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Study Guide to Information Ages, Hobart
& Schiffman (1998)
Some preliminary thoughts
What follows are some general comments about the first of this semester's
textbooks:
Hobart, Michael E., & Schiffman, Zachary S. (1998). Information
ages: Literacy, numeracy, and the computer revolution. Baltimore,
MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
You will also see three, short (c. three-page), informal study guides
to the book as well. Because the readings are distributed over three weeks
in the Fall 2000 semester, the study guides will follow that division
as well, addressing the three major sections of the book:
| September 27 |
Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 3 (pp. 1-84); these
first three chapters comprise Part I of the book, The Classical Age
of Literacy |
| October 4 |
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (pp. 87-172); these chapters are
Part II: The Modern Age of Numeracy |
| October 11 |
Chapters 7, 8, 9, and the Conclusion (pp. 175-268);
the last three chapters make up Part III: The Contemporary Age of
Computers. |
Discussions of sections of the Bibliographical Essay (pp. 279-294) are
included under the sections of the appropriate parts of the text. This
bibliographic essay is very useful, for the reading of the book and for
your professional reading more generally.
On a general note, there are many caveats that the engaged reader should
consider about the authors' argument. Four of the most important are:
- The authors are historians, writing what is essentially an intellectual
and cultural history. The major strengths of their approach is their
familiarity with major historical sources and their training in historiography.
At the same time, the authors' identity as historians leads them to
the dubious assumption that the historical method is "above the fray."
That is, despite their protestations to the contrary and their admirable
care with language, they often imply that historians can be more removed
from the cultural artifacts they describe than might be defensible.
Further, there is a general undercurrent of what we can call a Whiggish
approach to history - that is, that history is teleological (has a goal),
recites a narrative of "progress' however defined, and that history
takes us ever upward. Their use of the term "ages" to identify their
main focus carries some of this assumption. Another major weakness of
the historical approach is that they seem less than sensitive to the
cultural politics and complexity of many of the concepts they discuss.
More specifics on this point appear below in the discussion of particular
parts of the book. With all this said, however, the book is an unusually
good one, and Hobart & Schiffman are to be commended for the many and
manifold strengths of the book
- Hobart & Schiffman take care, especially at the conclusion of their
work, to remind the reader that there is no assumption that there is
a moral progression in the three "ages" they describe. On a related
note, they remind us that all three of the information modes (literacy,
numeracy, and computing) co-exist currently and will continue to do
so.
- As will be illustrated below, their use of some important and loaded
terms is often too loose and less than self-conscious. Because of that,
they often fail to alert their readers to the contention inherent in
many of their assertions, especially some of particular interest to
Information Studies. The most pernicious [such a strong word!] of these
usages is the omnipresent content/conduit distinction. This is a seriously
complex epistemological problem that they simply elide and ignore.
- They adopt the facts - data - information - knowledge - wisdom hierarchy.
As Ron indicated in our first class, this hierarchy is very widely accepted
in our field. It is intimately linked to and (largely) dependent on
Shannon's information theory and the mathematical theory of
communication. These theories are often misapplied to other, non-telephonic
contexts. This point merits some thought.
Remember - be an engaged, critical reader, neither a gullible nor a dismissive
one. While such a stance is difficult to develop and maintain, it is rewarding
and one of the primary elements of professional behavior.
Introduction and Part I: The Classical Age of Literacy; Chapters 1,
2, and 3 (pp. 1-84)
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Introduction: "Information, Present and Past" |
| p. 3 |
Hobart & Schiffman say that "Information has become
the dominant metaphor of our age." - if you are particularly interested
in this point and want to follow it up in a serious way, see Mark
Poster's The Mode of Information as well as Schement & Curtis'
Tendencies and Tensions in the Information Age.
For a critical approach, see Slack & Fejes (Eds.), The Ideology of
the Information Age. Also recall the material earlier in the semester
about Science and Technology Studies (STS)
and the so-called Information Age
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Chapter 1: "Orality and the Problem of Memory" |
| 4ff |
their differentiation between information technologies
and communication technologies is highly contentious, especially among
communication, LIS, and other scholars.
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| 13, 20 |
here and throughout the chapter, they rather dismissively
describe poets and our classical, cultural forebears as caught in
the moment and unable to link words to more than the familiar "concrete
things and situations." Hobart & Schiffman also say that "the members
of the [classical epic's] audience identified uncritically with the
action in scene after scene." This dismissal is wrong-headed for at
least two reasons: (1) it ignores the value of community and the value
of narratives and other rhetorical devices for creating and maintaining
communities and (2) it adheres to the insulting "primitive savage"
stereotype for persons from other times and other places. Hobart &
Schiffman do not try to do these things deliberately and would deny
that they do them by implication - but their lack of training in social
sciences that study such questions puts them at a serious disadvantage.
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| 21 |
what they celebrate as the Platonic philosophy's use
of alphabetic literacy to separate knower and known is problematic.
For many post-positivist commentators, we have spent the past three
millennia trying to repair such a rift, especially after the advent
of Cartesianism/Kantianism and its radical subject/object dichotomy.
This is a major point and compromises many of the philosophical and
social assumptions throughout their work.
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| 23 |
here and passim, the content/conduit distinction
is evoked. Please remember that this is only one way to identify how
information technologies work; the mutual construction of meaning
by members of a community, through narratives and metaphors, is a
fundamentally different way of thinking about information technologies.
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| 26-27 |
here they're better on the constitutive nature of narrative
and its role in identity and in groups - unfortunately, they use this
discussion as illustration of a "weakness" in pre-literate culture
that supposedly over-emphasized reinterpretation, while literacy supposedly
freed us to "remove" ourselves from daily existence and be more "objective"
in constructing some form of stable "mental objects" (p. 30). And
just how can something be both "mental" and an "object"
;~)?
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their warning that we need to try to understand pre-literate
culture from a pre-literate point of view is apposite - and is a key
to their work as a whole.
Bibliographical Essay (BE; pp. 279-281)
See especially the work of Walter Ong and others on the costs as well
as the benefits of literacy.
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Chapter 2: "Early Literacy and List Making" |
| 32 |
One of the strongest parts of the book is their insistence
that we need to reflect on what appears to be both simple and clear,
especially since "literacy assumes itself" (p. 33). This study guide
tries to walk a fine line between appreciating their warning while
still asserting that their argument underestimates (1) the intellectual
gifts and achievements of our pre-literate ancestors and (2) how elements
of supposedly pre-literate culture are vital to our existence as individuals
and as members of groups, e.g., rituals and formulas of speech, communal
meaning-making, and legitimation and sensemaking through narrative.
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| 33 |
One of the most important questions they ask in the
book is "at what point does drawing become writing?" Their response,
while contentious, is well-made and worth very close attention.
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| 34 |
Their point here about the power of abstraction is quite
good, although it is built upon a mistaken assumption that pre-literates
were largely too immersed in the moment to be reflective.
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| 43 |
Their point that writing "evolved from pure information
into a technique of information storage before it became a full-blown
technology of communication" is certainly contestable. It is so, primarily,
because it depends upon their simplifying and (I think) mistaken assumptions
that orality is not reflective, that information is not related to
the construction of meaning, and that communication is simply information
transfer. Further, the metaphor of information storage, and
remember that it is only a metaphor, is less than satisfying.
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| 55 |
their description of "kingship" in the Sumerian King
List as not a class or concept in the Hellenic sense may or may not
be true - what is true is that the description certainly fits the
modern social science and philosophical sense of what a concept is.
BE (pp. 281-282)
They mention the work of Denise Schmandt-Besserat. She's at UT-Austin,
and her work is increasingly recognized as essential in considering
the development of writing.
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Chapter 3: "Alphabetic Literacy and the
Science of Classification" |
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Throughout this chapter, they're on firmer ground than
in other parts of the book, in asserting the abstracting power of
the alphabet and its representational character [yes, a pun!]
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| 69 |
the blanket statement that "[n]arrative is the enemy
of classification" is more than a bit simplistic - classification
is often one of the foundations of narrative, and both classification
and narrative are important catalysts for the creation and maintenance
of epistemic and other communities.
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| 74 |
while their discussion of Plato is generally good, they
say that "[b]y divorcing words from things, alphabetic literacy has
raised questions about the appropriateness of one's terms." Again,
this assertion, although qualified and contextualized, tends to underestimate
the rhetorical resources of the pre-literate, especially their sensitivity
to meanings, conundra, and classes. Further, it overestimates the
distance that literacy puts "between" words and "the real."
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| 77 |
here and throughout this chapter in particular, Hobart
& Schiffman justifiably remind us of the assumptions inherent in (Greek
alphabet-based) literacy. At the same time, however, they too often
fail to reflect critically on the Greek philosophers' stances on the
supposed "reality"/language distinction and other social concerns.
The naïve empiricism that runs through much, but not all of
the book, rests on the rather simple and unproblematic (according
to them) acceptance of the concept of "simple" sense perception. This
point is very contentious - many commentators question the idea that
the world is directly accessible to us, unmediated by our understandings
and theories of the world and of ourselves. This point is one of the
most important epistemological questions for us to consider in the
context of the book.
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| 82 |
here and elsewhere, they invoke "common sense." This
concept can be a strength in reminding us to look to how ordinary
people think of and talk about what their lives are like (a phenomenologically
rich and consistent understanding). At the same time, it can be a
trap that leads to lack of reflection and to a simple acceptance of
the local, contingent status quo.
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| 84 |
Hobart & Schiffman wisely remind us of our "own unspoken
faith in the relation between words and things." This concept merits
great scrutiny, and you should be able to question it closely while
still recognizing its strengths.
BE (pp. 282-283)
They mention the passing remark in Fentress & Wickham's Social Meaning
that "the distinction between words and things became apparent only
as writing increasingly modeled itself on language." As noted in the
comments on pp. 21 and 74, post-modernist approaches consistently
remind us of the close relations between words and things. |
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