[Sigia-l] data as information?

[James Melzer]

Is it more dangerous to treat data as information or to treat
information as data?

I've noticed that practitioners from the data modeling community
sometimes discuss findable information (specifically, documents) as an
output of their methodology. I think Google has demonstrated to some
degree that this can be effective, given the right behavioral
assumptions.

Are the two communities (data architecture and information
architecture) discussing the same thing from different perspectives?
Even our terms are different - they often use the phrase "meta data"
as a synonym of the term "metadata".

~ James

On 6/28/05, Ed Housman <em_housman at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ah, we turn again to the Nature of Information.  Quite so, it is the substance
> we IA's get paid to manipulate.  About a year ago, we chatted for weeks about
> *context*.  The epigram emerged: "Information is data in context."
> 
> Over these months I have been pondering further "what is information anyway?",
> but was side-tracked by an analysis of *media*.  A medium is necessary for
> information to move among members of a group, allowing cooperative activity.
> It carries information from one place to another in time-space, or stores it
> for future use.  Smoke signals, flags, bugles, flashing mirrors, tom-toms,
> voice, printed text, carvings on stone, radio broadcasts, disk files, web pages
> ... these are all media.  They all involve expendature of energy. But a medium
> is NOT information; information rides on its back.
> 
> I don't want to divert you all from your very interesting ongoing discussions,
> but I thought I'd add this thought as long as you brought up the subject.
> 
> Currently I am analyzing the movement of information itself, irrespective of
> the medium; for the same information can be sent using different media.  The
> meaning, stupid.  (Referring to myself, of course.)
> 
> --Ed
> 
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-- 
James Melzer


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"Choice, the problem is choice." - Neo