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amyjko / foundations-of-information

A book to support the INFO 200 Intellectual Foundations of Information course.
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suggestion: seminal -> foundational (or etc.) #30

Closed RhoBott closed 3 years ago

RhoBott commented 3 years ago

Perhaps consider "foundational" (or formative, important, key, vital, central, earth-moving, game-changing, ground-breaking [or other noun-gerund combinations] ... ) instead of seminal?

Four appearances in text: ch 3

In his seminal work, he linked information to the concept of entropy from thermodynamics.

ch 4

This history of analog encodings directly informed the digital encodings that followed Shannon’s seminal work on information theory.

ch 9

What determines when information management becomes necessary? The answer to this question goes back to some seminal work from Herb Simon, who said in (yet another) seminal work, Designing Organizations for an Information-rich World

amyjko commented 3 years ago

Ah, interesting, is this a feminist critique of the word's etymology? Or just a redundancy critique?

RhoBott commented 3 years ago

Reasonable question, apologies for not being clearer. The former.

amyjko commented 3 years ago

Great, thanks! I hadn't encountered that critique before, but now that I see it, it seems like a word well worth avoiding. Edits on their way.