mdst3703 ontology-overrated-2012-10-16
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Ontology is Overrated
Prof. AlvaradoMDST 3703
16 October 2012
Business
Midterms next Thursday … Assignment: – See Assignments > Final Projects—Homework 1
Review
Manovich’s thesis: the database is a symbolic form– Produces a figure/ground reversal between
paradigmatic resources and syntagmatic products– Between process of production and finished product
How is this reversal represented in Vertov’s film?– How does Vertov “solve” the problem of relating
paradigm to syntagm?
Overview
Today we look at the development of the database as symbolic form on the web– Symbolic forms shape cognition
In particular, we look at changes in new media associated with Web 2.0– Web 2.0 is, roughly, the web after Google
In many ways, the Web 2.0 revolution is the result of the “databasing of the web”
Each of these are made possible by the application of database logic
Clay Shirky is one of the most important theorists of the post-Google web
American media theorist. Studied fine arts at Yale. Teacher, writer, consultant. Books include Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus.
What are some differences between Shirky’s view of ontology and others we have read?
All of the theorists interested in models have assumed that there is a model in the
text that can be retrieved by scholars (experts)
Shirky embraces the network effects of Web 2.0, in which user participation
outstrips the capacity for experts to control content
The text emerges as a site of competing interpretations
David Weinberger
This is the biggest rationalization effect so far:
That our view of knowledge itself is an effect of how we organize the
documents that store it
As Wesch says, we will have to rethink some of our deepest notions
The tree of nature and logic From Ramon Lull Ars Magna (Great Art), 1305
For example …
What is the advantage of this kind of structure?
Trees can be easily navigated by people
What is the advantage of this kind of structure?
Content can be classified in as many ways as there are perspectives
But this kind of organization follows from information stored in databases
URL 1 TAG 1
URL 1 TAG 2
URL 1 TAG 3
URL 2 TAG 2
URL 2 tAG 3
URL 3 TAG 1
URL 4 TAG 5
The Method: Tags and URLs
Links have addresses– <a href=“http://somewhere.net”>Click me</a>– Addresses are URLs
Tags can be used to classify these addresses– Delicious– Diigo
Anything can have an address and be tagged– Images in Flickr– Things in the world
Examples
Delicious (web pages and tags) Flickr (images and tags) Twitter (tweets and hashtags, retweets)
Effects
Cool visualizations Sometimes useful mashups The web itself becomes a large, socially
constructed database
A visualization of messages referencing the #Aristotle hashtag on Twitter, created by Social Collider. The red lines in the center are the #Aristotle references.
http://complexrhetoric.blogspot.com/2009/03/is-aristotle-on-twitter-panel-wrap-up.html
“we could mine the tweets surrounding an archived hashtag in order to generate a topic based context that would persist after the event had been long gone”
http://blog.ouseful.info/2010/09/09/additional-thoughts-on-tag-powered-context/
-- Scrape tweeting links using the hashtag from the twapperkeeper archive and feed them to a facet of the search engine
-- Look to other services, such as delicious, to see who has been bookmarking URLs with the particular tag-- Look to delicious to see who bookmarked the ALTC2010 homepage
SEE http://ohttp://ouseful.open.ac.uk/jit/examples/hypertree-demo2.php?mode=tag&url=http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2010/useful.open.ac.uk/jit/examples/hypertree-demo2.php?mode=tag
Tag Powered Context
35,000,000 Flickr Photos, MappedWhat happens when images are tagged by location
With Web 2.0 and social media, the web itself becomes a big database
When ontology doesn’t work
Domain – Large corpus – No formal categories – Unstable entities – Unrestricted entities – No clear edges
Participants – Uncoordinated users – Amateur users– Naive catalogers – No Authority
Does this match the
situation in scholarship?
Question
Are Unsworth’s and Shirky’s positions compatible?– What are their major differences?– Both approaches want to generate data and
produce visualizations …– Both approaches expose classifications that are
surprising and interesting
Michael Wesch is a UVA-trained cultural anthropologist at Kansas State. The video you saw propelled him into superstar status . . .
Wesch
Why is it important to separate form and content?
How do XML and RSS relate to Shirky’s and Unsworth’s positions?
How is Wesch’s argument similar to Shirky’s? Unsworths?
How is it different from both Unsworth and Shirky?
Brad Pasanek is a Stanford trained UVA professor of English who has used a simple database approach to study metaphor.
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