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Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data
A critical history of the modern tradition of documentation, tracing the representation of individuals and groups in the form of documents, information, and data.

In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data.

Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, “the father of European documentation” (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts into users and information; social media's use of algorithms, further subsuming persons and texts; attempts to build android robots—to embody human agency within an information system that resembles a human being; and social “big data” as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance. Finally, Day considers the status of critique and judgment at a time when people and their rights of judgment are increasingly mediated, displaced, and replaced by modern documentary techniques.

"1119449048"
Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data
A critical history of the modern tradition of documentation, tracing the representation of individuals and groups in the form of documents, information, and data.

In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data.

Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, “the father of European documentation” (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts into users and information; social media's use of algorithms, further subsuming persons and texts; attempts to build android robots—to embody human agency within an information system that resembles a human being; and social “big data” as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance. Finally, Day considers the status of critique and judgment at a time when people and their rights of judgment are increasingly mediated, displaced, and replaced by modern documentary techniques.

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Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data

Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data

by Ronald E. Day
Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data
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Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data

Indexing It All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data

by Ronald E. Day

Overview

A critical history of the modern tradition of documentation, tracing the representation of individuals and groups in the form of documents, information, and data.

In this book, Ronald Day offers a critical history of the modern tradition of documentation. Focusing on the documentary index (understood as a mode of social positioning), and drawing on the work of the French documentalist Suzanne Briet, Day explores the understanding and uses of indexicality. He examines the transition as indexes went from being explicit professional structures that mediated users and documents to being implicit infrastructural devices used in everyday information and communication acts. Doing so, he also traces three epistemic eras in the representation of individuals and groups, first in the forms of documents, then information, then data.

Day investigates five cases from the modern tradition of documentation. He considers the socio-technical instrumentalism of Paul Otlet, “the father of European documentation” (contrasting it to the hermeneutic perspective of Martin Heidegger); the shift from documentation to information science and the accompanying transformation of persons and texts into users and information; social media's use of algorithms, further subsuming persons and texts; attempts to build android robots—to embody human agency within an information system that resembles a human being; and social “big data” as a technique of neoliberal governance that employs indexing and analytics for purposes of surveillance. Finally, Day considers the status of critique and judgment at a time when people and their rights of judgment are increasingly mediated, displaced, and replaced by modern documentary techniques.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780262322782
Publisher: MIT Press
Publication date: 09/26/2014
Series: History and Foundations of Information Science
Sold by: Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format: eBook
Pages: 184
File size: 292 KB
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Ronald E. Day is Professor in the Department of Information and Library Science in the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University at Bloomington. He is the author of The Modern Invention of Information and Indexing it All (MIT Press).

What People are Saying About This

Joseph T. Tennis

Indexing It All recasts our understanding of the information age. Day lays bare the ways in which documentation work and algorithms, by indexing it all, increasingly reify our understanding of the written word and our lived experience. His is a necessary and eloquent critique.

Paul Dourish

What is information, what is its power, and what are the sources of that power? Tracing the historical emergence of what he dubs the 'modern documentary tradition,' Ronald Day opens up an examination of the ways that information comes to be seen as standing for or even substituting for a world of human relations. In domains as disparate as android robotics and data mining, this powerful and thought-provoking analysis raises questions of tremendous significance both for scholars and society at large.

Endorsement

Indexing It All recasts our understanding of the information age. Day lays bare the ways in which documentation work and algorithms, by indexing it all, increasingly reify our understanding of the written word and our lived experience. His is a necessary and eloquent critique.

—Joseph T. Tennis, Associate Professor, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle

From the Publisher

What is information, what is its power, and what are the sources of that power? Tracing the historical emergence of what he dubs the 'modern documentary tradition,' Ronald Day opens up an examination of the ways that information comes to be seen as standing for or even substituting for a world of human relations. In domains as disparate as android robotics and data mining, this powerful and thought-provoking analysis raises questions of tremendous significance both for scholars and society at large.

—Paul Dourish, Professor of Informatics, University of California, Irvine; author of Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing

Tracing the historical transformation of documentation to information, and information to data, Ronald Day reveals how the cultural relationship between people and documents has been overtaken by a data-driven view of people as documents. Indexing It All is an incisive challenge to information science from one of the field's best thinkers.

—Leah A. Lievrouw, Professor of Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles

Indexing It All recasts our understanding of the information age. Day lays bare the ways in which documentation work and algorithms, by indexing it all, increasingly reify our understanding of the written word and our lived experience. His is a necessary and eloquent critique.

—Joseph T. Tennis, Associate Professor, Information School, University of Washington, Seattle

Leah A. Lievrouw

Tracing the historical transformation of documentation to information, and information to data, Ronald Day reveals how the cultural relationship between people and documents has been overtaken by a data-driven view of people as documents. Indexing It All is an incisive challenge to information science from one of the field's best thinkers.

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