PERSPECTIVES ON REPRESENTATION
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SHOW AND TELL: BRING IN A REPRESENTATION (for lecture, Thursday, October 10)

During class, I’ll divide you in half.  I would like half of you to bring to class on Thursday a numeric representation and the other half to bring a non-numeric representation.  Please be prepared to say what your representation represents.

 

READINGS ON REPRESENTATION, BROADLY CONSTRUED (for lecture Thursday, October 10 and Tuesday, October 15)

We’ll spend Thursday and Tuesday discussing broadly the representation of information.  We’ll consider questions such as: What counts as a representation?  What’s the relationship between the representation and the thing itself?  Do you have to have words to represent information?  Do you have to have language to represent information?  Do you have to be human to represent information?

To prepare for class, please read the three following articles.  Skim the articles by Savage-Rambaugh and Saxe, paying particular attention to the discussions of the travel patterns of bonobos on the ground and the numeration system among the Oksapmin in Papua New Guinea, respectively.  Please take notes on the Marcus article as we’ll draw on this article for next week’s lab (October 18). 

Savage-Rambaugh, E. S., Williams, S. L., Furuichi, T., & Kano, T.  (1996).  Language perceived: Paniscus branches out.  In W. C. McGrew, L. F. Marchant, & T. Nishida (Eds.), Great Ape Societies (pp. 173-184).  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Saxe, G.  (1981).  Body parts as numerals: A developmental analysis of numerations among the Oksapmin in Papau New Guinea.  Child Development, 52, 306-316.

Marcus, A.  (1992).  Chapter 3: Symbolism (pp. 51-64).  Graphic Design for Electronic Documents and User Interfaces.  New York, NY: ACM Press.

 

REMINDER -- PREPARATION FOR LAB 2: WHAT IS INFORMATION? (for lab Friday, October 11)

In this lab, you’ll examine your own personal information experiences from the perspective of Buckland (and others).  To prepare for this lab, keep a journal of one or two “information” experiences you encounter.  At a minimum, you should record your initial “information” goal, how you sought to reach that goal, sub-goals along the way (e.g., other information you needed to acquire in order to achieve your original goal), how you attempted to satisfy each sub-goal, what worked, what didn’t, what sources you drew on (e.g., people, directories, maps), and so forth.  For our purposes, the more detailed your “information journal” the better.  Please bring a copy of your information journal to lab on Friday, along with the Buckland article and the Meadow and Yuan article, and your notes on those articles.  You’ll use your information journal as “raw data” for the lab.  Please turn in a copy of your “information journal” with your lab write-up.