theorywatch

From the current issue of National Geographic, quoting one of my favorite theorists (Tom Malone at MIT, who’s now launched at least three successful theories, one of which I had the pleasure of tracking in my own dissertation):

“‘It’s now possible for huge numbers of people to think together in ways we never imagined a few decades ago,” says Thomas Malone of MIT’s new Center for Collective Intelligence. “No single person knows everything that’s needed to deal with problems we face as a society, such as health care or climate change, but collectively we know far more than we’ve been able to tap so far.’ Read more…

If only Jilltxt would set this ACM conference presentation to music —

or if Poesygalore would animate her Shelf Check cartoons —

I think they might be big hits on YouTube.

On the other hand, I’m not sure whether adding vocals or animation to jny2cornell’s tag cloud visualization of Gonzales’s 4/19/07 Senate testimony would increase its impact.

(Hmm, perhaps I should have taken more communication theory courses at Newhouse when I had the chance….)

I had the pleasure of giving the pre-dinner speech at our spring SLISebration last night, and it went reasonably well. (Note to self: when white tablecloth is on speaker table, mouse does NOT work well– adapt quickly!) Due to having prepared much more material than necessary (typical junior faculty error in making public presentation to outside audience!), I rushed through some introductory material about normative theories, and didn’t clearly state the relationship of theories to models. Read more…

Here’s an interesting new twist in the diffusion of theory, illustrated by Google’s Earth Day logo. How influential is something like this?

Welcome to Theorywatch! This is a blog created by Betsy Van der Veer Martens, an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Library and Information Studies. My research interests center on the generation and dissemination of theories of all types, so this is where I’ll be posting theory news you can use. (Or, at least, that I can use!) You might call it cognition in the rough… sometimes VERY rough!