Now we're getting somewhere. ( Though I, too, have
tried, before, to bring the thinking this far, in fact even
further, as some may recall. )
Steve McDonald was just now also on the right track,
but not as far along as one imho must ineluctably go if
one is ever to make any further fundamental progress
in our field.
- Laval Hunsucker
Breukelen, Nederland
----- Original Message ----
From: Bernhard Eversberg <ev_at_BIBLIO.TU-BS.DE>
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Sent: Wed, June 30, 2010 8:35:56 AM
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Knowledge vs. Information [was: Problems With Selection in Today's Information World]
Jan Szczepanski wrote:
>
> This is information:
>
> Ray Denenberg came to the Library of Congress in 1982 to direct the development and implementation of protocols for the Linked Systems Project...
The way I see it, this is text, this is data on paper or on screen.
Trouble is, "information" and "data" are used as synonyms today.
Data can become knowledge, for me, only if I read it. But it works
only if I understand the script, the language, and the wording.
Otherwise, it carries no meaning for me, it conveys no knowledge,
it does not inform me. The script remains that much barbed wire if
it is, for instance, Devanagari.
"To inform" is a verb, information is the process of informing. This
view is very old, it is the original one. The word goes back to Cicero,
or his time, when a Latin word for the Greek "entyposis" was sought, and
this means the process of coining, of impressing the image into the
blank metal. The process, not the image itself. "informatio" was just
a literal translation of "entyposis".
Therefore, should'nt we better think of information not as an entity
side by side with energy and matter, but at a process? The process
that turns data into mental imagery, into knowledge?
"Information processing" is - as I see it - hype. It always means
nothing more than data transformation, it is not knowledge processing
to gain new insight and understanding. Until there will be true
artificial intelligence, insight and understanding, knowledge forming,
can only take place between human ears. It can be helped by machines
that do some massaging of the data before taking them in.
B.Eversberg
Received on Wed Jun 30 2010 - 15:58:28 EDT