Waking Up Devon~

Infotopia

2007-06-01T21:02:06Z

In “Infotopia” Cass Sunstein explores how human beings collect and produce knowledge. One intriguing point of his book is the chapter on deliberation. At first Sunstein explains that when answering a question, there will be a greater average of accuracy the bigger the number of people guessing. He then goes on to tell us that when a large number of people deliberate, their answer is usually wrong. His reasons for this give a lot of insight into the psyche of human beings, and how real the “mob mentality” can be.
I think this is a great read following last week’s book by Umberto Eco. Last week we questioned what it is that makes us individuals, and to what extent society effects who we are. “Infotopia” extends that thought. Not only can popular culture shape our memories, but also the pressure of our peers to believe in certain ideas can be powerful. Together they ask us to question our past memories and beliefs as well as the ideas being introduced to us every day.
Sunstein also discusses blogs and how people can fall into “information cocooning” by surrounding themselves with information that they already agree with. He explains the importance of being exposed to contradicting views, which give people a better understanding of their world. Overall, Sunstein is hopeful as to the possibilities things like weblogs and open source software may bring.

Mysterious Flame

2007-05-24T20:58:44Z

What is the “mysterious flame”? While Umberto Eco’s book is about a man who has lost all personal memories, it is also a book questioning what a memory truly is. Throughout the story Yambo searches through memorabilia of his past hoping to remember some of his own. It is ironic that any and all of his personal memories could be attached to these artifacts of popular culture, and thinking about this makes us question if we have any memories that are not somehow attached to items our society has created.
The term “product of our society” is brought to mind. If all we are is merely a collection of artifacts, photos and headline stories, (combined with emotional responses handed down from our parents) how can we ever truly claim individuality? I believe Eco hints at something more. While we are indeed shaped by the influences of pop culture, perhaps more today than ever, Eco suggests that this “mysterious flame” tugging at our heart at any given moment is our subconscious self, telling us what we have decided to be important sometimes without realizing. Even though the majority of traits that we consider our “identity” have been spoon-fed to us since birth, there is something more. There are the choices that we make, the moments that we file away, sometimes without any logical reason that shape who we think we are.

]]> Its thoughts like these that make me a little sad. My generation (probably every generation) has been brought up believing we were somehow special. We are the generation X (or whatever my group was called). We were supposed to make a difference in this life. Special. Especially mediocre.
The suggestion that true individuality, that true uniqueness is not possible unless born with a pretty severe defect, or mutation (yay for mutants!) contradicts everything I was lead to believe in myself. I was raised on books about dragons and fairies and special little girls who could do anything if they believed in it. Apparently their are no people in this world left who believe in anything that much.

Professor and the Madman

2007-05-15T07:29:51Z

I had no idea non-fiction could be so interesting. True there are some parts I find myself nodding off at, certain blips about shakespeare not having a handy dictionary...but hey, what is more entertaining than crazy people.

I myself have often questioned my own sanity, especially when hearing about seemingly normal, educated people just going off the deep end...but i'm not paranoid...

I'm not quite done with the book, but I look forward to finishing!

Straight from the Stacks

2007-05-15T07:28:17Z

Straight from the stacks comes a bunch of librarian recruiters. Though I suppose one reading “Straight from the Stacks” would already be considering a career as a librarian.
While this book did do a really good job at giving you inside information about what goes on in certain library jobs, and the specifics on what you need to do to get these jobs, I was not to impressed with the number of job types listed. Most of the book focused on public and school/academic libraries, which don’t get me wrong, are a huge sector of the library world, it didn’t give much information on the nontraditional and the medical/law libraries. It would also be nice to know about jobs within libraries that do not require an MLIS; there are a lot of people employed in all these libraries that are not actual librarians. Many of the librarians giving descriptions of their jobs are just a little too happy-cheery about their fabulous jobs, helping the world be a better place, instilling life long lessons to their patrons and all that jazz.
This book felt very dry, and many of the described jobs seemed great to the point of being ordinary. I did like John F. Dean, the Director of the Department of Preservation and Collection Maintenance at Cornell University. He seemed like a very driven person, and I have always been fascinated with bookbinding, as well as preservation and conservation, they are art forms. So perhaps there is hope for me yet in this field.

Radical and Revolting

2007-05-15T07:27:15Z

“Revolting Librarians Redux” was definitely an interesting read for someone considering this field as a possible career choice. There is a certain ambivalent attitude that seems to surround this profession. Each of these radical librarians considers their job a calling, proud guardians of the freedom of knowledge. Yet the book is filled with petty complaints about the details the job often encompasses. However, despite some of these annoyances there are some genuine concerns about how libraries are being run, and what it means to be a radical librarian.
The chapter “Libraries to the People, Redux” by Chris Dodge was excellent in questioning the materials most libraries carry and why. Dodge writes about the importance of independent publications, which should be important to any librarian truly concerned with the freedom of knowledge. Many of the authors including Dodge did a great job at listing publications, and where to find them. I also really enjoyed his toast to “…contrarian librarians” a sort of all encompassing description of what makes a radical, revolting librarian.
Though some of the complaints were discouraging to someone new to the field, the notion of librarians as free thinking, always questioning, idealistic hopefuls was very inspiring. Not a bad job.

Chicano Website

2007-05-07T18:29:08Z

Yay! I cant believe it took me this long but I finally had the idea to open up the chicano site with dreamweaver...sometimes the most simple approach is the last one tried! So now I can work on the website, make changes, add content and just save it all on my handy little thumbdrive. If i ever get the actual password for the site I can just put it all up! Of course I've never done this before so this is all my assumption...

I know most of you could care less, but I have been trying to make some sort of progress and now I can at least do some work and save it for proof! When I first opened up the site I immediately felt the urge to cry(lots of unfamiliar tags comments and what the hell is php??) and tell jules I couldn't do it. But my pride would not allow such a failure!! I started tinkering, went to the w3 schools site for that php problem and now I'm getting it! Oh well, there is my update my project, now all I need is time to work.

Mcluhan

2007-04-20T06:31:41Z

The first quote to really stand out for me in “Essential Mcluhan” was at the very beginning, “To contemplate the products of our own appetites rather than to anathematize the people who are keen enough to exploit them…” was what really started my interest in this book. Generally we point the finger at corporations who invest an incredible amount of time and money figuring out how to get into our heads, how to sell us something. Mcluhan however urges us to take a look at our own “appetites”, to basically do the same thing that the advertising and marketing people have been doing all along.
He questions why it is that something so impacting of our lives is not investigated further. Despite the fact that we all know what the billboards and commercials are expecting us to do we simply go along with it. When surveys come out telling of the negative impacts a certain add has on a certain demographic group, society as a whole points our fingers and demands something be done (to that company of course). Mcluhan suggests that maybe we should be looking a little deeper into how we as a society think, and so desperately consume. As a responsible society we should at very least attempt to educate ourselves on why it is that so many of these adds and slogans work, even when we do not realize it. Then it might be possible for us to break away from this mindless intake of material and start living the way we want to rather than the way we are told we want to, if that is even possible.
This is just one of the things I got out of this reading, “Essential Mcluhan” will require much more than one week of reading and a one page paper even to summarize.

QuarterOutline (in progress)

2007-04-10T17:51:42Z

-work on cleaning up chicano art slides (sail)
-possibly add to chicano website??
-do display case for sail in library
-research paper,
-free libraries?
-E Portfolio
-design portfolio

Ranting on "Search"

2007-03-07T00:24:11Z

I would like to address Battelle's concept of "Search" What is search? Why do we search? He lays out many answers for us. Search is the act of looking for something, trying to find something. The reason for searching is the same, to find something. I am really interested in his idea of the types of searches. on pg 32 he says:

"There is search to recover that which we know exists, and then there is search to discover what we intuit exists, but have yet to find."
Recovery and Discovery. It seems so obvious that these are the reasons for searching. One of those stupidly simple statements that just sticks to the lining of your brain. I search to find something I have lost, or I search to find something that I think (or hope) exists. This is like a metaphor for life. Either we live in the past, constantly trying to reinvent it, forcing the past onto our present, or we look ahead; searching (living) for some ethereal "thing" that we just "know" or hope exists. Of course nothing in life is so black and white and we are each living within our own little shade of gray amidst an infinite spectrum.
It is incredibly stupid that I am constantly relating little quotes to my entire existence. I started of just free-writing hoping to get a little start on my paper. Of course I will need to take myself out of it, rather, "one needs to take oneself" out of the story. There can be no I, no me, only the collective one...we.

How did Google rewrite the business anyway? Did they just take an idea and role with it? The age-old slogan "knowledge is power" surely must have flashed in their heads the instant they realized what their technology could do. It is awe-inspiring that one day soon every piece of written knowledge, that mankind has ever created will be able to fit on a little piece of hardware smaller than my little finger. My mind reels. What does this mean for us? Sure it’s all sci-fi and fantasy paranoia, but if you told people from the 1800’s some of the things WE do today you would be put in the asylum, or burned. Our ancestors had the same brains as we did, capable of the same thought. The truth is however that we are not limited by our intelligence, but rather our society. We limit ourselves. We impose our own boundaries. If we take this literally, it is both remarkably freeing and incredibly sad at the same time. But here I am living in the past. Do not dwell on the past and forget to live in today.

That is some old saying.

Anyway, I have completely lost my train of thought, but I will post this anyway and hopefully between now and Friday, I will have worked out some sort of paper!

TheSearch

2007-03-06T00:46:09Z

I have not finished the book yet, but I have a really good excuse!

What I have read so far is pretty easy reading though. There is a good bit of history done on googles predecessors. I was just starting to use the internet in '98 and I had no idea the amount of work that had gone into it, or the momentum that was behind it. I had no idea people were already getting rich and going broke off of this thing that seemed like merely a toy to me. Battelle seems to have done a really good job researching this, and he presents (so-far) a fairly rounded view of the whole beginnings of "search"

Cyber Cinderella

2007-02-27T06:36:47Z

What a cute story! I really liked it, but I guess I have always been a sucker for this Sex in the City style tales. This city happens to be London, and the story is presented in book rather than HBO, so basically I can enjoy that much more (being as how reading is much more academic than being glued to the TV) I think I and many other women are drawn to this image of the single, sexy, sophisticated girl. NOT perfect, by any means, this makes her relatable. She has a job, she has a flat and of course she has wonderful friends and a social life! She is smart, creative, independent (but not un-needing), and sexual. Practically everything I ever really wanted by a certain age (there is a certain amount of shallow snobbishness that I both hate and envy here as well). Yet this never proves to be enough, there is always the depression, whining, snobbery...the hope for life changes that these "sex in the city" type characters seem to go through so easily. Where do I go to sign up for these well paying mind-numbing 9 to 5ers?? Why can I never find those awesome apartments for way cheap?? I can barely carry on a conversation with my one or two friends without feeling awkward at some point...surely I must have missed the "miss independent" day at school or something.

Technology Matters

2007-02-20T14:31:51Z

Today our world almost completely revolves around technology and how it is affecting us. From the food we eat,
to our cars, our toys, our jobs, we are totally enmeshed with it. Nye does a great job at looking at our hand in hand evolution with technology and how it is helping and harming us. Actually I think he would say it is not the technology that helps or harms, it is the way we choose to use it. He really gets into the cultural aspect of technology, and the many fears and hopes that societies have about it. I got a lot of info out of this book. It was verry historian like!

Revolution in the Valley

2007-02-13T01:20:05Z

Revolution in the Valley is packed full of history from the viewpoint of one of the individuals experiencing it. It is also beautifully eye pleasing, with lots of examples of the work being done, as well quotes places throughout to create a more dynamic text. Actually this book struck me as the closest an actual in-hand book can get to becoming a hypertext. The way Hertzfield put in so many little side notes, and quotes, and even pages written by other's involved felt very much like reading online, and following multiple links. I really enjoyed it!

Unquiet Indeed

2007-02-06T06:38:02Z

This has probably been the best learning -about the book and the library- book that I have read so far! Battles takes us way back to the beginnings of libraries, and although you only get a page or two per historical event, he covers just about everything! Well, I don't know that for sure because I have never read this much about beginnings of the library. This book has definitely peaked my interest in the history of the library, and especially how books and the building of libraries has gone hand in hand with the powers that be. I had always known about the control of texts by the church in more recent times, but I was fascinated with the history of texts and libraries in Rome, Greece and Egypt. I also enjoyed the histories of China and Islam. It is amazing how knowledge has survived the millennia, and the continuous cycles that emerge.

More Foucault

2007-01-30T00:13:26Z

The second half of Foucault is proving a bit more ?discomboobling? for me, just when I think I know what he is getting after, he moves into an example that is several pages long, and I am totally lost. I keep hoping for a real concrete example of one of his ideas, but perhaps there are no layman examples for ideas of such complexity.

But, even in the dark I have found some beautifull quotes, that help me get through it.

pg.219 "History as we know, is certainly the most erudite, the most aware, the most conscious, and possibly the most cluttered area of our memory; but it is equally the depths from which all beings emerge into their precarious, glittering existence.

pg278 "Life is the root of all existence, and the non-living, nature in its inert form, is merely spent life; mere being is the non-being of life. For life-and this is why it has a radical value in nineteenth-century thought-is at the same time the nucleus of being and of non-being: there is being only because there is life, and in that fundamental movement that dooms them to death, the scattered beings, stable for an instant, are formed, halt, hold life immobile- and in a sense kill it- but are then in turn destroyed by that enexhaustible force. "

If that isn't poetic, I don't know what is! I think had Foucault just given up on debate and on giving his ideas and theories credit, he would have made a fine poet.