Beautiful post… sorry it took me almost three weeks to get to it! I’ll have to think where this fits… she does deserve attention. Might make an interesting “Arthur Curley Lecture” at ALA.

Hugs

Karen S.

Pamela thank you for spreading the word about Suzanne Briet, and danah thank you for this very late (for me) recognition of an Information Lady. In my post i explain that i got a degree in information science in 1973 at l’INTD, the school that Suzanne Briet had founded… and even though, it’s through your article, danah, that i first heard of her! From the biographies i read by Ron Day and Michael Buckland, i have made up an image of mine of Suzanne Briet being another “Simone de Beauvoir”…

At the end of the post i also announce of the publication (in French) of “La femme digitale”, a book written by Isabelle Juppé, wife of Alain Juppé former French prime minister.

I would like to translate to spanish this post, and posting it into my own blog http://www.sopadebits.com/, which is focused on the mix of technology, information science and maths.

Of course I will point to your blog with the whole of the attributions that you think are needed.

I do have some concerns about your argument in this post, however. I’m curious about why you feel non-Christians are marginalized in the history of information science. The list you provide at the end of the post seems arbitrary to me in that regard. I don’t see Buckland’s paper making the argument that Bush’s ideas got more attention because he was Christian–indeed, do we know that Bush was Christian? Clearly Hitler and Hoover would have wanted to marginalize Goldberg because of his Jewishness, but it’s still a stretch, in my view, to conclude that information scientists and info-science historians are more likely to promote Christians than non-Christians in their chronicles, as you imply.

Also, I think it’s important to recognize that Bush’s primary contribution was not so much the technology he imagined as the way in which he viewed information technology’s power as a supplement or extension to human cognition. The word “computer” suggests that Bush’s vision was not widespread–these machines were for rapid calculations, so how could that be a cognitive aid? Buckland’s admirable essay moves too quickly, I think, to dismiss Bush’s idea of associative trails. Buckland argues that these trails are too idiosyncratic to be of social value, and that they change so rapidly with additional learning that to specify them at any given point generates data that will quickly become irrelevant even for the individual. If that were true, however, Google wouldn’t work. Also, Bush’s vision at its most intense suggests that these associative trails could and should be shared, and by implication the sharing of associative trails would generate new associative trails. The Memex’s social function is every bit as important as its private function, but Buckland does not treat that part of Bush’s essay. Bush’s vision is of a distributed cognition as well as an intimate supplement to memory. I would argue that more conventional information indexes are necessary but not sufficient, and have arisen at least in part because there was no technology powerful enough to generate distributed cognition in any way besides taxonomies–with the possible exception of natural language, the ultimate folksonomy.

By all means, the histories of information science should find and celebrate those pioneers (and those working today) who have been eclipsed, forgotten, or marginalized, for whatever reasons. But that is no reason to diminish Bush’s contribution, or to suggest that his influence is largely the result of social injustice. While I think Buckland does not acknowledge or analyze the real conceptual power of Bush’s famous essay, his conclusions do try to treat the matter fairly, at least to the extent of acknowledging that Bush’s “skillful writing” aided its influence, and making plain that the record strongly suggests that Bush knew nothing of Goldberg’s work. Your first paragraph implies that Bush stole the idea from Goldberg–an unfair and inaccurate implication not supported by either Buckland’s article or the historical record as we now have it.

As one of the weirder students who actually hang out with the LIS historians (a grand lot if there ever was one) I know of many of these people. As to how to get others interested in them I have no idea. LIS is basically ahistoric at this point. I’m not even going to try and say why, but it is so sad.

But I shall attempt to spread the word further by linking to this on the UIUC Progressive Librarians Guild page.

mark : no relation to Michael Buckland but I did tag him with an antelope sticker once [sorry, bad LIS joke].

Awesome post!

amy buckland
(no relation to Michael… but the name certainly helps in the LIS world!)