Information & Culture is an academic journal printed three times a year by the University of Texas Press. It publishes original, high-quality, peer reviewed articles examining the social and cultural influences and impact of information and its associated technologies, broadly construed, on all areas of human endeavor. In keeping with the spirit of information studies, we seek papers emphasizing a human-centered focus that address the role of and reciprocal relationship of information and culture, regardless of time and place.

The journal welcomes submissions from an array of relevant theoretical and methodological approaches, including but not limited to historical, sociological, psychological, political and educational research that address the interaction of information and culture.

To learn more about our submission standards or submit an article for publication in Information & Culture, visit our submission requirements page.

 

Volume 56 Issue 1 (March 2021)

Knowledge Organization in the Wild:  The Propædia, Roget’s, and the DDC

by Jonathan Furner 

p. 1-31

Jonathan Furner is a professor of information studies at UCLA. He studies the history and philosophy of cultural stewardship and teaches classes on the representation and organization of archival records, library resources, and museum objects.

Hegel and Knowledge Organization, or Why the Dewey Decimal Classification Is Not Hegelian

by Shachar Freddy Kislev

p. 32-48

Shachar Freddy Kislev, PhD, works at the intersection between the history of philosophy and digital humanities, with a particular interest in the aftermaths of the Hegelian system. He teaches philosophy, intellectual history, games and art at the Shenkar College of Design and Engineering in Ramat Gan, Israel.

The Public Interest and the Information Superhighway:  The Digital Future Coalition (1996–2002) and the Afterlife of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act

by Bryan Bello and Patricia Aufderheide

p. 49-89

Patricia Aufderheide studies the social impact of media policies. She founded the Center for Media and Social Impact. She recently co-authored, with Peter Jaszi, the second edition of Reclaiming Fair Use (Univ. of Chicago Press).

Bryan Bello is a PhD candidate at American University's School of Communication. He studies the representation of public interests in informatino policy debates and also works as a documentarian advancing the practice of co-production.

 

What Documents Cannot Do:  Revisiting Michael Polanyi and the Tacit Knowledge Dilemma

by C. Sean Burns

p. 90-104

C. Sean Burns is an associate professor of information science at the University of Kentucky. His research areas include scholarly communication, information retrieval, and the history of automation. He holds a PhD in information science and learning technologies from the University of Missouri.

Book Reviews, Summer 2021

Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond, edited by Linda Barwick, Jennifer Green, and Petronella Vaarzon-Morel
Reviewed by Monica Galassi
"Written by a diverse group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal community members, knowledge holders, artists and researchers, the book Archival Returns: Central Australia and Beyond presents examples of projects, negotiations, and technology used by and with Aboriginal communities from Central Austra."

Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age by Nathan R. Johnson
Reviewed by James Hodges
"Nathan R. Johnson’s Architects of Memory: Information and Rhetoric in a Networked Archival Age is a relatively brief and eminently readable treatise on the intertwined histories of librarianship, information science, and information technology."

Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives, by Philip N. Howard
Reviewed by Claudia Flores-Saviaga
"In Lie Machines: How to Save Democracy from Troll Armies, Deceitful Robots, Junk News Operations, and Political Operatives, Oxford University professor Philip Howard takes us on a journey through the history of the production of “lie machines,” supported by the latest scientific research in the field of disinformation studies."

The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America by Sarah E. Igo
Reviewed by Andrea Ringer
"Sarah Igo’s sweeping history of privacy in The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America tells the story of how US citizens have conceptualized and negotiated ideas of privacy up to the current moment, when being unknown seems like an impossibility."

The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI by Marcus Du Sautoy
Reviewed by Jina Hong
"Marcus Du Sautoy’s latest offering, The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, succeeds in its attempt to explain from an analytical, mathematical perspective for the layperson, and provides readers with a personal-qua-scientific narrative about how the march of mathematics and marvel of thinking machines are closely interwoven with historical and socio-technical elements."

The Information Manifold: Why Computers Can’t Solve Algorithmic Bias and Fake News by Antonio Badia
Reviewed by Christiana Varda 
"As we traverse this “information age” characterized by immediate access to abundant information, Antonio Badia invites us to pause and consider what counts as information. His book, The Information Manifold: Why Computers Can’t Solve Algorithmic Bias and Fake News, examines how we define information by considering three different perspectives (syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic) that color not only how we understand information, but also how we approach and manage it online on a daily basis, in the context of issues such as algorithmic bias and misinformation." 

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