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

[Ted Han]

On 6/30/05, Boniface Lau <boniface_lau at compuserve.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately, I don't think I understand what you are trying to say in the above.

Right, sorry, i'll be clearer.  Link the two posts i made above together.

The point is that input (for the sake of avoiding problematic usage of
information/data/whatever, i'm just going to use the word 'input')
does not have meaning by itself.  That is, in a vacuum, input has no
inherent meaning.  Inputs, when they are created, are ascribed some
intended meaning by their creators.  This meaning has -no- necessary
link to the meaning attributed to this piece of input by whatever
device percieves the input.  So, my point is that, unlike the tree
that falls in the woods when no one is around to hear it, inputs
genuinely -don't- have meaning unless there's someone there to supply
the meaning (psychologists/philosophers might say that "supplying the
meaning" constitutes having some correspondance between the input and
things in the real world).

Regardless of this fact, for practical purposes, one may want to take
a creator's intended meaning when making an input as the "right"
meaning (and deconstructionists do not believe that this is the case).
 This was i guess sort of an aside, but i wanted to make the
distinction between how things actually are, and how things are
treated in everyday life.

Any clearer?

-T