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.

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."

semantics to pragmatics

Olsen et al (1998). Full Text Searching and Information Overload. The International Information & Library Review, vol. 30(2), pp. 105-122:

"While the tools for writing, storing, disseminating and retrieving documents have undergone a revolution in the last few decades, reading is still a very slow process. For practical reasons, we are forced to determine a working set size, i.e., the number of documents that we can handle."

(...) 

"By combining metadata and subject terms in a vector-based information space, visualization may give us the opportunity to handle larger document collections and to help the user to find the documents that are most likely to satisfy an information need defined on a pragmatic level."

weblog as PIM tool

Efimova, L. (2009). Weblog as a personal thinking space. Forthcoming in: HT’09: Proceedings of the twentieth ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia, June 2009. New York: ACM:

"Using weblogs as a knowledge base, and then as an instrument to support PhD work, creates synergies, as the effort that goes into creating and organising entries [posts] later pays off by providing more ways for retrieval, and a better quality of the material to be reused. In turn, the experience of reuse or unexpected discoveries that older posts bring stimulates putting more effort in creating new entries." (p. 8)

Resulting from her own practice to a finished dissertation, using an autoethnography approach, Lilia presents a detailed account of that process, summarized in a table, showing "how different stages of idea development [during the PhD process] are supported by the activities around the weblog content."

Another strong point is made concerning the role of paper in knowledge work, and although I only saw the paper today, was glad to see that it reasons with the preliminary findings of the data I've been collecting and the entry that I've made previously, that it reasons with my own use of blogs for supporting research, and also for advocating the use of blogs instead of pages for eliciting the on going process of doctoral research work. Doing it requires "requires the filtering [of] large amounts of information, making sense of it, and connecting the different bits and pieces to come up with new ideas. In this process, physical and digital artefacts play an important role" (Efimova, 2009, p. 2).

The blog allows also for the integration of permanent captures of temporary information in that sense the blog works like a canvas that can display scrapnotes in other contexts extending their use for the weaving of new knowledge. But like she says in the paper,

"The connection between the functionalities of weblog technologies and their uses for personal information management needs further examination. The similarity between the roles my weblog plays in supporting my work and those of paper collections in other studies indicate a need to explore the affordances of weblog technologies from PIM perspective and possibilities of learning from blogging when designing other tools, in particularly those that support managing information scraps that do not fit current tools" (p. 9)

different perceptions of academic spaces

As a student, I don't review myself in the words of Tapscott. Maybe in most of my higher education I was very, very lucky. I did my bachelor in Macau (South of China), back in 1995-1998 and the majority of my teachers engaged with students in deep discussions and debates. Many times, the discussions continue outside the class room. Maybe because class-size (turmas) where around 30 people and not hundreds. But this should be viewed as anedotical evidence, since it is my own perception not based in any research, unlike the research based on the evidences collected by Tapscott in the US.

In my own life as student in the academic context, the questioning of our assumptions was the stage for our discoveries. Our teachers have done so in such a way, that we still maintain conversations today with some of them. The thousands of miles that separate us made the conversation fade, even though we could all communicate via CMC, makes me thing how important it is the social practice of face to face mentoring, so characteristic of academic spaces.

Later on, back to Portugal, following my 'licenciatura' (1999-2001), I moved to a pos-graduation (2001-2002), then a master (2002-2004) and now I'm on a PhD program (2006-2010) all in Portugal. I find the same engaging, the same will and open minds from the tutors and mentors with whom I cross. Some of the bonds that started in higher education later became business and work opportunities outside the educational system.

I agree that some things need to be changed, that the model needs perfecting, but I fail to see the end of Universities mainly because they are a gathering place where conversations can flow without restrictions, without our bias (seeing only what we want to see, is typical when each one of us is looking for information the web) and serendipity of finding what we did not know it existed happens through mentoring and exposition to contradicting views, of colleagues making questions that we did not knew how to ask, that otherwise would 'simple' be there 'invisible'.

Having access to all the courses information available, is not enough for all of us to become knowledgeable on those subjects. Like it's not enough to be able to access all the scientific databases to make a PhD. Even if we are independent learners (I wonder if we ever are!) we need to experience it, to articulate it, to try it out, to share it with others. Blogs, wikis, IM, and all the social tools that we have available, are great, and I've been using them for quite some time, and I'm longing even more for those moments where we can sit together, face to face, and articulate in a more encompassing language (where the non-verbal is the greatest part of our communication), where we are all hearing the same things, where we have the opportunity to read the silences, to articulate our discoveries, to let the unexpected and unlooked for emerge in the interactions.

The more I use technologies, the more I long for a place of real interaction with less noise and more meaningful interactions. With the people that I've come to know over the years over CMC and the continuing sense of friendship that grown out of it, comes also the frustration and the sorrow of not being able to be there to be part, to share special moments like this. We can flatten the world with ICT but our social relations are not substituted by «platforms». We still need to be able to live our relations with all our senses, not just by creating our digital identities and much less by disembodiment of our knowledge to resume it to bits of scattered information.

No! Information comes with the passion of long weaved and crafted social interactions that makes it much more than just words, images, sounds. Information comes with memories, with all the senses we have used in the distinct, the unique journeys that each one of us makes. Some of them come from having to know things that we wouldn't wont to look for. Even frustration, pain, losses, they are all needed to understand the information that surrounds us. And do not get me wrong. Technology is great. I'm a great enthusiast myself. But I do not think it should ever be used to justify short cuts of motivation and the need to find meaning that is not around the corner, ready to use (or to be bought). We live very assimetrical realities. What for some are fluent tools for others are handicaps, but they both have a very important place, and we should not afford loosing any of them. They are all needed. They are all part of a delicate ecology in our long history of learning.

For sure that the models in use can be perfected, but not the excuse of lack of tools for not making it, since they are at our finger tip disposal and we can (and are) bringing them to the academia (and the organizations and circles we are part of). That's also part of the privilege times we are witnessing. When we can all share tools as needed instead of having them imposed on us. Let us choose according to our needs, sculpting together the spaces of our learning.

-------

Thoughts on reading the provoking piece on the Edge: The Impending Demise of the University By Don Tapscott, that wrote the well known book «Growing up Digital: The rise of the Net Generation».

integrating flows of communication

Notice how Google Wave focus is not on knowledge management (KM) but on communication and collaboration. More precisely, in integrating flows of communication. And although it will only be release in the end of the year, you can show your interest by submitting your email.

After seeing the video, I can't wait to use it in real life research projects. While the use of web tools was of great value, there where always issues of individual preference for using different tools, and in the end we ended up with more scattered information across different tools. Because most of them where used only if a private space was provided, it added for the difficulty of moving information from one place to the other.

As for the last words in the Google Wave presentation "can't wait to see what you are gone come up with, guys", I'm just waiting for my time to come and play around with it :-)

What is a wave?

A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when.

A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

infoplace or infospace needs for manipulation

Borgman, C. L. (2003). Personal digital libraries: Creating individual spaces for innovation. Paper presented at the NSF Workshop on Post-Digital Libraries Initiative Directions, Chatham, MA.:

"Individuals need a “place” or a “space” in which to assemble and manipulate information resources for their own purposes, with flexible tools that they can adapt to their practices, skills, habits, and artistry."

[PDF in D:/Phd/Bib - Info Spaces]

ecotone

Uma boa metáfora para explicar espaços de transição. Neste caso, a palavra «ecotone» serviria para explicar espaços de transição próximos. Notei que as palavras «edge» e «boundary» também são utilizadas como sinónimos em algumas das definições.

Define: ecotone

"A narrow and fairly sharply defined transition zone between two or more different communities. Such edge communities are typically species-rich. (Allaby 1998)" www.oup.com.au/orc/demo_glossary.aspx

crossing organizational spaces

Efimova, L. & Grudin, J. (2007). Crossing boundaries: A case study of employee blogging. Proceedings of the Fortieth Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-40). Los Alamitos: IEEE Press:

"Editors, email, and instant messaging were first widely used by students who later brought knowledge of their uses and effective practices into workplaces. Weblogs may make such a transition more quickly. We present a study of emergent blogging practices in a corporate setting. We attended meetings, read email, documents, and Weblogs, and interviewed 38 people loggers, infrastructure administrators, attorneys, public relations specialists, and executives. We found an experimental, rapidly-evolving terrain marked by growing sophistication about balancing personal, team, and corporate incentives and issues"

farewell

I had to say goodbye from my workspace in INETI. The extintion of INETI by the Government has been something beyond my comprehension. I'm on unpaid leave from July 2007 to July 2010. 

[self] information behaviour

... and postponed access to information space, in my research routines, made me decided to start registering my own information behaviours and disturbances i encounter, and strategies i follow.


Looking for information, or following a lead or a clue, depends on:

• the time/place where one is - different places allow different accesses to different spaces, namely information spaces (ex: if i was working in INETI and not in my house, i could have accessed the papers posted below. Instead, i have to leave a «to do» message to myself, with enough elements to recover it when I am back to INETI, or UMinho, or other place where i am granted access to that piece of information... or buy myself an entrance and have my own almost-independent-place password). What's different about my scenario experience in 2007 and that of someone 10 years ago? The time of access to information, the amount of information available, the tools, the infrastructure... the status of the work (in this case, the PhD work). Information space's time/place dependent.
• the tools one has at the moment (and the supporting infrastructure needed for the tools to work). Information space's tool dependent. Need to explore if this kind of information spaces might configure also opportunistic access to information.
  
• formato of the information (and the medium required to interpret the information). Information space's format dependent.
  
• previous information to access information - examples can include: passwords and user IDs, bookmarks, reference lists, memos... since not every information is readily available, sometimes we need other pieces of information to be able to access the information we want. Information space's access dependent.
  
• passing the information without having access to it - if one of the persons that has access to my blog, happens to be in a place where access is granted, this message might be confusing: here i am saying that i can not see something that i give the link, and yet, if that person clicks the link, might get the complete paper. Information space's mediation dependent.
  
• interpret and make sense of the information around - this kind of information is best observed when one person moves from one country to another one, with a different language. This was of critical importance in the case of expatriates, when they where assigned to another country [refer to BCP study]. Information space's [code]/language dependent.
• having previous knowledge - «Quem não sabe é como quem não vê». One can read all the words in a book and still not «see» the information contain in the book. Later, when one reads the book again with more knowledge on the book's subject, one can «see» the information while reading the very same words. Information space's knowledge dependent.

Following the above described cases, information spaces can depend on:

• time/place
• tool
• format
• access
• mediation
• [code] language
• knowledge
  

Whittaker, S. and Hirschberg, J. (2001). Research alerts: the character, value, and management of personal paper archives. interactions 8, 4 (Jul. 2001), pp. 11-16.

Gwizdka, J. (2000). Timely reminders: a case study of temporal guidance in PIM and email tools usage. In CHI '00 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (The Hague, The Netherlands, April 01 - 06, 2000). CHI '00. ACM Press, New York, NY, 163-164:

"We describe our research in progress that explores the use of personal information management (PIM) tools in time and attempts to establish temporal attributes of information. We report on a short field study undertaken to examine relations between tools and information life-cycle. We propose four information types: prospective, ephemeral, working and retrospective. We outline relationships between PIM tools, email and different types of information. We use this framework to explain problems observed with handling information."

Wang, Y., van de Kar, E., and Meijer, G. (2005). Designing mobile solutions for mobile workers: lessons learned from a case study. In Proceedings of the 7th international Conference on Electronic Commerce (Xi'an, China, August 15 - 17, 2005). ICEC '05, vol. 113. ACM Press, New York, NY, 582-589:

"Based on recent literature of systems engineering, business engineering, information systems design, and project/process management, an analysis framework is presented that assesses the design approach of workforce solutions. An exploratory case based in the Netherlands was studied under the framework. The results indicate a need for a design approach that integrates "soft system thinking", collaborative business engineering activities, and process management strategy. The study provides a basis for further research to design mobile workforce solutions."

Context of Work

Kirsh, D. (2001). The Context of Work. Human Computer Interaction, vol. 16, pp. 305-322 [versão html / falta arranjar versão pdf c/ numeração de páginas]:

"I have been describing the context of work as a highly structured amalgam of informational, physical, and conceptual resources that go beyond the simple facts of who or what is where, when. Some of these resources are shared knowledge between participants, others have to do with the structure of the tasks a user is involved in and the different ways he or she has of coordinating the use of physical, informational and conceptual resources between himself, the work setting, and teammates."

"First, we must understand the factors which bias how people react to rich information spaces, loaded with entry points to more information. Second, we must unravel the complexities of the activity landscapes we interactively construct out of the resources we find and the tasks we have to perform. Finally, we must chart the diverse ways people coordinate their activity with their environment and with others."

Control & Space

Zierhofer, W. (2005). State, power and space. Soc. Geogr., vol 1(1), pp. 29-36:

"No other institution eases global contacts and mobility of persons, goods, information and services as much as the state by guaranteeing standards for systems of representation. It is thus above all that the state creates spaces for certain purposes – only one of which is to let social life take place in a physical space in order to control it." (p.35)

information spaces implications

Lee, Hur-Li (2003). Information spaces and collections: Implications for organization. Library & information science research, vol. 25(4), pp. 419-436.

Perceptions of Information Spaces

Dillon, Andrew (2000) Spatial semantics: How users derive shape from information space. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 51(6), pp. 521-528.

digital libary as information space

Recolhidas pela Interactive Learning with a Digital Library in Computer Science, uma compilação de definições para biblioteca digital. A noção de «espaço de informação» está implícita nesta descrição de Edward A. Fox (1999):

"Digital libraries are complex data/information/knowlege (hereafter information) systems that help: satisfy the information needs of users (societies), provide information services (scenarios), organize information in usable ways (structures), manage the location of information (spaces), and communicate information with users and their agents (streams)."