Meeting of the Mind

Streams (dynamic information objects), attention, flow

Educause review posts “Streams of Content, Limited Attention: The Flow of Information through Social Media” by Danah Boyd, social scientist at Microsoft Research.  Bringing together Csikszentmihalyi and “streams” of information, the piece shows how neuroscience can be applied to real-world information phenomena.  Boyd doesn’t quite get to the “problem of the document” (in these days of electronic impermanence and Web 2.0 capability of continuous editing, what can we anchor as a fixed document any more), and the connection between “flow” and “streams” may be just a tad glib; but it does bring up the question of how attention might affect the consequences of publishing something that’s not a fixed document but a “stream.”  Authors have always known that once they write something and release it to the world, the work leaves the author’s control and takes on a life of its own.  Now we are taking a more scientific look at what is essentially the field of “communications.”  With the word “attention,” Boyd is inviting us to consider a more physiological approach.

Institute for the Future of the Book

Investigates the effect of the digital medium on discourse as it shifts from dead trees to “networked screens.”  Their home page links to projects including MediaCommons (commented on in Collaboration and social neuroscience), the Googlization of everything, and a book on the history of disbelief–which is notable for its technical feature, CommentPress, allowing comments in the margins.

Neuroscience at an i-school

Information and discovery in neuroscience at the Information Systems Research Lab at UIUC GSLiS is more about information and discovery than actual neuroscience, but it’s one of the most relevant sites to watch.

Citation mapping

(Other essays on that site are worthwhile as well.)

Kohonen self-organizing maps

Ben Shneiderman‘s information visualization work

He is actually an HCI (human-computer interaction) scientist. Now that he has shaved his beard, he is of less interest; but he continues to contribute to the psychology of interfaces.
One of his exciting projects, because it provides means for thinking and expression using visualization: OLIVE: On-line Library of Information Visualization Environments. Examples of visualization environments include Geographic information services (GIS) (including Arc software), computer chip design, newspaper layouts, and photography (Photoshop). Unfortunately, OLIVE is now about ten years old. Note to self (you know who you are): check projects page for citations and continued work.

Cognitive work analysis

Great work by Raya Fidel et al. at a great school, the Information School (iSchool) of the University of Washington . See also
From information behaviour research to the design of information systems: the Cognitive Work Analysis framework from Information research (an excellent journal, from Sweden, but no RSS feed).