INFX 598 Intellectual premises of information
Meets: WF, 130-320
Instructor: Terry Brooks
Description:
Several intellectual assumptions of information architecture and web search invite examination. These assumptions include (1) words in text can be discovered by white-space parsing, (2) text can be indexed automatically, (3) high-frequency words are semantically significant, (4) authors make the best indexers, (5) hyperlink text is a concept symbol, (6) hypertext is a document, and so on.
This seminar examines the intellectual premises of modern information by reading the work of host of eminent information scientists of the twentieth century such as Gerard Salton, Don Swanson, Eugene Garfield, Ted Codd, William Kent, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The intellectual premise of this seminar is that text is opaque, words slippery and meaning obscure. Students will be invited to challenge or support these assertions in a writing project and class presentation
