[Sigia-l] data as information?

[Marcel van Mackelenbergh]

> Is it more dangerous to treat data as information or to treat
> information as data?
> 
Data = just the bytes
Information = the bytes plus the interpretation of those bytes

In the data world you can compare two items and determine whether they
are equal.

In the information world the two are never equal. The interpretation of
something depends on everything the person has learned. Since this is
always somewhat different, the interpretation is never the same. 

This is the big trap we often fall into. The sender sent a word, the
receiver received the word. However, the sender meant something else
than the interpreter understood.

However, this is not too dramatic. You can read this email because you
and I share a lot of the same interpretation of these words and
sentences. 

It is the challenge of IA not only to look at structures but also to
look at the interpretations. That's why we always want to know how our
target audiences call stuff or what they mean by a certain word.

marcel