Notes on Information Foraging
I began week two reading an older academic report (1999) by Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card entitled, "Information Foraging," which was cited in another periodical I read recently. It was a very slow read, but I think I was able to "mine" some good information from it to support some of my findings that I am going to put forth in my white paper.
Of interest was the following:
"Not only do people adapt to core complex information environments, but environments of information to which people adapt are themselves complex and dynamic." And D.C. Dennett in "Consciousness Explained" has aptly characterized this scenario as using the notion of cultural knowledge units or "memes." Richard Dawkins made "memes" famous in his 1976 book "The Selfish Gene." The strange coincidence here is that I have been doing alot of reading lately where the notion of "memes" keeps coming up, and I read Dawkins book as an undergraduate many, many years ago — and it always amazes me when what comes around goes around.
I guess more about memes later.
I have also been looking at the concept of "attention" alot lately. In my marketing class I have students focus on the concept of permission marketing and I try to get across the importance of attention. What we give our attention to is incredibly important to us and to those we share that resource with. If it happens to be a marketer, then that makes their day.
So as part of my reading period I re-read Winnifred Gallagher's book "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life." The reason that I first was interested in this book was that she wrote it as the result of her battle with breast cancer and I read it as the result of my battle with prostate cancer. But as I started to read the book, I realized that this book was so much more than that. Gallagher says. "Your life is run ... by a group of bickering agents with different motives. (The voices in your head.) Where sticking to a goal is concerned, you can reduce the conflict by focusing on the most supportive voice and suppressing the distracting, counterproductive ones." There's much to think about there.
Clay Shirkey's book: "Here Comes Everybody," is so much fun to read. Well, fun I guess if you are a social media geek, that is. But interesting if you are anyone else. Honestly, if you read this book and don't like it, or don't find it interesting — drop me a line, I want to talk to you. The first chapter alone gets you completely hooked. He tells the amazing story about how a woman loses her Blackberry device in the backseat of a New York City cab, and figures out who found it because they took pictures of themselves using the Blackberry. Somehow she still could access her account and see what was going on. The story is amazing and frightening at the same time. Frightening if you have a Facebook or Linked-In account with pictures, and you do something wrong, because you can be found!
I am totally enthralled by this book and I know I will have much more to say about it here, and in future lectures.
That's all for this week, below is a summary of the past week.
Calendar of Events for the Past Week
Friday, September 18, 2009
- Email catch-up
- Project Management
- Set new schedule
- Reading: Started going through "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher for notes
- Reading: Started to Read Clay Shirkey's "Here Comes Everybody." (Chapter 1)
- Editing: "Freelance Guide."
- Email catch-up
- Downloaded Joomla! Manual (This took longer than I thought --- Yikes!)
- Training: Joomla! (Sections 3 & 4)
- Reading: Information Foraging by Pirolli and (This is very academic, but I thuink there is great stuff within it; see my comments below.)
- Readinig: "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher
- Reading: Clay Shirkey's "Here Come Everybody." (Chapters 2- 4)
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
- Training: Joomla! (Sections 5, 6 & 7)
- Reading: Information Foraging by Pirolli and (Finished --- have to re-read sections)
- Reading: Re-reading "Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher for notes
- Reading: Clay Shirkey's "Here Come Everybody." (Chapters 4- 8)
- Editing: "Freelance Guide" up to page 50.
- Editing: "Freelance Guide" up to page 51-100.
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