Information Architecture

Information Architecture

Posts 1-5 of 5
  • Matthias Müller-Prove
    Matthias Müller-Prove    Group moderator
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    ontological drift of "information"
    http://www.searls.com/cluetrain/hyperorg.html
    and scroll down to "Unmanaging Rich Data"

    >>
    Unmanaging Rich Data

    All this open information. Sounds like a nightmare to most of us. But in fact, information is the wrong term for it; we just don’t have anything better.

    The term information, as we commonly use it today, is a product of the computer age. Before then, information meant something like news. The term took on special meaning first in information theory, where it received a mathematical definition (to the yawning indifference of the awaiting public) and then in the computer world when data was invented.

    As everyone who’s taken Computer Science 101 knows, information consists of significant correlations of data. "Ants #1-#100 died at 8:58" is data. "Ants #1-#100 ate mayonnaise from the office cafeteria at 8:51 and died at 8:58" is information.

    [Table that does not fit here]

    "Information" is the stuff that goes into computers. And we all understand that to get the relevant facts about the world into our databases, we have to strip out a lot of the subtleties. For example, when we’re populating our employee database, we have fields for "Name," "Start_Date," and "Salary," and maybe one for "Hobbies," but we certainly don’t have fields for "Hates_Thai_Food," "Can’t_Remember_Names," "Hums_While_Reading," and the things we know about our coworkers that together constitute a context for working with them.

    We strip out the context because that enables us to manage information: we select rows based on the content of the columns, we sort and arrange the rows, we look for interesting correlations of rows and columns. In short, information is stuff we generate precisely to be managed with computers.

    The Web isn’t about information, however. While it takes a database administrator or data entry specialist to enter data into a database, it takes any idiot with a computer to post something -- from naked pictures of your cat to an overheated manifesto -- on an intranet or on the Web. And it’s only going to get easier.

    So, while we’re populating our corporate databases with context-less, stripped-down information that can be managed, we’re populating our new Web world with every type of artifact the human hand can devise without a thought about how it will be managed.

    Information is built to be managed; the stuff on the Web is the product of the lack of management. Information is stripped down; the content of the Web is rich in its contextuality. These two sets of contrasts go together.
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    • 27 Mar 2006, 5:47 pm
  • James Kalbach
    James Kalbach
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    Re: ontological drift of "information"
    David Weinberger, der seit Jahren auf dem IA Summit in Nordamerika teilnimmt, war der Keynote-Speakers dieses Jahr in Vancouver. Dieses Thema - dass wir Context von Informationen ausstrippen - hat er wesentlich vertieft. (The Cluetrain Manifesto ist nun 7 Jahre alt, und die Ideen darin schon älter). Nicht wie Compter Scientists versuchen IAs Context weider zu schaffen, behauptet er.

    Seine 22-MB Präsentation findet man hier:
    http://iasummit.org/2006/conferencedescrip.htm

    Jim
    • 31 Mar 2006, 08:47 am
  • User photo
    Eric Sommer
    (not a XING member)
    Re: ontological drift of "information"

    Hi there, I like your personal 'wants' - 'peace on earth and goodwill towards men'. That's the right stuff! I also enjoyed your article. But I"m not sure that the rich and variegated material posted on the web pages of the world can't be 'managed'. With appropriate software, contexts can, in fact, be created by web-surfers to incorporate this 'unstructured hodge-podge' into structured projects and information structures which are relevant to particular users. If you're interested in pursuing this line of dialogue/inquiry, you can download for free the advanced beta for ADMour knowledge management desktop at

    If you are a new ADM user, be sure to download the build called 'ADMNewUser', not the one called 'Client only'.
    You can download the build now from:
    http://adm21.net/fileshare/login.php
    Username: gift
    Password: download
    After download, unzip the contained files from the downloaded file into a new folder on your desktop. Then click on the file adm.exe to start the program.

    Eric Sommer, CEO, Advanced data Management
    • 05 May 2006, 7:36 pm
  • Matthias Müller-Prove
    Matthias Müller-Prove    Group moderator
    The company name is only visible to registered members.
    Re^2: ontological drift of "information"
    Hi Eric,
    can you please point me to some screenshots of the ADM system? Your site does not seem to have any. (Yes, I am on a Mac right now.)
    thanks
    Matthias
    • 06 May 2006, 01:06 am
  • User photo
    Eric Sommer
    (not a XING member)
    Re^3: ontological drift of "information"
    Hi there, I can send you some screen shots which will show our outliner, metadata columns and forms, internal browser, web search, and so forth. The problem is that the real power of ADM is its dyanmic knowledge harvesting and organizintg ability. So the best way to understand it is to download - when you have access to a pc - the advanced beta I pointed you to. (The commercial release from the main website is 2 years old, and the beta is worlds ahead of it.) FInal point: Thanks for your quick reply, and let me know if you still need screen shots.
    Eric
    • 06 May 2006, 03:52 am