Monday, August 30, 2010
Week 1: The Muddiest Point
For this week's muddiest point, I'd like to bring up the apparently mysterious transition that occurs when information is synthesized into knowledge. I look forward to reading Losee (1997), which was mentioned in Professor He's PowerPoint presentation, but in the mean time, I wonder if bits of information might effectively be envisioned as buildings blocks, which when combined serve to form a greater structure-- a structure we might call knowledge. It makes sense that contextualized information becomes knowledge, but the necessary context must also be comprised of information, itself contextualized by other bits of information. Therefore, it seems to me to be something magical when information is synthesized by human minds into knowledge-- like informational alchemy. I'd love to hear if people find any articles outside Losee (1997) that deal with this transformation!
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I've been curious this week about that DIKW pyramid as well. I"m inclined to think of the relationship between information and knowledge as something quite dynamic -- in part because of the context issues you raise, but also because I think that knowledge, and especially what we term 'common knowledge' has a role in shaping what observers see and count as information. There are some much more eloquent articles and writers out there -- Samuel Delany and Emily Martin come to mind -- that explore nuances of that through things like historical anatomical drawings, medical textbooks, AIDS research etc. Interesting food for thought.. that doesn't quite explain the alchemy you're talking about, but does throw in some interesting complications.
ReplyDeleteIt's very interesting to envision the transition of information to knowledge as perpetually dynamic, consisting of what might be called a feedback loop where Point A influences Point B and point B then influences Point A (though this is a blatant over-simplification). One has to wonder, based on the fluid nature of knowledge, what portion of 'common knowledge' could truly be classified as knowledge and not synthesized points of view regarding certain pieces of information that are simply mutually agreed upon by multiple people...
ReplyDeleteThanks for recommending Delany and Martin! Hopefully I'll have some time to check them out this weekend.