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

[Groot, Boyd de]

What is a "bigger convention" to one might differ for another, as the
examples of the differences in dateformat between the US and Canada (and
Europe) have shown. 
It seems you see a bigger convention as some ideal truth that is seperated
from the people that use it and attach meaning to it. The reality is that,
just as with language, these conventions are dynamic and change over time as
people use it and cultural and technological developments continue.

Then about noise vs data vs information. To a mere observer of a tennismatch
the sound a ball makes when it hits the strings of a racket is probably just
noise. To the players on the court, however, there is a wealth of
information in this sound which can help a player anticipate speed, spin and
even direction of the ball. 
What is the bigger convention here? The 20.000 fans hearing just noise or
the 2 players using this information intuitively. Do these players care when
it's matchpoint in the third set tiebreak?

Again this illustrates that the presence of people and the context is
important.

--Boyd


>From: Boniface Lau

My be we should be reminded of how this discussion was started. It was
started on the example that Tom gave in the thread-starting post. In that
example, "January 1, 2001" was considered more meaningful than "010101"
because of the date format.

But where does that date format come from? It is a part of a bigger (higher
level) convention. IOW, there was this bigger convention implied in Tom's
example. "January 1, 2001" is a date because the bigger convention has a
certain format of date. "010101" is less meaningful because the bigger
convention does not say much about the format in "010101". 

Thus, the issue of the example was about the differences between "010101"
and "January 1, 2001" under that bigger convention. Dragging in the issue of
a person's presence is totally missing the point.


BTW, Tom had mistakenly thought that the absence of context caused "010101"
to be less meaningful. The truth is that it is due to the bigger convention.
Had the bigger convention said something about the format in "010101",
"010101" would have been as meaningful as "January 1, 2001".


Boniface

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