http://www.informationdesign.org/ Dedicated to the growth and improvement of the information experience industries. en-us plato@xs4all.nl 2009-12-16T12:50:49+01:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 "I would like to draw attention to the scientific models of the Belgian information pioneer Paul Otlet who albeit that they are standing in positivist and Modernist tradition can still be relevant for mechanical and manual modelling of science within the Semantic Web and Web 2.0." (Charles van den Heuvel - Modelling Science) Classics 2009-12-16T12:50:49+01:00 Pre-publication - The designs of Paul Otlet (1868-1944) for telecommunication and machine readable documentation to organize research and society - "At the end of the nineteenth and in the first decades of the twentieth century various European scholars, like Patrick Geddes, Paul Otlet, Otto Neurath, Wilhelm Ostwald explored the organisation, enrichment and dissemination of knowledge on a global level to come to a peaceful, universal society. We focus on Paul Otlet (1868-1944) who developed a knowledge infrastructure to update information mechanically and manually in collaboratories of scholars. First the Understanding Infrastructure (2007) report, that Paul N. Edwards et al. wrote on behalf of NSF, will be used to position Otlet’s knowledge organization in their sketched development from information systems to information internetworks or webs. Secondly, the relevance of Otlet’s knowledge infrastructure will be assessed for Web 2.0 and Semantic Web applications for research. The hypothesis will be put forward that the instruments and protocols envisioned by Otlet to enhance collaborative knowledge production, can still be relevant for current conceptualizations of ‘scientific authority’ in data sharing and annotation in Web 2.0 applications and the modeling of the Semantic Web." (Charles van den Heuvel in: Knowledge Organization, 36 (4) 214-226) Classics 2009-12-13T16:52:04+01:00 Pre-publication - Otlet's Visualizations of a Global Information Society and His Concept of a Universal Civilization - "I have discussed at such length Berners-Lee's Weaving the Web in order to compare the US-oriented views of the history and future of the World Wide Web, as its proclaimed inventor expressed them toward the end of the twentieth century, with the ideas explored 50 years or more earlier by Paul Otlet and his colleagues about knowledge organization on a global level. My aim is to try to show how some of the issues that were important in explaining the origin of the World Wide Web and in predicting its future were already being explored at the beginning of the twentieth century by a number of European pioneers, who proposed similar solutions and encountered similar problems to Berners-Lee." (Charles van den Heuvel in W. Boy Rayward [ed.] European Modernism and the Information Society, pp 127-153) Classics 2009-12-13T16:37:03+01:00 "Some historians see in Otlet’s work a prototype of the World Wide Web and the hyperlink. Although unsuccessful, it was one of the first known attempts to provide a framework for connecting all recorded culture by creating flexible links that could rapidly lead researchers from one document to another — and perhaps make audible the previously unheard echoes between them. Anticipating postmodern literary theory, Otlet posited that documents have meaning not as individual texts, but only in relationship to each other." (Wired) - courtesy of lievenbaeten Classics 2009-12-10T16:18:38+01:00 "In this article, I sketch Otlet's and Kaiser's ideas about information analysis and compare the types of knowledge organization systems (KOSs) that they constructed on the basis of these ideas. As we shall see, Otlet and Kaiser held very similar views about the possibility – and desirability – of disaggregating documents into information units and organizing the latter into indexed information files. Both men also agreed on the technological means to implement their information-analytic approach." (Thomas M. Dousa - ASIS&T Bulletin Dec/Jan 2010) Classics 2009-12-04T09:18:18+01:00 "Pause for a moment and think about the history here. 1993 is 16 years ago as I write this, about the same span of time between Vannevar Bush's groundbreaking 1945 article 'As We May Think' and Nelson's initial work in 1960 on what would become the Xanadu project. As far as software projects go, this one has some serious history." (Micah Dubinko - Micahpedia) - courtesy of markbernstein Classics 2009-11-26T10:43:22+01:00 "Uniting a team of international and interdisciplinary scholars, this volume considers the views of early twentieth-century European thinkers on the creation, dissemination and management of publicly available information. Interdisciplinary in perspective, the volume reflects the nature of the thinkers discussed, including Otto Neurath, Patrick Geddes, the English Fabians, Paul Otlet, Wilhelm Ostwald and H. G. Wells. The work also charts the interest since the latter part of the nineteenth century in finding new ways to think about and to manage the growing body of available information in order to achieve aims such as the advancement of Western civilization, the alleviation of inequalities across classes and countries, and the promotion of peaceful coexistence between nations. In doing so, the contributors provide a novel historical context for assessing widely-held assumptions about today's globalized, 'post modern' information society. This volume will interest all who are curious about the creation of a modern networked information society." (W. Boyd Rayward) - Introduction chapter available for download Information design 2009-07-02T16:57:53+01:00 "If I have seen farther, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants...and then I looked down at those giants and saw the silly videos they made back in the day. CHI Video Showcase 2009." HCI 2009-04-14T09:57:05+01:00 "Although its individual features weren't new, the Mac offered integration, the expectation of a GUI, and interface consistency." (Jakob Nielsen - Alertbox) Usability 2009-02-02T10:35:45+01:00 "The look back by this forward-thinking man is not without its bitterness. The Web, after all, can be seen as a bastardization of his original notion that hyperlinks should point both forward and backward." (John Markoff - NYT) - Chapter summaries available. Classics 2009-01-11T21:51:23+01:00 Event videos available - "On December 9, 2008 at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium, SRI International commemorated the 40th anniversary of the world debut of personal and interactive computing by Dr. Douglas C. Engelbart and the SRI Augmentation Research Center (...) Speakers at the 2008 event included original participants in the 1968 demo and presentations on Doug Engelbart's vision to use computing to augment society's collective intellect and ability to solve the complex issues of our time." (A 40th Anniversary Celebration) Classics 2009-01-01T14:47:21+01:00 Classics 2008-10-15T14:56:02+01:00 "The film, developed in 1992, predicted the explosive growth of the world wide web at a time before graphical web browsers even existed. Starfire: The Directors' Cut explores in candid detail a technological future based on industry cooperation, human-centered design, and the continued presence of bad guys." (AskTog - Starfire: A Vision of Future Computing) Classics 2008-06-19T15:12:31+01:00 "It is hard to find an old technology that is not available in any form any where on earth. But today I may have found one. Alex Wright's story in the New York Times about Paul Otlet, the little-known Belgian who worked out an early version of hypertext (...) prompted a reader to point out a system similar to Otlet's that was once available commercially in the US." (Kevin Kelly - The Technium) Classics 2008-06-18T15:47:34+01:00 "On a fog-drizzled Monday afternoon, this fading medieval city feels like a forgotten place. Apart from the obligatory Gothic cathedral, there is not much to see here except for a tiny storefront museum called the Mundaneum, tucked down a narrow street in the northeast corner of town. It feels like a fittingly secluded home for the legacy of one of technology’s lost pioneers: Paul Otlet." (Alex Wright - The New York Times) Classics 2008-06-17T09:29:29+01:00