[Sigia-l] Data, information, knowledge, wisdom

[Ted Han]

On 7/1/05, Scott Nelson <skot at penguinstorm.com> wrote:
> On Jun 30.2005, at 18:38, Ted Han wrote:

> In the United States, 12/05/05 would (according to convention) be
> read as December 5th, 2005 - a date in the future
> 
> In Canada (Yay for my 138th birthday today!) it would (according to
> convention) be read as May 12, 2005.
> 
> In this relatively simple case, the establishment of context serves
> to transform a series of meaningless number into a "date." This is a
> simple example only, and in many cases "context" is not enough in and
> of itself to do so.

This is exactly the example i had in mind.
 
> In any case, without the human concept of language & script (as
> defined here) the numbers mean nothing, and would require decades of
> anthropological study to comprehend.

Well, fortunatley english and the arabic numerals are a fairly well
studied system ;)  But this is after all one of the reasons
linguistics exists.

-T