{"id":49,"date":"2015-01-19T23:05:34","date_gmt":"2015-01-19T23:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jonathanfurner.info\/?page_id=49"},"modified":"2025-02-11T23:30:51","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T23:30:51","slug":"faq","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/www.jonathanfurner.info\/?page_id=49","title":{"rendered":"FAQ"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is information?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah, that’s a tricky one. Maybe best to save it for later.<\/p>\n

What is the Department of Information Studies?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s one of the two academic departments that make up the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. There are lots of other departments and schools around the world that are like it. Not all of them are called departments (or schools) of information studies. Some of them are called iSchools. Some are called departments\u00a0(or schools)\u00a0of library and information science, or something similar. Most of them are quite different from departments\u00a0(or schools)\u00a0of computer science, or information systems, or IT, or management. The people in those other places are usually interested in quite different kinds of things.<\/p>\n

What is information studies?<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Information studies” is just the name that some people use to refer to the area of inquiry that they’re interested in. That might sound\u00a0unhelpful, but the problem is that it has proven very difficult to find a definition of information studies that everyone in information studies agrees to. It’s easier, and perhaps more accurate, to say that information studies is what the community of people, who say they do information studies, do.<\/p>\n

No, seriously, what is information studies? Surely, if you really are a professor\u00a0of it, you can do better than that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

OK, I’ll give it another go. Information studies is what you do if you ask interesting questions about the things that people do<\/em>—or that they could<\/em> do, or should<\/em> do—with or to information. So it’s about people just as much as it’s about information.<\/p>\n

But—What. Is.\u00a0Information?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well … different people have different ideas about the nature of information. Some of the ideas are quite narrow in scope. Others are quite broad. Some are about the kind of thing that information is. Others are about the properties of information—especially those properties that only<\/em> information has, and those that all<\/em> information has. Here are a couple of those ideas. Which one is better than the other? You decide.<\/p>\n

One idea is that information is something that is contained in the things that people say, write, draw, and make. (Instead of “contained in,” you might prefer one of these:\u00a0“stored in,” or “recorded in,” or “encoded in,” or “expressed by,” or “carried by,” or “meant by,” or “communicated by,” etc. Although, there are subtle and important differences among these different formulations.) Here’s something that people occasionally\u00a0say (too occasionally, actually): “Norwich City F.C. won the Milk\u00a0Cup in 1985.” The information contained in this statement is the information that Norwich City F.C. won the Milk\u00a0Cup in 1985. In other words, information is whatever\u00a0something means<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Another idea is that information is whatever\u00a0has meaning<\/em>. Here’s something that has meaning: the statement “Norwich City F.C. won the Milk\u00a0Cup in 1985.” According to this second idea, then, it’s the statement itself, and not its meaning, that is information. Things that have meaning include the things that people say, write, and draw, and some (if not all) of the things that people make.<\/p>\n

Each of these ideas has many variants. For example, some people define information as whatever\u00a0can be encoded in a sequence of binary digits (0s and 1s). That’s a version of the first, information-as<\/em>-meaning idea. Others say that it’s the sequences of binary digits themselves, not what they encode, that are information. That’s a version of the second, information-has<\/em>-meaning idea. The most important variants are probably the ones in which it is understood that meaning is not literally contained in any given statement, but is at least partially determined by the context<\/em> in which the statement is made—a context that encompasses the mental state of both speaker and hearer.<\/p>\n

So you’re saying that some people in information studies are interested in meanings, and others are interested in things that have meaning? That sounds really vague. (And also maybe a bit like semiotics?)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ah, well, remember that information studies is about the things that people do<\/em> with or to information. Create it and destroy it; collect it and scatter\u00a0it; lose it and find it; preserve it and waste it; hide it and display it; remember it and forget it; fake it and verify it; steal it and give it away; and so on. In particular, information studies is\u00a0about the reasons that people have for doing\u00a0these kinds of things in the ways that they choose, and about the effects of those\u00a0actions on the world. By studying such reasons, methods, and outcomes, we can figure out what people could<\/em> and should<\/em> be doing with or to information, and endeavor to change the world accordingly.<\/p>\n

So, for example, you might be interested in the ways in which …<\/p>\n