Seeing Variations of Information

HIS 105 Presentation:

http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=d574q6m_145v8cbx694

"To me, when I relate to a piece of fiction, you know, or a novel or something, it isn't that it makes me step outside myself, although sometimes there are those kinds of books. But I mean, the things that I really relate to is when I read something that has articulated something that I felt but haven't been able to articulate."

Charlie Kaufman, 10/23/08, Fresh Air

Information has never been stable. That may be a truism, but it bears pondering. It could serve as a corrective to the belief that the speedup in technological change has catapulted us into a new age, in which information has spun completely out of control. I would argue that the new information technology should force us to rethink the notion of information itself. It should not be understood as if it took the form of hard facts or nuggets of reality ready to be quarried out of newspapers, archives, and libraries, but rather as messages that are constantly being reshaped in the process of transmission. Instead of firmly fixed documents, we must deal with multiple, mutable texts. By studying them skeptically on our computer screens, we can learn how to read our daily newspaper more effectively—and even how to appreciate old books.

from The New York Reivew of Books, Volume 55, Number 10 · June 12, 2008

The Library in the New Age

By Robert Darnton

Information Cycle Video from Penn State: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/instruction/infocycle/infocycle.html

Knowledge is essentially a reductionist endevour. Yet, info sources are increasing in variability--increasingly diverse types of sources

Continuum--> Every information source is unique on one end, information sources fit into peer-review and scholarly on the other

Another Info Cycle: Data, to information, to knowledge, to wisdom.

Values, beliefs, way we see the world determines what we emphasize, what we believe, what we trust.

Headlines Following Speech by John McCain on May 27, 2008 (makes interpretation more apparent)

McCain Calls for New Arms Treaty With Russia

Washington Post, United States

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/05/27/by_glenn_kessler_denversen_joh.html?hpid=topnews&hpid=topnews

• McCain offers plan to reduce nuclear weapons

• McCain's Nonproliferation Policy -- It's a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

Huffington Post, NY

• McCain Urges Change to Nuclear Weapon Strategy

• War protesters interrupt McCain's Denver speech

The Coloradoan, CO

http://www.coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080527/UPDATES01/80527012

• McCain edges away from Bush but seeks his help

• McCain's Disjointed Russia Policy

DemocracyArsenal.org, NY

http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2008/05/mccains-disjoin.html