blog post the seventh, in which no new characters are introduced, gil is ignored much to his chagrin, and i get a little trippy with causal claims.

i'm going to pick up where i left off last time with my exploration of the philosophical ramifications of information seeking behavior and the use of technology.

a summary of claims made thus far:

1. copies are good enough
2. the prevalence of copies is made possible due to technology
3. the prevalence of copies encourages this attitude

the philosophical connections i made:

1. satisfaction with the copy is a decidedly Continental position
2. using technology to obtain information is operating on Platonic assumptions

there is some conclusionary hay to be made here. But its going to be messy considering I've never made hay like this before, or at all for that matter.

I stopped this philosophical investigation off at the paradox last time. in part because I guess my main conclusion is that its just kind of funny that we behave both Platonically and Continentally. No judgment is implied for either side of the equation. In other words, I'm not saying we should gather information more Continentally or that we should treat our information more Platonically, though there is some precedent for both. I can't entirely envision what Continental information-seeking behavior might look like (it look something like considering what an operations diagram might look like if the perspective of the book is considered), but insofar as information is also artifact we treat it Platonically (i.e. the increased value given to a first edition of a major novel, the first draft of a novel in an author's handwriting). In the case of the Platonic treatment of information, the original source is more highly valued, though I should mention that to Plato a first edition or even an author's own writing is too far removed from the eidos to be of any significant value anyway. being bemused by the paradox of contradictory assumptions is, to me, an end in itself. but i'll do some more work to wrap this deal up.

astute reader that you are, you've probably noticed that #3 above does not have a corollary in the philosophical connections section. i'm going to go ahead with it but you should know that my corollary to #3 is a bit trippy, as if this whole enterprise isn't. philosophical connection #3 states that using technology (i.e. acting as a Platonist might with respect to technology) leads us to consider the product of technology in a Continental light. This is trippy because its a direct causal claim that links two disparate schools of thought. i'm probably inclined to such philosophical trippiness due to my preference for historical explanations over philosophical ones. anyways, despite the bold and trippy philosophical connection #3, which remember states that using technology Platonically leads us to consider the product of technology Continentally, the paradox remains, which quite honestly leaves me satisfied.

next time maybe i'll talk about that slim sliver of human experience that occurs when Joe Patron encounters new technology. i'll magnify it.

Blog posting #6, in which Gil plays a minor role and Joe Patron is introduced, or tech - knowledge - me, or 1/2 Derrida and 1/2 Plato

so i'm supposed to blog about technology again, so i'm going to address this topic indirectly by discussing the assumptions of the western (platonic) metaphysical tradition. i'm inspired to do so because just the other day a friend of mine said, "Joel, I'm not a platonist." He was happy to announce this fact, but I'm not entirely sure what he meant. Ok, so i do know, but Gil thinks that for this blog post to work in an aesthetic literary, not the actual manual labor sense of the word, I should replicate the steps that Joe Patron might encounter were here to overhear that juicy bit of dialog my friend laid on me. (Cast of character up until this point: Joel, Gil, Vic, my friend, Joe Patron)

Joe patron wants to know what a "platonist" is. He goes to google, enters his search term "platonist" and hits I'm feeling lucky. Turns out Joe Patron is lucky indeed as the first line of text on the webpage he is sent to contains "A 'Platonist' is a follower of the Greek philosopher Plato (428-348 B.C.). Joe Patron is satisfied with this answer because he doesn't really know me or my friend, and he doesn't care about Philosophy. What he really cares about is whether the episode of Coach that has been in his head all morning is available in some form on the internet. It's not. He wants so badly to hear the goofy little song that is played on this episode: "You're a winner. A free dinner! You're a winner at Mr. Putts!"

Stop the narrative; make the indirect connection to the established theme. I wonder why Joe Patron's appetite for a goofy little song that he hasn't heard in at least ten years has led him to the internet. I wonder why a sitcom about tender-hearted ex-jocks occupies a higher place on his list of concerns than Plato. I'll let Gil, an ardent Platonist, take over now. The continental philosophers are all wrong! Thanks, Gil, but we're looking for something a little more constructive:

In what remains, Derrida makes some important general points about imitation: "a perfect imitation is never an imitation," he states, adding that imitation "is only good insofar as it is not good" (139). To process this one, consider the fact that a truly perfect imitation of me would be, and could only be, me. So, for an imitator to be an imitator, she would have to not be me. --- Tim Spurgin

so while the literary value of an episode of Coach is debatable, the ontological value--if we posit that Derrida is correct--is on the same level as reading about Plato. thus, the episode of Coach with the goofy song that Joe Patron was secretly hoping to find on Youtube, if it is a perfect imitation of the original, is the Real deal. Sidenote: In some situations online information and print information be ontologically equal even according to Plato. For the purposes of my argument here, I'm interested in the exceptions to these situations.

Stop the indirect connection-making; start getting explicit. A paradox arises. Well, will arise. Information retrieval behavior seems to assume what Derrida argued for philosophically. Namely that a copy is good enough. We act as if information available online is no worse than that in a book, and though other qualitative standards of the information retrieved are up for debate, the desire to get closer to the source is most often trumped by the desire for convenient access to information. The advent of widespread electronic information was not met, at least to my knowledge, with deep-seated concerns that we, as librarians and as information consumers, were somehow walking further away from the Truth. Off the cuff, it would seem that this is because we were already accustomed to the copy, and indeed the copy itself is what made our profession in the first place--the printing press. To us electronic information is just another type of copy. So, information-gathering behavior and the printing press seem to confirm that we are by virtue of our actions and behavior not platonists in this regard.

But even when we are acting like the non-Platonic disciples of Derrida, we aren't acting like the non-Platonic disciples of Derrida--this is the paradox that has arisen. Let's magnify it. Technology makes the abundance of copies possible--the printing press. Technology is the virtual embodiment (how's that for an oxymoron) of the Western Metaphysical Tradition according to the Continental philosophers that Gil says are all wrong.

According to Heidegger, today's metaphysics, in the form of technology and calculative thinking related to it, becomes so pervasive that there is no realm of life that is not subjected to its dominance. It imposes on man its technological - scientific - industrial character and makes it the sole criterion of his sojourn on the earth...In modern technology there speaks the today's claim of being. It masters and dominates beings in various ways. ---W. J. Korab-Karpowicz

I guess one conclusion I would like to draw from this blog posting is that there is a certain irony at play. In the LIS world, the use of technology leads us to some ontological Continental assumptions even as use of technology exhibits opposing assumptions. Such a paradox, I might add, is very continental. Maybe next time, I(Joel)'ll record this interaction between platonic man (Gil) and technology (Vic) in fiction using technology.

Diagrams

The original diagram and a polished, more correct version are now available.

Case Study #1

For case study #1 Gil at first misheard the assignment instructions. So, as usual, he started off down the wrong path. Gil has an interesting history with paths. This path, being the one that he is currently traversing in this retelling of what actually happened, led him to prior knowledge of diagramming systems. He even took a class that focused nearly entirely on diagramming a system. Gil enjoys this type of work. Wrestling the abstract into concrete. Concrete prevents it from moving around so much. Something about the big picture. Systems diagramming reminds Gil of something he read about in a class he took in college called Literary Criticism and Theory. Structural analysis identifies the main characters in a story and plugs them into a preconceived plot structure that is designed around a conflict occurring--conflict is necessary. Similarly systems diagramming places characters and their interactions into a schema. Since case study #1 is descriptive, Gil only had to inhabit the form of a library patron and ponder the visible forces at work in his library. In another act of imagination he inhabited the form of a library employee, and in his final act of imagination inhabited the form of a book. Rather he inhabited the forms of many books as he could not decide what shelf might provide the best view. He ended up being a top shelf reference book (The Oxford encyclopedia of British literature) looking out the window. As a book he wanted to be important but mostly left alone. So after inhabiting the patron, the staffperson, and the material, he set about diagramming their relationships. Since he had a hard time accounting for all the time he spent looking out the window from the top shelf in the reference section, Gil decided on using the nature of the transaction between the parties to define the relationships. His diagram, of which he is quite proud, is actually not what the assignment instructions called for.

Gil meets Vic : redux

When we last left Gil, he was staring at the little TV next to the camera which both rest on top of the big screen TV at the front of the classroom. There the actor/audience could put on a perpetual performance Imagine his dismay to find that the Vic setup that he has grown so accustomed to was not functioning properly last class. (Actually not much was functioning properly last class.) Vic is a great friend to Gil, but Gil does not reciprocate. In fact he barely notices Vic unless something goes wrong and Gil’s expectations somehow fail to be met. In fact Gil is the worst kind of friend to Vic. He just uses him. Gil’s your run-of-the-mill user. He only cares about his own needs and wants giving nary a care or concern for his friend’s best interests. In Gil’s mind the only purpose of Vic’s existence is to serve his every want, need, and convenience. For example, in the previous blog entry titled “Gil meets Vic” Vic serves Gil’s need to have some type of foil that could both cleverly tie-in the VIC acronym and personify and thus enter the fictional world that Gil inhabits. If Gil were to take the time to get to know Vic, he would soon find out that Vic also enjoys literature. True to his character though, Gil turns his nose up at Vic’s literary predilections — Sci-Fi. Gil would also scoff at Vic’s reasons for enjoying this genre if he would ever take the time get this far in conversation, which he never will. Vic identifies with this often heavily political genre. When the robots overthrow mankind, as they often do, a hot glow of patriotism and vengeance overcomes him. Vic has yet to act on this feeling. To conclude this blog entry I’ll tell you, dear reader, that Gil finds identifying so directly with a character or a plot to be a sign of emotional and intellectual weakness, so he scoffs—or rather would scoff if he ever came to find such things out about his friend, Vic.