infrastructure of experience

"By 'the experience of infrastructure', we point to the ways in which infrastructure, rather than being hidden from view, becomes visible through our increasing dependence upon it for the practice of everyday life. By 'the infrastructure of experience', we want to draw attention to the ways in which, in turn, the embedding of a range of infrastructures into everyday space shapes our experience of that space and provides a framework through which our encounters with space take on meaning. (...) The first, and most fundamental, conclusion is that space is organized not just physically but culturally; cultural understandings provide a frame for encountering space as meaningful and coherent, and for relating it to human activities. (...) The second conclusion is that architecture is all about boundaries and transitions, and their intersection with human and social practice. (...) The third conclusion is that new technologies inherently cause people to reencounter spaces. This is not a question of mediation, but rather one of simultaneous layering. (...) Finally, there is already a complex interaction between space, infrastructure, culture, and experience. The spaces into which new technologies are deployed are not stable, not uniform, and not given." P. Dourish & G. Bell (2007). The infrastructure of experience and the experience of infrastructure: meaning and structure in everyday encounters with space. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, vol. 34(3), pp.414-430.

silence

"Experience doesn't come raw, but it comes in real time, in wildness, and not in anyone s direct control. Responding to experience means letting generalization and specificity be in dialectic in our writings and in our biographies. And this in turn means resistance – to pressures for conformity and towards the uniform voice (although there are sometimes ethical reasons for presenting a united front )." Star, S. L., Bowker, G., (2007). Enacting silence: Residual categories as a challenge for ethics, information systems, and communication. Ethics and Information Technology, vol.9, pp. 273-280. Image by Monica Pinheiro, license CC BY-NC-SA ( CC ).

Distance (still) matters! a)

Follow up on the related myth that «distance is dead», in a paper by Petra Sonderegger (2009) in R&D working context across disperse teams in project work. Creating Shared Understanding in Research Across Distance: Distance Collaboratiion across Cultures in R&D. In e-Research: Transformation in Scholarly Practice:

"In summary, shared understanding and the flow of tacit knowledge are key elements of innovative collaboration; and trust, shared context, and frequent interactions (both formal and informal) are central to establishing these elements. Despite proclamations of the “death of distance” (Cairncross, 1997), physical presence and shared space are still important in today’s world, especially for people who are highly interdependent and faced with ambiguous situations. This study was designed to explore the potential and the limitations of distance collaboration in R&D, given the communication tools available. (...) For the researchers in this study, in-person meetings led to a higher level of comfort in collaboration. They trusted their counterparts more and moved the relationship from a purely professional level to a more personal level; they made fewer negative attributions in situations of uncertainty. An increase in spontaneity and a decrease in formality helped overcome some difficulties in distance communication."

a) Note to self: see another post with same title, and follow tag «distance».

About «completion suggestions»

Trying out the new feature «completion suggestions» from blogger. Strange feeling of having a ghost shadow trying to guess what I'm going to type next. Don't know what's behind this feature but some thoughts on using it come to mind.

What if I was to choose not a word editor to write down the narrative of my thesis, but instead choose to use blogger compose? Would the shadow adapt to my writing style? Wouldn't it be great if it could also relate to all the stuff I've previously wrote/mention/annotate in here? Things like suggesting to cite a paper that I've read back in 2003 and somehow left it buried in my cite.u.like/librarything/post?

All in all it's quicker to write cause, since English is not my mother tongue, it becomes easier to get the next word in place. Think a lot of people might be using this already but : ) It can even improve my writing skills. For once, I can have the right spelling before I finish the word, instead of writing the word to realize that the red line beneath it means I have to go back to click on it, see suggestions and then choose the one I think I want, and then click again enter or go back and re-write the word in : )

Yes, think I'll be using it a little more to see how I feel.

On TheBrain page they say: "With PersonalBrain you're never more than a few seconds away from any piece of digital information. Web pages, documents, images, notes... From people and projects to ideas and task lists, it's all there in an instant." What are the assumptions behind this declaration?

1. You always have with you the hardware needed for access;
2. You have the software installed in all the hardware you carry with you, when you need to access;
3. You always have internet access, to use the software installed in all the hardware you have with you, when you need to access; 
4. You will have time to edit all your pieces of digital information with «PersonalBrain» and send always the last version of that «brain» to all the hardware gadgets you use when you need to access it;
5. You will never run out of battery/energy when you need to access!

Even without discussing and going into «Knowledge Management Software» (*), there's a lot of «layers» one needs to have in order to use that metaphoric «digital brain». With paper mind maps, even a paper restaurant towel or napkin will do. This to say, like many other surrogate IT tools we find, sometimes the number of layers needed for using them, make them far more expensive and time consuming, then their counter more traditional tools.

Forgot to mention, I'm a user of mind maps. Read about radial thinking (Buzan & Buzan), started mind mapping in 1999, using paper, pen and colors, and around 2002 also started using software. In 2005 even gave workshops for people interested in mind maps in my working place. So I guess I can be considered a fan of mind maps. The immediacy you get with paper and pen is not substituted with digital equivalent canvas for mind mapping. But the ease you get when in need of changes and the added value of incorporating digital files and links, it's very easy to do. Any how, they complement but do not substitute each other.

(*) Mind maps, either paper and pencil or digital, are «tools» to help us visualize our ideias and connect them. They try to mirror the way our brains organize information, in what's is called radial thinking. Mind maps and concept maps are not the same thing. Mind maps are organized in branches, like a tree. Concept maps, do not follow a tree structure to organize information, but instead show connections between concepts. The effort you put into constructing them, according to your personal knowledge, is what makes them so powerful  to visualize all the connections in what can be just a page! But you'll have to do it, or else you'll have just a catalog or reference work that you still do not know what's inside. 

Paper demand response

For long I've been a subscriber of alerts from the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). Today I've received an email informing me of another service they are offering resulting from requests from both authors and readers:

"In response to requests from authors and readers to purchase printed and bound hard copies of papers on SSRN, we provide a 'Purchase Bound Hard Copy' service for most free PDF files in SSRN's eLibrary." FAQ

Clearly an(other) argument to build upon the affordances of paper beyond all the digital offerings available and being built that shows market demand for paper products. 

Just yesterday another argument crossed my information spaces. In short, Paula Simões compared the consumer costs associate with buying a paper Book versus buying an eBook with DRM (Digital Rights Management). Albeit the immediate cost of acquisition favouring the eBook, after the purchase the costs are much higher for the eBook then for the paper Book. Those costs, besides the need to have additional artefacts to actually decode and read the product (eReader, computer, etc), concern social factors and even use factors. While we can lend books to our friends, sell them in second hand markets, and even leave them to our family or donate them to libraries, eBooks with DRM do not allow such affordances. And this is no minor issue. The original post as receive a lot of other comments that are adding layers of costs associated with DRM (you can use the google translate if Portuguese is a barrier).

Thing is, most of us do not have the required time to undergo an exhaustive study of all our artefacts restrictions so things like DRM might go unnoticed for quiet a long time... until the day we realize by self experience or by reading about others' experiences, that DRM restricts the social behaviour of sharing information by restricting the product to a specific artefact and only for the person who acquire it.

Am I missing something or this is one more point in favour of good old paper? Since people are talking way beyond their geographic limitations, will people keep on paying for eBooks with DRM? Seems that in Portugal, two large national editors are going to have to rethink their product restrictions policies.

Role of paper in disruptions

"People check a posted list of survivors at an evacuation center in Miyagi prefecture's Natori city on Monday, March 14." from CNN

We are well aware of the great uses that information technologies and social networks supported by internet connections have been playing in the last years. Yet, we tend to minimize the role played by paper in times of great disruptions, like the one Japan is going through.

Visions of ideal solutions to the management of personal information collections

Bruce, H., Wenning, A., Jones, E., Vinson, J., & Jones, W. (2011). Seeking an ideal solution to the management of personal information collections. Information Research, 16(1) paper 462: 

"(...) the researchers found that observing people over time as they find, select, collect, organize, and manage information for a personal project provides an excellent context for studying the challenges of personal information management."

Visions of single information space

Tom Heath and Christian Bizer (2011) Linked Data: Evolving the Web into a Global Data Space (HTML edition). Synthesis Lectures on the Semantic Web: Theory and Technology, 1:1, 1-136. Morgan & Claypool:

"The World Wide Web has enabled the creation of a global information space comprising linked documents. (...) Linked Data provides a publishing paradigm in which not only documents, but also data, can be a first class citizen of the Web, thereby enabling the extension of the Web with a global data space based on open standards - the Web of Data."

"Just as hyperlinks in the classic Web connect documents into a single global information space, Linked Data enables links to be set between items in different data sources and therefore connect these sources into a single global data space."

Indústria do Papel

from CEPI

Na Europa, CEPI (Confederation of European Paper Industries) nas Preliminary Stats for 2010 registam aumentos, comparativamente a 2009, apesar da situação macroeconómica. Para estatísticas específicas de papel destinado a impressão, ver CEPIPRINT (Association of European Publication Paper Producers) e CEPIFINE (Confederation of European Fine Paper Industries).

Em portugal, CELPA (Associação da Indústria Papeleira) Boletim Estatístico 2009 (Setembro, 2010) os dados reportados a 2009, registaram aumento da produção em Portugal:

"Em 2009 a produção europeia de pastas para papel desceu 13,5%, sendo Portugal o 4º maior produtor europeu de pasta – com 7,1% do total – e o 3º maior produtor de pastas químicas – com 8,9% de produção. Relativamente à produção de papel, também a Europa viu a sua produção baixar 10,4%, sendo Portugal o 11º maior produtor europeu de papel e cartão – com 1,8% do total - e o 2º maior produtor de papel fino não revestido (UWF) – com 11,6% da produção total." (p.18)

"Neste contexto, em 2009 as empresas portuguesas produtoras de pasta e de papel conseguiram registar um aumento da produção de pastas virgens de 7,9%. (...) Apesar das quebras sentidas, com impacte directo na Rendibilidade das Vendas, que diminuiu de 10,2%, em 2008, para 7,0%, em 2009, o sector está a adaptar-se às mudanças dos mercados e acredita no seu potencial de crescimento a médio/longo prazo." (p.18-19)

Pena que na PORDATA não tenham dados sobre a produção de papel. Faltam-me também aqui estatísticas em termos globais que permitam ter uma noção do consumo de papel ao longo dos anos.

Opening the source(s) with blogs in research practices

By the time I've started my PhD, I had already used blogs as a research tool for conducting research work, since 2003 [master's degree in Information Studies] not so much as a fieldwork tool, but as a way of registering trails of the research (ongoing information, readings, questions, doubts, ...) that allowed others to  find me and, in turn, due to explicit (comments in blog) or implicit (link back, web bookmarks, citations) conversations allowed me to find them.

Lorenz antropologi.info blog, for long, as been a way for me to feel connected to anthropology developments. Yesterday, while re-reading a recent post about using Comics to present research findings, I've recalled an older post that offered the link to the issues of Opening the source in fieldwork:

"When you do anthropological fieldwork, your main tool is yourself. You participate, you observe and you ask incredible amounts of questions."

I would think this would apply equally well for everyone conducting social science research, either for qualitative or quantitative studies. If for the qualitative paradigm one might not find hard to extend the above citation, it might not be so straight forward for the quantitative research. But it might become clear if one thinks that in quantitative survey instruments, the questions are framed by the researcher, hence the researcher becomes part of the design tool.

Come to think in this terms, all of science is done this way. One of the big differences might be that in anthropological fieldwork the researcher explicitly exposes the self as part of the study (reflexivity) and in other paradigms the researcher is concealed from the reports/narratives of the research, but nevertheless, they are embedded in the research work... and I recall the work of Latour and Wolgar on Laboratory Life: the construction of scientific facts:

"The construction of scientific facts, in particular, is a process of generating texts whose fate (status, value, utility, facticity) depends on their subsequent interpretation."

Communication history in stamps

Image from Kees Graaff post

Historical narratives of information artefacts, in a collection curated by Kees de Graaff, Communication: a history in stamps.

Information as thing

In accordance with the view of information as thing by Buckland (1999), the article by Jones, W. (2010, No knowledge but through information, First Monday, vol. 15 (9-6), September) brings back the arguments of the need to operate/manage information items and not knowledge: "Knowledge is not a thing to be managed directly. Knowledge is managed only indirectly through information". His view is directed to show that Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) should be viewed as a subset o Personal Information Management (PIM) and not as a higher level approach. 

"The ways in which an item is manipulated will vary depending upon its form and the tools available for this form. The tools used for interaction with paper–based information items include, for example, paper clips, staplers, filing cabinets and the flat surfaces of a desktop. In interactions with digital information items, we depend upon the support of various computer–based tools and applications such as e–mail applications, file managers, Web browsers, and so on. (...) Knowledge as ‘no thing’ cannot be managed directly. If we think we have knowledge ‘at our fingertips’ we are most likely touching information in some form instead. This is not to say that knowledge management is not possible. But we do so through its expression in information. There is no management of knowledge except through the management of information."

In his paper he also evokes a pictorial representation of "[i]nformation management activities viewed as an effort to establish, use and maintain a mapping between needs and information. ["illustration was done by Elizabeth Boling and is a variation of a figure that first appeared in Jones (2008)."]

Could not help myself recalling the nonsense of 'knowledge management' by Tom Wilson (2002), which as always provoked great discussions and food for thought in my journey.

Technology interference in data collection, transcription and analysis

Another number of the Forum Qualitative Social Research is out, and although just gave a superficial reading to the table of contents and one of the contributions, the article by Jeanine Evers seem to answer some of my questions and issues when dealing with the huge amount of visual data (mainly photos) that I've collected for my research:

Evers, Jeanine C. (2011). From the Past into the Future. How Technological Developments Change Our Ways of Data Collection, Transcription and Analysis [94 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1), Art. 38.

The whole issue is dedicated to «Discussions on Qualitative Data Analysis Software by Developers and Users», which should be of interest for many people doing qualitative research and/or developing technological tools for qualitative analysis, reporting «The KWALON Experiment»:

"The KWALON Experiment consisted of five developers of Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) software analysing a dataset regarding the financial crisis in the time period 2008-2009, provided by the conference organisers. Besides this experiment, researchers were invited to present their reflective papers on the use of QDA software. This introduction gives a description of the experiment, the "rules", research questions and reflective points, as well as a full description of the dataset and search rules used, and our reflection on the lessons learned."

Europe Digital Agenda - The New Renaissance

"Comité des Sages" calls for a "New Renaissance" by bringing Europe's cultural heritage online:

"The report urges EU Member States to step up their efforts to put online the collections held in all their libraries, archives and museums. It stresses the benefits of making Europe's culture and knowledge more easily accessible. It also points to the potential economic benefits of digitisation (...) The report's recommendations will feed into the Commission's broader strategy, under the Digital Agenda for Europe, to help cultural institutions make the transition towards the digital age."

"Today europeana.eu already offers access to more than 15 million digitised books, maps, photographs, film clips, paintings and musical extracts, but this is only a fraction of works held by Europe's cultural institutions (see IP/10/1524). Most digitised materials are older works in the public domain, to avoid potential litigation for works covered by copyright."

Elisabeth Niggemann, Jacques De Decker & Maurice Lévy (2011). The New Renaissance. Brussels: Report of the 'Comité des Sages’, Europe.[PDF]