Scholarship and Technology Books

This is a very good book, but as the previous reviewer pointed out, you will need to pick up the English translation etc. as it is entirely in Japanese (full-on Hiragana, Kanji, Katakana, the works).

If you are serious about learning the language, this is probably the best place to start - but similar texts such as 'Japanese for Busy People' are a little less daunting. Since you could probably learn 3 European languages in the same time that it would take you to acheive a respectable level of Japanese, I would only recommend this if you are serious about learning to really read and write the language.

If you are happy to focus more on speaking etc., then you would be better off with another text, cause this is a bit of a slog. Happy studies.

Having studied Japanese both at university and in Japan, I have come across a myriad of beginner's titles but none of them are comparable to Shin Nihongo No Kiso I & II. These texts give a thorough grounding in the language and prepare the students for further study. This is also the text used by many Japanese language schools in Japan as it quickly yet succinctly gives students a grasp of the spoken language which can be used immediately. The texts must also be praised for its methodical approach to grammar which is where many other texts fail.

Please note that the main text must be bought in conjunction with two additional supplementary books, grammar notes and the English translation...

Harrision & Steven have prsented a written format with regard academic digital networking. They present issuse's such as, developmental policy, virtual classrom and electronic journals, to name a few. This is a must read/study for all graduate students persuing DE.

Excellent to investigate about the debates between philosophers and theologicians during the late middle ages.

This book provides an excellent introduction and overview of Historical GIS. It is very well laid out, providing an overall introduction to the capabilities of GIS in its traditional context before moving on to case studies of how historical users have utilized Historical GIS.
I appreciate how the book demonstrates both the advantages as well as the drawbacks of using GIS technology in the context of historical research. It cleared up several misperceptions I had about GIS in general, which probably could have been done with any number of other GIS books out there, but as a historian, I appreciated the book being catered to my audience as opposed to a general reader.
The book is of similar quality as a college textbook, and appears to be used as such. While the authors do not assume the reader has a working knowledge of GIS, they do assume a basic understanding of the goals of GIS and how it might have potential in the field of historical research.
I highly recommend it to anyone in the field.

FINAL REVIEW 22 June 2008

This is not a technical book, it focuses more on the socio-political aspects of how knowledge is communicated among scholars. While it addresses fraud, it does not address the ideological war against science, high crimes and misdemeanors including deliberate lies to the public, or the nuances of "fog facts" and "lost history."

The author brings to this effort past experience in the Alexandria Digital Earth prototype project, and the National Research Council's signposts in cyberspace inquiry.

It would be good to have other reviews.

Overview comment: The author has done an extraordinary job in designing this book--writing it must have been easy once the seven page outline of detailed contents was created.

My notes:

+ National Science Foundation (NSF) did not begin investing in cyber-infrastructure until 2006 (my first web site was created in 1994).

+ Grab this lady for the project. She integrates informaiton science, information psychology, information sociology, information politics, and information culture in a manner so well presented I don't mind the headache.

+ Cites G. C. Bowker on data diversity, and ends the book with the observation that search and retrieval across specialized data sources is till very difficult (See Steve Arnold's chapter Can collective intelligence improve findability?>, URL in the comment.

+ Words and concepts covered by the author, with substantive citation, that I found particularly interesting:

- Data withholding
- Knowledge diffusion
- Consequences of misconduct
- Cultural memory
- Open standards
- Accidents
- History and sense-making
- Cultural boundaries of science (see Dick Klavans and Brad Ashfords' lovely Maps of Science web site)
- Knowledge lost
- Bibliometrics, data as capital
- Ecologies of knowledge
- Ethnography of infrastructure within communities
- Communities of learning, meaning, identity
- Internet Time and unreliability of search engines
- Geographies of the Internet (the project is mapping substnative knowledge)
- The end of isolated inquiry and isolated conclusions (far future)
- "outcomes" and "results" are not in this book--it is a survey
- book's major self-limitation is its exclusive focus on academia--the other seven tribes of intelligence (government, military, law enforcement, commerce, media, non-profits, and civil societies including religions and labor unions are not addresses at all)
- talk about data intensive science but unwitting of urgency of getting to real-time science (changes that used to take 10,000 years now take 3)
- no discussion of retrospective research
- dismissive of self-publishing
- pre-print lag times to publishing are worse than the government
- peer review is broken (as well as tedious)
- conferences not yet digital
- dissemination, diffusion, publicity, transparency, discourse
- search and dfiscovery very corrupt (see Arnold--less than 2% efficacy)
- publishers losing ground to online (greed is killing them as well)
- termporal patterns and pattern analysis of the aggregate knowledge

Heart of the book is the issue of open access combined with the immaturity of the content, tools, and architecture of the digital world of knowledge. Legal, cultural, and technical obstacles will not be settled soon.

I put this book down with two thoughts: it is a stellar piece of well-documented and well-conceived reflection--and it barely scratches the surface of what can and should be known about scholarship in the digital age, to include call centers in China and India able to teach their respective 1.5 billion poor populations one cell call at a time. Schools and universities are still in the industrial era, half advanced day care and half prison. Knowledge is no longer an academic domain--it is the world brain emergent, with eight tribes of knowledge ignoring one another in 183 languages we don't speak, with the cell phone, not the laptop, as the great equalizer and enabler of the wealth of networks.


See also:
The Future of Ideas: The Fate of the Commons in a Connected World
The Age of Missing Information
Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin
Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth'
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography
Vo[[ASIN:097156616X Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peaceltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West]]
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World

This is a great resource, though it is starting to get a bit out of date. For example, it lists the Thacher Summer Science Program. That program has moved from Thacher School. It now has two campuses, one in Ojai, CA at a school a few miles from Thacher and the other in Socorro, NM. The contact information has also changed (see summerscience .org). It would be great to see a new edition of this book.

This is an interesting, clearly written, well organized introduction to the history of information technologies. The author explains the role of classification in the increase in knowledge, introducing major contributors to Western science: Linneaus, Lavoisier among others.

PLACING HISTORY: HOW MAPS, SPATIAL DATA AND GIS ARE CHANGING HISTORICAL SCHOLARSHIP challenges historians and historical geographers to use information science wisely, as it vastly affects historical scholarship and historical revision processes. College-level holdings strong in GIS analysis, use, and historical analysis alike will find PLACING HISTORY an invaluable link between cartography, geographic assessment and history. Case studies and regional analysis blend in an excellent set of examples on how GIS interpretations and usage affects history.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be, but I still enjoyed it. As is explained in the introduction of the book, a lot of the sections, as well as the presentations on the included data disc, are the result of a conference dealing with using GIS in historical research. The book is well written, with each contributor taking care to present each topic in an objective light. The book is better read a section at a time, as trying to read it straight through can get very overwhelming, due to so much information being presented.

George Krambles and Art Peterson take you deep into the innerworkings of The Chicago Transit Authority, Chicago's urban mass transit system. This book is chock full of rare photos of the agency's infancy in 1947, when it was a merger of two bankrupt systems, Chicago Surface Lines and Chicago Rapid Transit Company until its glory days of the late '70's early '80's...then its decline in the early '90's.

George Krambles was not just an observer, but the well respected, hands-on General Manager that respected all who worked for him and with him at the CTA. It was not unususal to see Mr.Krambles at the controls of an L-train in the Chicago Loop, or behind the wheel of the latest model bus. This is not just a collection of memoirs, but a factual journey into the day to day operations of a transit system no one knew the way he did.

The text is complimented nicely by color photographs by Art Peterson, one of the nation's top transit proffessionals and a prolific urban photo! grapher. To further add to this volume are rare photos from the CTA's own historic files, many rarely seen. Other graphics are reproduced as well.

Wheather you are a urbanoligist, transit proffessional, or rail or bus fan, this book is worth a prized spot in your library.

Selfe and Hilligoss compiled this book in 1994, when the issue of computers in composition was aflame. Six years on, their volume still holds many key ideas and theories with relative currency. Readers should be anxiously awaiting a revised edition, but in the meantime "Literacy and Computers" is a worthwile gateway into the "new" reading and writing of texts.