melanie feinberg, spring 2010 organizing information 7 statements

Melanie Feinberg, Spring 2010

Organizing Information

7 statements


What do we mean by “organizing information”?

• Describing.

• Grouping.

• Relating.

• Arranging (sorting).


What are some systems for organizing information?

Libraries (and their classifications), Web sites (and their information architectures), the periodic table of the elements, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of mental disorders, the supermarket, the racial categories on the U.S. Census forms, the schools and departments in this university, your kitchen, restaurant menus, the folders on your computer, the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), your iTunes playlists, the section headings in a book, and the table of contents, and the index, the colors to indicate elevation on a map, the menus and commands in a software application...


What are some systems for organizing information?

Classification at the Dairy Queen!


1. You cannot escape.

Classification surrounds you.

You add to the mass of classification without even thinking about it.

Classification is part of your brain!


2. Any classification is only partial.

We need classification to simplify the world: classification enables us to generate new knowledge and communicate it to others.

But the real world is infinitely complicated. And it bites back.


3. There is no one classification to rule them all.

Paul Otlet: one of many who wanted to classify the world.


3. There is no one classification to rule them all.

But situations are different. People are different.

New ideas arise. And old ideas are reinterpreted.

Even in science! Phenetic (Linnean) taxonomy vs. cladistic, for example, in biology.


4. Classifications are made by people.

They are not handed down from the divine, or from Melvyl Dewey.

All classifications can thus be criticized.


4. Classifications are made by people.

Not the periodic table of the elements!!!!

Mendeleev discovered that. Nature created it!

Yes, in some sense, we can say that even the periodic table of the elements is a human creation.


5. Classification is creative.

By selecting the important properties of objects and showing how these manifest in different groups, each classification shows a unique way of viewing the world.

Classifications can open our minds as well as confirm our stereotypes. And creating a classification that illuminates new relationships between things can be thought of as a creative act!


6. Classification is political.

Classifications can validate or marginalize certain ideas, or certain groups.

What are the significant properties behind any category term?

What’s in and what’s out?



From the Soviet library classification:

Religion

Atheism

E0 Marxism-Leninism on religion and atheism

E1 Freethinking and atheism

E2 / 9 Religion



From the Dewey Decimal Classification:

• 200 Religion• 210 Natural theology• 220 Bible• 230 Christian theology• 240 Christian moral & devotional theology• 250 Christian orders & local church• 260 Christian social theology• 270 Christian church history• 280 Christian denominations & sects• 290 Other & comparative religions


7. Classifications both reflect and shape us.

What we create has a life of its own.

Why should it be weird to have pancakes for dinner? Or meatloaf for breakfast?


Thank you


Borges’ “joke” classification

These ambiguities, redundancies, and and deficiencies recall those attributed by Dr. Franz Kuhn to a certain Chinese encyclopedia entitled Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. On those remote pages it is written that animals are divided into

(a) those that belong to the Emperor

(b) embalmed ones

(c) those that are trained

(d) suckling pigs

(e) mermaids

(f) fabulous ones

(g) stray dogs

(h) those that are included in this classification

(i) those that tremble as if they were mad

(j) innumerable ones

(k) those drawn with a very fine camel’s hair brush

(l) others

(m) those that have just broken a flower vase

(n) those that resemble flies from a distance


Not so much a joke?

“But the impossibility of penetrating the divine scheme of the universe cannot dissuade us from outlining human schemes, even though we are aware that they are provisional.”

melanie feinberg, spring 2010 organizing information 7 statements

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