Tag Archives: definition of information

ETL401 Module 2.2

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The role of the teacher librarian is to act as a conduit between the outside information world and the inhabitants of the school.

Case looks for a universal definition of ‘information’ but finds that there isn’t one. He argues that there doesn’t need to be one; that the generic, everyday understanding will do in most cases. He goes on to say that the various specific needs of particular disciplines has led to each discipline creating their own more rigorous definition as befits their needs.

Floridi describes the radically changing information environment and predicts what the landscape may look like in the future. Many of his predictions have been accurate. The world is more and more “connected” and the introduction of smart devices and online economies is increasing. We relate to people more often through our use of devices than by other means of communication. We have more information available than at any time in the past, but many of us struggle to know what to do with it. It is as if we are spending our ‘offline’ time working to support our ‘online’ time rather than the other way around. Virtual assistants such as Siri and Alexa seem to be examples of what Floridi was writing about.

Deep web – the deep web refers to that information that is held online but is not accessible to the general public. This could include online banking information, media content available with a login, journals and databases that require a password to access. It is different to the Dark web – an area of the internet held on specialised servers that allow users total anonymity in the information they post and in the information they seek. The content of these websites are untraceable and not available using a regular search engine or browser. Content held there can be innocuous but it can also be illegal or disturbing.  https://us.norton.com/internetsecurity-how-to-how-can-i-access-the-deep-web.html

Internet2 – an international network used by educational and research institutions to provide high bandwidth support for accessing and collaborating on advanced internet based data and tools. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/24955/internet2

 

I am coming to understand the information landscape to mean the vast array of sources of information available. This includes information in many forms including digital, print, film, images, artefacts, magnetic forms etc. It would include information communicated in various modes or in multiple modes. Whether information must be deliberately communicated and whether it must be received and understood is still under discussion. My initial thought is that it must be able to be received and understood even if it so far has not been. I do not believe at this early stage that information must be deliberately communicated. This implies that natural phenomena could not be analysed to give information about upcoming changes to an environment. On the question of whether the information must be useful, I think that is a very subjective judgement to make. Information that is not at all useful to one recipient might be very valuable to another, depending upon their particular area of inquiry. The information landscape is constantly changing and growing. Developing technologies allow information to be gathered, organised, communicated, stored and used in new and innovative ways. It is accessible freely at any time of the day or night which, while it has the advantage of being at our finger tips at all times, it has the disadvantage of meaning that it is becoming increasingly difficult to disconnect from our all-consuming connected lives. Expecting people to be responsive at all hours of the day and night means that they are constantly “on call” and this is not conducive to a healthy work-life balance. Mosbergen (2016) refers to the desire to legislate down time for employees. While this would indeed assist with maintaining a healthy work-life balance, it might be less helpful to employees looking for more flexible work environments and structures. If a company dictates that no emails can be sent after a certain time in the evening, then workers who seek to complete some of their work from home in the evening in order to work around family or other commitments would be restricted in their ability to do this. Perhaps, then, it would be better to encourage businesses to change the culture of their organisation in other ways. Positive leadership in demonstrating work-life balance, setting expectations at reasonable levels achievable within the expected working hours might be more effective. This would be difficult to legislate, however.

References

Case, D. (2006). The concept of information. In Looking for information: A survey of research on information seeking, needs and behaviour, pp. 40-65. 2nd ed. Burlingham: Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. ebook, CSU Library.

 

Floridi, L. (2007). A look into the future impact of ICT on our lives. The Information Society, 23, 59-64. CSU Library.

 

Mosbergen, D. (2016). French legislation suggests employees deserve the right to disconnect. The Huffington Post. Retrieved July 2016.

ETL401 Module 2.1

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This module discusses the nature and definition of information. It describes the classic definition (a collection of ‘bits’ of information recorded in agreed symbols) and the semantic definition (the content of a message). The data-knowledge continuum positions the message between chaos, data, information, knowledge and wisdom, moving along the continuum as comprehension increases.

Increasingly, information is a trade-able commodity. Yet it is different to other trade-able goods in a number of ways.

  • information is inconsumable – that is, even when you use it, you still have it. Other goods, eg chocolate, disappear once they have been used. They are consumed by use.
  • information is untransferable – that is, even if you give it to someone else, you still have it. If you give chocolate to someone else, they have it and you don’t.
  • information is indivisible – that is, you can’t use only part of it without changing it. It is possible (however unlikely) that you might use only part of the chocolate. In that case, a smaller part remains, as delicious as ever. You have divided the chocolate into parts. If you divide information into parts, the meaning is changed and so the original information is lost or becomes new or misinformation.
  • information is accumulative – that is no matter how often you use it, it still remains with you, building up over time. If you get more information, it adds to the collection but can never be consumed by use (only by deleting and even then other versions often exist especially with digital information). Chocolate, on the other hand, can only be used once. Once eaten, it is gone. It does not remain to be accumulated once it is used.
    (Combes, Fitzgerald & O’Connell, 2019)

This has implications for the work of educators everywhere. We need to develop knowledge and understanding in students in a well-thought out order, such that each skill or piece of information builds upon the last and we need to make clear where the new information sits with the current schema. We need to make sure students are taught how to think about the information they are presented with and learn to critically evaluate it, adding it to the appropriate schema or rejecting it as misinformation. It also has implications for how librarians organise information. Related pieces of information should lead the learner from one to another. Currently all I can think of is positioning related topics close by each other and using catalogue software that might suggest to users the topics related to each other. I am convinced that there are a great many other strategies librarians use.  I am keen to learn more about them.

When we want to communicate information, we want the receivers to understand and be able to use that information as easily as possible. We therefore need to encode it into a format they can easily decode (choose the relevant language and format) transfer it as a whole package or in a series of sequenced, related packages and make clear to them where this new information sits within their current knowledge and understanding of the topic.

References

Combes, B., Fitzgerald, L. and O’Connell, J. (2019). The Information Environment. In ETL401: Introduction to Teacher Librarianship. Retrieved from  https://interact2.csu.edu.au/webapps/blackboard/content/listContent.jsp?course_id=_42381_1&content_id=_2899453_1