Some years ago Elke Greifeneder and I offered a seminar in which students tested their reading experiences on a Sony eBook reader, a laptop, a desktop computer, printouts, and a bound book. The reading content consisted of German novels and the students measured the experience only by testing reading speed. The result was that there was no apparent difference between the eBook reader and other media. The students subsequently published the research (see Grzsechik, K. et al, (2010), "Reading in 2110 – reading behavior and reading devices:a case study" The Electronic Library, Vol. 29 Iss: 3, pp.288 - 302 or online at Emerald).
Now a more extensive study at the University of Mainz has reached similar conclusions: "Almost all participants stated that reading from paper was more comfortable than from an e-ink reader despite the fact that the study actually showed that there was no difference in terms of reading performance between reading from paper and from an e-ink reader." The study also found that "the older participants exhibited faster reading times when using the tablet PC." (Source)
The general assumption in Germany is that a strong cultural preference for print on paper is likely to persist. It may, of course, but if the US experience offers any indication, the resistance may give way to the convenience of having multiple works on a single device. On my iPhone right now I have a dissertation and 4 novels. The iPhone is a bit small for dissertation reading, but I never read scholarly works on paper any longer because I want to be able to search them and to look up references simultaneously. I also buy fewer and fewer novels in paper form because I do not want to have to carry one more object with me.
A few years ago I thought that an interesting study would be to sit in the Berlin S-Bahn (elevated train) and count the number of people using eReader devices. Now such a study would be harder, because such a large number of people spend their transit time doing something on their smart phones, but whether that is reading, playing games, or sending email is hard to say. Or perhaps what they are doing is irrelevant. Whatever they are doing, it seems to involve reading on an electronic device.
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Thursday, October 27, 2011
CyberAnthropology
I spent the day at the "1st Berlin Symposium on Internet and Society" While the topics were in general very narrowly focused on policy and regulation, the session I attended this afternoon was on "CyberAnthropology -- Being Human on the Internet". While I am not in a strict sense an anthropologist, I have explicitly used methods from cultural anthropology for close to 40 years and thus found the topic interesting.
The session began with a critique of the presenters' paper in which the speaker noted that the presenters had done no original data collection of their own. In my own part of the academic world that criticism would probably be grounds for rejection from any serious scholarly symposium or conference.
It further became clear that the presenters had almost no background in contemporary scholarly anthropology. Their approach was to throw out the whole empirical basis of contemporary anthropology as too narrow and to replace it with a cloud of philosophers starting with Plato and Aristotle and ending with Paul Ricoeur and Derrida. (Note: I was at the University of Chicago during the years when Ricoeur was there -- his concepts are not entirely new to me.) The presenters believe that "philosophical anthropology" and their understanding of hermeneutics eliminates the need for standards for evidence and rules for persuasion. At least that is what I heard them say over and over again. Nonetheless it is interesting that they welcome data from others. I wonder why?
True to their law faculty roots, the presenters have already acquired the rights to http://www.cyberanthropology.de. Others have already captured the name http://www.cyber-anthro.com/, so the brand is not exclusive.
My objection to this symposium paper is partly that I regard it as an embarrassment to my own Philosophical Faculty 1, which houses the university's departments of philosophy and European Ethnography (cultural anthropology). It does not reflect our standards.
The session began with a critique of the presenters' paper in which the speaker noted that the presenters had done no original data collection of their own. In my own part of the academic world that criticism would probably be grounds for rejection from any serious scholarly symposium or conference.
It further became clear that the presenters had almost no background in contemporary scholarly anthropology. Their approach was to throw out the whole empirical basis of contemporary anthropology as too narrow and to replace it with a cloud of philosophers starting with Plato and Aristotle and ending with Paul Ricoeur and Derrida. (Note: I was at the University of Chicago during the years when Ricoeur was there -- his concepts are not entirely new to me.) The presenters believe that "philosophical anthropology" and their understanding of hermeneutics eliminates the need for standards for evidence and rules for persuasion. At least that is what I heard them say over and over again. Nonetheless it is interesting that they welcome data from others. I wonder why?
True to their law faculty roots, the presenters have already acquired the rights to http://www.cyberanthropology.de. Others have already captured the name http://www.cyber-anthro.com/, so the brand is not exclusive.
My objection to this symposium paper is partly that I regard it as an embarrassment to my own Philosophical Faculty 1, which houses the university's departments of philosophy and European Ethnography (cultural anthropology). It does not reflect our standards.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
AnthroLib moves
Nancy Foster wrote yesterday that AnthroLib has moved to a new address at the University of Rochester Library. A feature that I had not noticed before is the link to a bibliography in a Zotero Group. The bibliography is quite new (started apparently in September) and doesn't have much in it yet, but I suspect it will grow fast. Some links are to Proquest and seem to assume that everyone has the same level of Proquest access. From Berlin at least the links do not work.Nonetheless the list of articles is interesting.
The map is a typical Google map with the odd quirk that it can start moving and be difficult to stop without reloading the location. The flaw may lie in how I touch the map screen with my cursor. It is mildly annoying. The map shows that most of the AnthroLib projects are US-based and generally east-coast, but perhaps we can get some started in Berlin.
The map is a typical Google map with the odd quirk that it can start moving and be difficult to stop without reloading the location. The flaw may lie in how I touch the map screen with my cursor. It is mildly annoying. The map shows that most of the AnthroLib projects are US-based and generally east-coast, but perhaps we can get some started in Berlin.
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
O'Reilly Media Ebook report
I am thankful to Jim Campbell (University of Virginia) for sending me a link to the O'Reilly Media report on "The Global eBook Market: Current Conditions & Future Projections" by Rüdiger Wischenbart with additional research by Sabine Kaldonek. The strong growth of eBooks and eBook popularity in the US and UK is not yet reflected in Germany, though an acceptance for reading on the screen has grown since 2009. As the report says: "ebooks at this point have a difficult stand against a cultural tradition that places (printed) books and reading high on the scale for defining a person’s cultural identity.
While I read a great deal on the screen and insist that I only read student papers in electronic form, I admit that I take pleasure in Berlin's excellent book stores with their intelligent selections and recommendations. As physical places, they are a delight. I wish they offered eBooks in house the way Barnes & Noble does, though. Then they would be perfect.
While I read a great deal on the screen and insist that I only read student papers in electronic form, I admit that I take pleasure in Berlin's excellent book stores with their intelligent selections and recommendations. As physical places, they are a delight. I wish they offered eBooks in house the way Barnes & Noble does, though. Then they would be perfect.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Archiving in the Networked World: Preserving Plagiarized Works (Abstract)
This article will appear in Library Hi Tech, v29, no. 4, which should be available in November 2011 in preprint form. The abstract is below.
Purpose:
Plagiarism has become a salient issue for universities and thus for university
libraries in recent years. This article discusses three interrelated aspects of
preserving plagiarized works: collection development issues, copyright
problems, and technological requirements. Too often these three are handled
separately even though in fact each has an influence on the other.
Methodology: The article looks first at the ingest process (called the Submission Information Package or SIP, then at storage management in the archive (the AIP or Archival Information Package), and finally at the retrieval process (the DIP or Distribution Information Package).
Findings: The chief argument of this article is that works of plagiarism and the evidence exposing them are complex objects, technically, legally and culturally. Merely treating them like any other work needing preservation runs the risk of encountering problems on one of those three fronts
Implications: This is a problem, since currently many public preservation strategies focus on ingesting large amounts of self-contained content that resembles print on paper, rather than on online works that need special handling. Archival systems also often deliberately ignore the cultural issues that affect future usability.
Methodology: The article looks first at the ingest process (called the Submission Information Package or SIP, then at storage management in the archive (the AIP or Archival Information Package), and finally at the retrieval process (the DIP or Distribution Information Package).
Findings: The chief argument of this article is that works of plagiarism and the evidence exposing them are complex objects, technically, legally and culturally. Merely treating them like any other work needing preservation runs the risk of encountering problems on one of those three fronts
Implications: This is a problem, since currently many public preservation strategies focus on ingesting large amounts of self-contained content that resembles print on paper, rather than on online works that need special handling. Archival systems also often deliberately ignore the cultural issues that affect future usability.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Microsoft Research Summit 2011 - day 3
Dinner Cruise
The dinner cruise turned out not to be especially cold, since the ship had large indoor areas where we ate. Microsoft also provided an open bar at this and in fact at all the dinners. Often the wine at such functions is dubious, but even the wine was good and the quality of the selection of micro-brew beer was equally impressive.
Of course the goal of the dinner was not food or drink or even the scenery along the lake, but the conversation among colleagues. I ate with fellow deans from Illinois, Michigan, and Carnegie Mellon, and even if no great research comes from our discussions, collegial discourse is an important social component in the efficient functioning of organizations and projects.
Day 3
I should remember more of day 3 that I do, but jet lag had not quite lost its hold and the morning presentations, while good, left little permanent impression. The main event of day three was in any case the iSchool meeting with Lee Dirks and Alex Wade from Microsoft Research. Lee and Alex gave some sense of the projects they are working on. Lee especially has an interest in long term digital archiving that includes involvement in projects like PLANETS. While testing is an official component of PLANETS, I find that it puts less emphasis on testing than on planing and organization. Testing is, however, what is really needed and that is what I tried to suggest in the meeting -- not, I think, with great success.
The other research aspect that I tried to sell, without much obvious resonance, was ethnographic research on what digital tools people really use and what they really want. Microsoft builds tools and we saw a lot of them that are oriented toward research, but I wonder how well some of them will do in the academic marketplace in the long run. Ethnographic research gives deeper insights into what people understand and misunderstand than do surveys.
Just before I left we held the oral defense of the thesis for one of my very best MA students [1]) whose thesis looked at how a group of literature professors at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (which actively supports Open Access) regard Open Access. It was striking how much they misunderstand Open Access and how little they know about it. Most of them would never have filled out a survey. This information would just have slipped away or remained as an anomaly. Microsoft could profit from research like this and had an interest in it in years past. It is less clear that it does today.
[1] Name available on request, with the student's permission.
The dinner cruise turned out not to be especially cold, since the ship had large indoor areas where we ate. Microsoft also provided an open bar at this and in fact at all the dinners. Often the wine at such functions is dubious, but even the wine was good and the quality of the selection of micro-brew beer was equally impressive.
Of course the goal of the dinner was not food or drink or even the scenery along the lake, but the conversation among colleagues. I ate with fellow deans from Illinois, Michigan, and Carnegie Mellon, and even if no great research comes from our discussions, collegial discourse is an important social component in the efficient functioning of organizations and projects.
Day 3
I should remember more of day 3 that I do, but jet lag had not quite lost its hold and the morning presentations, while good, left little permanent impression. The main event of day three was in any case the iSchool meeting with Lee Dirks and Alex Wade from Microsoft Research. Lee and Alex gave some sense of the projects they are working on. Lee especially has an interest in long term digital archiving that includes involvement in projects like PLANETS. While testing is an official component of PLANETS, I find that it puts less emphasis on testing than on planing and organization. Testing is, however, what is really needed and that is what I tried to suggest in the meeting -- not, I think, with great success.
The other research aspect that I tried to sell, without much obvious resonance, was ethnographic research on what digital tools people really use and what they really want. Microsoft builds tools and we saw a lot of them that are oriented toward research, but I wonder how well some of them will do in the academic marketplace in the long run. Ethnographic research gives deeper insights into what people understand and misunderstand than do surveys.
Just before I left we held the oral defense of the thesis for one of my very best MA students [1]) whose thesis looked at how a group of literature professors at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (which actively supports Open Access) regard Open Access. It was striking how much they misunderstand Open Access and how little they know about it. Most of them would never have filled out a survey. This information would just have slipped away or remained as an anomaly. Microsoft could profit from research like this and had an interest in it in years past. It is less clear that it does today.
[1] Name available on request, with the student's permission.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Microsoft Research Summit 2011 - day 2
Cosmos: big data and big challenges.
Pat Helland talked about massively parallel processing based on Dryad using a Petabyte store and made the point that these massive systems process information differently. Database processing in this environment involves tools like SCOPE, which is an SQL-like language that has been optimized for execution over Dryad. Saving this data long term is a problem because they are worried about bit rot. Cosmos keeps at least three copies of the data, checks them regularly, and replaces data that is damaged. Interesting how close this is to LOCKSS (which saves 7 copies).
In talking about how faster processing is not always the solution to processing problems, a speaker quoted Henry Ford as saying: “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses... “ (source: Eric Haseltine Long Fuse and Big Bang.)
NUI (Natural User Interfaces)
One of the speakers distinguished between making user interfaces imitate nature and making them feel natural. Non-verbal clues that convey meaning need to be part of the interaction. Another speaker said that we need better feedback systems. An example is a touch screen with a single button. If a user touches it and nothing happens, the user will hit it again and again. When designers changed the button to send out sparkles when touched, the repeated touching stopped, even though sparkles are not a natural result of touching a screen.
In the discussion someone said that we aren't doing science if we can't go back to the data. This suggests a clear separation of data and processing that speakers about very large data sets said is no longer really possible, since the data is usable only with a degree of processing. The speaker was doing fundamentally social science research, which is more human-readable than Big Science data.
Other comments of interest:
Microsoft clearly has a strong interest in image management, particularly three-dimensional images such are used in medical imaging (doubtless a good market) or gaming. They are dividing a picture into quadrants and creating mathematical representations of the edges in each square to create a hash to search for similar photos. Photosynth.net was also demoed -- it allows the creation of three dimensional images from multiple photos.
Evening Cruise
Microsoft has planned a dinner cruise for the evening. It should be pleasant (I will comment tomorrow), but many of us wanted to go back to the hotel to leave computers, etc., and to change clothes because it is fairly chilly out (despite the heat wave in the rest of the US).
In the discussion someone said that we aren't doing science if we can't go back to the data. This suggests a clear separation of data and processing that speakers about very large data sets said is no longer really possible, since the data is usable only with a degree of processing. The speaker was doing fundamentally social science research, which is more human-readable than Big Science data.
Other comments of interest:
- Do we need to take the “good” into account in our interpretation of the “natural”?
- It's not a machine that we are interfacing to any more, though the speaker is not sure what it is exactly. There is no machine, but a task.
Microsoft clearly has a strong interest in image management, particularly three-dimensional images such are used in medical imaging (doubtless a good market) or gaming. They are dividing a picture into quadrants and creating mathematical representations of the edges in each square to create a hash to search for similar photos. Photosynth.net was also demoed -- it allows the creation of three dimensional images from multiple photos.
Evening Cruise
Microsoft has planned a dinner cruise for the evening. It should be pleasant (I will comment tomorrow), but many of us wanted to go back to the hotel to leave computers, etc., and to change clothes because it is fairly chilly out (despite the heat wave in the rest of the US).
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