IS 202 Assignment 1
Mary Hodder

What is information according to your background or area of expertise?

Information is organized data, where the organizer, the user and the purveyor shaping and differentiating the data organization determine what becomes information. As a creator, user and purveyor of it, my definition is biased and personal, even though I think I have some ability to comprehend others’ uses and beliefs around it. I derive and gather information about my definition of information from work, my interests and activities. The pile of books, newspapers, trade journals and magazines, music minidiscs, computer parts, the paper covered in handwriting, the laptop both as hardware and receptacle of created files, the artwork, gadgets, digital photos on a flashcard, dvds, viognier commentary from Jay McInerney, my outlook address book printout, reference materials, real estate contracts, auto repair slips, eye drop directions, fabric swatches and financial reports and bills in my room inform what I see as information. The browser windows open on my desktop, 23 of them, do this as well. It’s a pantload, just covering the past weeks’ activities. And if I tried to take it in as random data, it would swim through me with no anchoring points, no possibility of informing my experience or developing further into knowledge.

Information is more than data. In the financial reports, data might include a single entry on a spreadsheet, while the spreadsheet itself, with the placement of data into particular formats and columns, formulated into new individual sets of data, might together become a piece of useful information, displayed so as to emphasize one point over another. The paintings on the wall convey thoughts and emotions, data organized decades ago by the artists. It is touch, smell, taste, feel, emotion. It is a linen fabric swatch for the sofa imparting a thick, soft, golden tactile experience, and in the context of its intended use, is transformed from simple data about the fabric to a more complex piece of information about the effect on the sofa and the people who might use it. It is the Jonathan Reynolds article, with a pancake recipe that might be mere data cooking instruction, if not for his story about Christmas alone in New York City. Information is commentary, opinion and in fiction, it can be the lie that tells the truth. Information is aggregated or designed in some way to communicate asynchronously, or not, to a recipient user with particular contexts for understanding and placing the information into use. Without context and usefulness, information may regress back into data. Most likely, the information in my room mentioned above would, at least in part, exist as data to others because it would not be meaningful to anyone but me.

So information is communication. It is something others create, and I create. It is data, combined with related facts, context, and distinctions between combined data and their relationships. It is important, but not more important than knowledge.