Impact of Social Media on the Youth

INTRODUCTION

Social Media has become an important part of our society that it is impossible to imagine our lives without it. Every other person is part of one or many social media platforms, some of the most popular ones being, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, WhatsApp, and YouTube. People, especially youth prefer to socialize through these platforms where you can interact with people from different parts of the world by just a click of the button. From giving us new ways to come together and stay connected to the world around us, to providing an outlet for expression, social media has fundamentally changed the way we initiate, build and maintain our relationships. As the popularity of social media is spreading all over the world, there have been mixed feelings about these networking sites.

My quest on how and to what extent social media is impacting the youth, led me to conduct a survey as well as an interview targeting an audience of 17 to 24 years.

I was able to conduct a detailed questionnaire which was responded by 12 participants along with an interview with two persons. The participants’ occupations were mixed – both professionals, as well as students, were part of the research process.

FINDINGS

From the research, I was able to gather, that most of my participants used social media networks such as WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

There are both positive as well as negative impacts of using social media. It is necessary to talk about both sides of social media in order to get an overall idea of the research findings. First, let’s discuss some positive impacts followed by the negative impacts that were found based on the analysis of the results of the research.

POSITIVE IMPACTS

  • Exposure

People can interact with other people around the world through social media networks which, empower them in many ways. Social Media becomes a platform where people can showcase their ideas or talents, learn new skills and acquire knowledge through social media.

  • Finding friends

Social media is also able to connect people by using algorithms in a way that normally wouldn’t happen in the real world. The role of algorithms in filtering our results based on our history, location, interests and other details are explained in “The Relevance of Algorithm” by Tarleton Gillespie, the reading that was discussed in class. This reading speaks in detail of the “algorithmic identity” of a person and how this helps in filtering the results to provide us with the best suitable results based on our location, likes/ interests and our profile information. The high possibility of finding long lost friends has been pointed out as an important factor in expanding the social life of these young people.

  • Mental Health

A large number of people mentioned feelings of motivation and inspiration while using social media. Using Facebook, WhatsApp and other apps help in increasing the friendship quality and network size.

  • Interaction

Also, many people who are not comfortable talking face to face feel safe and less intimidated by chatting with a person online. The growth of mass self-communication, the communication that reaches a global audience through p2p networks and internet connection has been talked about in “The Rise of Network Society” by Manuel Castells.

NEGATIVE IMPACTS

On the flip side, social media has some negative impacts as well.

  • Usage

Also, a large number of people used social networks when they are bored, as soon as they wake up in the morning or before sleeping with more or less no goals to achieve. Most of the people registered using social media for 1 to 5 hours daily. This increased time consumption by using social media may affect their productivity and cause addiction.

  • Physical Interaction

Though social media is widely used for its socializing abilities, it is also criticized for reduced physical socializing capabilities. The impact of Social Media has changed the manner in which we see ourselves, the manner in which we see our personal relationships, plus it has also affected the manner in which we connect with our general surroundings. Most of the participants recorded having a huge number of friends online compared to the limited few who were their actual friends in real life. This may also be due to the fact that many of the youth accept strangers as on social media, making themselves prone to exposing their personal details to a group of strangers.

  • Mental Health

Many young people complained of mental breakdowns. These people are also found to be obsessed with the likes and comments they receive on social media as they mentioned constantly checking and keeping track of the likes they received to account for their popularity. Many youngsters also confirmed how they compared themselves to others on social media by stalking their aesthetically perfect Instagram photos or staying up to date with their relationship status on Facebook. This causes an increase in unrealistic expectations, self-doubt as well as feelings of jealousy

  • Physical Health

There are lots of unhealthy physical effects of social media usage. A large number of people indicated poor posture and eye strain as some of the physical impacts they experienced. One can get eyestrain from staring at screens for too long. Fatigue by staying up too late posting on social media was also an issue found among the youth using social media.

CONCLUSION

From this survey, I can conclude that most young people are aware of the risks and dangers of social media, yet they do not intend to quit these, as our lives are intertwined with it. Social Media usage, if constantly checked and kept under control, it can outweigh its negative impacts to make the social media platforms a better and effective means of communication. One of the ways of doing this can be by limiting the usage duration by having apps to track your usage and lock you out of your phones for a certain amount of time. Taking some breathing time away from these media can help bring back our conscience to the physical world and create a balance in our lives.

Posted on by Divya Thomas Chuttiparavilayil 0

Observation of The NYPL Stephen A. Schwarzman Research Library

The Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, located on Fifth Avenue between Forty-Second and Fortieth Street, stands as a centerpiece for the New York Public Library. It is a grand marble building that has remained a spectacle since 1911. Few things have been changed in the library, beyond modern updates and fixes, and most people want it to stay that way. But what about what goes on inside the marble? 

Are the librarians the same people that checked out the first books?

Have librarian practices remained the same?  

Is information still circulated through the same stacks that were built in 1911?

Do people still use the research library?

What type of people actually participate in library offerings?

Just how old is this library? 

To catch a glimpse at the answers to these questions, I spent a day observing researchers and patrons at the New York Public Library Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, as well as interviewing library staff.

Setting

I decided to spend most of my time in a smaller research room instead of the main Rose Reading Room for multiple reasons. First, tourists flock to the Rose Reading Room, and they are not the focus of my inquiries. Second, the Local History and Genealogy Milstein Division where I took up shop, allowed me to view researchers, librarians, and staff all at the same time. Third, this division of the library was broader than some of the other research rooms and as a result I would be able to observe a wider range of questions, requests, and interactions.

Observation

From the start I notice that everyone who enters the research room has one two reactions. They either straighten up and constantly check with the librarian visually to make sure they are not breaking any rules (similar to how people react to seeing a police officer), or they smile and say hello as if they feel welcomed. Both reactions indicate that librarians on title alone have a level of respect from the general public. It is for this reason that they have a certain code of ethics and an obligation to their community to keep the information in the library safe. It is also why diversity among library staff, and inclusion for all is so important in a library. As respected figures, librarians set a standard for others. 

Staff & Diversity

It is not difficult to see that the New York Public Library places value on diversifying their staff. The Local History and Genealogy division (LHG) in particular represents varying races, sexes, languages, genders, ages, and sexual orientations. The library publicly puts valuable information into all types of people’s hands, which I believe is an effort to normalize the idea that information professionals can be anyone.

Interestingly, I also noticed that most of the librarians in LHG were male. In my personal experience it has often been that most librarians are women. Despite this, I noticed, unsurprisingly, that there was no change in how the librarians interacted with patrons or researchers, or how their work got done. Overall, based on the ALA Manual definition of diversity- “race, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, creed, color, religious background, national origin, language of origin or disability”, the NYPL has kept up with ethical and responsible hiring standards. 

Patrons

If the librarians are the brain of the library, and the books are the lungs, the patrons are the heart. Without the people that wander the stacks looking for information, nothing would be read or investigated. The librarians would be out of job, and the books would be useless. It is for this reason that I found it interesting that not everyone has equal access to the library.

The key to everything NYPL has to offer is a library card. It is a simple plastic thing with a barcode number that can reveal a world of opportunity. Want to check out a book? Better grab your library card. What if you want to browse the internet for a bit? Got to use your library card. It seems the only thing you can do without a library card is stare out the window and enjoy the climate controlled building. 

To get a library card you need two things: an address, and an ID with that address on it. For most people that come to the NYPL this isn’t an issue. Even if your ID has a different address on it, you can pull up a bill or a piece of mail with your name and place of residence on it and they’ll welcome you to the club.

For a smaller, but still very relevant group of visitors, however, having an address is not easy. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, there are 62,391 people without permanent homes in New York City. That is 62,391 people who cannot use the library to find jobs on the computer, or check out a book to develop marketable skills. This exclusion of a group of people that would benefit significantly from library services is definitely a flaw in the NYPL system. 

Interview

After spending some time observing in LHG, I sat down with one of the librarians so that I could learn about the things I couldn’t see. Contrary to stereotypes, he had a demanding voice and stature and I felt compelled to listen to him.  

Information Overload

One of the more important topics revolving around librarianship, in my opinion, is how these professionals handle data or information overload. Not long ago librarians often had to fight against having too little information available to them. With the internet, digitization of thousands and thousands of records and collections, as well as increased patron contributions, librarians have an overwhelming amount of resources. When asked about this, the LHG librarian explained that he had to learn how to research more effectively. Databases have helped narrow down search results, but he mostly relies on his own ability to filter out the extra stuff. He also mentioned that in the research libraries in particular, patrons use the online catalog and databases to find their own materials before bringing it to him for assistance. This means, however, that his job also now includes teaching patrons how to use the library website, its databases, catalog, and other little overly complicated bits. 

With all of this new digital content and information floating along above our heads in the cloud, an important question is; Who owns it, and why do libraries have it? The librarian had a quick answer to this, which was if the library had to own everything it circulated, no one would know anything of importance. He pointed out a feature of LHG that was pretty popular with researchers; a file system of researcher-created records of families, places, and things. The library doesn’t necessarily own any of the findings in those files, but it keeps them and cares for them because it’s the library’s obligation to to do so. 

Burnout

Naturally our conversation concerning piles and piles of information lead straight into my next question. Did he ever feel burnout? Was he ever tired of his job and did he ever feel like the work wasn’t worth the punishment? He had been quick to respond before, but was slower this time. Yes, he did sometimes feel the effects of burnout, but not in a way that made him feel like his work wasn’t worth it. Rather, he felt that sometimes the institution thought his contribution was less than what it was in reality, and that was the frustrating part, reasonably. I found this interesting considering I had previous overheard two librarians gossiping about how the people making important organizational decisions knew nothing about the system. The conclusion from this is that the NYPL administration may not fully consider the insight of those who work in the very trenches they are redesigning. 

Politics, Neutrality & Librarianship

I managed to end my inquiry on the most difficult topic; Librarianship and neutrality. The librarian I spoke to had little trouble forming an opinion, ironically. He suggested that librarians can be neutral until there is a political or ideological thought that threatens the overall well-being of the library’s patrons or the collection. Generally, politics can’t play a part in researching a topic for someone, because that could limit what information you can give. Same goes for controversial ideas. He did mention at the end of our talk that he believes that it’s impossible to stifle your own beliefs completely, and that its the responsibility of the person to control how those beliefs come out. 

Conclusion

As I learned about the ins and outs of the library during my observation and conversation, I found the answer to my biggest question. Despite being old on the outside, most of the inside of the library was young and new. The librarians were informed and up to date on the pressing matters of their profession. The staff was diverse and welcoming. The exclusion of some groups in the city needed some work, but I feel as if the library is aware of this issue and is working on solutions. Overall, the NYPL Stephen A. Schwarzman Building is blazing into 2020 as a leader of library practices. 

References

Birdsall, William F. “A Political Economy of Librarianship?” Progressive Librarian, no. 18.

Cope, Jonathan. “Neoliberalism and Library & Information Science Using Karl Polanyi’s Fictitious Commodity as an Alternative to Neoliberal Conceptions of Information.” pp. 67–80.

Gehner, John. “Libraries, Low-Income People, and Social Exclusion.” Public Library Quarterly, vol. 29, 15 Mar. 2010, pp. 39–47., http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01616840903562976.

Nauratil, Marcia J. “The Alienated Librarian.” New Directions In Information Management, vol. 20, 1989.

Rosenzweig, Mark. “POLITICS AND ANTI-POLITICS IN LIBRARIANSHIP.” Progressive Librarian, no. 3, 1991.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Scarcity or Abundance? Preserving the Past in a Digital Era.” The American Historical Review, vol. 108, no. 3, June 2003, pp. 735–762., doi:10.1086/529596.

Vinopal, Jennifer. “THE QUEST FOR DIVERSITY IN LIBRARY STAFFING: FROM AWARENESS TO ACTION.” In The Library With The Lead Pipe, 13 Jan. 2016.

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Memory and Community: Person, Place, and Thing

Person: Cynthia Cruz

Cynthia Cruz is a poet of German and Mexican descent, born in Germany but raised in northern California. Her work reads like a scrapbook, image after image placed on top of one another. Her third book Wunderkammer translates to “a cabinet of curiosities”. Each poem heavy with German history, German artists, and fragments of the personal. Each image is locked in a multi-leveled vitrine for the reader’s consumption. The poet’s mother was a hoarder, the poet is obsessed with archiving, the need to “collect, assemble, and name”.

In 2018 I attended Cynthia Cruz’s craft talk at the Poet’s House entitled “The Archive as Resistance”. In 2010, as a Hodder fellow at Princeton, Cruz scoured through archives to research for Wunderkammer. She drew inspiration from German visual artists: Hanna Darboven, Gerard Rictor, and Rosemary Trockel. As well as great German writer and thinkers Aby Warburg and Walter Benjamin. Throughout her collection, she created “totems and objects that carry memory or meaning”. She describes the poems in Wunderkammer as dense, long lines, and no space, a type of claustrophobia”.

  • taken from Cruz’s Wunderkammer

Wunderkammer is an exploration of trauma and how trauma informs and changes people. A part of her research involved reading about the building of the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

The creation of a museum that houses artifacts and relics of Berlin Jews chronologically create a sense of closure as if the Holocaust was now in the past. When in fact that past has not passed. Questions of how it could have happened and it’s impact are felt throughout and informs contemporary Germany, Berlin, and the world.

In conversation with Sharon Macdonald’s “Is Difficult Heritage Still Difficult?”, Cruz’s work remains personal (fictional or not), her use of German history is through her lens (girlhood, failure, and mental illness). Macdonald’s piece deals with the right way to present such a dark past: facts versus emotions, how much of the horror to show, heritage versus nationalism, and etc. Through the poems in Wunderkammer, Cynthia Cruz takes fragments of her past, her mixed cultures and works from people from her native country to make a sort of collage.

Place: The Historic New Orleans Collection

In 1938, General L Kemper and Leila Williams purchased two properties in the French Quarter—The Merieult House and a late 19th century residence on Toulouse Street. Throughout their lives they gathered a hefty amount of important Louisiana artifacts. After the couple passed, their home became the Historic New Orleans Collection.

The Historic New Orleans Collection – Merieult House. 533 Royal St., New Orleans, LA 70130.

In 2016, during my first trip to New Orleans, I got to witness the award winning and traveling Purchased Lives: The American Slave Trade from 1808 to 1865 exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection. I walked in with two childhood friends and my one friend’s aunt, we moved separately, sometimes we regrouped but we never spoke. From what I recall, you could hear a pin drop, it seemed like every visitor was busy absorbing the information to say anything of value.

Historian Erin M. Greenwald curated the exhibit which includes period broadsides, paintings, and prints illustrating the domestic slave trade, interactive displays, historical records by tracking the shipment of more than 70,000 people to New Orleans. While there were interactive components, most affective, was the “Lost Friends” ads placed after the Civil War by newly freed people attempting to locate family members. The preservation of those ads made everything so three dimensional. In Cloonan’s “W(H)ITHER Preservation”, she writes, Preservation allows for the continuity of the past with the present and the future”. I was there on vacation, steps away from Bourbon street, filled with tourists and bachelorette parties, but on a ground drenched in history and blood. The presentation of the ads-from floor to ceiling- daughters looking for mothers they had not seen in 30 years, gave the memory institution have a pulse.

Thing: Little Free Library (Take A Book, Share A Book)

A small wooden box full of books, where neighbors are encouraged to take a book and leave a book. Little Free Library is a non-profit whose mission is to increase access to books for readers of all ages and backgrounds. The organization boasts 90,000 street libraries in 90 countries. Those who want to start a Little Free Library can order a kit through their website or build their own. Their website also has a map where the user can type in their zip code and find the Little Free Library nearest to them. There are two in walking distance from my apartment in Bushwick. I think the idea is adorable and promotes community building.

This reminds me of Chatman’s four concepts in “The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders”. She names deception, risk-taking, secrecy, and situational relevancy as reasons “information outsiders” remain on the outside. But with something like the Little Free Library, it’s open to everyone, there need not be any sharing of personal information or personal stories. There is a freedom, no need to sign up for a library card, or fees for lateness, it is almost encouraged for it to be anonymous. The only concern is not enough people knowing about such a uniting program.

-Herbert Duran

Resources

2018: The Archive as Resistance: A Craft Talk with Cynthia Cruz. (n.d.). Retrieved November 7, 2019, from Poets House website: https://poetshouse.org/audio/2018-the-archive-as-resistance-a-craft-talk-with-cynthia-cruz/

Chatman, E. A. (n.d.). The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders. 15.

Chatman—The Impoverished Life-World of Outsiders.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/924614/mod_resource/content/1/Chatham-Information%20Povertyt.pdf

Cloonan, M. V. (2001). W(H)ITHER Preservation? The Library Quarterly: Information, Community, Policy, 71(2), 231–242.

Cloonan—2001—W(H)ITHER Preservation.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/924550/mod_resource/content/1/Cloonan_2004.pdf

Cruz, C. (2014). Wunderkammer. New York: Four Way Books.

Exhibition – Purchased Lives: New Orleans And The Domestic Slave Trade, 18081865 – New Orleans, LA. (n.d.). Retrieved November 7, 2019, from http://www.americantowns.com/news/exhibition-purchased-lives-new-orleans-and-the-domestic-slave-trade-1808aeur1865-22900958-new-orleans-la.html

Macdonald, S. (2015). Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still ‘Difficult’?: Why Public Acknowledgment of Past Perpetration May No Longer Be So Unsettling to Collective Identities. Museum International, 67(1–4), 6–22. https://doi.org/10.1111/muse.12078

Macdonald—2015—Is ‘Difficult Heritage’ Still ‘Difficult’ Why Pu.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://lms.pratt.edu/pluginfile.php/924553/mod_resource/content/1/MacDonald_2015.pdf

Purchased Lives Exhibit Opens At The National Civil Rights Museum. (2018, January 25). Retrieved November 7, 2019, from Black Then website: blackthen.com/purchased-lives-exhibit-opens-national-civil-rights-museum/

What We Do. (n.d.). Retrieved November 7, 2019, from Street Books website: http://streetbooks.org/what-we-do-1

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Event Review: AI Now 2019 Symposium

On October 2nd, 2019 the AI Now Institute hosted its 4th annual symposium. Titled “The Growing Pushback Against Harmful AI,” the symposium brought together lawyers, professors, community advocates, and organizers to discuss the ways that Artificial Intelligence has negatively affected their communities, their work, and their lives. The AI Now Institute is an interdisciplinary research institute based at New York University that focuses on the social implications of current and emerging AI technology. The AI Now Institute brings experts across fields, professions, and communities together to identify and respond to the growing ubiquity of AI technology, and the harmful effects it is proving to have.

Co-Founders and Co-Directors Kate Crawford and Meredith Whittaker introduced the symposium by doing a “Year in Review,” highlighting some of the major events involving AI in the past year, including San Francisco’s ban on facial recognition technology and Amazon abandoning its HQ2 in New York City. The symposium was then divided into four panels, which explored topics such as the use of AI technology by the police and border patrol agents, the pushback by tenants in an apartment building in Brooklyn who are fighting against facial recognition technology, a class-action lawsuit against the state of Michigan for using an algorithm that falsely flagged over 20,000 Michigan residents of employment fraud, and lastly the methods, successes, and goals of organizing tech workers across platforms to win gains in the workplace.

The first panel of the symposium, “AI and the Police State,” was chaired by Andrea Nill Sánchez, incoming Executive Director of AI Now. This panel spoke with Marisa Franco, Director and Co-Founder of Mijente; Ruha Benjamin, Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University; and Kristian Lum, Lead Statistician of the Human Rights Data Analysis Group. The panelists dove right into the ways that AI systems, technology, and information practices are used by border patrol agents and local police departments to target undocumented and marginalized people. On the same day as this panel, the New York Times published an article detailing how Donald Trump suggested border police “shoot migrants in the leg” (Shear and Hirschfield Davis) if they threw rocks at border agents, a chilling backdrop for the discussion. 

Franco spoke to the fact that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) relies on local police and contracts with technology companies to meet their arrest and deportation goals. Amazon’s “Ring” and the Palantir’s “FALCON Tipline” have been specifically exposed as aiding police departments and I.C.E in locating people who are undocumented for arrest and deportation. Franco directly pointed to Amazon and Palantir as targets of Mijente’s strategizing against the use of tech companies profiting off of deportations (using the hashtag #NoTechForICE on social media). 

Benjamin and Lum spoke to the use of AI and various algorithms to criminalize and target marginalized communities. Benjamin highlighted the specific threats that automated risk assessment technology pose to already vilified communities. Municipalities are increasingly turning to pre-trial risk assessment algorithms to determine a defendant’s risk of committing a future crime, a process that is deeply embedded with racial stereotypes and highly questionable, racially biased data. These algorithms serve to perpetuate racist stereotypes and the criminalization of poverty by drawing from data in a deeply racist, sexist, and classist society. Benjamin powerfully spoke to how these algorithms aren’t actually “flawed,” they are working exactly as intended for police departments, to legitimize racially targeted policing by pointing to algorithms that are described as neutral and objective, when they are anything but neutral or objective.

As outlined by Safiya Noble in her 2016 PDF talk titled “Challenging the Algorithms of Oppression,” she makes it is clear that technology and algorithms reflect and produce the racism and prejudices of the society they are created in. These algorithms serve to maintain and continue racist stereotypes because of the perception that technology, data, and algorithms can be objective. The question becomes, how do we challenge both the racist society that produces the data the algorithms used, and how do we prevent algorithms from perpetuating racism in our virtual and physical lives?

Amid the sea of examples of the ways that facial recognition technology is being used to target, criminalize, and further marginalize already vulnerable populations, the second panel focussed on AI technology used to monitor tenants in the Atlantic Towers in Brownsville, Brooklyn. The panel “Tenants Against Facial Recognition” included two Community Activists from the Atlantic Towers Tenants Association, Tranae Moran and Fabian Rogers. Along with Mona Patel, an attorney from Brooklyn Legal Services, they both spoke of the Tenants Association’s case against their landlord for attempting to install facial recognition software in their building without informing or acquiring consent from the tenants. Their case highlights how there is no precedent for legislation on facial recognition technology in housing units. This case will be an important milestone in the fight against surveillance and attacks on privacy, and speaks to the new ways that people will have to fight back against invasions of their privacy and the collection of their data.

The session “Automating Judgement” was a conversation between Jennifer Lord, a lawyer from Michigan, and Kate Crawford. They discussed the automation system MiDAS, which ultimately upended over 20,000 people’s lives by falsely accusing them of employment fraud. Sparking the question, when algorithms fail, who is responsible? Lord spoke to the dangers of outsourcing fraud detection work, as well as outsourcing any social benefit dispersal programs, to machines and algorithms. 

These three sessions highlighted that when algorithms both work as intended or fail at their task, they have the ability to ruin people’s lives. These panels demonstrated that when these technologies do work, they pose serious threats to marginalized communities by drawing from data sets imbued with racist histories and stereotypes, and also act as unwanted tools of surveillance in marginalized communities. When algorithms don’t work as intended they are able to act as the most brutal bureaucrat and withhold necessary services to citizens and flag them as criminals.

The final session, “Organizing Tech,” brought together organizers from the Awood Center and the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (Abdirahman Muse and Bhairavi Desai, respectively), and Veena Dubal, a lawyer focussed on technological and social issues, in conversation with Meredith Whittaker. This panel highlighted the need for tech workers to connect with workers across both sector and class to make demands of employers. Groups have emerged such as the Tech Workers Coalition which aims to connect various tech related labor, social, and economic movements as a result of the widespread struggles that tech workers have been experiencing. 

This symposium brought together key figures in ongoing struggles with AI. However these issues are just the tip of the iceberg. As AI becomes more ubiquitous in our culture, and the business model of tech companies continues to exploit both workers and the consumers of their products, the need to hold AI and tech companies accountable will become ever more important. Whittaker and Crawford concluded the symposium with calls to continue to challenge the ways that AI can be used to discriminate, exploit, and cause harm to individuals and communities and to do so by centering the voices and experiences of those who are most affected by these systems.

Works referenced 

AI Now Institute. https://ainowinstitute.org/about.html

Felton, Ryan. 2016. “Michigan unemployment agency made 20,000 false fraud accusations – report.” The Guardian. Accessed October 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/18/michigan-unemployment-agency-fraud-accusations

Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfield Davis. 2019. “Shoot Migrants’ Legs, Build Alligator Moat: Behind Trump’s Ideas for Border.” The New York Times. Accessed October 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/01/us/politics/trump-border-wars.html

Noble, Safiya. 2016. “Challenging the Algorithms of Oppression.” PDF 2016 Talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRVZozEEWlE

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Observation: Visitors, artwork, and technology at the Museum of Modern Art

In 2013 the Guggenheim hosted a James Turrell’s retrospective that transformed the iconic rotunda of the Guggenheim into Aten Reign, a large scale and site specific work using light, changing colors, air and space, and the curves of the museum itself. Turrell transformed the Guggenheim into a site for artful reflection for all who entered the space. Rather than an object to look at or a subject to contemplate, the experience of being in this transformed space was the work of art. “A lot of it is the idea of seeing yourself seeing, and how we perceive” Turrell has said of his work that lacks image, object, or “one place of focus” (Guggenheim).

During the length of this exhibition, there was no art on the walls of the Guggenheim’s spiraled hallway. Visitors were encouraged to lay on the ground of the lobby and gaze at the ceiling, which, using light and color, had been transformed into overlapping ovals of bright fluorescent hues. It was ethereal, magical, meditative, sublime. In an attempt to preserve the sense of bliss and encourage quiet, unmediated reflection, no photography was allowed in the space. 

Something I can say with complete certainty is that hearing a security guard shout into an echoing rotunda “NO PHOTOGRAPHY” every two minutes was not conducive to an ethereal, magical, meditative, or sublime experience. Something I learned during my visit to the Guggenheim that day was that visitors will do whatever they want. They will get the validation of their experience that they expect. They will share their experience no matter what.

This experience, six years ago, has stuck with me and prompted me to think about how the relationship between people and their smartphones has affected the experience of viewing art in a museum gallery setting. This experience, among others, has largely influenced my interest in museum studies, digital media, and tech theory. 

Background

I used to always bring a journal into a gallery and take notes on the works I liked, the artists, themes, books I should follow up with. Now I take photos of wall texts, books I want to look into, and of other people taking photos in the galleries. Sometimes I feel weary and critical of my own increased use of technology in galleries, but recognize that people, including myself, want to personalize, document, and share their experiences. In Finding Augusta, Cooley discusses Michel Foucault’s conception of “speaking the self,” and that often “much of what we document of ourselves transpires at the nonconscious level of the proto-self, at the level of impulse” (Cooley, 2014). This interest in “speaking the self” extends into many, if not all, facets of our digitally connected world.

Prompted by this assignment to conduct an observation relating to information studies and our personal interests, I decided to do an observation at the Museum of Modern Art. My intention was to observe specifically how people use technology, specifically smartphones, in a museum gallery setting. 

Perspective, or, guiding questions for assignment

General questions to guide my inquiry:

  1. How do people engage with art in a museum gallery setting?
  2. How do people engage with technology  in a museum gallery setting (both their own devices or provided by the museum)?
  3. How does technology, specifically the use of personal devices, mediate a viewer’s experience with art in a museum gallery setting?
  4. What do people do with their personal devices? Social media, digital scrapbooks, text messaging, etc?
  5. How does the use of technology by others affect an individuals experience in a museum gallery setting?

Specific questions for observations:

  1. How many people who walked through the gallery used a photo to take a photo of a work of art?
  2. How many people used their phone for non-art related purposes, namely, communication?
  3. What other phone use did people engage in?
  4. How many people used a camera to take a photo of a work of art or the gallery?
  5. What other technology was used (either personal devices or provided by museum)

Observations and data

I sat between rooms 205 and 206 (marked on Fig 1) within an exhibition titled “1970’s-Present.” Immediately upon entering this exhibition space on the second floor of the museum, there were large paintings by Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, and Basquiat. Further into the gallery I found a place to sit, where I could observe visitors walking through the gallery in either direction. My focus was on visitors who walked into room 205 and then through rooms 205 and 206. 

Fig 1. Area I was observing marked in pen.

I used a worksheet to tally how people took photos of artwork in these gallery rooms with a smartphone, camera, or other device. Using a tally system I recorded how many people used their phone for communication (in some cases I couldn’t tell, in some cases I could see that people were texting, snapchatting, emailing, on Instagram, etc.). When I could, I recorded when people were using their phone for non communication or photographic purposes. The accuracy of these recordings were to the best of my observations as someone casually sitting on a bench in the gallery (I did not walk up to people or move to try to see anyone’s screens).

Fig 2. Worksheet/observations

Breakdown of tally (from Fig 2):

Phones used to take pictures33
Phones used for communication22
Other phone use5
Cameras used to take photos5
Other tech* seen
*Airpods, iPads, earpods		8

I realized while taking these observations that I did not include a section for audio guides. I added a section on my worksheet, but studying and observing audio guide use in the galleries could be an entirely separate set of observations and data that could easily include analytics from the devices.

A few things that stood out to me during these observations and while reflecting on the data:

  1. Within the scope of half an hour I had collected more data and notes than expected. I had intended to stay in the gallery for one hour but decided to end observing at half an hour.
  1. Almost as many visitors used their phones to communicate as take photos of the works, although visitors mostly used their phones to take photos.
  1. It was noticeable how many people idly held their phones in their hands. Rather than reaching for a phone from a pocket or bag to take a picture or send a text, the phone was constantly ready to be used. 

This last phenomena of visitors constantly holding their phone also points directly to our class discussion around Steve Jobs saying of the iPhone that it “fits beautifully in the palm of your hand.” This also relates to Foucault’s conception of “speaking the self” mentioned earlier, where we, as visitors in a cultural institution, see something that we react to (either emotionally, aesthetically, personally, etc) and find ourselves compelled to document and/or share. By focusing on cell phone use within the space of the gallery, I was in a unique position to notice a seemingly small detail that could have interesting implications in understanding how people connect to their technology in a museum setting.

Further research

Further research may include doing similar observations near works of art that are of higher profile. Had there been a place to sit and observe unobtrusively, I may have chosen to sit in the room with the Haring, Holzer, and Basquiat works. Immediately upon entering the 1970’s-Present exhibition, visitors are confronted with large scale, recognizable, and graphically engaging works by artists that are more recognizable than in the rest of the gallery. I am confident that different observations would have been recorded in that space given those particular works of art.

Further research that would be fruitful would be to understand what visitors do with their photos after they’re taken. If asked, “what are you going to do with that photo you just took?” Answers could range from, “I want to post it to my Facebook page,” to “I want to save this memory,” to “I am sending it to my friend who loves this artist,” to “I am working on a research paper.” I am interested in what the actual responses would be and their frequency. 

Conclusion

The conversation about technology in art and museum spaces is continuing to unfold as our lives and relationships become more and more mediated by technology. Much thought is being put into how museums and cultural institutions should relate to users and their lifestyles, many institutions have dramatically changed their photography policies in the past decade (Gilbert 2016), a direct result of the ubiquity of smartphones and visitors interest (and adamance) in documenting their experiences. As technology changes and evolves in ways that affect habits and our attachment to convenience and accessibility of social media, public institutions will need to grapple with how these developments affect their mission, rules, and expectations of visitors. 

Works referenced

Cooley, Heidi Rae. Finding Augusta: Habits of Mobility and Governance in the Digital Era. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press, 2014.

Gilbert, Sophie. 2016. “Please Turn On Your Phone in the Museum.” The Atlantic. Accessed October 2019. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/please-turn-on-your-phone-in-the-museum/497525/ 

“Introduction to James Turrell.” The Guggenheim Museum. Accessed October 2019. https://www.guggenheim.org/video/introduction-to-james-turrell

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Person, Place, Thing: A Lion, a Witch and a Wardrobe

The public library has played the role of a site of respite for my family, dependably familiar and inviting for us and countless others. This space, the children’s section of the library in particular, has inspired my venture into the study of information science. By entering the library, children and their caregivers are able to enter into a safe and cost-free place to engage and begin to form a relationship with literacy and community. 

My budding interest in information science enticed me to return to this city that I adore, New York, to study libraries and information science. An unfortunate but temporary consequence of this transition is that the vast children’s book collection we have accrued and weeded over the course of my daughter’s young life is currently spread out between three different storage locations for the time being. Even had we been physically close to our beloved books, my daughter and I our simply huge fans of browsing and borrowing to our hearts’ content, a habit we formed early on and continue to nurture. Since our very recent arrival to the city, we have slowly begun to explore a handful of libraries throughout the five boroughs. 

One of the contenders for a favorite children’s section is the marvelous and massive Main Branch in Manhattan, or, as it’s known by my daughter, “the library with the lion flag.” She’s not wrong. A single stone lion is, in fact, the library’s official mascot, and I have become very acquainted with this lion. What follows is a brief chronicling of my relationship to the NYPL children’s section: a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe.

A Lion

Patience, the lion, care of the NYPL website on the library lions

One lion accompanied by another, a pair of huge, imposing lions carved out of stone, oversee the masses below on New York’s Fifth Avenue, seemingly standing guard at the building’s scenic East-side entrance. A mirror image of the two felines is also replicated inside the children’s section, composed entirely of slate gray Legos. 

In my eyes, even their Lego incantations seem to emit an aura of nobility. Interestingly enough, they were given virtuous names, Patience and Fortitude, by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia amidst the Great Depression. The mayor’s reasoning was that these symbolic statues might inspire these qualities in the struggling citizenry during this challenging era. Today, visitors travel from far and wide to catch a glimpse or even a photo alongside this notable duo.

A Witch

The witch in this case uses her powers for good. Her role is more akin to that of Glenda of Wizard of Oz fame than that of the Wicked Witch or icy villain of Narnia. She is a public librarian. Like Glenda, the public librarian gently guides library patrons by listening to and interpreting their needs and providing a nudge in the right direction. Patience and fortitude are just as necessary for the librarian to embody as much as the next person. 

Librarians do not stand guard at the doors of the library as the large and lofty lions do, but they are also like guardians in many ways, for civic service is no easy feat. Often librarians today find themselves playing the roles of counselors, social workers, advisors, and are assumed to be experts on any number of bodies of knowledge. Though they are not human computers, they are rather exceptional figures in their own way. 

On a given day, the children’s librarian at any branch in the NYPL system could be leading a preschool story time for kids aged 3-5, which includes reading books, leading the group in song, engaging the crowd in some sort of hands-on crafting exercise, and otherwise expertly facilitating a bustling room full of toddlers and their caregivers, all within the span of an hour or so. Librarians plan programs, provide services, teach, listen, and so much more. How they manage to fit this all into one person’s job is as close to magic as something could get! 

The same, of course, could be said for librarians all over the country, from branches big and small. Their communities, however, are unique and individualized, and each library branch has their own special charms. I just happen to especially adore the NYPL Main Branch and its magical and benevolent witches, as have countless others before me. 

A Wardrobe

In a tiny corner of the children’s library in the central NYPL branch is a miniature puppet show station. With free play, the children can choose to alternate between the roles of puppet master and audience member as they please. The liminal spaces of the library provide a gateway to magical experiences, indeed, for people of all ages. In the first C.S. Lewis tale with its introduction to Narnia, the wardrobe functioned as a portal into a different world. It could also be said that books, in their many forms, can open up a gateway into new dimensions for anyone who takes the time to engage with them. 

Books can certainly be enjoyed from the comfort of one’s home, but there is something magnificent in the ordinary children’s room of a public library. From a child’s perspective, one can only imagine the magic and wonder that are evoked from hearing an entrancing story told by someone other than their guardian. The librarian themself might be just the point of entry needed to transport a child into the world of literacy. Their children’s room, when all works as planned, serves to act as a kind of magic wardrobe, transfixing and transporting young minds to new and thrilling environments.

Or so I would like to believe! As I have only begun my studies, I have much to learn, but if there’s one thing I am sure of, it is that we could all stand to use a little magic, patience, and fortitude in our lives. And thus concludes the short chronicles of NYPL kid’s services: a lion, a witch, and a wardrobe, as told by a mother and aspiring public librarian. 

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Person, Place, Thing: Grumpy Cat, Shopping Malls, and IKEA Assembly Instructions

Person: Grumpy Cat

In late September 2012, a cat photo was posted on the internet. This happens every single day. But this cat photo was different; it was the first internet appearance of Grumpy Cat. More than likely, you know exactly which cat I am referencing. How can this be? In 2015, CNN estimated that there were over 6.5 billion cat photos on the internet. With seemingly endless cat photos, how can you and I both know Grumpy Cat?

There is no denying Grumpy Cat’s internet fame. In fact, it is a photo of Grumpy Cat (real name Tardar Sauce) that appears at the top of the Wikipedia page, “Cats and the Internet”. But how did we get here? This is too brief a writing to discuss the many specific mechanics that create internet fame. However, we can certainly say that internet fame is impossible without sharing information.

Tarder Sauce posing with her wax model at Madame Tussaud’s in 2016

The first photo of Grumpy Cat was posted on Reddit, where users edited it into memes almost instantly. With each new iteration, a new audience was exposed to Tarder Sauce, growing her online presence. From there, it became a phenomenon. Grumpy Cat memes exploded to other parts of the internet.

The internet allows for rapid sharing of information; whether it is the sharing of current events, personal anecdotes, or cat photos. We are able to learn, research, and share faster and easier than ever before.

It is arguable that images and memes in particular are shared more than anything else online! Some only reach specific audiences, remaining within the network of its creator. Many are impossible to track the image’s source, such is their rapid spread. However, once in a while, an image or concept emerges that identifies with all, much like Grumpy Cat.

Place: Shopping Malls

Shopping malls, the ultimate retail destinations of America. Most are arranged in a similar fashion: with large “anchor” stores at each end, with smaller stores in aisles, and often a food court in between. Many malls, particularly the largest, have multiple levels. With such large interior spaces, wayfinding in shopping malls is extremely important. Shoppers need to know not only the location of each store, but the location of bathrooms, food, escalators, and exits.

Ross Park Mall, Pittsburgh, PA

How this information is communicated to the shopper can make or break one’s experience at the mall. The shopping mall wishes to encompass every retail desire one may need, but facilitating the ability to find it is necessary. All malls employ some sort of directory; most look like a simplified floor plan displaying the location of each store and amenity.

Some directories separate stores into categories, ie. Women’s Clothing, Men’s Clothing, Gifts, Kiosks, Food. Others choose to list stores alphabetically, or break down locations by zone. Signage in the aisles usually centers around the anchor stores, and therefore requires knowledge of the general direction you are heading.

In my own experience, directory signage is often few and far between, requiring the shopper to retain the information presented to them. Thinking back to the suburban mall my friends and I used to frequent in high school, the signage was sparse, and escalators were tucked away such that you could only use them if you had prior knowledge of their location.

Given this, one must consider: are malls intentionally making wayfinding difficult for shoppers? By wandering around a mall looking for a specific store, one is more likely than not to enter other stores along the way, adding additional purchasing opportunities. All this wandering will likely make you hungry, requiring you to purchase food at the mall. And god forbid you forget where you’ve parked!

Thing: IKEA Assembly Instructions

If you’ve ever purchased furniture from IKEA, you may know all too well that IKEA assembly instructions can be difficult to decipher. IKEA is infamous for requiring their customer to assemble their purchase; in a bid to reduce costs, most furniture comes flat packed, with assembly instructions explaining the process.

BILLY assembly instructions

These illustrations precisely outline assembly steps with accurate scale drawings of the pieces and hardware necessary for each step of the task. The consumer must correctly identify each part and utilize it in the correct way at the correct time. Given this complexity, there is no doubt that these illustrations are highly designed, tested, and optimized before released to the public. In fact, IKEA dubs its instruction designers who are responsible for distilling product assembly into its most basic steps “Communicators”.

IKEA communicators take care to not overwhelm the consumer by making the installation instructions only as detailed as necessary. However, by relying on the customer’s observation and interpretation skills alone, it is possible that mistakes will be made. Of course, if all else fails, there is always the option to pay an additional fee for IKEA’s assembly services!

Now, why – if IKEA furniture requires assembly by the average person – do the instructions use only graphics to convey the necessary information? IKEA’s products are sold in 38 countries across the world. Creating installation instructions graphically eliminates the need for translation. In their mind, the information literacy of the consumer is the only barrier to successful assembly. For some, this is a skill in need of practice.

IKEA’s corporate youtube account revolves around design inspiration and product announcements, inferring that the company’s communicators believe their instructions to be sufficient without tutorial videos. However, countless third-party youtube videos exist explaining assembly for nearly any IKEA product imaginable, with individuals sharing their own experiences, tips and tricks. Through this dissemination of information, individuals help to fill in what they perceive to be an information gap – space that IKEA has left.

Posted on by Lisa Peck 0

Person, place, thing: Ada Lovelace, Brooklyn Public Library, Personal Computer

Person: Ada Lovelace 

Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) was an English mathematician and writer known to have written the first algorithm ever, way before computers existed. She worked with Charles Babbage (1791-1871), the inventor of the Analytical Engine, a project for a mechanical general-purpose computer. In 1842 Babbage asked Ada Lovelace to translate a review made by an Italian mathematician of his Analytical Engine. The result was the translated review plus a set of notes explaining how the machine could work and what kind of computing it could make. One of the notes was a detailed method for computing the Bernoulli numbers, a calculus of math theory, using the Analytical Engine. This set of instructions to be done by a specific machine to produce something more than a calculation is known as the first algorithm and because of it, Ada Lovelace is also known as the first computer programmer.

Portrait of Ada Lovelace, possibly by Alfred Edward Chalon

At that time it was not common that women were trained in maths or science as she was. Ada was the daughter of the famous English poet Lord Byron and Annabella Milbanke, Lady Byron who was also trained in mathematics. Her mother made sure that she got a solid science and overall education through private tutors so that Ada would keep away from the insanity she accused Lord Byron of. Thanks to one of her tutors, at a very young age Ada Lovelace met  Charles Babbage and despite the age difference, they worked as peers. Babbage recognized Lovelace’s analytic skills and outstanding intellect calling her “The Enchantress of Numbers”. 

Ada Lovelace’s contribution was not only the algorithm itself but in the set of notes, she also wrote about her auspicious vision of what the Analytical Engine could achieve.


The operating mechanism can even be thrown into action independently of any object to operate upon (although of course no result could then be developed). Again, it might act upon other things besides number, were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations could be expressed by those of the abstract science of operations, and which should be also susceptible of adaptations to the action of the operating notation and mechanism of the engine. Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expressions and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent. (1)

Ada Lovelace was definitely ahead of her time. The first actual computer came to life around a century later and it, in fact, accomplished what she envisioned. 

Place: Brooklyn Public Library

Brooklyn Public Library Central Library is one of the most iconic buildings in Brooklyn. The construction of the building started in 1912 commanded by architect Raymond F. Allmirall but it didn’t open to the public until 1941. The structure is built to resemble an open book, with its spine facing Grand Army Plaza. The great entrance is ornamented with fifteen sculptures of famous characters from American literature like The Raven from the poem by Edgar Allan Poe, Tom Sawyer from the novels of Mark Twain and Moby Dick from the novel by Herman Melville. The entrance also has two massive columns decorated with reliefs representing the evolution of arts and sciences. 

Brooklyn Public Library, Central Library, photo by Gregg Richards


My favorite collection within the library is the Brooklyn Collection, a collection of documents of Brooklyn from pre-colonial times to the present that includes books, photographs, newspapers, maps, atlases, directories, prints, illustrations, and posters among other media. In this collection, I could see the designs and photos of the construction of the subway station I use every day.

The Central Library consists of 352,000 sq feet organized in ten different departments and collections offering numerous programs and services. One of the services that I use the most is the Shelby White and Leon Levy Information Commons that offers a wide range of programming related to digital media and technology. There is an amateur recording studio equipped with and editing workstation that I used for recording an episode of a podcast. 

Reflecting about BPL’s services and collections takes me back to the text about Information Ecologies by Nardi and O’Day (1999) where they go beyond considering a library as a place for accessing information, focusing on the relationships within the ecology of the library, including the relationship between people, people, and their environment, and people and technology. 

Thing: Personal Computer

The access to information we have today wouldn’t be possible without two things: the internet and personal computers. Before turning into a mass consumer electronic device, computers were used by experts in scientific settings. The earliest example of a personal computer, meaning a computer made for a single user, dates from 1956. The LGP-30 developed by physicist Stan Frankel was meant to be used for science and engineering as well as simple data processing, the price of the LGP-30 was $55,000, a good price for that type of machine at that time.

In 1962 MIT Lincoln Laboratory engineer Wesley Clark designed the LINC, which was meant to function in a laboratory setting. Some end-users from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) participated in a workshop at MIT where they built their own LINCs and brought back to their own institutions. 

In 1965’s New York World’s Fair appeared Olivetti Programma 101, which was the first to be described as a desktop computer. 40,000 units were sold including 10 sold to NASA for use on the Apollo space project. The cost of the Olivetti Programma 101 was $3,200. Let’s jump to the year 1971 when the Kenbak-1 was released. This is considered the earliest personal computer by the Computer History Museum. It was designed by John Blankenbaker and the price was $750. 

The world would have to wait until 1973 to see a personal computer that looks somewhat like the computers we know today. The Xerox Alto had a graphical user interface (GUI) with windows, icons, and mouse. It also allowed users to print documents and share files. As per the software it had a word processor, a paint program, a graphics editor and email. From that moment fort the development of personal computers occurred rapidly and all the designs that came after the Xerox Alto were in one way or another inspired by it.

Xerox Alto, 1973, photo by Martin Pittenauer

End notes

(1) Menabrea, Luigi Federico; Lovelace, Ada (1843). “Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage, with notes by the translator. Translated by Ada Lovelace”. http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/sketch.html

Resources

Brooklyn Public Library Website www.bklynlibrary.org

Computer History Museum Website https://computerhistory.org

Essinger, J. (2014). Ada’s algorithm : how Lord Byron’s daughter Ada Lovelace launched the digital age. Melville House.

Meriwether, D. H. (2018). Ada Lovelace. Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://eds.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.pratt.edu:2048/eds/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=e89df074-5928-4a07-ac04-f9a65ce05cb7%40sessionmgr4006&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmUmc2NvcGU9c2l0ZQ%3d%3d#AN=88806839&db=ers

Nardi, B. & Day, V. L. (1999). Information Ecologies: Using Technology with Heart.First Monday, 4(5), May 3, 1999. https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/672/582

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Striking out to find my way home: Catholicism and information

This world is filled with persons, places, and things, interrelated with other persons, places, and things and given meaning by the context surrounding them. In thinking through this essay, considering what person, place, and thing are relevant to the themes of this course, to the field of information, and my future career within it, what thoughts and memories kept recurring surprised me. Though memories of library visits, of librarians, of all the things I have accessed because of libraries, I recognize that these all pertain to my experiences as an information seeker and user, less to my future in the information field. In reading pieces like Ravi’s (2019) “Miss Manhattan” and studying the ever-shifting sands of the information field, its constant convolution, I shifted with this these ideas. In pushing beyond where my mind has gone before, I found myself coming right back home – Catholicism.

I am a Catholic. I go to mass. I receive the body of Christ. Person. Place. Thing.

Take away a single part of this and Catholicism falls apart. Ravi’s essay inspired me to critically consider their alternative approach to thinking about the relationship of persons to places to things, its delicate identification of these three concepts as congruently existing in modeled sculptures across New York (2019). If one is able to consider persons, places, and things in a way understanding of layers of interconnection, even congruence, between them, then Catholicism must be relevant here, at least in a personal context. As a religion, it is, in theory, intangible and unembodied, thus ineligible for consideration as a person, place, or thing. But as hours of lecture and class readings have taught me this semester, practice, not theory, defines purpose and nature. As such, Catholicism is practiced and becomes known to us, becomes something we live, touch, and exist in. Because of this, I believe it appropriate for discussion in this post.

As person, Catholicism clearly exemplifies Bates’ (1999) concept of the metafield, as defined in identifying the information field as one that encompasses others in its theory and practice. Catholicism, extant on every continent, represented in some form in every country, is a breathing example of person in that its presence is facilitated by bodies, proxied for by every baptized baby, every confirmed adult. Temporally and geographically, the Catholic Church and her followers epitomize the metafield brought to life, an overarching structure alive with billions of beating hearts. Considering Catholicism as person reminds us that metafield structures are not cold, dead things, and that information absent a human vessel is impossible.

As place, Catholicism complicates, not theoretically but narratively. As a religious practice, Catholicism has entrenched itself in landscapes around the world, from far-flung towns to the largest of urban centers. Close examination of how Catholicism reached so many places quickly reveals its “difficult heritage,” a concept meant to describe the marking of “atrocities perpetrated and abhorred by” the entity that committed them as “significant history” (Macdonald 2016). The complication lies in the idea of the institution of Catholicism “abhorring” its historical policies and actions. Schools, rectories, religious camps, and sacristies where priest abuse occurred for decades still stand, the reality of what happened in these places still largely unacknowledged and unrectified by the Catholic Church. Physical Catholic structures, like churches, monasteries, convents, were used to extend the power of the Church and those that supported her into populations that did not want them, to colonize entire continents. Again, the Catholic Church again relegates the reality of their actions to darkness. As so much historiography and truth-telling has demonstrated, the physical manifestation of Catholicism as geography engenders a difficult heritage almost everywhere it has gone – understanding Catholicism as place opens this heritage up to being worked upon, to being brought into its own salvation through the use of information.

As thing, Catholicism explodes in relevance. At the heart of this faith is the scripture housed in our Bible, which, even if it is literally believed to be authored through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, is a just a book. Bolstering this text are pamphlets laid out in Church vestibules, ready for hungry eyes on Sunday mornings, Catechisms awaiting new students every fall, textbooks on theological morality, apologetics, and other Catholic philosophies. Catholicism’s entire existence is supported by its own production of information, cultivated over thousands of years. To invoke the language of Elfreda Chatman (1999), Catholicism as thing has been used to build a very large round in which every Catholic is expected to live forever. If there is anything to learn from considering Catholicism as thing, it is that the hard to reach and the information impoverished are not always those who are unaware or afraid of how information can be generated, accessed, and used, but also those are adept at these practices within their life in the round. Understanding this means we can address the invisible walls separating things like Catholicism from the rest of the world of information.

As centerpiece or backdrop, the persons, places, and things that make up Catholicism support or exemplify course themes of understanding the breadth of information science as a metafield, of understanding the use, misuse, or disuse of information surrounding history, and reaching information users who are hard to reach. On a personal level, the persons, places, and things that make up Catholicism represent who I am and why I want to work as an information professional.

I am a practicing Catholic, my journey within the Church pocked by the pitfalls that come with the rigors and rigidity of organized religion. Still, I do not walk away because I believe leaning in, listening, and filling gaps is part of my path as a Catholic. As I continue to study information science and understand this field, I have found that this belief in these things lends itself greatly to information work and filling gaps for those in the world we share. Considering Catholicism as person, place, and thing has demonstrated to me that entering the information field as a profession does not feel foreign – in many ways, it feels like coming home.

Bibliography:

Bates, M. J. (1999). The invisible substrate of information science. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 50(12), 1043-1050.

Chatman, E. A. (1999). A theory of life in the round. Journal of the American Society for Information Science 50(3), 207-217.

Macdonald, Sharon. (2016). “Is ‘difficult heritage’ still difficult?” Museum International 67: 6–22.

Ravi, A. (2019, September 23). Miss Manhattan [blog post]. Retrieved from https://studentwork.prattsi.org/foundations/2019/09/23/miss-manhattan/.

Schwartz, Joan M. & Terry Cook. (2002). “Archives, records, and power: the making of modern memory,” Archival Science 2: 1–19.

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