Information Overload: A System for Better Managing Everyday Data

Chapter 1. INFORMATION ON INFORMATION

Information is ever present in our daily lives. Many of us are barraged with it. Yet it is very hard to respond to the question "What is information?" We all have a vague idea of what information constitutes.

Many words express the idea of information: Consider data, knowledge, being, writing, sign, and symbol, to name just a few. But objects such as a name, a song, a picture, or an idea also contain a shared quality called information. Some information is considered more valuable than other information, typically because a person puts a higher value on it. Old information can become valuable in a new context or when used by contemporary technologies for making novel combinations. The iPod is just one example of such a technological transformation of information.

Information is more than simple data. Data can be viewed as a series of symbols, facts, or rough observations. Individually, these mean nothing to us; only when data is experienced in the correct context are we able to process and analyze it. When data changes a person's level of knowledge, we call it information.

Data, as such, is neutral. The very same data can be important to one human being and totally unimportant to another, the reason being that the context and the information receiver are different. Knowledge is more than just information. To change information into knowledge, we add elements such as experience, importance, value, understanding, opinion, and reasoning. Knowledge ...