IS291B Week 9 Class Notes

Formats and digital preservation

International
Digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml

Need format, software, hardware
Every time, you’re looking at a performance
Over time the coordination of these elements ceases to coordinate
Major solution is migration of formats
Other sols: keep museums of old machines – still problematic
Complete lack of any theoretical background to the site’s information
No definition of a format!

Technical registries of formats
Nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/Default.aspx
Could automat migration (could even be on demand)

This is an area that is understudied

Migration pathways
Series of conversions from word to xml, for example

Pdf – draws pictures
Word – characters are the unit
Formats embody a different conception of the object
Mp3 to loss format, can’t recover what was lost

Politics of standard
Idpf.org/epub

Enormous infrastructure being built around formats
Perception and manipulation of the content
Not much study/theory on this

Cybernetics
Love
All of these books are labors of love
Remember the amount of love that goes into such works

Have to find ways to respond and disagree with ppl who are in love with their babies

**The concepts he defines and you can use
Perceptual capital
Perceptual labor
Format theory
Plural ontology
Linking information theory to perceptual technics
p. 244

bites that become associated with you
politics of citation

what is the list of things he developed for which he can be cited?

They are the unit of exchange between scholars

**MT: garnet’s animal-machines relate to both cybernetics and perceptual technics

how could the main conceptual argument be challenged
his cultural studies approach and his focus on context

there is a sense of arbitrariness
MT: “perfect storm”

Tests as documents
Evidence he had at his disposal
What didn’t he get access to?

People who work together in labs and consortia
How ppl are organized
Objects organized according to the history
Ideas – historical

Glosses over empirical data regarding MP3

He frames each chapter in a theoretical tradition

But doesn’t go into methodology

Textual analysis of everything

Format theory provides him with a sort of method
Leads him to focus on the ideologies that result from assumptions
Theory is all over in the text
Enmeshed

Binaries
Logistics story followed by social story

More additive to others’ ideas, not replacing
Accepting the complexity of what he’s talking about

Physical performance of the text
Layout, visuals, endnotes
References in text don’t even indicate author
Diagrams are explained in detail

The book is modular///can use just a chapter in diff classes

What is the action? Think differently
Conditions/context
Increased focus on format

FCC website – debate over net neutrality and open internet and how service providers can prioritize/not prioritize traffic
Providers: we need to Manage out networks
Verizon Wireless network optimization
Transcoding—apply their own compression standards to your file’

Movie for next week:
The Asylum
RD Laing