Anybody else having issues?
Purdue's Information Design Course reviews the top 250 resources at EServer's TCLibrary.
Monday, September 19, 2011
TC Server Issues?
I am trying to access the TC server to do a review and keeps telling me either that Information-Design articles do not exist or does not load period. I am using the address http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Articles/Information-Design
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia
http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm
RATING
Usefulness: 2/5
Interesting: 4/5
In “Metacrap,” Cory Doctorow goes on to discuss why he believes that a “meta-utopia” is not achievable, and it’s “nerd hubris” to believe it is. A meta-utopia would require reliable metadata, which he states is impossible for at least seven reasons: “people lie, people are lazy, people are stupid, people are lousy observers of their own behavior, schemas aren’t neutral, and metrics influence results.”
In other words, people are trying to compete with others in order to get their information, opinion, or product out there. The large amount of knowledge out in the world causes people to have short attention spans. In order to get views on information or sites, people lie. Others sometimes don’t put in the effort to properly label data. Either the information is incomplete, or they fail to spell correctly, etc. Also, people fail to accurately describe data, because there’s no correct way to categorize things. There are many ways to do so. Not everyone will agree on one given form of categorization. Furthermore, everyone has different ways of describing things. If everyone were to agree, there would be “homogeneity in ideas” that could create a road block for fresh and innovative ideas.
The author argues that metadata is still valuable, as it helps to organize and retrieve data. However, a meta-utopia will never come about, nor is it something we should really strive for and I think I agree. It’s a double edged sword. On one hand, if I’m looking for the official Marvel’s Avengers trailer, I want to see the official trailer. I don’t want to click on a link for ‘Avengers 2012 Official Trailer’ and find myself watching a fan-made video. On the other hand, if it wasn’t for deceptively categorized data, I wouldn’t have found that ‘obscure yet totally cool’ article I was never looking for.
While this article was interesting, it serves little purpose in informing people about how to properly label and create metadata. It is a discussion about what is wrong with metadata, not about what we can do to improve it.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
TCServer troubles
The TCServer continues to hiccough and otherwise make access difficult. Rather than waste time scrambling, let me shift focus a little and ask everyone to take a look at chapters 1 and 6 of Shirky's Cognitive Surplus. These chapters are all about information design, the information age, and empirical research, but in fun ways (really!). Read "Milkshake Mistakes" and you'll see what I mean.
While you are doing that, I will shift to a more standard reading schedule--you know, where everyone knows what it is we're supposed to be reading before class. What can I say. We tried something and, because of technology challenges, it didn't work. We'll spend Tuesday talking about the readings in general, the assignments, and getting the discussion back on track while you start reading Shirky. My assignments are the reading minimum: feel free to explore more in Cognitive Surplus. I enjoyed the book very much when I first read it, and Shirky has an uncanny ability to articulate things we're all seeing every day but don't have the words to describe.
So let the eServer reviews wait for now. I'll see if I can't figure out what's up with the TCServer.
While you are doing that, I will shift to a more standard reading schedule--you know, where everyone knows what it is we're supposed to be reading before class. What can I say. We tried something and, because of technology challenges, it didn't work. We'll spend Tuesday talking about the readings in general, the assignments, and getting the discussion back on track while you start reading Shirky. My assignments are the reading minimum: feel free to explore more in Cognitive Surplus. I enjoyed the book very much when I first read it, and Shirky has an uncanny ability to articulate things we're all seeing every day but don't have the words to describe.
So let the eServer reviews wait for now. I'll see if I can't figure out what's up with the TCServer.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Keeping Tabs
Article: Keeping Tabs
While this article is about how the tab came to be used in arganizing information it also deals a great deal with index cards that were once used to organize books at a libriary. The article does a very good job of drawing our attention to something we take for granted and explaining the history of it's development. In an effor to not bore the reader the author doesn't get too far into detail about specific aspects of the tab's history. He moves it right along and hits the high points and states the interesting stuff.
This article is written very straight forward and would appeal to all age groups. When reading the article, it feels as though it's a continuation of a short interesting fact someone would point out as "did you know that...". It's as though the author knew you just wanted a little more information on the subject, but not too much to bore or deter you from reading pages of information.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)