The Survival of Knowledge

The flow of information through society is essential for the survival of knowledge through ages and allows for advances in any given field of research. Whether it be the arts, sciences, medicine or law, the ability to expand, learn and grow all comes from the ability to share and communicate. To publish. This essay will attempt to explore how the invention of the printing press and E-Readers, benefited the science world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and in contemporary society.

One of the fundamental turning points in history would undoubtedly be the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg. This new invention allowed for the survival and renewal of old texts and the publication, and most importantly, the circulation of countless more. Information could flow through society a lot easier and therefore be worked upon, theories disproven or added to, and information and knowledge simply acquired. The following paragraphs will look at how the invention of the printing press allowed for a flow of knowledge through society and heightened the scientific world during the fifteenth and sixteenth century and to help illustrate this point, the focus will be on Claudius Ptolemy, Nicolaus Copernicus, and Galileo Galilei and how the publication of their works benefited one another.

Claudius Ptolemy, born in Egypt, published sometime in the 2nd century a work entitled, Geographia, a book which mapped the worlds geography in the Roman empire and had was thought to be lost, Niccolo Niccoli is said to have owned a copy which ensured its survival, until it was published again in the 15th century and brought back into circulation (M.Aston). What the circulation of this book did, some 11 centuries after it was originally published, was allow for an expansion of knowledge. As Margaret Aston states in her The Panorama of the Renaissance:

            'Renaissance geographers, who inherited Ptolemy without his maps and a keen interest in his methods for making them, made good their lack by not redrawing Ptolemy's world but also adding maps of their own - with places and continents unknown to Ptolemy.' (Aston, M 203)

This new ability to circulate information allowed for growth of information and knowledge. It is undoubtedly one of the most defining moments in all of the history of publishing.

Although the story of Ptolemy's Geographia is an fascinating one in regards to the sheer power which came with the printing press in its ability to reproduce and recirculate, it is not his work which ties with that of Copernicus and Galileo. A work he published entitled, Almagest, was the most definitive of astronomical studies for centuries and stated that everything in the solar system orbited the Earth (M.Aston). Though one finds it fascinating to delve into the complex works of these early pioneers, it is not the point of this essay to analyse the publications contents, only how they work with one another in time.

With that in mind, a jump forward in time of around 14 centuries is needed at this point. Now in the fifteen hundreds, Gutenberg's printing press has been changing the way information flows through society for just over a century when Nicolaus Copernicus, born in Poland, sent for publication his work entitled, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, which studied planets and their orbits and adopted a very new and unheard of approach to physics and cosmology, that which went against the grain of the time (S.Hawking). Copernicus stated that everything did not orbit the Earth, instead, everything in the solar system orbited the Sun. Although Copernicus' work was largely ridiculed as without merit, largely by the catholic church, the work was nonetheless in publican and his theories able to flow through society and reach the hands of yet another great astronomer almost a century later, Galileo Galilei, who was born in Italy.

Galileo was definitely a supporter of the Copernican theory and in 1632 published a book entitled, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. This publication explored Ptolemy's theory in comparison to Copernican theory, and was very much in favour of the latter. This publication landed Galileo in a lot of trouble and he was branded a heretic, but nonetheless inspired many after him (S.Hawking). And was made widely available through print publication .

The reason for this comparison is to show the way in which information was able to flow across the world due to the invention of the printing press in 1440. Three men, separated by centuries and continents were able to learn and grow off one another. What the printing press did for science, and many other fields of study, in this period is is indisputably phenomenal.

In the digital age publications take on many forms and an analysis of what it means to 'publish' in todays society is a lot more complex then that of printing ink words onto a page. If only Gutenberg could see the way in which publishing has evolved since his printing press revolutionised the industry. If he could hold an E-Reader in his hand and browse through immense possibilities it provides to the user, he would be truly astonished. The next section of this essay will explore the uses of E-Readers and tablet devices and the way in which they have shattered the conventional ideology of publishing, being that of physical, ink publications such as books and magazines.

When looking through all which is possible through an E-Reader it becomes difficult to see where it benefits one aspect of society more then another. One browses through the categories on Apples AppStore and see's pages of categories of applications; games, education, business, news, entertainment, and the list goes on. It appears all aspects of growth and development in information and industry converge to a single point, you. The tablet device holder. And at alarming rates, twenty four hours, seven days a week to be precise. There is no stopping the flow of information in todays society.

To pluck a specific example from the multitude of applications and publicans which can be accessed from a tablet device seems redundant, however, upon acquiring a digital subscription to say, Wired, a magazine publication which reports on technological and scientific advances around the world, one can see the purely unprecedented reach, the information gateway that these devices provide to the user. What the printing press enabled for Galileo's, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, tablet devices, E-Readers and Wired, offer the everyday citizen; a chance to explore and examine, critique, analyse and even question that which governs the technological and scientific world which surrounds us all. It allows for a rebirth of knowledge and information from another’s publication, it is itself a digital renaissance.

A close look into the digital subscription of Wired shows just how effectively these devices enable a marriage of dense information and aesthetic wonder. The digital magazine is vibrant and animated, articles literally jump out at you, play music and are sometimes even narrated. The content becomes appealing to all which read.

Although Tablet devices and E-Readers are undoubtedly an ideology changing instrument, like that of the printing press, they are not without their flaws. Jonah Lehrer discusses in his article, The Future Of Reading, his concerns with the way in which E-Readers could have a negative impact on our understanding of a text. He states that technology always moves forward, benefiting and developing itself, and it will surely be the same with E-Readers. He then states:

            'making content easier and easier to see - could actually backfire with books. We will trade away understanding for perception. The words will shimmer on the screen, but the sentences will quickly be forgotten.' (Lehrer, J)

He then goes on to talk about this concern in relation to a study undertaken by Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist, whereby it was concluded that easy to read text is interpreted by the ventral pathway of the brain, and more difficult text is interpreted by the dorsal stream in the brain, which is more active and aware then the ventral pathway and thus enables us to acquire more knowledge from a text. (Lehrer, J)

This is a legitimate concern which faces tablet devices and E-Readers, however, there are ways around it. As Lehrer states himself, possibly having the ability, as a user, to manipulate the text, make it more difficult to read, by dimming the screen or so on. Even with this in mind, who is to say that humans wont adjust to this new form of information digestion? Surely in the fifteenth century, Gutenberg's printing press made it far easier to read a publication then something which had been hand written on parchment with a quill.

The printing press gave information to society. Where It enabled a flow of knowledge the likes of which had never before been seen, tablet devices and E-Readers reconstitute it. They break down and rewire the way in which information flows from publisher to user, from user to user and eventually back to the publisher and back out again. It is a closed circuit of information, the snake eating its own tail.

If the printing press was the spark which triggered publication as we know it today, E-Readers are apart of the flame it left behind. As Aston states:

            'The legacy of recovered texts and the newly established understanding of Greek provided the essential base for more investigative, questioning, observational attitudes of the mind. The invention of the printing press was critical for this process. 'The printing press sowing knowledge', along with the invention of the compass and the making of gun powder, were commonly acclaimed as the three revolutionary discoveries by which the age (the Renaissance) was altered'. (Aston, M 204)

The E-Reader not only saw an easier, more efficient way of publishing, but a whole birth of knowledge, of understanding, which could reach the globe and inspire thought and development. E-Readers and tablet devices are doing much the same, except in an instant. They make information and knowledge accessible at any time and place.  The scientific world would not be where it is today without the invention of the printing press, furthermore, even this essay could also cease to exist for several reasons. Without the printing press information would not have been able to flow through society, knowledge and understanding would not have been able to grow and tablet devices, E-Readers, publishing, as we know it today, would most likely not exist.

Hawking, S 1988, 'A Brief History Of Time', Batman Press, Great Britain

Aston, M 1996, 'The Panorama of the Renaissance', Thames and Hudson, London

Lehrer, J 2010, 'The Future of Reading',

 < http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/09/the-future-of-reading-2 >

Naughton, J 2010, 'Publisher Take Note; the iPad is altering the very concept of a 'book', The Guardian,  < http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/dec/19/ipad-publishing-kindle-books-apple >

Publics

Publics and Publishing. What can I say? It's been an experience. On a serious note, I did enjoy much of the content in the course and learning about different publics, modes of publication, archives and information graphics.

If I was to reflect say on my two favorite topics from the course, I would probably choose, archives and information graphics. Archives opened my eyes to the way in which data is constantly stored in hundreds of places, sometimes from only one click of a button. And information graphics because it showed me the ways in which data can be visually, and aesthetically, portrayed.
I kept out an eye out recently, trying to find a good example of a convergence of archives and information graphics and found a great one at work. When a costumer is deemed 'regular' and agrees to let us keep their data on file to make deliveries and taking their orders easier, the data is then put onto a map wich hangs in the staff only section at work and each adress is marked by its own individual colour or symbol. This means when an order is placed, the symbol becomes that persons reference on the order and we then use that to locate their adress and details.

Since completing this course I am always thinking of ways of publishing data, and on the look out for ways others have done the same.

Aggregation

Looking at my own personal space, my own personal computer, books, social networking accounts, news pages and so on, I found it interesting to think in terms of my own aggregation and my own distribution in regards to the publics which surround these publications. How much am I contributing to these publics, or taking from them? Am I consciously or unconsciously contributing?

Thinking in regards to social networking platforms and internet based platforms, the line between aggregation and distribution would be incredibly blurred. This being the case for myself, but also for most, if not all, of the users active. I take and receive information from these sites almost simultaneously, I store it in my own personal database, while sending it to the data base of another user or site by reposting or simply clicking a link. With internet based publics, I both consciously and unconsciously contribute data. It would be impossible to distinguish the two as it is happening constantly and to a large extent in ways in which I am completely oblivious. Even right now, while I blog, I am distributing on several levels; my personal blog, data associated with the blog, my location time and place.

In terms of literature, I would very much be more of a aggregator. As my collection grows, and the shelves accumulate more and more books and magazines, my own personal database of information and literature grows. I am very much aggregating this information consciously. As far as distributing would go, I may distribute this data from time to time unconsciously. I may lend a book to a friend, or tell them to read it, I may tell someone about an article I read or an image I saw.

It seems increasingly harder in todays society to distinguish between aggregation and distribution and to fully know the extent to which one is partaking thanks to the enormity of online databases and archives. 

Visualization

For our visualization we decided to map out our groups communication over the course of one weekend. We set out to show a visualization of the globalization of communication through calls, sms and Facebook interactions.
We collected our data by drawing up a table in Excel and documenting locations, sent and received, time, am or pm, and form of communication.

Table of communications

From our data we were able to show the reach of our communications which span right across Sydney and even to other countries. Our tables returned a lot of data so our visualization is quite packed, however we feel this is beneficial as it shows just how much communication takes place over a single weekend and from only three people. If we times this data, maybe as an average, for the entire population of Sydney, which is around 2 million, we can see just how much communication takes place over a weekend.

Visualization

For my indidual analysis, I looked at which ways our visualization pre-exists our making it visual and what publics it intervenes in. This data does pre-exist our making it visual in the sense of possibly archived data. The data exists in some form in some archive wether it be Facebook archives, apple archives or carrier archives. However, this visualisation presents completely new data, it is the data of our communications over a weekend so, in essence, this particular data, our visualisation, could not preexist anywhere, only here. As was explained earlier by Rachel, we tabled our own data in order to visualise it, so there are actually levels of creation which took place to make our final product. So, the actual data which makes up our visualisation exists outside of it while also within the data of our visualisation.

Our visualisation intervenes in the telecommunications public. So by portraying links between connectivity we are allowing for patterns to form and show our reach over sydney through sms and calls. We are visualising what is in essence an invisible public, that of telecommunications. It is this which relates back to us 'creating' this new form of data and allows us to view what is largely contained as code. Also, we are intervening in social publics. What I mean by this is, the data we collected took place over a weekend, so friday Saturday night when we were in social situations and engaging with others through communications and due to this our data intervenes in that public sphere to.  

The Poetics of Information Graphics

I was largely unaware how much information I take in in a single day. Information seems to pass straight through me without me even consciously registering it. I am desensitized to it, unable to take the time to appreciate the ways in which information flows through society as I have been bombarded by it my entire life.

This having been the case, my eyes are starting to open to the ways in which data and information can be presented. As I was cruising through Google, looking over page after page of information graphics, one stood out from the rest and immediately grabbed my attention. It was aesthetically pleasing while deeply intricate, I had to know more about it. It was contained within an article entitled, Infosthetics: the beauty of data visualization. For me, this visualizaition sums up the way in which my eyes have been opened to visual data not only for its aesthetic appeal but the data it is in fact visualizing. It is the visualization of poetry texts from an annual German literature festival held in 2006. As described in the article, each word corresponded to a numerical code by adding the alphabetical values of its letters together then mapped onto a position on a circle and marked by a red dot. The grey lines are the words which appear in the poem and the diameter of the circles is determined by the length of the poem ( http://pingmag.jp/2007/03/23/infosthetics-form-follows-data/ )
I got a bit lost in the logistics of the visualization but it was what and how this visualization did that intrigued me, I would have never thought it possible to visualize data contained within poems. After seeing this I started to think of all the things I could visualize that I could see while sitting at my desk. I looked at my DVD collection and thought about how I could show which DVD's I view the most by some sort of a heat scale, the ones I touch the most would be a hotter colour then ones I hardly touched. I could then place this heat scale into a circle, like the above visualization, which could depict an entire year, or maybe even a single month. This would allow me to visualize when I watch the DVD's and would show heavier traffic maybe around university holidays opposed to heavy study periods.
I am gradually becoming more aware of ways in which information can be visualized, and, furthermore, what information can be visualized. It is not simply a form of conveying information, it is an expression of that information, a look into the way in which it flows and works with elements surrounding it. It is art. 

Archives

To be perfectly honest I found it hard to fully grasp the concept of archive fever. I think it has to do with an obsession or fixation on archives and what can be recorded, a kind of nostalgia. Having information on times and events.
What I did find interesting however was Matthew Ogle discussed, 'The Memory', in his Archive Fever, A love letter to the post real-time web. He states, 'By providing us with new ways to share what we're doing right now, the real-time web also captures something we might not have created otherwise: a permanent record of the event. We've all been so distracted by the now that we've hardly noticed the beautiful comet tails of personal history trailing in our wake. We've all become accidental archivists; our our burgeoning digital archives open out of the future.' I like how Ogle phrases this point and I feel it in my own anxieties which sprout from digital archives. For example, I read an article in the Sydney Morning Herald sometime last year about Facebook tracking its users web history even if they don't have their Facebook account open, if they are on the same browser that they use for Facebook, they actions are being archived by Facebook. For instance, I use Firefox so whenever I have firefox running, Facebook is archiving everything I do. Although the web is doing this anyway, archiving my every action, even the action of writing this blog, Facebook sells their archives to corporations for millions of dollars. So one action, lets say of writing this blog, has been archived in my web history, Facebook, and possibly multiple organisations archives for commercia purposes, reating back to what Ogle describes as being 'accidental archivists'. I particularly like the way he describes this as a comet tail of personal history, all linked to me, the accidental archivist, who thrusts my comet relentlessly forward, leaving a larger tail everyday.

This kind of 'burgeoning digital archives', as Ogle puts it, scares me at times. It reminds me of our studies in first year, about 'the doubling of place', whereas such a private action, a google search, something not even mediated by a social networking platform, could be archived in hundreds of different places, for countless people to see.. who knows where in the world my information could be archived, and it all would have originated from my desk in my room.

Bay Pizza

When reading about assemblage and actor-network theory and how each are made of components which work individually and also sustain them as a whole or a network, I found it interesting to think of these relationships in terms of something familiar to me. Where I work.
I work in a pizza restaurant called Bay Pizza, it is only a take-away and delivery restaurant though, not a sit-down one.
When relating this to the theory of assemblage, as broken down into its individual components by De Landa, the material role of Bay pizza would be performed by the walls, the floor, the oven and essentially us a entities within the confides of our network. The expressive role would be played by things such as our logo on the front of the store, our signs which contain our menu and our habits in the store, which would demonstrate to outsiders what we do in the store. The territorializing role would be played mostly by my boss and also the owner and when he isn't present by myself, being manager. The deterritorializing role would be played, I believe, by a lack of ingredients, due to an overload in orders, or a break down in communication which could result in an order not being made in time for a customer. For the linguistic/coding role I thought this could maybe be played by an insurance company and or the security company which monitors our alarm system, even the company which delivers our produce and the customers which buy our product, all at work to protect and sustain the network which has formed.
With these aspects making us up as an assemblage network I found it then interesting to look at Bay Pizza in terms of actor-network theory and more so the 'material-semiotic' aspect.
As I explained earlier, there are many elements or entities which must come together to create the assemblage network, but we also must work together to ensure its survival. If material role breaks down, we are unable to open, if a territoralizing role breaks down, there is no order and we cannot operate, if a linguistic role breaks down we are vulnerable and will probably break down. Each separate element works together to make a whole network and the material form which is Bay Pizza.
As for the semiotic role, this comes from our relationship with our customers. If walking past our store a customer would most probably first see our expressive role at work, which would be responsible for bringing them inside and essentially apart of our network. Once inside, they would witness all the other roles at work and draw meaning from them; this is a functioning restaurant.

It was quite beneficial to relate assemblage theory and actor-network theory to something so close to home. However, it did make me wonder as the the limit of such theories, For example, Bay Pizza being one role in the assemblage of our street, or that street being one role in the assemblage of a suburb on so on to the point where the entire planet is one assemblage network and our semiotic meaning is to be perceived by, well, who knows.