LIB1201 Research and Documentation for the Information Age Fall 2016

I agree with Vaidhyanathan. We do generally go straight to Google and tend to believe whatever is thrown at us after we hit enter. Especially when it comes to quick access of information or seemingly trivial matters. The reason why is because we might subconsciously think that because someone dedicated the time to make a website compiling a lot of information on one subject, we can believe in them. The truth is that anyone can write anything and make a website and put it up. Google is only a tool to find those sites based on the words being typed into the search bar and how they match up in each site. That can provide some highly unreliable info.

I do tend to trust Google but not entirely.

The concept of questioning authority according to Meszaros is that just because a person of a higher level in an institution tells their underlings or students to think a certain way and believe in their teachings, it may not be correct. If  one gathers the right information for themselves, that is the best way to learn something.

There are a lot of misinformation being spread  because of biases and lack of credible sources due to lack of interest to search for legitimate information. People in general also tend to believe too heavily on someone who is considered an authority on a subject without doing any independent research and finding their own conclusions. Meszaros studied undergraduates and was able to make these conclusions based on their attention or lack there of and linked it to problems such as these.

The Freedom of Information Act or FOIA is the liberty for citizens on the United States to access information about the United States Government. This was created in order for the citizens to be informed about any policies or general information about what is going on with the government.

The U.S. Department of Justice is the administrative power behind the FOIA. This policy is supposed to benefit citizens because it is supposed to allow them to access information that will keep them informed and up to date with happenings in the government. There are, however, some information that is not made public, such as things that claim to compromise national security or personal privacy. To me, this means that whatever they deem to be a “threat to national security” can be kept hidden from public view. That doesn’t sound very convincing about its “open access” claims.

The chapter of Brian Martin’s book is available online as a PDF because he believes that having access to information is important. He frowns on the idea of making knowledge a commodity that is hard to get.

The availability of this chapter online does exemplify the belief of having free scholarship to an extent. Martin explained that while it is great to have free access to knowledge because that means that virtually anyone can obtain information, he also explains that the writers and researchers must be compensated for their hard work and that is why access to knowledge costs money. Martin only put this chapter online for free, but the rest of his book must be bought in order for him to be properly compensated for his work.

Classification is important because it helps organize things in the world around us into easily discernable groups. It helps researchers find specific information using these classifications and controlled vocabularies. As Badke explained, when searching for information related to senior citizens, there are some organizations, such as the Library of Congress or LC, that use the word AGED to classify them under. Using these terms within the classification systems of the information being searched can help ensure that the researcher is getting the exact information they need. Also, putting things into groups help us know general information about the things in each group. Wright explains that remote countries with little contact with outsiders create their own classification system in order to survive. They know what plants are safe to eat and what animals are hardest to hunt because through experience and teachings they were able to put the information from their surroundings into an organized and well-understood system that can be passed down through generations.

An example of trolling that comes to mind is someone that created a Facebook account called Customer Service and will go around and respond to people who leave complaints on real customer service accounts. They tend to respond in a rather humorous manner but one that is rather insulting or sarcastic towards the person who left the comment. However, the person who left the comment usually deserves the trolling as they have some rather ridiculous complaints. For example, one of the comments was asking for the removal of auto flushing toilets because it scares their child to which the troll replied that they will and they hope that the next time they take their child to the bathroom that the child won’t be afraid of whatever disgusting they find left by the a previous user.

At least, this troll is being rather playful as opposed to someone who is actively trying to cause harm to others. Reading through his troll comments can be rather funny since it is harmless, especially when the person who comments starts responding and they being to have a “conversation.”

For an imagined future, I decided to go with the video game, Mirror’s Edge. In this future, the city in which the game takes place is completely under a totalitarian rule. Within this city, all information is controlled by the government and this is accepted by the public. One of the main questions that game proposes is “How much of your privacy are willing to give up to be protected?”

With this, the protagonist works with a group of people called runners to spread certain information even though this is considered to be illegal and the government is after their group.  Information in this world isn’t easily accessible as it is for us.  Information in this world can be extremely dangerous and can cause chaos depending on what is spread.

One example of an imagined future is Betheda’s Fallout. Fallout is a video game series where players traverse through a post apocalyptic world to put their survival to the test. While the game is set far in the future, the setting is based on the early 1940s and 50s era.

Unfortunately, in this world, written information is difficult to obtain since books were either destroyed during the nuclear blast or used as material for fire, clothes, and houses. However, oral communication is still alive and well as there are a number of individuals who pass down what they know to friends, family, neighbors, and passerby. A few of them travel to other cities with a caravan or by themselves to spread the word of religion, dangerous creatures roaming the area, important people, events, etc.

But in Fallout 4, the latest game in the series, lies a large city (practically the capital of the area) that creates daily news for their inhabitants. Most of the towns folk read these papers so it can be assumed that a decent chunk of people in the fallout world are literate. There are also multiple computer terminals scattered across the wasteland; while most contain writing from before the nuclear blast, several have journal entries that were recently filled.

Due Assignment #5B Reading Response

In Weinberger’s writing “Too Big to Know,” he discusses the infrastructure of knowledge and the process of filtering information to make it much more manageable to be used in a much more resourceful way. one similar thing I could compare this to is information databases which updates are done periodically changing old information with newer information with documents to prove their findings. Understanding the infrastructure makes use better researchers because the better we’re at, at navigating the internets and databases the easier finding information becomes. Knowing where to find information makes the process of categorizing information based of keywords and databases much more simpler as well as finding information in the library.