Information -- what is it?

[Dcrux]

You know information when you see it, becasue you are an information worker. So, supposing you were writing a help wanted ad for the position of 'information worker' what would be in it, do you suppose?

As an applicant for the position, how would you define information? Is information different from data; if so, how? Does familiarity with technology equate to an inherent ability to perform information work? (Where in the help file does any software explicitly say that?) What would you do in order to "work" with information? Describe a day-in-the-life of an information worker ...in contrast to, say, a data processor. And throw in something about information literacy for good measure.

And has the threshold for information work been raised? In other words, does the field of information work evolve, change or progress?

Since most everyone is now in the process of calling themselves "knowledge workers," this exercise shouldn't even be an exercise.

[DrTandem1]

"Information" and "data" are synonymous. Familiarity with technology allows for the ability of amassing a huge quantity of data.

I'm not sure what you mean by "information worker." It broadly covers those that collect, filter, sort and analyze information. This could be done by one or more people.

I suppose for information to be useful it would need to be relevant for some task at hand other than writing an encyclopedia, which could be classified as generic data collection and ordering/sorting.

[ADAM Web Design]

Information --- what is it?

It's a 11-letter word, but that's not important right now.

(Someone had to do that.)

Anyway...I don't consider information and data to be synonymous. I consider them to be similar, but not synonymous. Information tends to be the collective gathering and presentation of data in a friendly manner to the user, whereas data is a series of raw information.

[DrTandem1]

Information --- what is it?

It's a 11-letter word, but that's not important right now.

(Someone had to do that.)

Anyway...I don't consider information and data to be synonymous. I consider them to be similar, but not synonymous. Information tends to be the collective gathering and presentation of data in a friendly manner to the user, whereas data is a series of raw information.

You may not consider them the same, but the dictionary does. Yes, I like Airplane, too.

[khurramali]

A content Writer could be an information worker. Because he has to process all the information given to him, analyse, sort, organize and convert it into a useful form.

Every SEO is an informaton worker, for that matter.

[mugsetcmaster]

Technically I would say both are the same; the connotation however may lead to "data" being a subset of "information". Information being the broader, more generalized term. I could send you a bunch of data that was meaningless to you but invaluable to me or someone else. Though a writer is an "information worker" he would not probably apply for a data processing position. So I think you may want to be more specific in your ad for your information worker. Just what do you want this person to do?

kass

[remasujeeth]

Data is a set of raw information, whereas information is a more organized, relevant and appealing set of content. To be precise, data is just a collection, whereas information is an analysed and organized collection of relevant content. Information anyday is valuable and data may or may not. When it comes to content developers, a resource combination of domain expertise and language skills makes the best information giver. By best i mean relevancy.

[TrafficProducer]

Or are you talking about Knowledge?

( Data, Information, Knowledge. )


Post your Situations vacant. Advertise details here for free. (http://www.iworkveryhard.com/add_situations_vacant.html)

[Dcrux]

Peter Drucker said, in a 1997 Forbes magazine interview, "For top management tasks, information technology so far has been a producer of data rather than a producer of information-let alone a producer of new and different questions and new and different strategies. ....It can be argued that the computer and the data flow it made possible, including the new information concepts, actually have done more harm than good to business management." Forbes ASAP: the Next Information Revolution August 24, 1998

Drucker, who has recently passed away, seems to be indicating several things. One - data and information are distinctly different. Two - information is perhaps more valued, beneficial and sought after. Three - it is harder to come by or produce. Drucker, having used the term "harm" seems to indicate a problem in need of solving. Should you look, you'll quickly uncover similar views, using terms like data smog, information anxiety, multitasking madness, technostress. The terms seem to indicate a design failure.

What if the murky understanding of this symbolic continuum -- data, information, knowledge -- is part of the problem? If so, a first step is to try to distinguish between data and information, with an eye toward solving these identified problems.

My working definition for data: "Data is a representation of something using numbers, symbols, words, graphics and/or sound. That something can be a physical object, idea, event or process. Data has a structure I term a pattern."

Information, to be any different, has to do different things. Information comes in varieties: Information, Disinformation, Misinformation, Noninformation. People use words like information tactics, information warfare, and so on. Such dinstinctions and uses suggest a fairly thorough understanding of what information is. Without a detailed understanding of what information is, you are not going to do well developing Technology for producing Information. Technology to produce information has to meet some kind of threshold that technology alone does not.

Given many people think information is the economically meaningful product of IT, this might be a problem. And any definition for infomation must be human centered, not an academic constuct not applicable outside the computer science curriculum.

My own definition: Data is descriptive. Information is prescriptive. This means, unless a human acts, it is not information. Information must have human interaction as a vital part, to have value to human objectives.

Data has pattern, information has context. Contexts tell you what is important to focu on, and what is noise. But information has to bridge or connect contexts. For example it is not enough to produce product, it has to be usable and desirable enough to buy. The product has to take into account technical and business factors like competition. Business success demands user objectives and business objective be met simultaneously and mutually. Each context -- business and use -- have different objectives which must be satisfied for a customer relationship to occur.

If someone wants to be paid to do information work, that's the minimum level of understanding and detail I'd require for the job.

[ctabuk]

Good points, but - by Misinformation are you pertaining to the webmaster who through a total lack of knowledge about a given subject still manages to attain a high SERP simply because the SE spider knows as little as the informant? Yet due to the high quality of incoming links his site, be it full of nonsense still gets a higher ranking. Even DMOZ Editors make complete hashes of reading another persons site as they have no technical understanding (except cbp)of SEO!

[TrafficProducer]

--"Information" is "raw", i.e. un-acted upon by any receiver;

--"Knowledge" is information acted upon cognitively, i.e. transformed into some conceptual framework and hence manipulable and usable for other cognitive uses;

--"Wisdom" is applied knowledge, i.e. knowledge along with the common (or uncommon) sense to know when and how to use it.

Read More http://www.km-forum.org/t000008.htm

Raw Data, this could be binary 0001001 or a list of numbers 1,3,22,55,677, etc other such values is not much help in it's raw form.

Information is Raw Data that has some processing carried out ont it.

I suppose you want an "Information Worker" to process data and provide usefull results from it.

There are tons and tons of Information, (websites, libraries, etc) but this is not much uses unless it can be used, by in the end by humans, in a quick and easy to undestand way.

Hopefully any knowledge can then be used to make some profit.

~~~

A piece of iron ore is not much good in the ground. It needs to be processed a many times to produce a useful item.

[kgun]

Assumption: Information in the digital world.

I would write at lest three (four) classes:

Class InformationLogistics {

Variables ....

Methods ....

}

Class DataLogistics {

Variables ....

Methods ....

}

Class CommunicationLogistics {

Variables ....

Methods ....

}

In the overall program eg.

Class DigitalLogistics {

Variables ....

Methods ....

}

methods and variables from all classes could be related depending on the project. Then define digital information within this class hierarchy.

Save as draft or submit? I take the chance ...

[JKomp]

My understanding is that:

Information is the presentation of ideas, data is used to lend authenticity to these ideas, perhaps making them facts.

Information can be in the form of pure data - but this does not make the two synonymous.

It's like saying all ants are insected so all insects are ants, it just doesn't follow.

[khurramali]

Raw Data / Facts and figures = unprocessed information. Which is of no use to anyone.

when organized, sorted, processed, stored in a database = becomes processed information.

when this processed information is provided to the 3 tiers of of a management of a company, namely

1. Strategic Management
2. Tactical Management
3. Operational Management

The Management are able to take informed decisions and manage their business efficiently.

[webmaker]

I think that I understand what you are saying.
For example:
Your site produces an rss/xml feed = Data = Data worker
I take your rss/xml feed and present it to the world on a website = Information = Information Worker.
I then read the feed = Learning = knowledge
I then am able to apply the knowledge when needed or not needed = Wisdom.
All these added together = Human
And since I like the search field. No search engine will ever be complete with out taking all of the above into consideration.

[TrafficProducer]

Just remember GIGO=Garbage In Garbage Out

Bad data could lead to bad information, which in turn leads to bad Knowledge, which in turn leads to bad decisions.

A good employee is what you are looking for to cut through these problems. Here are a couple of questions to asked them:-

What good decisions have they made in the past?

What have they been able to do about bad decisions?



Good luck with any new staff.

[kgun]

Data ---> Communication ---> Information.

You forget communication.

I think some of the best information on the WWW is located on university sites, but they are not best on communication.

I agree, garbage in is garbage out, even if my son says:

Definition of randomness: "A hurricane over a place with garbage that ends up with a plane" :-)

[khurramali]

Nice terminology, from FIFO and LIFO, in 21st century we have Garbage in / garbage out.

But don't forget

One person’s garbage might be other person’s treasure.

Some piece of information / data, might be of no use to you but combined with some other facts and figures, can be life saver / life maker for the other person.

[webmaker]

I=(D+P)*(W/X)
Information = ( Data + Presentation ) * ( Wisdom/ Number of times applied)
If (I=1) I is bad information
If (I=10) I is good information.

So information workers have to be able to take the formula and make it a 6 or above for them to earn thier money.

[kgun]

Interesting relation / equation.

X ---> infinity ===> I ---> 0.

KW's if you want to dig deeper:

Information criterium.

Entropy.

Ergodicity.

Mutual information.

Any relation you know of?

A useful link about useless information. (http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/site_index/index.html)

Time to make a new directory with an ever increasing X?

TrafficProducer, the least common denominator is a collection of 0 and 1's.

[thrashmangler]

Data creates information, data is the building block of information. Information is the accumulation of data into coherient thought and ideas.

[kgun]

If you think of a pyramide, I would put
1. Data in the bottom.
2. Then information.
3. Communication at the top (together with the surfer / consumer / client).

[freetraff]

In my opinion information is close to value.

Information must be valuable (useful/interesting). All the rest is useless data. In reality this data may be not that useless. But unless I see some real interest/value in information, I will never give it even a glance.

[kgun]

In my opinion information is close to value.

Information must be valuable (useful/interesting). All the rest is useless data. In reality this data may be not that useless. But unless I see some real interest/value in information, I will never give it even a glance.

Agree, but what is useful for me, may be unuseful to you. We may even have different opinions of value. If it is possible to measure

the money value of (data,information) so it is > 0 we may both agree that it is valuable.

Search Engines as Leeches on the Web (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/search_engines.html)
Summary:
Search engines extract too much of the Web's value, leaving too little for the websites that actually create the content. Liberation from search dependency is a strategic imperative for both websites and software vendors.

[Scott Adie]

Information is information. It's useless unless we know how to share it. To understand communication better, thus giving purpose to information, see;
http://faculty.uvi.edu/users/amarkha/Lectures/comm.pdf. Or don't!

[Scott Adie]

Lets simplify, information is all sensory input! Don't believe me? Put your head in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees. What information did you receive? Damn, it's hot!

[kgun]

Very foccused and good presentation about communication.

Page 7. Good example of the importance a of the context a message is given in.

I am sure, if we could understand these processes better, wars could have been avoided.

I have much to learn. Not a good communicater. We learn to speak when we are about 2 years old. We learn to listen when we are 80.

... we hear and see what we expect to hear and see. Page 10.

Next page, think about all the noise that can block communication. Yes.

I was on a seminar, where the seminar leader told that "the body language" had an importance even if you could not see the person, eg. here on this forum. I could not belive it, sceptical as I am.

Conclusion: Good and foccused presentation. Made a link to it on my communication page.

Lets simplify, information is all sensory input! Don't believe me? Put your head in a pre-heated oven at 350 degrees. What information did you receive? Damn, it's hot!

Reminds me of the following joke:

What is an average?

Lying in the oven with your head and the feet in the refrigerator and experience a comfortble average temperature.

[Scott Adie]

Like it KGUN, now we're getting somewhere... nowhere... anywhere... who knows where?

[kgun]

Have to sleep on it. It is late night in Norway. I go to bed.

Where is the thread owner? Have we (I) hijacked his thread? :-)

[Dcrux]

Lets simplify, information is all sensory input!

Lets take this one idea. We take in an estimated 10 million bits of visual data every second, but your brain only digests about 40 bits, and by the time you pay conscious attention, you fully process only about 16 bits. Somewhere, something determines which 16bits is important, otherwise the sensory overload would make the idea of sensing any specific thing impossible.

If you did pay "perfect attention" when you went to see a movie, you wouldn't see what you see now. "All sensory data" means you would see twenty-four snapshots, with very slight difference, displayed each second. Movies work through an exploit of your rules of attention. A drawing only works because we know what crucial elements you need to determine a bunch of lines is supposed to represent a man, a horse, a house.

One way is to look at data overload, and information as the rules for determination of what's important. We apply rules like this all the time, like spam filtering. Ufortunately, we don't study attention, or how we take all sensory input and focus only on a narrow slice -- the critical narrow slice -- for making decisions.

One kind of attention popular right now is the subject of Gladwell's book Blink (http://www.gladwell.com/blink/).

Now, if I know which bits you are paying attention to, I can understand how you're searching a site, researching a subject, or reading through an ad. In technical circles they call it an eyetrack study (http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/), but it is similar to web analytics.

Okay, what is the 'catalytic mechanism' for sifting through all data? When we architect attention, what we are doing is persuading. Designing persuasion into technology is called captology.

Ask yourself a question: Is information really information without persuasion? Perhaps in certain academic circles, but not for regular work or business. You try to communicate to persuade change in the person on the receiving end. Even if I send you a joke, I'm trying to change something -- your mood, your view of my sense of humor, etc.

[Scott Adie]

I'll take your word on the 'visual data stream' statistics but I am curious where you got them. I'll have to read Blink. Readacologists, wow a new word maybe, tell us that our visual input can be streamlined into virtual snapshots of information that the brain archives for later recall or disposal. That's part of the concept of speed reading and some of the reading methodologies designed to improve our comprehension of printed matter. But, at some point the brain references what we read into audio material, we speak to ourselves internally what we have read. Am I muddying up the water here? Anyway, can you apply the same reasoning to the 'audio data stream'? Or, is that something different altogether. In other words, when I stick my head in the pre-heated 350 degree oven, do I see 'Damn that's hot' or do I hear it in my head. There's some sort of obscure mechanism here that ties all of this together.

[Dcrux]

I = 0 (Information has no intrinsic meaning) (http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper140.html) by F.J. Miller lays out the difficuties of actually having something rightly called Information Techology.

In most cases, keeping our heads out of hot ovens isn't a problem. Books like Information Anxiety and PowerPoint's role in the shuttle disaster (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/29/AR2005082901444.html) might prove more fruitful for content producers.

Here's an interesting topic for discussion which immediately breaks down into one of two camps. One blames the user, the other group blames the tool. We know these arguments (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001029.html) ...I'm looking to introduce a new perspective.

Tools don't exist in insolation. Users don't exist in isolation. Tool developers don't exist in isolation from the other two. Reductionism serves us so well, we often chop our world into bits. Users, tools, and developers interact -- there's a system dynamic.

Developers seek out a specific segment of the marketplace (often gathering feedback). They produce a tool based on this interaction. Using the tool, users find constraints in the way the tool works assists certain things and hinders others (the basic idea underlying usability). This means certain use patterns are encouraged, others discouraged (persuaded). Tools influence use, which appeals to some users and not others, who then influence further development. Focus on any one, and the big picture is lost; the interaction between use, development, and constraint is lost.

When regular people use the word information, they tend toward "big picture" ideas. The study of system dynamics is a way to study and explain this big picture. Why is this important?

We have interaction design problems, like the Shuttle disaster. Blaming a single part only insures the pattern continues. Think of "pattern" as when people talk about the cycle of abuse. Intervention at multiple points of the cycle simultaneously are the only way to interrupt the cycle with a high probability of success.

In similar fashion, Data Processing is pattern repetition. With slight variation, what you got is what you will get. For information to live up to its reputation "information is power," it has to change these patterned behavior. Information is system level change which introduces new patterns of data processing.

People are not yet customers. You introduce a web page. The person is either persuaded or not. If they are persuaded, then they start to do business with you -- a new interaction pattern is established. Since this has monetary value, we can assume it is the kind of thing the IT industry is getting at.


The current UI is still tied indirectly to the PC’s original root metaphor, a typewriter.
-- Geoffrey Moore


We are very good at representing "things" in software, not the interaction patterns, influencers and system drivers I am talking about. Trouble is, we make a point of talking about symbolic activity, not just plonking on a software representation of a physical object (typewriter = word processor).

If we're trying to get that hypothetical 'information worker' job, we have to talk in terms something like this.

[Scott Adie]

We've had some fun but now, back to the original intent of this thread. You're right! I don't understand why so many people feel they must draw a hard line over issues like this. Or target a single idea or item (Shuttle O-rings), thereby trashing meaningful dialog (these arguments ). Certainly it often serves to make point more succint but it is rarely productive. If politicians could get out of this mode, perhaps they could do something productive. (don't go there!)

Your 'attack the problem with multiple points of intervention' will work is universally applied. With that in mind, can we establish some intervention points?

The first I would call CCM, Chronological Content Management. Any journalism class worth taking will teach this. Simply put, it's taking the most salient point, Shuttle Explodes, and placing it first in CCM. Each successive point, Entire Crew Dies, should build on the first but each successive point will usually have somewhat lesser value or impact on the reader. When the principal story has been told, divergent interests are addressed. Each of these has a chronological sequence of it's own. Failed 'O-Ring' blamed, Manufacturing Defect likely, Installation error possible, etc.

For interested parties, the whole story may have value. It may be consumed all at once, in large or small bites over time and even repeatedly. To those with a cursory interest, perhaps only the first two or three paragraphs are relevant.

Our web site information, to be effective, needs CCM (Chronological Content Management). Good advertising takes this approach as well. What's the Big Idea? Then support that idea with a chronological display of benefits, followed by the pertinent information about how to receive the benefits of the Big Idea.

Effective Journalism, Business Plans, Advertising and other good communications all follow these basic principals. Of course there are any number of variables to consider when laying out a plan for how to accomplish CCM. One thing that certainly helps is to use an outline (just like school), that exposes all of our ideas and what we want to communicate so that we can see how to put them in a format that adds value and drives people to our web sites for whatever purpose they exist.

This gives 'Information' value. Our first point of intervention then becomes the beginning of the process. Forget the Flash presentation, put down the mouse, close Photoshop, close Dreamweaver, Go-Live and all that stuff. Open Word or, heaven forbid, get a pencil and paper and make an outline. Even if you already have a web site, maybe even a successful one, you're bound to find ways to make it even better.

What's another POI (Point Of Intervention)? Don't you just hate acronyms?

Eventually we lose the meaning of content because they are not universally understood. Still, they do serve to streamline communication when they are understood.

[Dcrux]

What's another POI (Point Of Intervention)?

There are approximately twelve points of intervention (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donella_Meadows'_twelve_leverage_points_to_interve ne_in_a_system), I won't waste space relisting them here.

Thus we talke about content management, to really create a CMS, you would have to dwell on intervention points to "mangage" content creation. After all we're not just storing and retrieving text strings.

Outlines can be included as part of the pretty template -- that's managing content. Journalism training is not always going to be in the background of the poster using the supposed "information technology/CMS." Yet something as simple as a text file can provide background on most any form of content creation.


A CMS installation is an editorial project, not a software project… the editors, writers, designers and managers who run departments are not software engineers.
-- Jeffrey Veen


This raises another issue. We have the CMS. We have a body of information which could become knowledge (article writing from a journalism perspective, for instance). We have a software application which fails to reference or connect the user to this information.

A point of intervention might be to find these schisms or gaps between software development and user application information. Photoshop users get introduced to the last twenty centuries of art, merchandising, architectural visualization, diagrams -- not filter recipes to produce, essentially, nothing more than a decorative special effect.

Few application users want to be application developers or engineers. Yet ask for a house, most developers give you a hammer, casts of nails, 1500 feet of copper tubing, 5000 feet of electrical wire and fixtures, and five tons of lumber. ....and no blueprints. (You will get a nice tutorial about pounding a nail into a block of wood.) This is a protective tactic, not ignorance of what the raw materials are for. What the developer is doing it shielding themselves from any hint at promising some kind of outcome. In essence it extends the EULA (http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/EULA.html) into the code development process by making an application into an application development kit. You're not getting a CMS -- it is a content managment system development kit.


Content management systems suck.
-- Managing the Complexity of Content Management (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/managing_the_complexity_of_content_management) By Victor Lombardi


This is great for, say, data processing technology. I would think Information Technology, to take credit for producing information, would have to take responsibility for user success ...or at least acknoledging humans have objectives.

[Scott Adie]

It all depends on what IT is. That used to be a joke around work that had nothing to do with Information Technologies. Anyway, I think we must define IT as a term very precisely before we can determine whether it lives up to our expectation of IT. IT keeps coming back to haunt us doesn't IT.

I think much of this thread tries to address that issue by defining what Information is. IT as a term however serves as sort of a conjunction of terms. In other words, either word by itself is easier to define than the two together. For example, when I was a kid, 14-15, my dad gave me a box of Mechanics Tools. That did not make me a Mechanic but it also did not diminish the value of the Tools. It just meant they were placed in hands that did not yet know how to effectively utilize them. Likewise, perhaps Information Technology, to have any value is dependent on our interaction with it.

Photoshops filters don't necessarily make us Leonardo but if we study the possibilities and apply our personal creativity to them, perhaps we can create our own reality with them. Software is simply a mess of tools, some cool, some junk. But, even the best of these have little value until we exploit what can be accomplished with them. In some hands, even the best software is junk and in others, even junk software may become a useful tool.

I would suggest that dwelling on intervention points should be part of the creative process of managing content. Outlines, to be really effective, must be generated by the content manager or management team. No outside source, software mfg., has the intimate knowledge of our products or services necessary to create a CMS outline that fits properly. They can at best provide a starting point for the work we must do. The journalism model of communication is likewise only a starting point and only as effective as the people who use it.

There is no end-all solution and I hope there never is, life would be so dull!

[kgun]

Good posts above.

I = 0.

Sorry for making a statement that is very useful in economics.

I = Information set.

E=Event.

Then if

P(E)=P(E/I),

that is the unconditional probability of E is the same as the conditional given the information set, we may say that I has no valuable information.

Then there is a difference between ideology and sience. It has been said that economics is still on the ideological level. Then information is reduced to a tool in ideologies. In empirical economics, you have to take the data that is produced by the market or by human beings. That results in information and conclusions. But the conclusion may be a circle reasoning, you think that your test is objective science. But you are testing ideology. The result is given in advance. It is easier in the natural sciences where you can perform contolled experiments, again and again under identical conditions.

You throw a dice and does not know that the 1 is missing and replaced with another 2. You shall not throw many times before you know that something is wrong.

An actual topic. How important is it to have a background in mathematics, algorithmes and databases to understand how a SE works? Is it important for SEO? Is such a background a necessary, but not sufficient condition? Not necessarily. If you have very free thinking and not group thinking, a lot of people participating in a discussion, a lot of people having observed the SERP's may draw a similar (even better) conclusion than mathematical simulation. Intuition, observations by many participants implements a mechanism that is analogous to a scientific experiment. The crowd wisdom may draw very precise conclusions, but if it is group thinking it may reduce to circle reasoning.

[Scott Adie]

Then your conclusion, if you isolate methodologies, might be as follows:

SEO using much of the scientific method applying mathematics, algorythms and database extrapolation will lead to circular reasoning because it is subject to fixed principals.

SEO using intuitive and objective intrepretation through individual observations may be rendered effective through group collective input would or at least should approximate the scientific method above. This method would produce analog reasoning that would, at some point of application, meld into circular reasoning. It that happened it would seem to become circular through a decreasing radius scheme.

If that's how I am to understand your thesis then I would suggest the collective input of a rather large and diverse group of people would be required to make objective and linear SEO become subjective and circular SEO. What say you?

[kgun]

"Objective" observations by many, preferrably independent (thinking) people (without prejudices), testing their SERP placement for specific KW's give an insight that accumulated over all the contributors may produce a non empty information set.

As the number of contributers increases, the precision of the conclusion may also increase and fluctuate around the true conclusion.

If you toss a coin 4 times, the relative share ("empirical probability estimate") of heads may be 75 %. When the number of tosses increases, the share fuctuates around 50 % and in the end stabilizes on 50.xxxx or 49.xxxx %

Only my idea and not a fact.

[Scott Adie]

Your remark 'As the number of contributers increases, the precision of the conclusion may also increase and fluctuate around the true conclusion.'
aptly identifies the decreasing radius circular reasoning.

The inclusion of many 'independent thinking' people as you suggest, pushes the process toward a substantive center with, as you suggest, 'fluctuations'. As objective as any observer may fancy his or herself, all of us bring our own reality or sphere of influence into the mix. Absolute pure objectivity in nearly impossible to achieve. For instance, right now you're probably thinking; 'what kind of a nut is this?'

Now we must determine how to apply these diverse thoughts to content management in order to give this INFORMATION value.

[dburdon]

... good or bad. The above link doesn't work.

So are we all now knowledge workers? Interpreting structured data and applying acquired wisdom to make informed decisions.

The term "knowledge worker" was invented by politicians to explain the decline of manufacturing in the western world and the export of manufacturing jobs to Asia. In the UK we have only 1 million recorded unemployed but 2 million men of working age registered disabled. The data has been manipulated to present and entirely different picture from reality. Its called government spin.

When all the "knowledge work" has been exported to Asia what will they call the work that's left? Involuntary leisure?

[Dcrux]

So are we all now knowledge workers?

It's called title inflation. And anyone who thinks it is confined to government has not seen a resume, or dot com. Why not get a jump on it by calling ourselves "wisdom workers" instead.

What instantly exposes title inflation for what it is: there are no tests, experiments or mechanisms which might prove or disprove a claim of information. Information doesn't really exist as a practical matter because its absence or deficiency can't be proved to exist.

What if, instead of having a Quality movement, we said America's quality problems were caused by "quality overload" instead? Has any Just-In-Time inventory system been "too just-in-time"?? We probably don't have information overload problems, we have a problem of not being able to detect or produce information at all.

Getting back to the last couple posts we have two ideas: Tapping the Wisdom of Crowds (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385721706/ref=pd_kar/002-9726461-3778464?n=283155) while avoiding the Madness of Crowds (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/051788433X/ref=pd_kar/002-9726461-3778464?n=283155).

Since we make a big fuss about technology enabling collaboration, this would seem to be a key challenge. And Surowiecki (Wisdom of Crowds) lays out four pillers Diversity of opinion; Independence; Decentralization; Aggregation.

Can we rate content? Amazon does. I can't find the study, but they tried to correlate five-star ratings with sales. Couldn't. What correlated was "U" pattern rankings, polarized mostly 1s & 5s.

Any idea why? (Hint: Controversy = ??)

You've heard of Amazon, but do you know Amazon Smarkets (http://www.smarkets.net/)? One mechanism for harnessing the wisdom of crowds is called a prediction market. A software developer uses something like this for *Accurately* predicting feature implentation and bugfix priority. (Again if just asking worked Amazon five-star ratings would predict best sellers.)

So ....how do you like me for that fictional information worker job now?!