Just thinking aloud here.

After my last post I remembered that I had recently printed out an article that might pertain:

Kari, Jarkko and Jenna Hartel. 2007. Information and higher things in life: Addressing the pleasurable and the profound in information science. JASIS&T 58(8): 1131-1147.

(Mark, you may already have seen this article, but in case not, they do mention/cite Hjorland several times.)

Hartel, you may recall, has done research into the information aspects of people who cook as a hobby.

Anyway, it’s an interesting article. They point out that the research on information behavior is largely based on scenarios involving work or formal education, and that that leaves out a good chunk of our lives. In order to go beyond work and school, the authors suggest that we begin researching information behavior in the “higher” realms of the pleasurable (such as hobbies and leisure) and the profound (including ethics and spirituality).

I’m still uncomfortable with their high/low dichotomy even though in the end they pointed out that they only did it to “reveal the imbalance” and that “[u]ltimately, as research advances, the dichotomy should be reconciled” (1144). And I can’t deny that it is an effective tool, at least in the space of the article.

Where the article really caught my attention, though, was in the implications. There are several points there that pertain to what I’ve been seeing in the online yoga community, but the one that most caught my eye was the idea that “the outcomes of information are not neutral phenomenon” (1140).

For example, on the physical level, if you don’t know there are different styles of yoga, you might end up in a 105-degree room attempting to do Bikram yoga just because it was the first studio listed in the phone book. Ending up with heat exhaustion on your first time out would probably constitute a negative phenomenon for most people.

On the other hand I think that most of the people involved with WoYoPracMo have had largely positive outcomes as a result of the information they’ve gathered regarding yoga. For some this information is purely physical, while for others an initial interest in yoga as exercise has “actually promote[d] information processes” (1140), resulting in the pursuit of information about the philosophical underpinnings of yoga.

Also, the existence of the site itself is illustrative of “the potentiality of the human being for obtaining, processing, and sharing information” (1140).