Comments about Response

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response by sandy --sbaldwin, Mon, 06 Feb 2006 09:49:21 -0500 reply
Lindsey: (Hey Lindsey, try posting your responses in the comment box rather than via the edit function. It makes the page better organized and it's easier for me to respond.) I'm not clear on your first question: are you refering to Bush' set of problems at the beginning of the article when you invoke the complexity/unreliability connection? I found it a little confusing, I suppose because I don't remember him using quite those terms. Yes, he does deal with complexity, but isn't it largely in terms of the complexity of the "record" (or archive) and the resulting problems of access? I mean, the issues of reliability you raise are issues in the essay, but aren't they largely peripheral? Now, if we tie complexity to the problem of accessing and making sense of the archive, then we're close to Bush's set of questions. Certainly, the complexity of the archive is not going away, but perhaps the answer is to see that this raises new kinds of knowledge; for example, we gain tremendous knowledge of connection and linkage through the internet - it may not be "deep" knowledge but it is a significant knowledge.