Sense-making and information recombination - a FUMSI Editorial
Jinfo Blog

By Seth Earley

Abstract

The world runs on information flow. Money is information, products contain information – the most complex and sophisticated products can be broken down into basic materials assembled through application of knowledge and information to create novel and unexpected solutions.

Item

The world runs on information flow. Money is information, products contain information – the most complex and sophisticated products can be broken down into basic materials assembled through application of knowledge and information to create novel and unexpected solutions. In my class on information architecture I use the example of a camera: A camera is comprised of sand, metal and oil – all very cleverly arranged. A computer chip is made of silicon which comes from sand. There are a lot of techniques that are embedded in the processes to turn sand into a computer chip but it all comes down to knowledge and information.

There is nothing new in this observation. Humankind has continually built on knowledge and expertise in an evolution of tools and technologies to create new dimensions to our existence. What is new is the clock speed at which this is taking place along with the possibilities presented by our information infrastructure that enable information to be assembled in endlessly complex ways.

The common thread is one of sense-making and pattern recognition. In this issue we hear from four authors who each present their take on patterns, sense-making and information recombination. In one of the articles, Scott Brown discusses speaking “Stakeholder-ese” – making sense of a value proposition by putting it in terms that resonate with interested parties. This means understanding how your solution solves problems. Without putting the value proposition into the context of users’ problems they may not pay attention long enough to see tangible benefits. They will not make sense of your solution. Scott provides strategies and approaches for translating ideas into language and constructs that will sell users on the value of a concept.

Gary Green’s article is about “If this, then that” – a simple idea based on web services. We all know that it’s impossible to keep up with everything you want to on the web. Sites and apps provide various tools to monitor and manage the information that they are compiling from the other sites on the web. However, there was no easy way to get these to communicate with one another. “Ifttt” is a tool to recombine these various classes of knowledge based on triggers, values and events to create new outputs and information products to suit your needs.

Elisabeth Goodman writes about Twitter as a knowledge management tool and how people are using it to post updates from conferences and inform colleagues of interesting articles, webinars and other bits of valuable content. She provides tips for using the three “I’s” – Inform, Inspire and Interact – to make the best of Twitter. Twitter speeds the “information metabolism” of society by circulating and recombining atomic bits of knowledge and information.

And Aileen Marshall discusses the quintessential pattern recognition and sense-making field – Intelligence – in the context of the transportation infrastructure. In this article, the author discusses how the information management and library science fields are compatible with intelligence operations in terms of information gathering and from a career path perspective. The value proposition is protection of critical infrastructure and the safety of the public, the tools and approaches are many of the same ones that are used to understand context and content in other fields.

The one thing that these topics have in common is the increasing speed at which knowledge and information flows and the increasing complexity of that information. Kodak was a global organisation in 1903. The flow of transaction information from the field took months. Today, our global transactions are executed instantaneously. Our information cycles are in minutes to hours not months to years. The tools and approaches discussed in this issue allow individuals and organisations to manage and curate their content in new ways to keep up with this massive and immediate flow of content, knowledge and information.

This guest editorial appeared in FUMSI Magazine 52 (April 2012)

Subscribe to FUMSI to receive resources upon publication >>

« Blog