‘Byte’ My Metadata, Murdoch! (Session 2)

‘Bits’ explain in real terms how much information is required for a computer to be a useful tool in ordering and retrieving information. I remember pop-up notes during the dial-up days which specified whether you had 56 or 128 speed of bits transmitted. ‘Bits’ make sense when recalling how this information was pertinent. The way data is stored, transmitted, represented and managed is based on bits, and thereby they are the foundations of how information is used, shared and developed today. The printing press looks lame.

Exponential possibilities are afforded by adding more bits but extra processing speed would be required by hardware to make binary code with more bits in a chain. (Lecture materials) I am peeking through the door of mathematics and am amazed. The data that binary code represents only means what the author wants it to mean – that why we have coding rules and standards. ‘It is a human decision to apply this meaning’. (Lecture materials) Code is meaningless unless context is defined and agreed by a community of users.

File Format (bits are stored in files) is defined by ASCII so we all use the same formatting rules in English to communicate between all computers (think of it as the ‘alphabet’ of a computer language) and data files help us organize the information on all computers effectively. (Lecture materials) The file is manipulated by the user as a distinct entity – it is a fundamental unit of information that can be used in a distinct way with the FORMAT defining how it can be used. This is the system by which the ‘library’ of a computer is organized.

Metadata is a set of rules that define how the data contained in files is useful, and this metadata is defined as important by the programmer. Metadata is either semantic or presentational, and semantic metadata proves more useful. (Lecture materials) This is the ‘Dewey’ system of a computer ‘library’. We are learning about metadata because this is how the internet works with ‘mark-up languages’. I remember seeing the word ‘mark-up’ in a programmers books once but it makes sense that there is mark up language coded into a PC in general (like Word) because the computer must search for files to operate. Similar principles apply to a mark-up language written with defined metadata as to physical document filing – a file pathname is the same as the structure of a document filing system. There is an academic theoretical model of this ‘root’ architecture in library sciences. There are other academics who say that information is actually organized like tangled, folding ‘ganglia’, but still all files in the digital world are organized with a root structure otherwise we would never be able to find anything. What information is stored in those files is what varies. Data can be stored in a manner that is either ‘File-Centered’ or ‘Document-Centered’. (Lecture materials)

There is sense of data ‘lossless-ness’ surrounding digital information. Because data can be infinitely retrieved/replicated/modified/referenced, IPR issues are created. (Lecture materials) This is demonstrated with the fight between Google and News Corp. – the information publishers/creators VS. search engines that allow us to access/retrieve that information.