Boxes and Arrows: Comments on stories by Alex Wright

Ted Knight — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:38:19 GMT

Thanks for the article. I was surprised to learn of Otlet from a less-than-computer-involved friend. Astonished and pleased to learn of Otlet and his work, I made a set of links at my DMOZ bookmarks, here: http://www.dmoz.org/Bookmarks/T/tedk1/Ontology/Otlet,_Pau…
The parent category, “Ontology,” includes a number of other links that may be of interest as well. In particular, I recommend the 2007 David Weinberger book, Everthing Is Miscellanous. One of his core concepts is “the third order of order,” which I can relate to the way Otlet saw that the concepts in books can relate to each other, a kind of foreshadowing of meta-tagging. I came to this book from correspondence with Clay Shirky, whose web page entitled “Ontology Is Overrated” I would also recommend highly.

Chris Butler — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:57:36 GMT

Alex,

I happened to find this after reading your other article on Otlet from the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/17/science/17mund.html?pag…)- thanks for shedding some light on such a visionary individual, especially in light of the current movement towards a semantic web.

For the sake of conversation, here’s a link to the biographical documentary on Otlet hosted by the Internet Archive:
http://www.archive.org/details/paulotlet/

Chris

Ben Tremblay — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:51:56 GMT

Alex – I’ll see your encyclopedia and raise you a Julia-set shaped mandala.

I just found that “groundplane -antenna” showed me #3 in google.

Why “groundplane”? Because the physics of antenna allow that system to discriminate best when working against a base reference.

What’s the antidote to “glut”? Well … how about subjective salience?

Correct me here, but “Data is information that matters”, no?

And how do dullards and pedants judge what matters to people? Poorly.
What about plods, fakes, and phoneys? Worse.

How does my cognitive schema in-form the encyclopedia I’m experiencing via the web? Likely, not at all, except as yet another user case that ends in my being just a bit more dumbed down.

Discourse. Discussion as though persons matter.

Or, from another direction (“mandala theory” always in mind): _glasperlenspiel_.

The all inclusive nature of “encyclopedia” ... that, surely, is abused, debased, and demeaned when thought of as 2-dimensional. So how many, then?
Back when SGI was a player I toyed with 3. *shrug* Fun … tedious … futile.

Feed-back/feed-forward … re-entrant … manifold. DITA is kludge, fit only for computing machines, not nearly up to the task of making semantic web worthy of human consciousness.

But call me Cassandra: I’m bound not to have any credibility at all. Paradigmatically disruptive, ehh whot?
*grin*

—bentrem

Willy AUBERT — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:35 GMT

a book in french describe in deep the live and the work of Paul Otlet :
L’homme qui voulait classer le monde – Françoise Levie – Les Impressions Nouvelles www.lesimpressionsnouvelles.com
The MUNDANEUM in MONS (Belgium) is showing all the “rest” of this fabulous collection

Rodrigo Ronda — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:48 GMT

Very good article. I said that, if all people who make information architecture jobs seek intro Information Science deep, we going find many answers. Thanks Alex.

J Fischer — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:48 GMT

more info & links in this article:

Union of International Associations—Virtual Organization:
Paul Otlet’s 100-year Hypertext Conundrum ?

http://laetusinpraesens.org/docs/otlethyp.php

barnaby — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:48 GMT

fascinating, it also makes sense when viewed from the lullius-bruno-fludd axis of Renaissance memory systems which were primitive databases based on juxtaposing concentric wheels.

here’s some info:

http://www.silcom.com/~dlp/yates.html

Alex Wright — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:01:28 GMT

For further reading, I would recommend perusing Michael Buckland’s list of Otlet resources at http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~buckland/otletbib.html).

Also, Françoise Levie’s documentary “The Man Who Wanted to Classify the World” provides an excellent general introduction to Otlet (see the film clip in the ””Traité” section of the article – you can order a VHS version of the film from info@sofidoc.be).

Mike Steckel — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:01:23 GMT

I first heard of Otlet from a book ASIST published several years ago on Information Science history. It has several articles on him.

Info is here:

http://www.asis.org/Publications/bookstore/historical_stu…

Jacob Patton — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:31:57 GMT

What a fascinating article! How can I find out more about Paul Otlet? (Amazon only lists one book—International Organization and Dissemination of Knowledge: Selected Essays of Paul Otlet—and it’s out of print.)

Mike Steckel — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:47 GMT

Thanks Alex! This is one of those articles I have always hoped someone would write. A fascinating man who deserves to be better remembered.

Alex — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:23 GMT

Author’s Response:

First, thanks to everyone who’s commented on the article.

I’ve refrained from posting comments here so far, since I’ve been curious to see how readers’ collective judgment would evolve without me defending the piece. But since I’ve now been accused of making factual errors, I feel obligated to respond.

My opening gambit about prokaryotes certainly wasn’t meant to over-simplify things, or to suggest that prokaryotes had no ability to transfer cellular data. But I stand by my assertion that only eukaryotes have gone on to develop the capacity for social learning.

As for trilobites, I confess I don’t quite understand the comment about “peer mates”; but my assertion that trilobites engaged in imitative behavior is correct. I would invite anyone to explore the growing literature of paleopsychology and memetics research, where trilobites are almost always cited as the prime exemplar of group learning during the Cambrian era.

Finally, I certainly wouldn’t argue with several readers who have suggested that some of the themes in this article deserve deeper exploration. I’m working on writing a longer piece at the moment; and the feedback to date – both positive and negative – has been quite instructive. So, thank you.

Anna — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:23 GMT

There are some really big big mistakes in this text. First, a “poor” procaryote is not “simple” at all. Okay, it seems to be an easy to understand organism because it is single cell. What can be simpler than a single cell? Well, even single cells contain complex biochemical chain reactions which are not easy at all. They contain complex molecules, too. They contain RNA. They even share information (so-called horizontal transfer of genes). As we know today, they are able to “read” human genes (biotechnology uses this as a basis). They react on changing environment conditions. Every form of life can do this!! This is not typical for “higher” multicellular organisms. There more such mistakes … well, trilobites don’t have “peer mates” or something. They do not imitate each others. Have you ever watched a trilobite? They are still living on the US-cost. All in all, the article seemed to be a nice and well-researched but in my opinion it is something to have some fun on rainy sunday afternoons.

Jason — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:23 GMT

A nice but very selective overview of somewhat controversial topics which take whole books to cover. It’s fun as mental bubblegum, but doesn’t really recognize the reality of our capitalist system.

Mark Maloney — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:51:23 GMT

For decentralized and fragmented organizations, such as colleges and universities), this kind of approach is often the only type that will embrace, or at least describe, the organization.

In these orgs, content experts are at the bottom of the traditional communications hierarchy (i.e. faculty, staff, students) and rarely are given a platform to communicate externally. However, those individuals and the collaborations between them are what gives life to the institution. They “are” the institution…not the facilities and the like.

Clearly, strategic goals such as admission and development need to be addressed from an institutional level…but the remaining content should be evolved rather than determined. As scary as it sounds to let a site “build itself”, institutional goals will met more naturally and the unique characteristics of the institution will emerge. There are no assumptions.

The communications people rarely are able to keep track of the wealth of information that is running through the institution at all time…and it is this life blood which defines any institution.

It’s a tricky proposition…but if you can allow the publishing of content to occur at the grassroots level so to speak, but still ensure usability…then you can actually give a real voice to an organization…rather than the prepackaged kind that you see on 99.9% of educational communications.

The keys, in my opinion, are technical transparency of the internal content management tools and careful development of the navigational schemes…oh yeah and the ability and courage to think more like a scientist and less like a librarian.