Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet Review

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Scholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet ReviewFINAL REVIEW 22 June 2008
This is not a technical book, it focuses more on the socio-political aspects of how knowledge is communicated among scholars. While it addresses fraud, it does not address the ideological war against science, high crimes and misdemeanors including deliberate lies to the public, or the nuances of "fog facts" and "lost history."
The author brings to this effort past experience in the Alexandria Digital Earth prototype project, and the National Research Council's signposts in cyberspace inquiry.
It would be good to have other reviews.
Overview comment: The author has done an extraordinary job in designing this book--writing it must have been easy once the seven page outline of detailed contents was created.
My notes:
+ National Science Foundation (NSF) did not begin investing in cyber-infrastructure until 2006 (my first web site was created in 1994).
+ Grab this lady for the project. She integrates informaiton science, information psychology, information sociology, information politics, and information culture in a manner so well presented I don't mind the headache.
+ Cites G. C. Bowker on data diversity, and ends the book with the observation that search and retrieval across specialized data sources is till very difficult (See Steve Arnold's chapter , URL in the comment.
+ Words and concepts covered by the author, with substantive citation, that I found particularly interesting:
- Data withholding
- Knowledge diffusion
- Consequences of misconduct
- Cultural memory
- Open standards
- Accidents
- History and sense-making
- Cultural boundaries of science (see Dick Klavans and Brad Ashfords' lovely Maps of Science web site)
- Knowledge lost
- Bibliometrics, data as capital
- Ecologies of knowledge
- Ethnography of infrastructure within communities
- Communities of learning, meaning, identity
- Internet Time and unreliability of search engines
- Geographies of the Internet (the project is mapping substnative knowledge)
- The end of isolated inquiry and isolated conclusions (far future)
- "outcomes" and "results" are not in this book--it is a survey
- book's major self-limitation is its exclusive focus on academia--the other seven tribes of intelligence (government, military, law enforcement, commerce, media, non-profits, and civil societies including religions and labor unions are not addresses at all)
- talk about data intensive science but unwitting of urgency of getting to real-time science (changes that used to take 10,000 years now take 3)
- no discussion of retrospective research
- dismissive of self-publishing
- pre-print lag times to publishing are worse than the government
- peer review is broken (as well as tedious)
- conferences not yet digital
- dissemination, diffusion, publicity, transparency, discourse
- search and dfiscovery very corrupt (see Arnold--less than 2% efficacy)
- publishers losing ground to online (greed is killing them as well)
- termporal patterns and pattern analysis of the aggregate knowledge
Heart of the book is the issue of open access combined with the immaturity of the content, tools, and architecture of the digital world of knowledge. Legal, cultural, and technical obstacles will not be settled soon.
I put this book down with two thoughts: it is a stellar piece of well-documented and well-conceived reflection--and it barely scratches the surface of what can and should be known about scholarship in the digital age, to include call centers in China and India able to teach their respective 1.5 billion poor populations one cell call at a time. Schools and universities are still in the industrial era, half advanced day care and half prison. Knowledge is no longer an academic domain--it is the world brain emergent, with eight tribes of knowledge ignoring one another in 183 languages we don't speak, with the cell phone, not the laptop, as the great equalizer and enabler of the wealth of networks.See also:
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
The Age of Missing Information
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at PeaceScholarship in the Digital Age: Information, Infrastructure, and the Internet Overview

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Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society Review

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Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society ReviewThe title sais it all as far as content and prose are concerned. The message is that the governments should step in and try to close digital divide more proactively. A Keynsian approach to an important issue - interesting, but not breathtaking addition to the ongoing debate on digital divide.Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society Overview

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Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Finding and Using the World's Information Review

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Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Finding and Using the World's Information ReviewFew of today's web-savvy would contest Google's superiority among search engines. Behind the austere and simple interface lies a wealth of information just waiting to be tapped. Until now however, tapping all that information and power would likely require scanning dozens of websites hunting down tips for making the most out of Google. Fortunately, Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest and their colleagues have done most of the legwork for us in O'Reilly's Google Hacks.
Google Hacks is another in O'Reilly's Hacks series, "Industrial Strength Tips and Tools". In this case, 100 recipes for just about every imaginable use for Google. O'Reilly uses the term 'hack' in a positive way, meaning a clever technical feat or trick, as opposed to the negative connotation associated with those blackhats who break into computer systems for fun and for profit. Each "hack" is a stand-alone recipe demonstrating some aspect of using Google to find just what you're looking for. Most hacks also contain cross-references to other relevant hacks in the book, so you really don't have to read it from cover to cover. You could start with whatever interests you, and go from there.
The book is divided into several chapters, each of which contains several hacks. The first few chapters are targeted at the general end-user, describing in detail all of the various syntaxes you can use when searching with Google, as well as introducing the various topical collections (U.S. government, Linux, Mac, etc.), and other tools (Google Groups, Google News, etc.,) available. The authors are careful to point out where the various syntax pieces are incompatible, and which syntax features are available with which services. Also covered are various tools you can use to (legally) 'scrape' Google search results for further analysis. These chapters will be useful for just about anyone who uses Google. Some of the material (such as directly manipulating URLS to tweak search results and custom HTML forms) may be beyond the reach of some newbies. A general understanding of URLs, HTML and CGI scripting will be helpful in making use of most of the book.
The next few chapters are targeted more to developers and propeller-heads, describing the Google Web Service API, as well as providing dozens of scripts (mostly in Perl) for manipulating Google's index via its XML interface. Newbies and the casual user might find all this a bit overwhelming, but anyone with a Perl interpreter could potentially use these scripts to their advantage. One chapter also provides examples of using the API in various other languages including PHP, Java, Python, C#/.NET, and VB.NET. There are enough examples here of using the API in various fashions to get anyone with a sense of programming plenty of starting off points for whatever project they may imagine with Google's wealth of information.
The next to last chapter involves a handful of pranks, games, other oddities you can do with Google. Fool your friends with 0-result searches, let Google write poetry or a recipe for you. Draw pictures with Google Groups, or see just how good you are at Google-Whacking. This is the chapter for all of you who have way too much time on your hands ;-).
The last chapter in the book is targeted towards webmasters and offers several tips not only on getting your website well-placed in Google's search rankings, but also general help on getting traffic to your site in the first place. The authors also discuss strategies for using Google's AdWords system to the advantage of your business.
Overall, the book is very readable, and easy to move through (well, for a geek anyways). Each hack is self-contained, and can be read in a few minutes. Read it near your computer, as you'll likely be wanting to try some of these hacks out as you read them. As for its usefulness, I'm already using things I learned in the book on a regular basis to my daily advantage. However, if you're not more than a casual user of Google, all the scripts and API-speak might be overkill for your needs. The first few and last chapters probably justify the Amazon price for most users, however.
The book isn't perfect, though. I did find a few typographical errors scattered through the text, but they weren't prevalent enough to be too distracting. Also, with coverage of such a moving target as a major Internet property like Google, there will likely be links and even certain hacks that may not work, and features that change with time. Finally, the idea of narrowing down your search results to a manageable number surfaces often. In my opinion, what's important is not so much how many search results are found, but rather, whether or not Google can get me what I'm looking for within the first page or two of results, which it usually does, and which is why I use Google in the first place. The real value of the book shows itself on those occasions where Google doesn't necessarily get you where you want to be on the first shot.
In summary, true to its cover graphic, Google Hacks will provide you with a large number of tools to get the most out of Google, whether for serious research, casual browsing, procrastination activities, or just plain old fun.Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Finding and Using the World's Information Overview

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