September Readback and Update

It’s the end of another month and time to review my mind. A lot less material has been published on this site since school began at the beginning of September. My classes are finally starting to feel like a routine. I’m currently taking Information Culture, Information Ethics, Recommender Systems, and Intellectual Property.

The month began with a look back at what I learned through half of my MSI program at Michigan. Then it was the beginning of classes.

I’ve spent a lot of time this month trying to define my continuing academic interest in information science. The closest parallels seem to be with the philosophy of information. Another parallel is computing and philosophy. There was a course this term that covered some of that material but it conflicted with another class.

A couple of events prompted short entries this month. Eric Rabkin spoke on science fiction and nanotechnology. Theodore Porter on Victorian Scientists. Jon Udell on apprenticeship and library superpatrons.

Udell’s talk prompted some more thoughts on electronic identity, which may eventually lead to some thoughts about how we shape and present ourselves on the web. Barter and knowledge exchange was another blip on the radar.

Finally a note about the tension between technological and economic determinism arose out of a class discussion on information culture.

I’ve been toying around with LinkedIn this month, adding connections from work and school. If you think we should reconnect you can find my profile here.

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Todd Suomela
Associate Director for Digital Pedagogy & Scholarship Department

My interests include digital scholarship, citizen science, leadership, and communications.