[Sigia-l] data as information?

[Scott Nelson]

On Jun 28.2005, at 12:40, James Melzer wrote:

> People don't. And
> that is the distinction with which we, as IAs, are concerned. To us, a
> document is much more than Title, Author, and BodyText fields.
>
> Can we say IAs design information for people but data architects
> design data for machines? Our audiences are entirely different but our
> products may be congruous?

this is not unreasonable. the key difference here is what? the  
sentience of the audience is certainly one.

so, with machines that are not sentient and therefore have ability to  
understand or comprehend the raw data that's being fed into them, it  
will always remain what it starts as: data. the transformation into  
information happens when we - people, human beings - interact with  
these machine. we query, we analyze, we combine - any number of things.

the arrival of sentient machines will change this, of course. Marvin  
was quite good at simply processing data, but also understood  
information and intent.
--
Skot Nelson
skot at penguinstorm.com