Information
This week we start down the road of what is information. Personally, I find this very interesting because there are so many views and definitions. This is an area in which there is no right or wrong answer.
Lester and Koehler
Using information
I think the important point from chapter one is that information is all around us and that we use it all the time, whether or not we’re aware of that. I also think it is interesting to see how much the technology has changed in just the last five years since the book was published. Phones are much “smarter” than they were in 2007, tablet computers are much more common, etc. The time to get information is much faster now. Twitter, Facebook, and other communication apps mean we learn about things much faster than through the traditional media. This is also changing how news reporting works.
So, thinking about the list of technologies on page 3, what is obsolete to you? Some of this is very generation specific. For example, those of us who are baby boomers (1946-64) probably listen to the radio and watch more TV (on TV) than those of you in your early 20s. Reading newspapers in print is also a very rapidly dying form of information sharing.
Information is all around us. We also take it in using all of our senses, whether we realize it or not. We also process of lot of information in unconscious ways. We may be aware that it is hot outside, but we don’t have to tell our bodies how to keep us cool. Our brains process that information and “make it so.”
Lester and Koehler talk about the three main ways that we use information. First is in decision making. This seems to be obvious when you read it, but it may not be something that you’ve thought about before. These decisions can be small, what movie will I see tonight, or big, what car to buy or which college to attend.
Next is resolving uncertainty. We may not always recognize there is an uncertainty, but it is there. In this case we’re trying to resolve that uncertainty. You need awareness of your need and how to go about fulfilling that need. As they mention, we make many of these decisions each day. Some require help from other people or information professionals. The more uncertain you are about a topic or the harder the information is to find the higher the likelihood you will need to use an expert to help resolve your uncertainty.
Third is influencing decisions. This can be as basic as talking your friend into seeing the movie you want or as complicated as trying to influence someone to vote for you. This is probably a form of information that we’re aware of, particularly in election years. However, a question to think about is how influential is that information. If a Facebook friend posts something to vote for a candidate is that really likely to change your mind? What about a campaign ad? Influence doesn’t always have to be in your face. It can be a movie trying to change your mind about how to view the Viet Nam war. A song may influence you in some way.
At the end of the first chapter they talk about “ownership” of information. A question for discussion is can you really trade or own information. Is our idea of ownership of information changing with the World Wide Web?
What is information?
I don’t expect you to memorize the information models in the textbook. Be aware that there are different types of information models and discussions of how information moves.
Information is made up of smaller parts; for some these smaller parts are data, for others they are symbols. Information itself doesn’t come into being until we make sense of the data or symbols. Information stored in data or symbols can change with time. For example, the swastika didn’t mean much to people until the Germans used it as a symbol of the Third Reich. Now it carries information of “evil” to most people. The cave paintings in France carried some sort of meaning to the people who painted them. Now we’re not sure what they mean because we don’t know how cave people communicated or thought about the world. We add our current-day interpretation to these paintings to see what information they hold.
Information is then transformed into some sort of knowledge. I have 2 five dollar bills (data), I add them to get 10 (information), then I know how much money I have to spend. Some people take this one step further – that knowledge can be transformed into wisdom. We all have some sort of knowledge, but do we all have wisdom?
We also need to be aware that information can, and does, exist apart from the representation of that information. But can information really exist without some sort of representation? For example, I have the information that it is 78 degrees in my office right now. But how do I know that without some sort of representation of the information on my clock? I can’t put my hands around 78 degrees, so that information is different than the information in the textbook. I can hold the textbook, but am I holding the information it contains, or is it in my head? If I have it on my Nook, is the information the same? Can I hold the representation of the 1s and 0s of the file? (See, this can get to be really fun!)
Information can also degrade as it is transmitted; think of the game “telephone”. As the sentence is passed on the information being transmitted is changed. As I mentioned above, information can change its meaning over time. If we can’t understand the representation of information, does that mean that the representation doesn’t carry any meaning or information?
For those of us in information professions we have to be aware of the many ways that information is transmitted. We may not be interested in how information degrades during a phone call, but we need to be aware of how information can change when someone asks us for “Books about suicide”. Is the person thinking about committing suicide, know someone who is, or are they just writing a paper? The information professional needs to be aware of ways to clarify the information in the message of “Books about suicide”.
Barlow
Barlow discusses many of the same issues found in chapters 1 and 2 of Lester and Koehler; but he provides a very different perspective. For example, he talks about the idea of information being different from its container. A live Grateful Dead show will be very different from the bootleg tape from it. I think the Dead’s take on bootleg recordings is interesting; it has only helped their sales rather than hurt them. He also talks about how information can degrade.
His main points are very clear in the article.
- Information is an activity, it needs to move and be experienced. But what about the cave paintings? They don’t move, do they still contain information?
- Information is a life form, it wants to be free, it isn’t static. You’re all familiar with “memes”. They’re the cartoons that get shared on Facebook, “Tebowing” or “planking” are memes.
- Information is a relationship, each case is unique. If you read the textbook now and then again next year, you are getting different information from it. Or your thoughts about the ideas are different because of other classes you took or life experiences.
I very much like that he isn’t overly technical about information. Information professionals and communications experts can get very hung up in the technical details sometimes. He is another example of interdisciplinary sharing of ideas. His fresh eyes from the arts make us think differently about what we deal with every day.