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STUDY GUIDE, HOBART & SCHIFFMAN, Part 1
Philip Doty
Some preliminary thoughts
What follows are some general comments about the first of the LIS 386.13
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 semester (or the equivalent in a summer term), the study
guides will follow that division as well, addressing the three major
sections of the book:
| Part 1 |
Introduction, Chapters 1, 2, and 3 (pp. 1-84); these
first three chapters comprise Part I of the book, The Classical
Age of Literacy |
| Part 2 |
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (pp. 87-172); these chapters
are Part II: The Modern Age of Numeracy |
| Part 3 |
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 (BE) (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. 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)
| |
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. |
Note (added by R. E. Wyllys): For some interesting comments on the way
in which Hobart and Schiffman give short shrift to pre-literate societies,
see
Staley, David J. (1999). Digital
Historiography: Information. Journal of the Association for
History and Computing. 2(2). Retrieved October 20, 2002, from
http://mcel.pacificu.edu/JAHC/JAHCII2/P-REVIEWSII2/Digihist.html.
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