Terms for Talking about Information and Communication

an article by Corey Anton (Grand Valley State University, Allendale, USA) published in Information Volume 3 (2012)

Abstract

This paper offers terms for talking about information and how it relates to both matter-energy and communication, by:

1. Identifying three different levels of signs:
   Index, based in contiguity,
   Icon, based in similarity, and
   Symbol, based in convention;
2. examining three kinds of coding:
   Analogic differences, which deal with positive quantities having contiguous and continuous values, and
   Digital distinctions, which include “either/or functions”, discrete values, and capacities for negation, decontextualization, and abstract concept-transfer, and finally,
   Iconic coding, which incorporates both analogic differences and digital distinctions; and
3. differentiating between “information theoretic” orientations (which deal with data, what is “given as meaningful” according to selections and combinations within “contexts of choice”) and “communication theoretic” ones (which deal with capta, what is “taken as meaningful” according to various “choices of context”).

Finally, a brief envoi reflects on how information broadly construed relates to probability and entropy.

Full text (PDF 21pp)

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Out of the box – A life with rubbish information

an article by Roger James (Visiting Professor, University of Southampton) published in Business Information Review Volume 28 Number 3 (September 2011)

Abstract

Technology has been largely responsible for the revolution in information science and knowledge management over the last decade. The initial implementations, limited by technology, were concerned with content management which extended and reinforced the focus on structured, encoded and abstract material. Recently technology has extended its impact to massive, extensive messaging – or social media. Whilst social media has simply expanded available content, a more profound shift is to the new capability to manage context: recognizing the patterns of activity as a new source of information.

Context management has great potential to address complex, often social, questions providing new insights which we present in a new science of context management. Context management opens up new possibilities in productively using ‘information waste’ – perhaps collected for different purposes or as a by-product of a transactional system – and we predict new companies will emerge from the use of information waste.

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