Information Access Seminar
Indexing it All: The Subject in the Age of Documentation, Information, and Data
Friday, October 11, 2013
3:10 pm to 5:00 pm
Ron Day, Indiana University
In this talk, summarizing a recent book manuscript, I examine the mediation of subjects and objects by the techniques, technologies, and organizations of documentation, information, and data during the 20th and 21st centuries (what I call the modern "documentary tradition"). The talk asks: how have texts, being, and judgment been progressively subsumed by the documentary tradition? I look at five epistemic-historical moments: early 20th century European Documentation, citation indexing and analysis, social computing, android robotics, and big data and neoliberalism.
Alumnus Ron Day (MLIS '93) is an associate professor at the Department of Information and Library Science, School of Informatics and Computing, at Indiana University, Bloomington. He is the author of three books: The Modern Invention of Information: Discourse, History, and Power (Southern Illinois University Press, 2001); co-editor and co-translator of the mid-twentieth century French documentalist, Suzanne Briet's book, What is Documentation? (Scarecrow, 2006); and co-editor with Claire McInerney, Rethinking Knowledge Management: From Knowledge Artifacts to Knowledge Processes (Springer, 2007). He is the author of numerous articles on the history, philosophy, and theory of documentation and information science.