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Date

13. 7.2008 19:22:28

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Abstract

Shannon provides a model whereby an information source selects a desired message, out of a set of possible messages, that is then formed into a signal. The signal is sent over the communication channel to a receiver, which then transforms the signal back to a message that is relayed to its destination (Shannon & Weaver, 1949/1963, p. 7). Problems connected with this model have remained with us. Some of the concepts are ambiguous; the identification of information with a process has spancelled the debate; the problems of measuring the amount of information, the relation of information to meaning, and questions about the truth value of information have remained. Balancing attention between the process and the act of receiving information, and deterrnining the character of the receiver, has also been the focus of work and debate. Information science has mined work from other disciplines involving information theory and has also produced its own theory. The desire for theory remains (Hjorland, 1998; Saracevic, 1999), but what theory will deliver is unclear. The distinction between data and information, or communication and information, is not of concern here. The convention that data, at some point of use, become information, and that information is transferred in a process of communication suffices for this discussion. Substitution of any of these terms is not a problem. More problematic is the relationship between information and knowledge. It seems accepted that at some point the data by perception, or selection, become information, which feeds and alters knowledge structures in a human recipient. What that process of alteration is, and its implications, remain problematic. This review considers the following questions: 1. What can be gleaned from the history of reviews of information in information science? 2. What current maps, guides, and surveys are available to elaborate our understanding of the issues? 3. Is there a parallel development of work outside information science an information theory of use to us? 4. Is there a dominant view of information within information science? 5. What can we say about issues like measurement, meaning, and misinformation? 6. Is there other current work of relevance that can assist attempts, in information science, to develop a theory of information?

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Abstract

The concept of information as we use it in everyday English, in the sense of knowledge communicated, plays a central role in contemporary society. The development and widespread use of computer networks since the end of World War II, and the emergence of information science as a discipline in the 1950s, are evidence of this focus. Although knowledge and its communication are basic phenomena of every human society, it is the rise of information technology and its global impacts that characterize ours as an information society. It is commonplace to consider information as a basic condition for economic development together with capital, labor, and raw material; but what makes information especially significant at present is its digital nature. The impact of information technology an the natural and social sciences in particular has made this everyday notion a highly controversial concept. Claude Shannon's (1948) "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" is a landmark work, referring to the common use of information with its semantic and pragmatic dimensions, while at the same time redefining the concept within an engineering framework. The fact that the concept of knowledge communication has been designated by the word information seems, prima facie, a linguistic happenstance. For a science like information science (IS), it is of course important how fundamental terms are defined; and in IS, as in other fields, the question of how to define information is often raised. This chapter is an attempt to review the status of the concept of information in IS, with reference also to interdisciplinary trends. In scientific discourse, theoretical concepts are not true or false elements or glimpses of some element of reality; rather, they are constructions designed to do a job in the best possible way. Different conceptions of fundamental terms like information are thus more or less fruitful, depending an the theories (and in the end, the practical actions) they are expected to support. In the opening section, we discuss the problem of defining terms from the perspective of the philosophy of science. The history of a word provides us with anecdotes that are tangential to the concept itself. But in our case, the use of the word information points to a specific perspective from which the concept of knowledge communication has been defined. This perspective includes such characteristics as novelty and relevante; i.e., it refers to the process of knowledge transformation, and particularly to selection and interpretation within a specific context. The discussion leads to the questions of why and when this meaning was designated with the word information. We will explore this history, and we believe that our results may help readers better understand the complexity of the concept with regard to its scientific definitions.