March 20 - Bowker & Star

In his book "The Meaning of Things", Simon Winchester tells the story of the Oxford English Dictionary and the fabulous work that gave birth to such a powerful lexicographic tool. Among other things, he mentions the perception of the Oxford's rector that the most complete and comprehensive work on the English language was a necessary tool to the desire from the British to expand their domination on the globe. In a way, we can say that he was both right in his perception and successful in his intent, even though he didn't live to see the dictionary complete. English is the number one language in the globe, in academia, and also in the technology sphere.

Bowker and Star, unlike Cortada, seem to view technological tools -- and the standards around them -- as rather political forces. I tend to agree with them. To some extent, Cortada's view is that of a historian, as well as a technical consultant. He has a pragmatic approach to technology, and by analyzing the developments around the creation of the computer and how that changed society and many economical activities, he devised an idea of the computer as being an apolitical tool that is good per se. In this week's readings, it's easy to perceive that, looking into a broader context, than cannot be so. Even the language used in the computing world is English. Programmers of any culture MUST possess a certain degree of knowledge of English, so that they can perform. This, much like the Oxford, helps to maintain the status of English as the world's most prominent languge.

That being said, one of my main questions is: if standardization and classification include values of a given culture, is that culture then gaining prominence over others? My first answer, based on the above paragraph, would be yes. The Dewey Decimal System, heavily anglo-centered, can be a good example of that. But I'd rather take this up with the authors.

Second: on page 132, the authors emphasize the need to look into historical units when looking into classification systems. Isn't this process also biased by both the researcher's background the the western scientific methods as well? For instance, the natives of Colombia and Peru do not understand and accept the private ownership of the land to this day. Centuries ago, there was no such thing, so it would be easier to understand the free displacement of tribes over the Andes and possible fights over the permanence in a certain area. Nowadays, it seems not logical to us, 'modern' citizens that this is possible. So, they way they related to the land seems wrong, immoral, disrespectful. But is it so? They classify land as something that is not owned by anyone, so they'll cross a fence without thinking they're wrong. And a researcher looking into the 'historical' unit of analysis of a given period in the past may fail to understand why this behavior happens today. Or else, he may use his own background as an educated researcher to infer that these natives haven't learned about the private ownership. Both explanations would be, then, wrong.