Odyssey Online » Information Studies

Google’s Algorithm, Google Ribbed

pdoty — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:20:21 +0000

…Charles Arthur has published a very interesting piece in The Guardian on Google’s algorithm. He argues that Google is its algorithm, and makes an interesting argument about what this means for the company at this point in time…

…today’s Onion is also featuring a brilliant parody on Google and that word which must not be uttered in Google’s presence (ergo, privacy…the Onion does feature adult language and themes…)

Facebook Usage

pdoty — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 16:38:54 +0000

Ben Parr at the blog Mashable reports that “user[s] spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia and Amazon combined.” Wow. He’s got the numbers to make his case…I was wondering the other day if Facebook doesn’t take the place of postcards. That the sort of stuff we might have dashed off on a postcard is now the stuff of a Facebook post. That’s a lot of postcards. Of course, you can’t collect Facebook posts, whereas you could collect postcards. I can remember one of my mother’s neighbors who had a collection of Manchester New Hampshire postcards that numbered into the hundreds. I can remember some of the cards and I can remember him but I usually don’t remember what I do on Facebook…

Kindle V iTablet

pdoty — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:12:54 +0000

…there has been some quick commentary on whether the newly-released iTablet, the omnivore progeny of the iPod, will be the end of the Kindle. Megan McArdle at Atlantic provides an intelligent reflection on whether or not this will be the case. Other opinions vary:

Needless to say, Steve is betting on the iTablet.

Tuesday Internet Reading: Clay Shirky

pdoty — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:59:15 +0000

…Tuesday a.m., and it finds us look at Clay Shirky’s essay The Shock of Inclusion. Shirky is writing about the future of collaborative thought, whether the quality of public thought is collapsing, and whether “publishing has become the new literacy.” Lucid and insightful, and most certainly worth a look…

Friday Blogging, Licensing Agreements

pdoty — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:49:54 +0000

…just before the holidays Jessmyn West over at librarian.net got to blogging about e-books. In objecting to some promotion Amazon.com was doing, she made the assertions that

1. they’re creating a distinction that isn’t necessary, between ebooks and paper books
2. at the same time they’re obscuring the very very real distinction that exists and is terribly important: you do not own an ebook, you license or lease it.

The idea of owning materials or accessing them via digital technologies as a controversy withered years ago for librarians, just think about all the stuff we have only electronic access to. Yet, with the Kindle this question now bleeds over into personal book collections, into everyone’s interaction with what we have, up to this moment, thought of as books, and it seems to have energized energized the ownership v. access question enough, to give pause. Because, stated simply, Jessmyn’s right–you don’t own an ebook.

A big part of the issue is with Amazon is their inability to clarify what exactly the terms of the license for content are. As Thomas Claburn reported in Information Week, Amazon had to amend/clarify policies on deleted books (after one lease had expired) after controversy and accompanying rumors swirled. This and concerns of Google privacy policies have brought to the fore that licenses for digital content are not static, they aren’t, (I can’t resist) book-like. They can be changed, and changed without consent or even knowledge of the purchaser/reader. Remember shrinkwrap licenses? Those we licenses you agreed to by removing the shrinkwrap from a package, only the terms of the license were in the shrinkwrapped box which you couldn’t actually read until you got the shrinkwrap off…licenses for software or digital content are not (nor do they show any signs of becoming) simple transactions.

This and the idea of the content of a book without the physicality of a book give, for me, an unfortunate feeling of a disposable object to the narratives that were books. Of all of the things that were commonly kept that are now commonly thrown away–table ware, razors, food scraps (for everyone who doesn’t compost), hay, clothes, spouses–books were a permanence. The book as object was a ballast (as John Updike characterized it) to a well navigated life. Jessmyn West links to a Cory Doctorow asserting the place of books in people’s lives. He makes an interesting assertion about how the image of book burning is one that comes to mind for very diverse groups of being when thinking about barbarism. His point is that technologies like kindles represent a kind of book burning…do I agree completely, no, but to dismiss the permanence of an on hand library is a misplaced thought on a Friday afternoon…

Information Appliances, Donald Norman

pdoty — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:51:23 +0000

…recently Derek Thompson put up an interesting post at Atlantic.com titled Where is the E-Reader Revolution Leading Us? which argues that e-readers are pushing technologies toward a Swiss Army Knife model: a mobile technology that can do many things. It actually seems to me that the e-reader (with all thy faults I love thee still…) is more akin to Donald Norman’s idea of an information appliance, well articulated in his book The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products can Fail, the Personal Computer is so Complex, and Information Appliances are the Solution. Norman makes a convincing case for what an information appliance could be and could do…

…his book The Psychology of Everyday Things (subsequent editions are titled Design of Everyday Things) is essential reading on the day-to-day implications of design…

National Potato Day

pdoty — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:07:46 +0000

…this being National Potato Day we can direct the SLU community to the wonderfully named John Reader’s wonderfully titled book Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent.

…also, on the broader topic of our relationship to information (if not potatoes) Jessica Hagy on her blog Indexed has a really very simple and very striking visualization of the relationship between confusion and information…

Network Neutrality, Again

pdoty — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:23:01 +0000

…since the Obama Administration’s ruling on supporting network neutrality (reported on here at Odyssey Online), the debate has come more into public focus, the politics of said have become a little sharper. The Washington Post reported that the FCC is drafting the specific rules that will keep ” Internet providers as acting like gatekeeprs,” and also reported that CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, favors network neutrality but thought it would be “a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.” Atlantic Magazine provides ran a useful Political Primer on network neutrality, identifying the players and what they are after.

Friday Blogging, New York State Budget

pdoty — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:48:04 +0000

…this from today’s edition of the New York Times on proposed cuts announced yesterday by Governor Paterson:

Hundreds of programs face cuts — libraries stand to lose $3.3 million, summer programs for special education students face a $10.4 million cut, and more than $14 million would be cut from Child Health Plus, a public insurance program. At least 31 H.I.V./AIDS programs also face cuts.

Tough situation. On a happier Friday note, here are two new uplifting titles about libraries:

Libraries for All! How to Start and Run a Basic Library by Laura Wendell
The Most Beautiful Libraries in the World photgraphs by Guillaume de Laubeir and text by Jacques Bosser

Optimistic reading for reading days…

No Tweets, Off Facebook

pdoty — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 15:36:59 +0000

…from the Washington Post, a well written article about twenty-somethings who do not social network. While it is not Civil Disobedience there are some interesting comments made about social networking platforms–what they are and what they result in–by “ordinary folks,” not professional commentators. A very useful article in terms of how people define genuine experience…