Download or read book Paper Machines written by Markus Krajewski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-08-19 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the card catalog—a “paper machine” with rearrangeable elements—can be regarded as a precursor of the computer. Today on almost every desk in every office sits a computer. Eighty years ago, desktops were equipped with a nonelectronic data processing machine: a card file. In Paper Machines, Markus Krajewski traces the evolution of this proto-computer of rearrangeable parts (file cards) that became ubiquitous in offices between the world wars. The story begins with Konrad Gessner, a sixteenth-century Swiss polymath who described a new method of processing data: to cut up a sheet of handwritten notes into slips of paper, with one fact or topic per slip, and arrange as desired. In the late eighteenth century, the card catalog became the librarian's answer to the threat of information overload. Then, at the turn of the twentieth century, business adopted the technology of the card catalog as a bookkeeping tool. Krajewski explores this conceptual development and casts the card file as a “universal paper machine” that accomplishes the basic operations of Turing's universal discrete machine: storing, processing, and transferring data. In telling his story, Krajewski takes the reader on a number of illuminating detours, telling us, for example, that the card catalog and the numbered street address emerged at the same time in the same city (Vienna), and that Harvard University's home-grown cataloging system grew out of a librarian's laziness; and that Melvil Dewey (originator of the Dewey Decimal System) helped bring about the technology transfer of card files to business.

Download or read book Thinking in Boxes digital original edition written by Markus Krajewski and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This BIT chronicles the history of the predigital “scholar's machine”: a box of paper slips that acted both as memory aid and text generator. In it, Markus Krajewski describes the scholar's box as a form of data protection, tracing its genealogy beginning with peculiar excerption techniques of early nineteenth century scholars.

Download or read book Human Information Retrieval written by Julian Warner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2009-09-25 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of information retrieval rooted in the humanities and social sciences but informed by an understanding of information technology and information theory. Information retrieval in the age of Internet search engines has become part of ordinary discourse and everyday practice: “Google” is a verb in common usage. Thus far, more attention has been given to practical understanding of information retrieval than to a full theoretical account. In Human Information Retrieval, Julian Warner offers a comprehensive overview of information retrieval, synthesizing theories from different disciplines (information and computer science, librarianship and indexing, and information society discourse) and incorporating such disparate systems as WorldCat and Google into a single, robust theoretical framework. There is a need for such a theoretical treatment, he argues, one that reveals the structure and underlying patterns of this complex field while remaining congruent with everyday practice. Warner presents a labor theoretic approach to information retrieval, building on his previously formulated distinction between semantic and syntactic mental labor, arguing that the description and search labor of information retrieval can be understood as both semantic and syntactic in character. Warner's information science approach is rooted in the humanities and the social sciences but informed by an understanding of information technology and information theory. The chapters offer a progressive exposition of the topic, with illustrative examples to explain the concepts presented. Neither narrowly practical nor largely speculative, Human Information Retrieval meets the contemporary need for a broader treatment of information and information systems.

Download or read book Good Faith Collaboration written by Joseph Michael Reagle and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wikipedia is famously an encyclopedia "anyone can edit," and Reagle examines Wikipedia's openness and several challenges to it: technical features that limit vandalism to articles; private actions to mitigate potential legal problems; and Wikipedia's own internal bureaucratization. He explores Wikipedia's process of consensus (reviewing a dispute over naming articles on television shows) and examines the way leadership and authority work in an open content community.

Download or read book Author Catalog written by Library of Congress and published by . This book was released on 1953 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: