ASIS&T conference
I spent the day at an academic conference for just about the first time since I left the philosophy biz 20 years ago. And the rush of memories generally weren’t pleasant. But, that’s just my scar tissue talking.
Today was the last day of the American Society for Information Science and Technology conference in Providence. I came to learn about cataloging and classifying, and I heard a couple of really interesting presentations. My favorite was by Frank Miksa of the U of Texas at Austin. He pointed out that we all tend to believe that “there exists a realm of knowledge that grows through individual contributions, is transmitted from generation to generation such that its existence is thought to be continuus and is capable of being examined.” But, he said, that idea is collapsing as it’s become clearer to us that we aren’t slotting books (say) into eternal subject categories; the books themselves create subjects.
I also enjoyed David Blair’s brief overview of Wittgenstein as well as the panel on blogs and wikis (Cameron Marlow and Sunir Shah), but they were fun in part because they were more familiar territory.
Much of the rest of the day I heard talks that were either too far over my head or seemed to me to be simple ideas wrapped in a lot of academic mystification…just like the American Philosophical Association meetings I used to go to. One of the presenters even used text-only foils. No, he wasn’t wearing spats.
The woman who introduced the blogging panel said that last year there was nothing about blogging, and ASIST ought to be in the lead of the information technology revolution. I was only there for a day, but what I saw was not vibrant with the ideas that are breaking all around us on the Net. Maybe I just missed it, but in this area, ASIST seemed to be catching up, not leading.
The hallway time was great. I met a bunch of people I’ll be following up with.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
wjen i was a librarian 20 years ago i went to asis meetings to see my mentors, robert taylor and pauline atherton. i also picked up on future developments although i didn,t quite understand them. i guess ASIS, like so many organizations and people, just didn’t make it into the millenium. what was the blogging discussion like?
Cameron and Sunir we’re great. Sunir put wikis into an historic context (dawn of civilization stuff) and Cameron had a fact-based exposition of what blogging’s about. Two really smart people and terrific presenters.
As a fellow ex- but always philosopher, I concur.
Philosophy is unlike many other academic disciplines. It is, by definition (in my view, of course), concerned with the questions that begin at one’s own existence, and perhaps branch into ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics and their ‘lines of reseach’.
One of the first things a philosopher (though not necessarily a teacher of philosophy) ought to call into question is his (her) “job”. If it ain’t real, it can’t be philosophy. Abtruse obtuseness and a disconnect from the ‘existentialia’ of life seemed like a bad way for a philosopher to spend his time, so I left.
— the amateur