Week 1: Information as Thing

Unsurprisingly Buckland's "Information as Thing" was the first paper I had ever read concerning the theoretical or even what I might consider the philosophical side of information. I was shocked to see that this paper was written initially in 1989, well before computers were used as they are today. Thinking about that now it seems it is a mistake to categorize information science solely in the realm of technology and computers. It seems that information and its manipulation, by whatever means, are fundamental to organizations past, present, and future. Buckland's paper is nice because gives a good base to start thinking information and how could be used, should be used, and how it is used.

Buckland outlines three principal uses of the word "information":

1. Information-as-process
   
2. Information-as-knowledge
   
3. Information-as-thing
   

Information-as-process: Process here refers to the process of change that occurs when somebody learns something new or what they already know is changed. For example, if you read this article about UNC basketball then you would have new information via "information-as-process".

Information-as-knowledge: This is harder to define because Buckland is talking about intangibles. This type of information can reduce uncertainty or increase uncertainty, depending on the person perceives it.

Information-as-thing: This is the real contribution that Buckland makes, defining information as physical objects. He says anything that somebody finds informative could be considered information. By that definition Amazon could be one of the largest providers of information.

Interestingly, Buckland finds a way to tie all these definitions together. For example a simple fact could be considered information-as-process because it changes what somebody knows, it is information-as-knowledge because it could change something that person believes, and this change in belief could cause the person who first read the fact to create something which then provides information to anyone who reads it or somehow learns from it.

Buckland breaks down information between tangible and intangible objects and entities and processes. Figure 1 is from his paper.

This breakdown of information which incorporates his three elements of information (four if information processing is included) is a very useful base to then define what kind of information is out there.

Something I found interesting was his assertion about intangible human knowledge which technically could be some tiny tangible thing in someone's brain. He says that academic tests possibly measure the physical amount of what somebody knows but since it is indirect it is not the same as counting out whatever tangible bits are actually in a person's brain. This analogy made me think of Google and its many vast networks of computers. On each of their harddrives are bits of information that could be physically taken out and read. However, that is not how Google works, all of the machines work together to offer information, sort of like a brain functioning to give a human information. So could the Google network be considered information-as-knowledge and the results they push out information-as-thing?

One downfall of Buckland is they way in which he writes. Though this paper seems to outline fairly basic definitions and ideas Buckland writes in a complicated way.