MI 201 Exam 1

The data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) pyramid or model

(From base to tip) data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom. It doesn't help that the terms "data" and "information" are often used interchangeably. Similarly, "information" and "knowledge" are often used interchangeably. Appreciate differences. Knowledge, being higher on the hierarchy, implies a higher level of organization. We can think of knowledge as the synthesis of information from various sources or over time, combined with experience. Knowledge is typically considered to exist mainly or only in the minds of people, as opposed to data and information, which typically exist in physical forms, such as databases or reports. A fourth level, "wisdom" is often added to the data-information- knowledge hierarchy to represent yet another, even higher level of organization. It is one thing to have knowledge about how the economy works, for example. But having the wisdom to know how best to respond as conditions change is another matter.

Domain analysis & role of subject-area specialist

A key concept for information science. As such, it links several other concepts important for information science, including "resources" and retrieval systems, the nature of "knowledge" in a subject area (the domain), and user behavior. It provides a framework for studying the communication of information within subject areas and user groups. Domain analysis falls under the socio-cognitive paradigm. It provides a bridge between research and practice, in that it provides both a theoretical framework (research), and a set of practical guidelines or activities for information professionals. Because domain analysis borrows concepts from several other disciplines, it provides a meta-theoretical framework for Information Science, abbreviated in these slides as "Info Sci." The basic claim for domain analysis is that "domains" are the proper object of study for information scientists. This claim, as well as much of the content of the assigned textbook chapter is made by Birger Hjørland, whom we have seen in previous modules. Falling under the socio-cognitive paradigm, domain analysis is an excellent example of why information science is essentially a social science. Recall from previous modules that cognitive paradigms think of information and knowledge as residing in the minds of individuals. And that the socio-cognitive paradigm involves the sharing of knowledge with others. In this sense, domain analysis encompasses things like user behavior. In writing about domain analysis and the subject specialist, our authors mentioned Information Officers in biomedical research institutes or pharmaceutical companies. In fact, with the increasing importance of information and organizations of all kinds, it should not be surprising that many companies have established a role for a Chief Information Officer or CIO at the top level of management -- the so-called C-suite -- along with the CEO, Chief Executive Officer, COO, Chief Operating Officer, and CFO, Chief Financial Officer. This reflects not only the importance of information in an organization, but also the fact that the duties and responsibilities in this area are so extensive that no other chief officer can handle them along with the essential aspects of their own area. Generally, a subject specialist or domain area expert is not a subject area practitioner, although they are likely to have been one. The most important thing -- the critical criterion -- for this role is that they have an expert understanding of the information resources in that field. Of course, they also need to have a good understanding of the basic terms and concepts of the field, what our authors referred to as its logic and language. There are two important reasons for this. One is that they need to be able to critically evaluate information resources. The other is that they need to be credible to users. In addressing the question, "What does a subject specialists do?" the authors provide several answers. Among them are carry out difficult searches and reference queries, evaluate and interpret information and suggest useful new sources and collection development. Another key role is to act as a sort of "consumer advocate" or "consultant," by providing guidance to the users of information in the organization. The article by Patrick Bangert discusses the relationship between subject area specialists and data scientists. While the textbook chapter does mention information tools several times, it does not mention the data scientists are often the people creating these tools. The role of data scientists has increased in recent years as the amount of data being generated and used by organizations has increased. A key role for data scientists is developing models of data that can be used to address the informational challenges in a domain. But they can't do that without a clear understanding of what data are relevant. The role of the subject specialist in this regard is to delineate what data are relevant. In order to produce a useful model, data scientists need to know several things at the outset that subject specialists help with. First, of course, is the nature of the domain. Next is the nature of the specific challenge that the organization's information team wants to address. As just noted, the subject specialist then needs to define the parameters of the relevant data. Both data that are already held by or accessible to the organization, and then data that are needed to address the challenge. Finally, the subject specialist should be able to explain the best way or ways to deliver the results to the organization's users. A data scientist has become an expert in the analysis of data. And as we have seen, a subject specialist, also referred to as a domain expert, is an expert in the domain, obviously. Both, though, will have obtained their levels of expertise through both education and experience.

Concept of "discourse community"

A scientific discipline or scholarly field would be considered a domain, as would the discourse community of a political party or religion, or a trade group, or a community of hobbyists. Hjørlan suggested that domains could be defined and explained in terms of three dimensions. The "ontological" dimension defines a domain in terms of the main object of interest. Recall that ontology is the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. The "epistemological" dimension relates to the kinds of knowledge in the domain. Recall that epistomology is the branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of knowledge. The "sociological" dimension, of course, deals with the kind of people and groups involved in the domain. J. T. Tennis suggested two axes to help define domains: "areas of modulation" (what should be included and excluded and what the domain should be called) and degrees of specialization or the focus of the domain. A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals.

Concepts of "relevance" & "aboutness"

Among academics, however, the issue of whether relevance is objective or subjective has been controversial. Although in my opinion, it is obviously subjective. It seems to me that the relevance of any information, whether provided by a search engine or merely stumbled across in everyday activities. This is unique to the individual doing the searching, reading, listening, or watching. Aboutness is a bit more straightforward. Although even here there is some slipperiness. Most would agree that aboutness is at least objective. And performing a search, for example, we can tell if a result is about the subject we are searching simply by reading it. Of course, the degree of aboutness might vary. One document might be almost exclusively about the subject of the search, for example, and thus would probably be quite relevant. While another might mentioned the subject only in passing and would probably be less relevant. A good way to summarize the relationship would be to say that aboutness is in the text of the item, whereas relevance is in the mind of the user.

Concepts of "ontology" & "epistemology"

An ontology encompasses a representation, formal naming, and definition of the categories, properties, and relations between the concepts, data, and entities that substantiate one, many, or all domains of discourse. Epistemology in library and information studies questions its assumptions and methods in order to test the reliability of its knowledge claims and to eliminate false claims and errors in models and theories.

The first "information technology" that allowed the separation of "information" from "transportation"

As James Carey has pointed out, this was the first time in history that the communication of information did not rely on the physical transportation of printed material. With the completion of the transcontinental telegraph in 1861, information could be sent from New York City to San Francisco instantly. As telegraph networks spread, newspapers could get same-day information from far away countries.

Significance of the Shannon-Hartley theorem

C = B log v2 (1 + S/N) The Shannon-Hartley theorem describes the relationship between the primary factors limiting data transmission in a telecommunication system, the bandwidth of the channel, and the amount of noise in the system. It's worth unbundling. C equals B times log two times one plus s divided by n. This means that the capacity of a transmission channel, C, is equal to the bandwidth, B, of the channel, multiplied by the binary logarithm, log two, times one plus the signal-to-noise ratio, S divided by N. To put it another way, more bandwidth means more data transmitted. More noise means less data transmitted. In more familiar terms, our home internet access speeds are generally far higher and cheaper on a per megabit per second basis than our mobile access speeds. Because wireline internet access, the type provided by the cable companies that serve most homes, has far greater bandwidth and far less noise than the channels connecting our mobile phones to cellular systems.

Shannon: "information" as the resolution of uncertainty

Claude Shannon, who is often referred to as the father of information science, defined information as "the resolution of uncertainty." We'll discuss Shannon's contributions further in Module 4.

Concept of "intelligence"

For companies: trade secrets -> competitive advantage. For nations: national security. Espionage.

Nature of "information science" (e.g., as a meta-discipline)

Information science can thus be thought of as a meta-discipline in that it draws on theories, principles, and insights from a range of other related disciplines. All disciplines of course, involve information and knowledge, as well as interactions among many of the same components as information science itself: information, people, technologies, organizations, and society as a whole. Information science is both an academic discipline and an area of professional practice. As an academic field, it is a multi-disciplinary field of study, involving several forms of knowledge, given coherence by a focus on the central concept of human recorded information -- again, reflecting the "documents" perspective. Two main areas of focus, both of which we will consider in more depth in subsequent modules, are "communication chains" and "domain analyses." The communication chain might be thought of as the lifecycle of recorded information, from its creation, through dissemination, indexing and retrieval, use, and archiving or disposal. A "domain" is essentially just a subject area, for example, archaeology or astronomy. An information specialist working in a law school, for example, would be expected to also know something about the law and the legal profession. Other perspectives on the field of information science indicate that it is a social science, a form of cultural engagement, and a philosophy.

Definitions of "document"

Information science grew out of library science, which was traditionally focused on recorded information or documents. This is a module on basic concepts. So of course, we will be using these terms and concepts throughout the semester. Document is one of those basic concepts. When we first came across this term in module one, we saw that a document contained recorded information. Given that for millenia, this meant written material, scrolls than codices, than books, it should not be surprising that this was the realm of librarians going back to ancient times. In the 19th century, we began to get recorded information in photographs and phonographs. Paintings and sculptures had been around long before that, of course. I would like to challenge another point made in the textbook though. The authors imply that an antelope in a zoo could be thought of as a document, even though it would not be recorded information. But that an antelope in the wild would not. I founded especially puzzling that they considered a zoo, quote, "where it can be studied in surroundings indicative of its natural habitat," unquote, would convey information better than an antelope and it's actual natural habitat. Why then would zoologists ever venture outside of zoos? Buckland in an article from 1997, also asks, what is a document? This came from his information as a thing perspective. He answered this question with another question. Does it function as a document? Also, according to Buckland, to count as a document, the thing had to be placed in relation to other evidence bearing items. This suggests that only things in collections, a concept to which we will be turning in a moment, can be documents. So for example, a plant in a botanical garden would be a document, but the same plant in the wild would not be. Documents and collections are fundamental concepts for us, but are being rapidly altered in today's digital environment.

Evolution of information, media & mass media

It was the introduction of powered rotary presses in the 19th century that triggered the era of mass media. Using flatbed presses, printers had been able to produce only a few hundred sheets per hour. By making the print surfaces cylindrical and assembling several of them together, printers could turn out thousands of sheets or pages per hour. By applying, first, steam power and then electricity, along with the innovation of rolls of paper, as opposed to individual sheets, printing presses were churning out tens of thousands of pages per hour by the middle of the 19th century. The economies of scale, along with the introduction of advertising, led to the "penny press": newspapers so cheap that virtually anyone could afford them. Increased literacy and the increased availability of the mass-produced consumer goods being advertised in the newspapers led to the emergence of mass consumer society. Again, during the 19th century, it became increasingly difficult to separate the history of information from the evolution of information technologies. Steam ships and trains meant more rapid transportation of printed material. The concept of digital programmable computers was articulated by Charles Babbage in the 1830s. The invention and deployment of the telegraph in the 1840s was a huge development. The Associated Press had been established in 1846, only two years after the first telegraph message was sent from Washington DC to Baltimore, a distance of only about 40 miles. The 1840s also saw the invention of photography. Images had been used to convey information since the earliest cave paintings. But now, we could get faithfully accurate images of real-world scenes. Both the telephone and the phonograph were invented in the 1870s. This gave us two new dimensions to information as sound. The telephone enabled communication of information as sound over distance. The phonograph enabled communication of information as sound over time. Incidentally, the phonograph would fit conveniently into the definition of "documents", that is, "recorded" information". In the final years of the 19th century, wireless communication was developed and commercialized. The ability to communicate information over large distances without wires was another huge development -- one, which, of course, eventually led to mobile phones. The strategic value of wireless communication was demonstrated early on as it contributed to the decisive defeat of Russia by the Japanese in the Russo- Japanese War of 1904-1905. We don't often think of things like filing cabinets, typewriters, even pencils with erasers or standardized forms as information technologies. But all of these developments have their place in the history of information. In the 20th Century, developments in the history of information accelerated even more -- and the distinction between information and information technology became even more difficult to discern. In any case, let's review a few key developments. One observation we can make is a bit arbitrary, but I think it provides a nice perspective. Roughly speaking, for the first half of the century, information was still all analog. With the development of early computers in the 1940s, information became increasingly digital in the second half of the century.In the 1920s, sound came to the movies. Technologies initially developed for telephone and wireless were applied to film, resulting in the first "talkie" movie, "The Jazz Singer," being released in 1927. Initially "wireless" meant, "wireless telegraph." By the First World War, however, audio technologies that were being developed mainly for telephone networks, were successfully applied to wireless as well. At that point, wireless systems could transmit voices as opposed to just on-off dots and dashes of the telegraph. After the war, wireless became popular as an entertainment medium. And, by the 1920s, had evolved into the broadcast medium we think of as radio. In the 1940s, radio evolved into television, radio with pictures. The development of radar technology during World War II helped with this transition. The development of computers was also accelerated by the war. The first working computers used vacuum tubes and analog technology. Although the transistor was invented in 1947, it was not used in computers for several years. In the 1950s, television became widespread. This was a social phenomenon, helped substantially by a policy development. The invention of the integrated circuit meant that many transistors could be packed together on a single small electronic component. Integrated circuits were soon being used in the manufacture of digital computers. Another information technology, the photocopier, was also invented in the 1950s. In the 1960s, sociologists begin talking about the "Information Society." The idea of the Information Society as a new phenomena, though, was that an increasing majority of economic activity involved the creation, distribution, analysis, and manipulation of information. From the agricultural revolution 10 to 12 thousand years ago, until the late 19th century, the majority of the population everywhere around the world worked to grow crops and raise livestock. During the industrial revolution, work shifted to manufacturing products. By the middle of the 20th century, however, increasing numbers of workers in the developed countries of the West, were involved in such areas as finance, insurance, data processing, journalism, entertainment, and other "information" industries. On the consumer side, more and more people, again, mainly in the developed countries of the West, were consuming the output of these information industries. The 1960s is also when large companies and government offices began adopting computers. IBM became the dominant force of the growing computer industry. Although it is not widely known, the internet was also invented in the 1960s, although it was not widely available until the 1990s. Personal computers, or PCs, were invented in the 1970s, as were video games. The first one of these to become commercially popular was a simple two-person table-tennis type game called Pong. Although PCs were invented in the 1970s, it was not until IBM released its version in 1981 that sales took off. While some home enthusiasts had already purchased personal computers sold by other companies, including a tiny, relatively unknown company called Apple, the corporate world trusted IBM. Cell phones were another information technology that had been invented in the 1970s, but was not readily available until the 1980s. The World Wide Web was invented in the 1980s, but did not catch on until the 1990s. Although the internet had been invented in the 1960s, and was being used by government and university researchers by the 1980s, it was not until a user-friendly browser was developed in the early 1990s that "the web" emerged in the popular culture. The commercialization of the internet in the mid-1990s started the evolution of the web as we know it today. Two final noteworthy developments of the 1990s were the digitization of TV and the incorporation of Google. Most of the developments that we associate with the history of information in the 21st century actually happened in the first ten years. The original World Wide Web evolved into Web 2.0. Many of the companies we think of when thinking about social media had launched by 2007: Wikipedia, MySpace, soon to be replaced by Facebook, and Twitter. Even the first iPhone was released in that first decade. On the more traditional media side, music streaming services were available by 2001, and streaming video services, led by Netflix, were available starting in 2007.

Concept of "informational asymmetry"

One party or side has more or more accurate information about a situation than the other side or party. The classic example here has been used car sales. Someone in the market for a used car might have done the research to determine that a particular make, model and year is what they want and is in their price range. When they get to the dealer, they find out that the dealer has "just what they're looking for." However, the dealer knows that this particular car is a lemon. This informational asymmetry, of course, puts the buyer at a significant disadvantage. Fortunately for buyers, the Internet has changed this dynamic. Now we can shop around online to see which dealers in the area might have one of the same cars, as well as whether a particular dealer has gotten lots of complaints or bad reviews. Records on specific, individual cars, such as those provided by CarFax, are now available to the public. As more and more information becomes more and more widely available, informational asymmetry has become less of an issue.

Philosophical "positions" & paradigms

Realism is a position that holds that the physical world really exists and is accessible to rational inquiry. Constructivism is the position that reality is a construct of human mind. In other words, rather than a single objective reality. This position says that we must consider that there are numerous subjective realities existing in the minds of individuals and social groups. Critical Theory is essentially a philosophical position that is generally applied to challenge prevailing theories and practices.

Factors that determine/influence the value of information

Relevance, timeliness, ROI (e.g., stock tips, college education)

Harari (Sapiens): cognitive revolution

Sapiens, Yuval Harari argues that the "spark" which made humans special from the rest of the animal world was the cognitive revolution that began sometime between seventy thousand and thirty thousand years ago. This was the ability of humans to share ideas about things that do not exist in the physical world, like myths and religions. Such ideas created cultural identities that have shaped societies since prehistoric times. In terms of information revolutions. The authors identify six of these information revolutions, language, recorded signs and symbols, writing, printing, mass media, and computers. The authors write that, quote, "We can only speculate how information may have been transmitted through oral communication." Certainly we know how information can be transmitted through oral communication today. And there are plenty of examples of indigenous cultures that still exist that anthropologists have studied extensively.

Concept of the "half-life of facts"

Scientometrics, which is the quantitative analysis of science, grew out of bibliometrics. Using scientometrics, Arbesman determined that in practically every area of science, information became outdated or was shown to be incorrect at regular rates. The rates varied by specialty, though. Facts in physics have changed relatively slowly (though occasionally in dramatic ways). By contrast, knowledge in the medical fields has changed rapidly in recent years. The main point for now though, is that in virtually every discipline, half of what we know will be obsolete in a certain number of years. It's been said that in some engineering disciplines, half of what students are learning today will be obsolete by the time they graduate. The lesson from this is that education should focus less on getting students to learn "facts," than on getting students to "learn how to learn," since once out of school, people will need to continue to learn what is new in their fields no matter what fields they go into. Arbesman talks about "fact- phase transitions" that occur when there is a seemingly rapid change and developments in a field. He uses the example of spaceflight, pointing out how quickly we went from Sputnik, the first man-made satellite to orbit the Earth to the Moon landing only 12 years later. We might also look at the shift from the traditional Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics and the atomic bomb in the first half of the 20th century. In The Economist interview, Arbesman talks about the idea of "consiience," the synthesis of knowledge across all fields of science. By the way, in an excellent book entitled Consilience E. O. Wilson argues for including the social sciences and the humanities in this synthesis of knowledge

Concept of semiotics

Semantic information is well-formed, meaningful, and truthful data. Knowledge is relevant semantic information properly accounted for.The related concept of semiotics, is the study of signs and symbols and their meanings. A signifier is the form of a sign or symbol. Sometimes the signifier is the image of the signified, the object being represented.

The work of Floridi

The essential message of Luciano Floridi's work on philosophy of information, or PI, reminds us of the data-information- knowledge pyramid we first discussed in Module 1: "Semantic information is well-formed, meaningful, and truthful data. Knowledge is relevant, semantic information properly accounted for. Floridi acknowledged that information was an elusive concept, but still considered it as a crucial concept for philosophy itself. His writings describe how information may be understood from three particular perspectives: information as reality as patterns in the physical world, information about reality, as in semantic and meaningful, and information for reality, for example, genetic information and algorithms. Floridi also coined the term "inforg" as a conscious informational organism, such as a human being. The question of whether machines can think, much less become conscious, is touched on in his essay, "Why Information Matters." More on that, in a moment. Floridi's philosophy of information puts him squarely in the realism philosophical camp and systems paradigm, in that it addresses the nature of reality itself, with information as the fundamental stuff of the physical universe. His take on the effect of black holes on information is not apparent. According to our textbook, Floridi's arguments amount to a proposal that there is a real and objective physical world which can be known and understood in terms of information. ...Floridi's work emphasizes information as recorded in documents and the life cycle of documents. Perhaps the most significant criticism of his work is that it does not allow fully for the social context of information and knowledge. As we have seen, many, if not most, scholars of Information Science argue that the social dimension is crucial. However, our textbook authors state that Floridi's work is, quote, "the best option currently available as a basis for a fundamental philosophy of the information sciences" -- largely because Floridi's "documents" perspective is, as they write, "very much in accord with the ideas of information science proposed throughout this book." As a reminder, this course will take a broader perspective on the field. I would like to take the last few minutes of this lecture to focus on Floridi's essay in The New Atlantis, "Why Information matters." In it, he takes a higher-level view of the field. In fact, a more appropriate title might have been "Why Philosophy Matters." He begins the essay by suggesting that in recent years, philosophy as a field has begun to care less about philosophical questions then about philosophers' questions. As with any academic or intellectual field, once those in the field begin arguing among themselves, their work begins to have less and less relevance to society in general. Floridi's essay quotes Bill Gates as wondering "whether the brightest minds are working on the most important questions". These are primarily problems affecting the world's poorest people. Problems such as the lack of adequate healthcare and nutrition, unsanitary environmental conditions, access to decent education and energy and relief from war and violence. Clearly, there's an important role for information and knowledge in addressing these problems. The essay argues that philosophy can forge and refine the intellectual tools we need for dealing with the most challenging problems and can contribute the insight and vision needed to help us solve these problems. Floridi notes the three scientific revolutions of the modern era that have most profoundly shaped our understanding of our world: those of Copernicus, Darwin, and Freud. He then observes that a fourth revolution, the computer revolution, should be the focus of philosophical inquiry today. But, identifying the most important area of philosophical inquiry is only a first step. We then need to be sure that we're asking the right questions. If not, of course, the answers will be irrelevant and useless -- or worse. Floridi uses the example of the Mars Climate Orbiter, pictured here, as an example of what can go wrong when people fail to ask the right questions or, more specifically, to specify the correct level of abstraction. As described in the essay, one of the engineering teams working on the orbiter had used English, or imperial units, rather than metric units for a critical piece of software. As a result, the $125 million orbiter launched a year earlier, failed to enter its orbit around Mars properly, and probably entered the planet's atmosphere and burned up. The essay uses Alan Turing as an example of asking the right questions. Floridi points out that, contrary to popular thought, the Turing test of artificial intelligence was not designed to answer the question: "Can machines think?". Turing refused even to address that question because he considered it too meaningless to deserve discussion. Other questionable questions might include, "Is the universe a computer?" or, "Is the human brain a computer?"

The FRBR model

The functional requirements for bibliographic records or FRBR model presents another dimension to our discussion. The first level of this model is a work. This is defined as a distinct intellectual or artistic creation. Shakespeare's Hamlet is provided as an example. The next level is an expression of a work defined as the intellectual or artistic realization of a work. The example here is the English text of Hamlet. The third level is a manifestation of the work defined as the physical embodiment of an expression of a work. The example is a specific edition of Hamlet, for example an annotated version. The fourth level is an item. This is defined as a single exemplar of a manifestation.

Why Martin Luther "went viral"

The spread of printing throughout Europe resulted in Martin Luther being probably the first person in history to "go viral." As the reading explains, printers needed popular texts to sell. Luther's 1517 critique of the Catholic Church, the 95 Theses, became required reading, at least among those who could read at the time. As with social media today, sharing and recommendations increased the popularity of Luther's writings, and printers throughout Europe were more than happy to respond to the increased demand. An example of the economic aspects of information, this might also be the first case of an information revolution causing a social revolution, as Luther's writings were no doubt a major factor in the Protestant Reformation. As we saw with the information explosion resulting from the diffusion of writing in the ancient world, the explosion of printed material in 16th century Europe created a need for bibliographies and new methods of indexing.

Concepts & definitions of "theory," "hypothesis," "paradigm" & "paradigm shift"

Theory: can be defined as a set of statements identifying key ideas about a phenomenon or field of study and how they are related. Theory does not mean simply an opinion as when someone wishes to dismiss someone else's position by saying, well, that's just a theory. In science, theories are subjected to rigorous analysis and debate and reflect the consensus of scientists working in that area. Hypotheses: are informed predictions about what will happen under specific conditions. It's important to keep two things in mind when formulating hypotheses. First, they must be designed to be observable. Actually, hypotheses should be designed to be not just observable, but also measurable. If we can't observe whether or not our hypothesis happened and measure the effect, then it won't help us with our investigation. The second thing to keep in mind is that hypotheses should be designed to be falsifiable. Just as a hypothesis will not be useful if the expected effect cannot be observed, it will not be useful if the expected effect cannot also be either verified or shown to be false. Paradigm: a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field. Paradigm shift: Thomas Kuhn coined the term paradigm shift to explain how a scientific field advance from older paradigms to new ways of thinking. So a paradigm shift is a fundamental change in the basic concepts and experimental practices of a scientific discipline.

The transformation of information into knowledge lies at the core of value creation & competitive advantage

Thomas Stewart explained how the transformation of information into knowledge lies at the core of value creation and competitive advantage for the modern enterprise.

Aspects of communicating information (meaning) -- from language (symbols & signs) to smartphones

When writing was invented, we began to use signs and symbols to represent agreed upon meanings. The central ideas are that words represent objects or ideas, and that the ways in which words are put together, what we call syntax, help these sounds, signs, and symbols convey meaning. If we think in terms of the evolution of language, we can see how we've gone from a strictly oral cultures through the eras of print and electronic media to the digital world of today. In the print era, we evolved from marks in clay tablets to manuscripts, to printing presses. If we look just at the evolution of printing, we can appreciate the evolution from the flatbed single- sheet presses popularized by Gutenberg in the 15th century, to the rotary, powered presses of the 19th century industrial age, which brought us into the age of mass media. From the practical development of wireless at the end of the 19th century, we had radio and the first half of the 20th century, and TV in the second half. Analog mobile phones appeared in the 1980s. The digital era gave us computers and the internet. But today, all these forms of communicating information have coalesced into the iconic smartphone. Now we can access and communicate information in the form of speech, text, images, both moving and still, with devices that we can slip into our pockets or backpacks.

Metaphor that "information is the new oil" (the importance of information in society)

Zumer argues that information is society's most important asset. This echoes the currently popular idea that data is the new oil. She writes that information science is experiencing an identity crisis. Even though we live in the information age, and suffer from information overload and information anxiety, information science as a field is poorly defined, as is the term "information" itself.