In class this morning, one of our professors was talking about geographical information retrieval. Information is stored in association with a given place and thus by searching for that place, one can find information. [Note that while the professor was talking about documents, and professional ones at that, i immediately translated everything to think about social information, as that’s my bent.]
There are two ways to think about information. One is simply through the lens of the material; the second is through the lens of the experience of that material. Most material is associated with an event. Even along the lines of document creation, there is the location of which the material is created and experienced in addition to the location in which it might reference.
This made think that much information is actually expereienced along three axes: place, time, person. For any given set of information, it may be experienced in multiple places, times or across multiple people.
Information impacts place; it is not just situated there. It impacts the history, the vibe and perhaps scars the space itself (marks on the wall).
Information is often felt to be ephemeral in time, as we cannot return to a given time to experience it.
Information fundamentally impacts the people who experience it. They store that experience, that information and incorporate it into their identity. Also, they are likely to recall versions of that information/experience later, regardless of its accuracy.
When we talk about information retrieval, we’re talking about reconstructing the history, removing a set of information from the time/place/people who experienced it into a current situation. Time fundamentally changes. But what does it mean to have data stored with place and people instead of in a collected repository removed from those contextual bits? Should what be retrieved simply be the factual elements of information, or the more experiential? Can we have impact retrieval?
It seems like ALL information is contextual, even if sometimes we like to think of it in the abstract. No energy is created or destroyed so all information comes from conbination and transformation of lower-level energies.
I think this IS what context is. Every node of data linked with priorone. The building of trophic webs.
The inplications of keeping that information consciously referrenced to it’s context generates reducdancy and thus, stability. Think abou how internet links are one-way connections, so there is a one-way connection from context to data as long it is abstract.
Source-referencing data allows for feedback loops. Some of these are positive and exponential increase, some are negative and become self-maintaining.
Time is and area you might want to probematize in this context, in particular if you look at Lash and Urry on the Sociology of time in the 20th century, you might find that the category of time and its relation to space is something that quickly collapses when you get to meta-analysis of the situation, which is in part what perspectivism and the Situationists highlight.
There is a classic Italo Calvino story about archives that might be applicable also, i think it is in Numbers in the Dark. It is about how history and the archives are constructed by those that control the information.
one last thought, what happens when information becomes mobile, here i am thinking less of digital devices than of commonplace books of the 14th -17th century, where people went to repositories copied things down, then ventured to another repository copied others, shared some of what they’d copied, etc. in copying they put things in a new contextual relation to space and mobility, ie speed, that transformed, alongside the republic of letters, the nature of intellectual communication, etc.
Another text to look at is Jean Baudrillard’s book “Simulacra and Simulation.”
It basically describes the breakdown of information from context which leads to a situation where all of culture, even the ideas that we reference, become simulations of things that don’t exist.
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Another one to read would be Donna Haraways Cyborg Manifesto
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
It’s really good, I would definately recommend it if you haven’t already read it. (it’s not the same as the essay printed in Adbusters a few years ago under the same name.)
The above comments are wonderfully thoughtful, yet just like danah’s post I feel they are missing something. I agree we live in a sort of information age and are learning (have learned yet?) to think of everything as information (its like the whole world suddenly turned itself into 1’s and 0’s). Yet information is nothing if its not COMMUNUCATED! as such, communication is the paramount medium that constraints how information is stored and retreived – essentially, retrieval of information is its communication. People speak, leaves turn colors, my shoes leave marks in the sand – all of that is communicated information. I think that in designing objects and in thinking about information as the framework of our world, forgetting about the importance of communication is detrimental. Ok… now think of information that is not communicated (or mis-communicated) and why that happens 🙂 happy brain candy.
I totally agree with the above post, except I would argue that everything IS information- this isn’t just a recent trend. And it has been an idea in our culture at least since the start of cybernetics in the ’50s. Information is a measure of nonrandomness. The equations for it (which I don’t know off the top of my head) see it terms of movement away from entropy.
Information is just as much a part of the structure of the interconnected peices of a social network or a communication systems as it is in the little quanta of information we send through that structure. Communication is a “higher form of information” in that it is developed through the imput of high amounts of embedded energy (or “emergy”)
Also:
I’d like to offer an idea that may link together the discussion. And that is “Communication is Coordinated Perception.”
I don’t think it’s possible to untangle the factual and experienctal elements of information… the data presented by the author is based entirely upon their experience and and context – whether that data becomes information once communicated to a given viewer depends on the context in which it’s viewed. The author’s experience and context remains encoded in the data but it’s the viewer’s context that determines how it’s interpreted. I think this would be true regardless of format.
True impact retrieval would be tricky because I’d think you’d have to bring about a basic understanding of the author’s context within the context of the viewer… whether you’d be able to do that by design depends entirely on your ability to tag portions of the event and somehow link them to the viewer’s own experiences. I’m reminded of the reactions some people with PTSD had to some of the scenes in Saving Private Ryan, even people who hadn’t been in combat but who had suffered trauma in some other context. But how you’d make that universal or reproducable is beyond me… maybe examining the chemical reactions in the brain and figuring out how to trigger them directly?