Glut : mastering information through the ages

Reading Alex Wright's recently-released book, Glut: Managing information through the ages. Wright is a widely-published author who earned his MLIS from Simmons College. In describing current information technology trends, the author makes a passing reference to library catalogs ("institutional knowledge systems...are fast becoming anachronisms in the face of web search engines" (6).) The start of this book is a bit of a struggle for me, as biology and the life sciences aren't my strongest areas. I was intrigued by the author's reference to Brent Berlin's research on hierarchies: "according to Berlin, every tribal community ever studied appears to share a universal tendency to divide their knowledge of plants or animals into five or six nested categories" (25). I see a parallel between that and the hierarchical archival finding aids that I've been working with for the past few years; the NWDA consortium that I work with supports a six level hierarchy of component description. In an article (see page 274) describing the Archon product, Chris Prom (and his co-authors) at UIUC noted that the software is built around five levels of description. Even though the EAD standard supports 12 nested levels, in practice, archivists tend to focus on the same number of levels that Wright cited.Chapter 3 deals with the topic of symbolic communication. Wright draws parallels between communications in the Web 2.0 world and "the symbolic exchanges of trust and coding of social rank that ice age people achieved using beads, shells, and necklaces" (44). The first example that I thought of was the Max-like avatar that I set up yesterday when I started my subscription to cell-based e-mail using Vemail. The author cites another that is relevant, "the use of icons in [IM] applications to represent emotional states" (44).Chapter 4 continues with the history of the development of writing and the creation of tools with greater and greater specialization, such as metadata, bibliographies, and classification systems. Wright credits Aristotle with "adapt[ing] and codif[ying] the ancient oral traditions of folk taxonomies. His greatest contribution was to make the old implicit structures explicit, and therefore available for inspection and improvement" (68).Having worked closely with digital repository support in recent years, Wright's account of the destruction of libraries (Alexandria, throughout the Roman Empire...) is extremely thought provoking. Regarding Alexandria, the author notes that its destruction "tells an instructive story about the inherent instability of institutional systems" (75). For a current perspective on this problem and its impact upon repository systems, see this preprint, authored by Dorothea Salo; she clearly describes how poorly academic institutions have supported digital preservation due to, in large part, institutional conservatism.Wright's discussion on the invention of the codex and its advantages over papyrus brings to mind the advantages of print technologies in general, in comparison to digital: -support for random access as opposed to linear access; -portability; and, -durability. These strengths have been difficult to crack, over centuries of time. For books where I have a clear choice of format (example, Lessig's Codev2), I always choose print, for reasons of portability and durability.In reviewing medieval contracts (in chapter 5), Wright makes an interesting point in defining "a new class of documents...that functioned less as a text and more as an internalized 'social fact'" (107). He then cited several modern examples, including click-through software licenses and stock prospectuses. There are numerous other examples (one that stands out: health insurance provider information) that contribute to today's information overload.Chapter 8, entitled "The Encyclopedic Revolution," begins with a fascinating description of the creation of, to borrow a phrase from Wright's text, the "meta-book"; this is set in the first 1-2 centuries following the invention of the printing press. The author draws parallels between early encyclopedias (such as Heywood's Gunaikeion) or "synthetic works" and the move away from fixed classification systems (147). These changes, Wright notes, are similar to the changes in subject classifications that have occurred with hypertext. (I'd love to make a submission or two to the Gunaikeion, but I understand it's a completed work.)Wright also compares encyclopedias in the aftermath of moveable type with the development of Wikipedia in the aftermath of the development of the World Wide Web. One episode that reveals Wikipedia's shortcomings, which I first read about in Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, concerns malicious information in a biographical entry for John Seigenthaler. I'm not sure that there's any true check in the Wikipedia system to prevent this type of personal attack. But, inevitably in technology books (including Friedman's), these kinds of problems are depicted as blips on the radar screen; Wright notes the "rising populist sentiment" behind the online encyclopedia (151).Wright describes the work of Anthony Panizzi; this brought me back to my grad school studies and a lengthy letter written by Panizzi that was published in a book co-edited by my cataloging instructor and my adviser at LSU, Dr. Michael Carpenter (full cite is on this list). Noting that "Panizzi's 91 rules would become the foundation for the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Wright argues that Panizzi's efforts in creating a usable catalog were designed to make libraries accessible to a broad range of citizens (169). And in reading Wright's book, it's hard to understate Panizzi's contribution; his work seems like a bridge to modern librarianship.The author's description of the events leading to the development of the web made me think of the Information Age exhibit that I was fortunate enough to visit during the two years that I lived and worked in the DC area. I thought of this exhibit at several points later in the book, including Wright's reference to the Differential Analyzer (and to technologies or products such as Alto, which is mentioned later). I've really enjoyed reading Glut, but Wright's description of Vannevar Bush's work during World War II is misleading. It gives the impression that Bush worked as a scientist during the war, when he in fact was an executive branch administrator, serving as the head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and providing leadership in a broad array of technical efforts (MED being the most crucial).I enjoyed reading the info on Ted Nelson...I worked with a programmer at A&M in the mid-90s; he was the first guy who told me (in detail) about Nelson and Xanadu. Wright analyzes Nelson's books, including Nelson's conception of hypertext. Only a fraction of the hypertext attributes that Nelson envisioned have been met in the current web environment.Final thoughts: a must read for librarians and automation specialists! In describing the emergence of the WWW, Alex Wright notes that, as with the development of other information technologies, "old hierarchies are giving way to emergent networks"; two of the "old hierarchies" cited by the author are "library catalogs" and "controlled vocabularies" (226). I really question whether librarians fully appreciate the changes ahead for the profession. Perhaps it's a product, as described by the author in the section on Melvil Dewey, of a focus on process over achieving results. Wright's book serves as a useful counter to this practice.