Posted by shirley
on February 27, 2009
Descartes, R. (1644) Principia Philosophiae
On February 18th, I attended the workshop ‘Abstract Images in Art and Science’ at Utrecht University, organized by dr. Ann-Sophie Lehmann, prof. dr. Paul Ziche, and Pim Verlaek as a cooperation between the Descartes Centre and the Visualisations Group of the Centre for Humanities. The Visualisations Group explores interdisciplinary approaches to the study of images and visual culture, and aims to connect researchers whose work is related to visual culture and the intersections between art and science.
The main goal of the workshop was to create dialogue between different scientific cultures that deal with the issue of abstraction. To this end the scientific background of the contributors ranged widely, from art history to the history of science, from computer science to logics, and from philosophy to media studies. Throughout the workshop, it would become clear that each scientific field not only came with a specific take on abstraction, but with a specific approach to bringing the point across. Dialogue in this sense was certainly facilitated; translation of concepts was often needed and added to a more concrete outcome for an interdisciplinary audience of students and professors.
The main problems that are encountered when studying the history of scientific images were addressed in the first lecture by prof. dr. Christoph Lüthy (dept. of philosophy, Radboud University Nijmegen). In the presentation “Words, Lines, Diagrams, Images: Towards a History of Scientific Imagery” he states that today’s science is very pictorial, judging by the new kinds of imagery found in contemporary science glossies. But what is the status of these images? Following the reasoning of art historian Martin Kemp, Lüthy argues that we are the heirs of renaissance revolution, both in our notion of science and our assets of visual tools. Historically, there are no criteria to distinguish images from non-images, and as similar imagery moves across centuries it is impossible to produce a stable taxonomy. The converse is true as well; comparable objects or processes are being expressed by extremely dissimilar visual means. Lüthy concludes that the meaning of a given image can only be grasped in the context of the epistemological, metaphysical and social assumptions within which it is embedded.
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Posted by shirley
on November 15, 2008
part 1
Session 2: Search Engines and Power
Theo Röhle – Dissecting the Gatekeepers
Theo Röhle is a PhD candidate in media culture at Hamburg University. His dissertation seeks to establish Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) and Foucauldian concepts of power within search engine research.
Where does the power of a search engine exist? One position of power is established in everyday discourse through images of anxiety and fear. Giving power a face however, tends to obscure the complex relations underlying it. As ANT suggests, there is no fixed source of power, just a temporary stabilization of a network.
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Posted by shirley
on November 15, 2008
Last Saturday, November 8, I had the pleasure of attending the well organized World-Information Institute conference Deep Search: The Digital Future of Finding Out in Vienna, Austria. With Deep Search, conference editors Konrad Becker and Felix Stalder set out to address the social and cultural dimension as well as the information politics and societal implications of search. An impressive line-up of eight speakers, divided over the sessions ‘Search Engines and Civil Liberties’, ‘Search Engines and Power’ and ‘Making Things Visible’, promised to make it an information-dense and interesting day.
As this will be a rather full report, I will post it in two parts. Be sure to keep an eye on the conference website, as the organizers promise to make a full video archive of the conference speeches available soon.
Keynotes
Paul Duguid - The World According to Grep: Both Sides of the Search Revolution
After a timely start and a word of welcome, Konrad Becker introduced the first speaker of the event: Paul Duguid, former consultant at Xerox PARC (1989-2001) and author of The Social Life of Information (Harvard Business School Press, 2000). Currently, Duguid teaches History of Information and Quality of Information at the University of California in Berkeley.
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Posted by shirley
on September 24, 2008
Search Engine Society is the name of Alex Halavais‘ forthcoming book, due to be published by Polity in October 2008, as part of the Digital Media and Society series. Halavais is assistant professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University (USA), a ’social architect’, and blogs about politics, culture, teaching and research at a thaumaturgical compendium. With his book, Halavais aims to unpack the black box of the search engine, in order to counter a host of assumptions underlying both technological developments and the way we use search engines to make sense of the networked world.
Approaching search from a user perspective, Halavais notes that the diversity of searching skills represents yet another level of the digital divide as even the most basic search is a complicated action. Where students tend to ‘shop’ sites such as Wikipedia or IMDB before turning to the search engine, experienced users engage in a more ‘focused browsing’; carefully circling concepts while extracting, recording and recombining data until results are met. Reaching those parts of the web that aren’t easily indexed however, requires yet alternative strategies.
Search based on re-finding information have become a recent interest to researchers. Making use of the remembering web, for instance through bookmarking sites such as delicious, re-finding may become a profitable search strategy. Much the same goes for real-time search, the process of re-using those searches that have proved to work in the past. In this line of ‘query-free search’, an engine may provide ways to find conceptual similarities to previously found pages or documents. As users gain experience, searching tends to become more complex. Most general-purpose search engines seem ill equipped to meet this diversity of needs, often building on traditional methods. Another pressing problem in determining a search strategy is the engine’s constant updating of ranking algorithms, causing a state of flux that is all but transparent.
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