Trudy Lane's List: DMAP

• But, that's all got to change. Why? Well, like a theory object, I still haven't worked out an entirely satisfactory reason. But, because I'm not allowing myself to be embarassed by sharing evolving ideas I'll risk embarassment and say it's becuase in the knowledge ecology that is made possible by the world of connected thought — the Internet — creativity, innovation, making stuff that makes for more habitable, sustainable worlds is a massively multiplayer game.

• Western epistemology is linear or teleological, logical, and atomistic. Our classification does not adequately represent other cultures with holistic, circular, and inclusive worldviews. These issues are discussed through Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose and deconstructed using theory discussed by Hope Olson. With the advent of the Internet, and the multiple possibilities of hyperlinks that are like a rhizome, hierarchical classification no longer needs to be an issue. Each item (web page) is a node of the rhizome and has the potential to be linked to infinite numbers of other nodes. All nodes are equal in value and extend shoots to other nodes. Borges' The Library of Babel represents the rhizome through a honeycomb of infinite hexagons.
• "The Library of Babel" anticipates the rhizomatic structure of the Internet.
• Eco helps the reader question memory and truth
• our system of classification is not inherent in nature, rather it is of the lineage of logic and teleology.
• These are metanarratives (Lyotard 1984), tangible beliefs, systems of knowledge that a societal body holds to be true. Olson traces the presumptions in modern day classification back to fourth century BCE in Greece during the development of logic (1999b)
• Western epistemology to be integral parts of our beliefs in logic, science, and rationalism.
• base all conclusions on empiricism— taking facts available from what we can see, taste, touch, smell, or hear, and synthesizing the items together to induce a conceptual "truth."
• Olson discusses Derrida's term, "différance," a combination of the words "differ" and "defer." The difference between binaries can never be pinpointed and is "perpetually deferred" (Olson, p. 182). Binaries are exclusive: "concepts forming a binary opposition are mutually defining—each being what the other is not. Such mutual definition involves exclusions, categorizations, and classifications. A given concept excludes what it is not"
• Logic is based in binaries and mutually exclusive concepts
• The new way of organizing information may be through a rhizomatic structure, an idea introduced by Deleuze and Guattari (1987).
• Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress
• In hyperspace, a discrete object may
• have multiple accessions, or just one
• the classifier (or cataloguer) determines the degree of sameness or difference
• arbitrary product of a societal mind
• the Western ideal of teleology
• The separation of time is a representation of a worldview that can reduce everything to base units.
• the hyperlink and the semantic web, many concepts/classifications can be put on the same level, without hierarchy, like a rhizome. Deleuze and Guattari (1987) introduce the concept of the rhizome (Figure 1),contrasting the rhizome with the structure of a tree.
• "center," or "totality," and even "universality."
• "is an act of power, usurpation. By assuming, one sets oneself above Others, in arrogance
• suggesting the use of local (as opposed to universal) critical knowledges
• such as cyclical worldview (instead of our teleological worldview
• Borges and the Rhizome
• "The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries"
• "The library is a labyrinth, containing not one Truth but all truths, many of them hoaxes, fallacies, frauds or imperfect facsimiles (books that differ by only a single letter or punctuation mark)"
• In the rhizome, the Internet, and the Library of Babel, there is no center and no binary, but an infinite number of interlocking nodes, linked through similarity through the Semantic Web
• The library is a circular structure—as one node crosses to another, and that one to yet another, and eventually the connection will come back to the original node. Circular structures, and decentralized organization are the complete opposite of Western classification schemes

• The Internet and the Rhizome

    

  Metanarratives of logic embodied in Western classification schemes can be deconstructed through an alternative: the rhizome structure. Sassón (2000) discusses the rhizome in her dissertation: "It does not necessarily link similar traits: on the contrary, the rhizome is able to make connections with diverse modes of coding. As a consequence, a rhizomatic structure does away with vertical hierarchies, so that no supreme force rules or imposes its traits upon subservient subjects" (p. 56). This can be seen in the digital world, especially in the hyperlink:

    

  Everything in hypertext depends upon linkage, upon connectivity between and among the various elements in the system. Linkage, in hypertext, plays a role corresponding to that of sequence in conventional text. A hypertext link is the electronic representation of a perceived relationship between two pieces of material, which become nodes once the relationship has been instantiated electronically. That is, the link simulates the connections in the mind of the author or reader (Slatin, 1990, p. 877).
• The challenge of the Semantic Web, therefore, is to provide a language that expresses both data and rules for reasoning about the data that allows rules from any existing knowledge-representation system to be exported onto the Web. (¶ 14)
• to laud the Semantic Web as the road of progress or a next evolution of knowledge organization is to fall under the spell of teleological discourse
• Borges' "The Library of Babel" represents this as a honeycomb of infinite hexagons with multiple links.

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