Article Summary for Lecture # 14 - Manuel

Digital as a Hegemonic Medium for Epistemology and Knowledge Organization

Epistemology was born in the European Modernity in order to control others’ knowledge. Its study deals with foundations, criteria and validation by which scientific knowledge is justified, including historical, political, economic, social, etc. circumstances. Rosa San Segundo Manuel, and Daniel Martinez-Avila believe that the approach of epistemology have changed within the 21^st century. New social conditions, industrial production, advances in medical and scientific research reflect the changing involvement of technology in day-to-day life. They cite the internet as a bringer of change in media, scientific and epistemic contexts.

                Manuel, et al., break down information into three main ages of human history:

• The Oral Age – Primitive ideas of social organization and structuring were developed. Information was transferred orally, kept internally.
• The Written Age – Developed a need to organize all the written knowledge. Writing and the role of the printing press allowed ideas to be shared with a wider audience.
• The Digital Age – Current age. Printed and oral information become digitized and uploaded onto the web.

The authors also note the organization of knowledge in the digital environment is represented, invented, and articulated with two new fundamental instruments: a material one, digital technology, and a symbolic one, the deposited culture.

                According to Manuel, et al., culture is being subordinated to technology, and theorize that soon there will be a digital repository of all constructed objects of a culture – making the digital not only the instrument and the location, but also the content itself. In this new culture, individuals will participate through blogs, wikis, and social networks. They believe digital natives have a new way of thinking in the Digital Age that embraces the hybridization of materials, formats, and texts, globalization of information, connectivity, virtuality, and hypertextuality.

                These digital natives do not read the same way printed text is meant to be read, and have new ways of learning, memorizing, and participating via Web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies. They are immersing themselves into digital reality- they have an electronic mailbox, participate in social networks, communicate via blogs, wikis, etc. The authors believe this will lead to a change in epistemology, which will be a sort of post-epistemology that approaches a new structure of knowledge.

                Overall, I agree with the authors’ ideas about the evolution of technology, and how the digital world is slowly changing the world in which we organize, study, and evaluation information. However, I found Manuel and Martinez-Avila’s article a little too brief. There were several ideas presented that I felt could be expounded upon, and found their highly technical vocabulary hard to decipher and navigate without a second pass. This being the case, it was a little difficult to extrapolate information to create this post, but do feel as though the article has its merits. This article does present some very interesting points about the future of information study, so if you are interested in how the digitization of our lives is affecting this, then this article is definitely for you!

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For more information and clarification, check out the full article (citation below)!

Manuel, R., & Martinez-Avila, D. (2014). Digital as a hegemonic medium for epistemology and knowledge organization. Advances in Knowledge Organization 14:96-100.