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Mark Burgin (1946-2023)

Mark Burgin 9 January 1946 - 18 February 2023 (Photo W. Hofkirchner) Mark Burgin, mathematician and information theorist, died on 18 February 2023. He was well-known for his leadership of interdisciplinary studies of the concept of information, particularly through the International Society for Information Studies (IS4IS) and its conferences, and the affiliated MDPI open access… Continue reading Mark Burgin (1946-2023)

“Transmitted as never before”: the communication revolution and the green infrastructure, 1830 – 1880

On 22nd September 2022, I gave a presentation to an international symposium on 'The Genesis of the Green Infrastructure', celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted. The presentation is now available, along with other materials from the symposium, on the symposium website and on YouTube.  This presentation reviewed developments in information… Continue reading “Transmitted as never before”: the communication revolution and the green infrastructure, 1830 – 1880

Indexes (and quite a bit besides), history of

In this history of indexes and indexing, Dennis Duncan offers a scholarly, but very readable, mix of information history, literature, information science, and the history of books and reading. To someone, like myself, whose ideas of indexes has revolved around the likes of Index Medicus and Chemical Abstracts, the ideas of satirical indexes, indexes as… Continue reading Indexes (and quite a bit besides), history of

Changing classifications

When teaching and writing about the classification of documents ('bibliographic classification'), I try to remember to make the point that document classifications very often draw from, and less often contribute to, more general classifications and taxonomies of knowledge, and of entities in the physical world. So it is worth keeping an eye on classification in… Continue reading Changing classifications

Equations, images, understanding?

In previous posts, I have touched on understanding, and the complementary nature of conscious human understanding and the more opaque, to us at least, understanding produced by AI systems. Such systems, particularly those described as deep-learning, produce an 'understanding' of large and complex data sets, but without employing the kind of concepts on which humans… Continue reading Equations, images, understanding?