Information Concepts From Books to Cyberspace Identities

Information Concepts From Books to Cyberspace Identities

Book Marchionini, G. (2010). Information concepts: From books to cyber space identities. In G. Marchionini (Ed.), Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services. Morgan & Claypool. Five senses of information Voice 1: Thought and memory. Information is a state of the human mind Voice 2: Communication process. Information is a stimulus perceived by a human; it is a process of affecting mental state Voice 3: Artifact. Information is matter that has been manipulated by people or their computational agents - artifacts that people create to communicate. Voice 4: Energy. Information is a kind of energy Voice 5: Identity in Cyberspace. Information is an instantaneous state of cyberspace. In the figure, energy is central because it is the most general sense of information and can be related to the other senses. External (to the human body) energy and internal memory activations drive thought as a stream of mental state changes (Voice1). Physical energies external to the body stimulate biological state changes in the brain (Voice2). Potential energy supports information as artifact (Voice3). Cyberspace represents the sum of human and machine communication processes and artifacts. It is a subset of all human knowledge augmented by products of computational agents, which, in turn, has implications for individual identity and for collective consciousness. Terminology Data is an energy that has some order, it is manifested in many forms determined by ordering constraints. Data have no meaning to humans without minimal metadata such as units of measure. Information is energy that has order as well as associated energy that provides context. The contextualizing information is metadata that supports the flow and use of data. In case of changing human minds, information is interpret able as a result of the metadata and the associated mental activity that integrates these data Knowledge is energy that originates in social contexts and that organizes different information resources into aggregates according to socially accepted schemas. Wisdom is sometimes included in this data-information-knowledge hierarchy, however, the author reserves it for something distinctly human and singular that is of a different phenomenon class than data-information-knowledge hierarchy of increasingly ordered, contexuatlized, and expansive energy. Noumenal Clouds A noumenon is a mental representation for a physical object, characteristic, relationship, event, or sensory experience. Clouds are highly fluid and ephemeral–like the concepts that we think about but eventually dissipate to make room for other concepts and are slightly different each time we reform them because our overall state of consciousness, experience, and physiology continually change and affect how we think. Furthermore, I think of this working memory as noumenal space where association clouds interact. In some cases, the clouds are well defined and well practiced and in other cases, the clouds are ill defined, highly ephemeral, and dense. Memory Long term memory is any sensation, event, label, or experience we ca recall and may be called information in Voice 1 sense Short term memory, or working memory, is where information from long term memory can be used by conscious thought. Working memory is strictly limited, and not only uses information recalled from long term memory, but also from perceptual system. Perception Our perceptual systems have both voluntary and autonomic components and a large range of sensors that respond to internal and external stimuli. It is essential that humans have sophisticated information filters that limit information flows at micro (sensor) and macro (mental) levels. Human Acts of Information Information acts are the means of interaction and range from physical acts such as eye contact, gesture, or touch to culturally developed acts such as speaking, writing, and singing. Actions do not stand alone - to understand an action we must consider the actor, the act itself, and the object of the action. Intention of an action can be one-to-one, many to one, many to many, or many to many human actors. Execution - Throughout history, people have created a variety of tools and techniques to aid them in executing information acts and considerable portions of our educational systems are devoted to developing skills to use these tools and techniques The effects of information acts - can be direct or incidental effects. Direct effects are changes in belief or behavior and may meet the intentions of the actor who performed the act or chose to not perform it. Incidental effects happen because they are manifested in artifacts or spawn associated artifacts, additionally the direct effects of information acts recursively spawn new kinds of incidental effects. Interaction as an Information Act The fact that information objects can present many fixed or randomly generated states gives them a kind of dynamism that has only been exhibited by people and to a lesser extent by animals throughout human history.This creates new opportunities as well as challenges. It enriches and complicates our lives and the information landscape. Artifacts Artifacts include a broad range of ojbects while retaining the connotation that the information objects is created by human effort. Artifacts may be anticipated or not. Two important terms that classify artifacts are form and life-cycle. Form Can be understood as a Substrate, Method, and Tool   Life Cycle   Electronic Information Artifacts Require Power Substrates are intangible to human perception It is easy and cheap to make perfect copies at scale Requires small amounts of physical storage space Support Multimedia Incorporate behavior (are interactive). Most significant characteristic because it changes the way that people experience the artifact. Information as Energy Change in physical state: reduction in certainty. Shannon (1948) suggests that information can be defined as a change in state, suggesting that the key elements in a communication system are the source, channel and receiver. Change in mental and social states: The changes from one state of thought to another require some kind of energy form, regardless of the philosophical perspective taken. Information as identity in cyberspace: the fifth voice Cyberspace is a general term that is used to encapsulate the confluence of peopel, global electronic networks, information artifacts generated by people and machines, and software agents that act in these networks at any moment. People act in cyberspace through technical interfaces that support input and output. Human information interaction is concerned with people and information as entities andt he variety of actions that occur as people and information become proximate and reciprocally change one another. HII can be measured in several dimensions: amount of variety available to actors; degree of presence experienced; and number frequency and fidelity of turn taking cycles. Personal vs Public identities Projections is exoinformation which is both purposeful and  and not. Reflections are artifacts created by other people. Projection and reflections represent proflections of self and represent a new sense of information.