Pragmatics/History/1960s

1962 Kent


Before the late 1970s, this may have remained the only thesis that took seriously the question of meaning as the basis of information retrieval.

In the information field, there are two diametric paradigms: one essentially views information as meaning or idea, namely idealism, whereas the other as thing or material, namely materialism. These may be illustrated as follows:

In the U.S., idealism is relatively rich in the West Coast, especially San Fransico Bay Area, CA, whereas materialism in the East Coast, especially Cambridge, MA. It is no accident that UC Berkeley and Silicon Valley prefer idealism, say, HCI to materialism, say, full automation.