Factores explicativos de las actitudes hacia el castigo juvenil. Evidencias de un diseño factorial

El rol desempeñado por la opinión pública en el desarrollo de la política criminal actual justifica el incremento de investigaciones destinadas a evaluar las actitudes de los ciudadanos hacia el castigo. No obstante, los avances en este ámbito han sido limitados debido a la utilización de rudimentarios instrumentos de medida. Por ello, el presente trabajo tiene como propósito explorar el efecto que generan en la opinión ciudadana ciertas variables referidas al hecho delictivo y al infractor, precisando su contribución relativa y la interacción existente entre ellas. Para satisfacer este objetivo se recurrió a un diseño factorial de la encuesta, creando una población de 256 casos-escenario fruto de la combinación de cuatro factores: la edad del joven, su historial delictivo, el grado de implicación en el hecho y el tipo de delito cometido. Los mismos fueron distribuidos en grupos de ocho casos ordenados aleatoriamente y fueron suministrados a 32 sujetos. Posteriormente se aplicaron análisis de regresión logística binaria. Los resultados obtenidos revelan que la naturaleza violenta de los hechos, la implicación activa de los jóvenes y el historial delictivo son predictores importantes de las condenas punitivas. Sin embargo la edad, una variable fundamental en la configuración de la justicia juvenil, no resulta significativa. De este modo, el trabajo muestra el potencial explicativo de este conjunto de factores y debate sus implicaciones teóricas y metodológicas para la investigación futura en este terreno.

Description and search labor for information retrieval

Selection power is taken as the fundamental value for information retrieval systems. Selection power is regarded as produced by selection labor, which itself separates historically into description and search labor. As forms of mental labor, description and search labor participate in the conditions for labor and for mental labor. Concepts and distinctions applicable to physical and mental labor are indicated, introducing the necessity of labor for survival, the idea of technology as a human construction, and the possibility of the transfer of human labor to technology. Distinctions specific to mental labor, particular between semantic and syntactic labor, are introduced. Description labor is exemplified by cataloging, classification, and database description, can be more formally understood as the labor involved in the transformation of objects for description into searchable descriptions, and is also understood to include interpretation. The costs of description labor are discussed. Search labor is conceived as the labor expended in searching systems. For both description and search labor, there has been a progressive reduction in direct human labor, with its syntactic aspects transferred to technology, effectively compelled by the high relative costs of direct human labor compared to machine processes.

A labor theoretic approach to information retrieval

This article synthesizes the labor theoretic approach to information retrieval. Selection power is taken as the fundamental value for information retrieval and is regarded as produced by selection labor. Selection power remains relatively constant while selection labor modulates across oral, written, and computational modes. A dynamic, stemming principally from the costs of direct human mental labor and effectively compelling the transfer of aspects of human labor to computational technology, is identified. The decision practices of major information system producers are shown to conform with the motivating forces identified in the dynamic. An enhancement of human capacities, from the increased scope of description processes, is revealed. Decision variation and decision considerations are identified. The value of the labor theoretic approach is considered in relation to pre-existing theories, real world practice, and future possibilities. Finally, the continuing intractability of information retrieval is suggested.

Human information retrieval

Information retrieval in the age of Internet search engines has become part of ordinary discourse and everyday practice: "Google" is a verb in common usage. Thus far, more attention has been given to practical understanding of information retrieval than to a full theoretical account. In Human Information Retrieval, Julian Warner offers a comprehensive overview of information retrieval, synthesizing theories from different disciplines (information and computer science, librarianship and indexing, and information society discourse) and incorporating such disparate systems as WorldCat and Google into a single, robust theoretical framework. There is a need for such a theoretical treatment, he argues, one that reveals the structure and underlying patterns of this complex field while remaining congruent with everyday practice. Warner presents a labor theoretic approach to information retrieval, building on his previously formulated distinction between semantic and syntactic mental labor, arguing that the description and search labor of information retrieval can be understood as both semantic and syntactic in character. Warner's information science approach is rooted in the humanities and the social sciences but informed by an understanding of information technology and information theory. The chapters offer a progressive exposition of the topic, with illustrative examples to explain the concepts presented. Neither narrowly practical nor largely speculative, Human Information Retrieval meets the contemporary need for a broader treatment of information and information systems.

Organs of the human brain, created by the human hand? The social epistemology of information technology

Purpose
– Information science has been conceptualized as a partly unreflexive response to developments in information and computer technology, and, most powerfully, as part of the gestalt of the computer. The computer was viewed as an historical accident in the original formulation of the gestalt. An alternative, and timely, approach to understanding, and then dissolving, the gestalt would be to address the motivating technology directly, fully recognizing it as a radical human construction. This paper aims to address the issues.

Design/methodology/approach
– The paper adopts a social epistemological perspective and is concerned with collective, rather than primarily individual, ways of knowing.

Findings
– Information technology tends to be received as objectively given, autonomously developing, and causing but not itself caused, by the language of discussions in information science. It has also been characterized as artificial, in the sense of unnatural, and sometimes as threatening. Attitudes to technology are implied, rather than explicit, and can appear weak when articulated, corresponding to collective repression.

Research limitations/implications
– Receiving technology as objectively given has an analogy with the Platonist view of mathematical propositions as discovered, in its exclusion of human activity, opening up the possibility of a comparable critique which insists on human agency.

Originality/value
– Apprehensions of information technology have been raised to consciousness, exposing their limitations.