, Ilkka. 1999. "Data
is More Than Knowledge: Implications of the Reversed Knowledge
Hierarchy for Knowledge Management and Organizational Memory."
Journal of Management Information Systems 16(3): 103-117.
Geoff's
slides
Paul's
slides
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Jan 27:
2. Information theory and semantic accounts of information
Readings:
Shannon, C. E., 1948. "A Mathematical Theory of Communication,"
Bell Systems Technical Journal, July & October (Reprinted in ACM
SIGMOBILE 5(1) 2001: 3-55.
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=584093
Floridi, Luciano. "Semantic
Conceptions of Information," Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Background:
Bar-Hillel, Yehoshua and Rudolph Carnap. "Semantic
Information." The British
Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1953 IV(14):147-157.
Buckland, Michael. 1991. "Information
as Thing." Journal of the
American Society of Information Science 42:5, June: 351-360.
Dretske, F. I. 1981. Knowledge &
the flow of information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Israel, David and John Perry, “What is Information?” in
Information, Language and Cognition, edited by Philip Hanson,
Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1990: 1-19.
Paul's
slides
Geoff's
slides
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Feb 3:
3. Quantifying Information
Reading:
Lyman, Peter, & Hal Varian, 2003. "How Much Information?: Executive
Summary
Postman, Neil, 1990. "Informing
Ourselves to Death," October, 1990.
Zeitgeist:
IBM Global Technology Services, "The
Toxic Terabyte: How Data-Dumping Threatens Business Efficiency,"
July 2006.
Schiffman, Betsy. 2008. "Web
2.0 Preview: Torture by Information Overload," Wired Blog
Foley, John. 1995. "New Tools Can
Help Tame an Ocean of Data," Information Week. October 30
Background:
Bell, Daniel. 1976. The Coming of Post Industrial Society: A
Venture in Social Forecasting.New York, NY: Basic Books.
Brown, John Seely & Paul Duguid. 2000. "Limits
to Information," chapter 1 in The Social
Life of Information, Boston: Harvard University Press
Lesk, Michael. 1996. "How Much Information
is There in the World?"
Porat, Marc U. 1977. The
Information Economy: Sources and Methods for Measuring the Primary
Information Sector , Washington,D.C.
Paul's
slides
Geoff's
slides
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Feb 10:
4. The Advent of News
Readings:
Habermas, Jurgen, 1989. "Introduction:
Preliminary Demarcation of a Type of Bourgeois Public Sphere " pp
1-13 in Habermas, Jurgen. 1989. The
Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Darnton, Robert. 2000. "An
Early Information Society: News and the Media in Eighteenth-Century
Paris," American Historical Review 105 (1)
Background:
Atherton, I. 1999. "The Itch Grown a Disease: Manuscript Transmission
of News in the Early Seventeenth Century" in J. Raymond, ed., News,
Nespapers and Society in Early Modern Britain. London: Frank Cass.
Fleck, Ludwik. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Lenoir, Timothy. 1997. Instituting Science: The Cultural Production
of Scientific Disciplines. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Povvey, Mary. 1998. A History of the Modern Fact: Problems of
Knowledge in the Sciences of Wealth and Society. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Raymond, Joad, ed. 1999. News,
Newspapers and Society in Early Modern Britain. London: Frank
Cass.
Calhoun, Craig, ed. 1996. Habermas
and the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996
Geoff's
slides
Paul's
slides
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Feb 17:
5. Information and the Organization of
Knowledge: Encycplopedias, Dictionaries, Anthologies, Libraries, Museums
Readings:
Nunberg, Geoffrey, 1996. "Farewell
to the Information Age" in G. Nunberg, ed., The Future of the Book, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Burke, Peter. A Social History of
Knowledge. Ch. 5, "Classifying
Knowledge." Cambridge: Polity.
Background:
Yeo, Richard. 1991. "Reading
Encyclopedias: Science and the Organization of Knowledge in British
Dictionaries of Arts and Sciences, 1730-1850." Isis, 82: 24-49.
McArthur, Tom. 1986. Ch 12-15, pp. 91-133 in Worlds of Reference. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
*Samuel Johnson. 1755. Preface to the Dictionary of the English
Language
, London.
Foucault, Michel. "Classifying." Chapter 5 of The Order of Things.
Routledge, 2002 (trans. of Les Mots et Les Choses, 1966). Most
of the chapter is viewable at
Google Book, and a plaintext version is also available here.
Geoff's
slides
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Feb 24:
6. Information and the Public: 19th Century
Roots--News, Photography, Science & Social Science
Readings:
Schudson, Michael. "The
objectivity norm in American journalism," Journalism, Vol. 2, No. 2, 149-170.
Datson, Lorraine and Peter Galison. 1992. "The
Image of Objectivity." Representations,
No. 40, Special Issue: Seeing Science, pp. 81-128.
Background
Schudson, Michael. 2003. "Where News Came From: The History of
Journalism," Ch. 4 in The Sociology
of News, Norton. Pp. 64-89.
Chalaby, Jean K. 2000. The Invention
of Journalism. Palgrave Macmillan.
Tucker, J. 1997. "Photography
as Witness, Detective, and Impostor: Visual Representation in Victorian
Science," in Bernard Lightman, ed. Victorian Science in Context.
University of Chicago Press.
Green, David. 1984. "Veins
of Resemblance: Photography and Eugenics." Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 7, No. 2,
Photography, pp. 3-16.
Geoff's slides
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March 3:
7. Economics and Information
Reading:
Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2002. "Information and the Change
in
the Paradigm in Economics," The
American Economic Review 92(3) 460-501.
Zeitgeist:
Kelly, Kevin. 1997. "New
Rules for the New Economy," Wired 5.09.
Background:
Ancori, Antoine Bureth & Patrick Cohendet. 2000. "Economics
of Knowledge: The Debate about Codification & Tacit Knowledge,"
Industrial and Corporate Change, 9(2): 255-287.
Arrow, Kenneth J. 1984. "Information and Economic Behavior" in K.
Arrow, Collected Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp:
136-152.
Cowan, Robin, Paul A. David & Dominique Foray. 2000. "The
Explicit Economics of Knowledge Codification and Tacitness," Industrial
and Corporate Change, 9(2): 211-253.
Duguid, Paul. 2005. "'The
Art of Knowing': Social and tacit dimensions of knowledge and the
limits of the community of practice." The Information Society
2005 21(2): 109-118
Hayek, Frederich. 1937. "Economics and Knowledge,"
Economica 4[NS](13):
35-54.
Hirshleifer, J. 1973. "Where
Are We in the Theory of Information?,"American Economic Review,
2: 31-39.
Machlup,Fritz & Una Mansfield. 1983. “Semantic Quirks
in Studies of Information,” in The
Study of Information: Interdisciplinary Messages. New
York: Wiley: 641–71.
Richardson, George B. 1960. Information
and Investment: A Study in the Working of the Competitive Economy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Romer, Paul. 1993. "Idea Gaps and Object Gaps in Economic
Development," Journal of Monetary
Economics, 32(3): 543-573.
Shapiro, Carl. 1982. "Consumer
Information, Product Quality and Seller Reputation," Bell
Journal of Economics, 13(1): 20-35.
Shapiro, Carl & Hal R. Varian. 2000. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to
the Network Economy. Boston: Harvard University Press.
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March 10:
8. Information Processing: Cognitive Science
& Artificial Intelligence
Reading:
Simon, Herbert A. 1981. "Studying Human Intelligence by Creating
Artificial Intelligence." American Scientist 69(3): 300-309.
Turing, Alan. 1950. "Computing
Machinery and Intelligence," Mind
59(235): 433-460
JSTOR
Background:
Bolter, David Jay. Turing's Man: Western Culture in the Computer Age.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1979. What Computers Can't Do: The Limits of
Artificial Intelligence. New York: Harper & Row.
Gardner, Howard. 1987. The Mind's New Science: A History of the
Cognitive Revolution. New York: Basic Books.
Johnson, George. 1986 Machinery of the Mind: Inside the New Science
of Artificial Intelligence. Redmond, WA: Tempus/Microsoft Press.
Miller, George A. 1956. "The
Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity
for Processing Information," Psychological Review 63(2):
81-97.
Searle, John. 1980. "Minds,
Brains, & Programs," The
Behavioral
and Brain Sciences 3(3) 417-457 [preprint]
Suchman, Lucy. 1993. "Response
to Vera and Simon's 'Situated Action: A Symbolic Interpretation,"
Cognitive Science 17(1): 71-75.
Vera, Alonso H. & Simon, Herbert A. 1993.
"Situated Action: A Symbolic Interpretation," Cognitive Science
17(1) 7-48.
Waldrup, M. Mitchell. 1987. Man-Made Minds: The Promise of
Artificial Intelligence. New York: Walker and Company.
Geoff's Notes
Paul's Notes
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March 17:
9. Information: The Modern Synthesis
Readings:
Kline, Ronald, R. "Cybernetics,
Management Science, and Technology Policy, The Emergence of
'Information Technology' as a Keyword,1948-1985. Technology
&
Culture 2006 74: 513-535.
Turner, Fred. 2005. "Where
the Counterculture Met the New
Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community," Technology
&
Culture 46 (3): 485-512
Background:
Bell, Daniel. 1979. "The Social Framework of the Information Society"
pp: 163-211in Michael L. Dertouzos & Joel Moses, eds., The
Computer Age: A Twenty-Year View. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Castells, Manuel. 2001. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on
Internet, Business, and Society. New York: Oxford University Press.
Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society: Vol 1
of The Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture. Oxford:
Blackwells.
Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. Vol 2 of The
Information Age: Economy, Society, Culture. Oxford: Blackwells.
Dorsey, John T. 1957. "A Communication Model for Administration," Administrative
Science Quarterly 2(3): 307-324.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1971. Vers le Cyberanthrope. Paris: Denoel.
Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on
Knowledge. Minneapolis, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Mattelart, Armand. 2001. The Information Society: An Introduction.
London: Sage.
Zeitgeist:
Duguid, Paul. 2006. "Netting
Out" [review of Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cybercluture].
The TLS, November 10.
[author's draft]
Negroponte, Nicholas. 1995. "The
DNA of Information" pp. 11-20 in Being
Digital. New York. Knopf.
Toffler, Alvin. 1970. Future Shock. New York: Random House.
Geoff's Slides
Paul's Notes
Envisionment Videos
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Spring Break
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March 31: (paper proposals due)
11. Information and the Modern State
Readings:
Oettinger, Anthony G. 1980. "Information Resources:
Knowledge and
Power and the 21st Century," Science[Centennial
Issue, July 4]
209 (4452): 191-198.
Scott, James C., John Tehranian, & Jeremy Mathias.
2002. "The
Production of Legal identities Proper to States: The
Case of the Permanent Family Surname" Comparative Studies in Society and History
44(1): 4-44.
Background:
Agar, John. 2003. The
Government Machine: A Revolutionary History of the Computer.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Campbell-Kelly, Martin, 2002. "Information Technology and
Organizational change in the British Census, 1801-1911," Information Systems Research 7(1):
35-57.
Cullen, Michael J. 1975 The Statistical Movement in Early Victorian
Britain: The Foundations of Empirical Social Research. Harvester
Press: New York.
Hacking, Ian. 1990. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Headrick, Daniel R.. 2000. When
Information Came of Age: Technologies of Knowledge in the Age of Reason
and Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.
Rusnock, Andrea A. 2002. Vital
Accounts: Quantifying Health and Population in England and France.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zeitgeist:
Barlow, John Perry. 1996. "A
Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace."
Dyson, Esther, et al. 1994. "Cybespace and
the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age."
Read, William H. 1978. "Information as a National Resource," Journal
of Communication, 29(1): 172-178.
Paul's Notes
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April 7:
12. Information and the Modern State
(continued)
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April 14: (paper outlines due)
13. Politics and Information
Geoff's discussion notes
Readings:
Lippmann, Walter. 1922.
Public Opinion, Macmillan.
Ch. 6-7, 13-14. (Google Book; Also available at Project
Gutenberg.)
Popkin, Samuel L.1994. The Reasoning Voter, Chicago.
Ch. 1-3, 5. (Google Book). An abridged version is available via Google
Books as "Information
Shortcuts and the Reasoning Voter," in Bernard N. Grofman, ed. Information, Participation, and Choice,
Michigan, 1995.
Background:
Dewey, John. "The
Public and its Problems," in Andreas Hess, ed., 2003, American Social and Political Thought,
NYU Press. Selection from Dewey's The
Public and its Problems, 1927 (Swallow Press, 1991).
Carey, James W. "The
Press, Public Opinion, and Public Discourse," in Public Opinion and the Communication of
Consent
ed. Theodore Lewis Glasser, Charles T. Salmon. Guilford Press, 1995.
Anthony Downs. 1957. An Economic
Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row. See also "An Economic Theory of
Political Action in a Democracy," The
Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Apr., 1957), pp.
135-150.
Kinder, Donald R., 2003. "Communication
and Politics in the Age of Information," in David O. Sears and
Leonie Huddy, eds., Oxford Handbook
of Political Psychology, Oxford.
Page, Benjamin I. and Robert Y. Shapiro, 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends
in Americans' Policy Preferences,
University of Chicago Press.
The
Internet and the 2008 Election. 2008. Pew Internet and American
Life Project.
Zeitgeist:
Wolf, Gary, 2004. "How the
Internet Invented Howard Dean."Wired,
January 2004.
Moore, James F., 2003. "The
Second Superpower Rears its Beautiful Head."
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April 21:
14. Information as Social Capital
Geoff's Discussion Notes
Reading:
Graff, Harvey, 1993. "Literacy,
Myths, and Legacies: Lessons from the past/thoughts for the future,"
Interchange 24(3).
Neil Selwyn, Neil 2004. "Reconsidering
Political and Popular Understandings of the Digital Divide." New Media Society, 6; 341.
Information
Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education, American
Council of Research Libraries
Background:
Stone, Lawrence. 1969. "Literacy
and Education in England 1640-1900." Past and Present 42: 69-139
Vincent, David. 2003. "Literacy
Literacy." Interchange, 34, 2-3.
Wilder, Stanley, 2005. "Information
Literacy Makes All the Wrong Assumptions." Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan.
7.
Nunberg, Geoffrey, 2005. "Teaching
Students to Swim in the Online Sea," The New York Times Week in Review,
Feb. 13.
Shiller, Herbert, 2002. "Information and Advanced Capitalism," in Frank
Webster, ed. Theories of the Information Society,
Routledge.
Wresch, William, 1996. Disconnected:
Haves and Have-nots in the Information Age. Rutgers
University Press, 1996.
Fink, Carston and Charles J. Kenny, 2003. "W(h)ither
the digital divide?"Info
5,6.
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April 28:
15. Searching for Information
Readings:
Vanevar Bush, 1945. "As we may think."
The Atlantic (July)
Background:
Battelle, John. 2005. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote
the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture. New York:
Portfolio.
Brin, Sergey & Lawrence Page, 1998. "Anatomy of a
large-scale, Hypertextual Digital Search Engine."
Buckland, Michael K. 1997. "What
is a 'Document'?" Journal of the
American Society for Information Science 48(9): 804-809.
Chartier, Roger. 1994. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and
Libraries in Europe between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries.
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Otlet, Paul, 1990. "Something
about Bibliography," pp.11-24 in W.
Boyd Rayward, ed., International
Organisation and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays of Paul
Otlet. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Internet Archive
Paul's
slides
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May 5: (papers due)
16. Paper presentations