The world according to grep: both sides of the search revolution

Paul Duguid

Search tools have helped to transform the way we interact with information. They may also have helped to transform the way we think about it, obscuring the physical and conceptual contexts that historically both enabled and constrained its production and use. These transformations can undoubtedly be liberating, but unless they are recognized, this talk will suggest, they may also be unexpectedly but significantly limiting.

This talk will look at the ways in which search is both a continuation of and a profound shift from prior 'finding aids' (indexes, catalogues, etc). It examines the prevalent atomistic view of how information is produced, as if it were built up from individual words, or even word fragments. This is a highly plausible, but equally problematic view as that makes too easily renders text a-historical and asocial.

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