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

[Ted Han]

On 6/30/05, Boniface Lau <boniface_lau at compuserve.com> wrote:
>
> But people do not arbitrary invent a meaning regardless of what they
> are seeing. When people see something written in a recognized date
> format, they are not going to interpret that as a person's name.
> 

I forgot to address this previously.  Arbitrarity does not imply
instability.  A lot of tech people have hard-ons for certified
standards set by some central authority.  However, a general consensus
can arise and stabilize (i don't have non-linguistic examples ready
off the top of my head unfortunately), and thus effectively become the
standard meaning or usage for a particular item/object/input.

-T