The Genre as a Bounded Social Construct
Like virtually everything else in our reality, the musical genre is not a naturally occurring phenomenon, but a socially constructed category of objects whose intersubjectively defined boundaries are the only thing which allow us to distinguish it from anything else (Zerubavel, 1991, p. 2). Just as there is no natural or inevitable reason that we should come to classify people as “Portuguese,” “Cambodian,” or “Australian” or various types of produce as “fruits” or “vegetables,” there is likewise no inherent reason that we should …

The Information Problem

In 1986 Theodore Roszak estimated that “a weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England.” At first, this seems a bit difficult to accept, but the moment we stop to appreciate the tremendous amount of information we encounter each day it becomes all-too-believable.

An Essay by Josh Baker

In response to the polemic article “…The Tough Get Spinning…” by Alex Giannattasio

I would like to take this opportunity to respond to a number of criticisms leveled against my column of two weeks ago by my friend Alex Giannattasio in a letter to the Daily Targum (“…The Tough Get Spinning….”).

We say the map is different from the territory. But what is the territory? Operationally, somebody went out with a retina or a measuring stick and made representations which we then put upon paper. What is on the paper map is a representation of what was in the retinal representation of the man who made the map – and as you push the question back, what you find is an infinite regress, an infinite series of maps. The territory never gets in at all. The territory is Ding an …

By Josh Baker

In recent years, as our computer technologies have become more sophisticated, many functions which were once performed exclusively by trained workers (e.g., those of the cashier, the bank teller, and even the family doctor) may now be accomplished in large part through the use of automated online systems. Online shopping sites, commercial banking sites, and health information sites (such as WebMD) allow consumers to access and use a formidable number of services without the direct aid of another person. Even many occupations which previously seemed impervious to computerized outsourcing (as with the aforementioned family doctor) may ultimately face just such a fate.