RE: Information -- a working definition?

Subject: RE: Information -- a working definition?
From: Viv Crawford <viv_crawford -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: <despopoulos_chriss -at- yahoo -dot- com>, <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:53:15 +0100


http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm



The linked page is a variation of what I was taught on an 'Information Science'* masters program that attempts to define the difference between data, information, knowledge and wisdom in what they call they DIKW Hierarchy.



The same idea is often also depicted as a pyramid where each time you step up a level there's been value added. (Google this for lots of examples.)



I believe that what I do is:

- use information that I find for myself (what does this button do?)

- combine it with knowledge (painfully) elicited from my SMEs (thus adding value)

- to create new information (what order do I press the buttons in?, to achieve what end?, what other buttons might I want to think about pressing at the same time?).



Eventually this becomes knowledge and hopefully understanding in the heads of my users. I don't create or write or format that knowledge. They do that with the information I've provided.



WRT to Knowledge Managers and Information Managers, typically an information manager concerns themselves with 'things' and the processes that surround them -- books, journals, papers, filing systems, intranets etc whereas a knowledge manager is primarily concerned with processes designed to make the organisation a learning organisation (for example, learning from past projects, eliminating single expert areas, knowledge transfer etc ). Obviously, the knowledge manager will need many of the IM's things in order to do her/his job.



YMMV, of course.

Viv



* What used to be called librarianship.



> Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2010 06:20:54 -0700
> From: despopoulos_chriss -at- yahoo -dot- com
> Subject: Re: Information -- a working definition?
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
>
> ********
> But why information? Why not knowledge, after all we now have "knowledge managers"?
>
> Generally speaking, knowledge and information are split in three ways:
>
> 1. Multiplicity - information is seen as fragmented, piecemeal while knowledge is structured and coherent.
> 2. Temporal - information is timely, transitory, even ephemeral while knowledge is seen as enduring.
> 3. Spatial - information is a "flow" while knowledge is a stock, specifically located.
>
> In
> essence, information, as it is used today, is conceived as a process
> whereas knowledge is a state. At the most basic level information can
> be equated to raw data and, as such, has 2 main functions:
>
> 1. As an input into a process (manufacturing, economic etc).
> 2. As an output that is sold as a commodity in its own right (info sold on customers to other retailers etc).
> ********
>
> I like your stress on the root FORM within inFORMation. I also like your division between information and knowledge. But I worry about equating information and data, because the point of definition is to draw boundaries. So it would be good to maintain boundaries between data, information, and knowledge.
>
> I think the problem is that assigning one of these three labels to some "stuff" is largely situational -- from one POV it's data, from another it's information, and yet from another it's knowledge. The good news is that as technical writers we have a specific situation. Our data sources (SMEs, etc.) are in a specific relationship to that situation, as are our readers. Mapping to your difference between information and knowledge, SMEs and products provide us data, we produce information, readers add that information to their knowledge. That's how I would like to see it, anyway.
>
> This situationalism is why I think a working definition of information is powerful... It adds meat to the definition of what we do, but also helps us get away from defining our jobs in terms of page count. The days when we can sell tech writing as the production of pages are numbered, if not over. Product development *is* information management, and we're information professionals. If we, the literary members of the gang, can't say what information is in this context, we're hosed.
>
> My 0.02 euros on the subject...
>
>
>
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References:
Re: Information -- a working definition?: From: Chris Despopoulos

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