On Data and Information
Stabroek News
December 15, 2006
In the last discussion, the fact that all Internet activity is recorded and that Internet transactions can be traced, was demonstrated by two high profile international cases, one from the Republic of China and the other from the United States of America. During the past two weeks, Guyanese were able to see for themselves in the case of an anonymous e-mail sent to local airline offices threatening that activities of a terrorist nature would be undertaken against airlines transporting American citizens. Agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation were able to trace the message to a local Internet café, and to determine the computer from which the message was sent as well as the date and time. As mentioned last time, every Internet user leaves a digital data and information trail in cyberspace that can be followed.
Data and Information
It would not have escaped the purist that the terms data and information were apparently used interchangeably above. The question of whether there exists a difference between these terms has been a topic of great controversy from the commencement of the information age. As graduate students in systems analysis in the early 1980's, we were instructed that processed data becomes information when it has some relevance to a user or observer. Hence what can be irrelevant data to one man may in fact be invaluable information to another. Russell L. Ackoff, the renowned systems thinker, in a celebrated paper featured in the 1989 Journal of Applied Systems Analysis identified a hierarchy of five types of content of the human mind that started with wisdom followed in descending order by understanding, knowledge, information and finally data.
Ackoff posited that on the average it would be found that about forty percent of the content of human minds consists of data, thirty percent information, twenty percent knowledge, ten percent understanding and virtually no wisdom. This allocation of mental space he wrote was particularly well reflected in the minds of our political leaders and those who educate them.
Russell Ackoff is an American and undoubtedly his comments were influenced by the politicians with whom he came in contact in his native country. The reader will exercise his own judgment as to whether or not those comments are equally applicable to the home grown variety. Our interest is to examine how computers have been used to extend human capacity to produce and utilize information.
Data and Data
Systems
Data are products of observation. To observe is to sense and the technology of sensing, i.e. instrumentation is highly developed. Like metallic ores, data are of no value until they are processed into a usable and relevant form. Computers have great capacity to store large amounts of data and indeed have been widely used and applied to do this.
Information and Computerized
Information Systems
Information is extracted from data by analysis. Its essential nature is to provide answers to questions such as who, what, where, when and how many. Information is therefore inferred from data and in this regard computer information systems generate, retrieve and process data. In government, business, finance and several other spheres of human endeavour, computers have been successfully applied in the development of management information systems (MIS) that have increased the ability of managers to understand and control organizational performance. Ackoff observes however a prevalent misuse of computing power that can result in "information overload" and recommends the design of computer MISs that filter irrelevant information and condense relevant information. For example, a computer report that identifies customers whose balances exceed an acceptable credit limit and are in arrears, is eminently more useful to a sales executive than a voluminous and detailed month end listing of Accounts Receivables.
Knowledge and Knowledge
Generating Systems.
Knowledge is know-how and it enables information to be transformed into instructions. Knowledge is obtained in two ways either by transmission from another who has it, or by extracting it from experience or research. Instructions can be programmed into computers to make them perform various tasks. Knowledge systems such as decision-making systems, automated forecasting systems, project management systems etc have human expert knowledge programmed into them and have been in existence for some time. In the early 1970's I was part of a team of systems analysts at Guymine that designed and developed an elaborate computer system to schedule the movement of ships coming to Linden to load bauxite. The Shipping Activity Control System or SACS as it was called, used the knowledge of officials in the shipping, production and mining areas together with relevant data to schedule and manage the arrival, loading and departure of bauxite ships in a way that would minimize demurrage costs to the company. SACS was unfortunately a little too advanced in concept for the available technology at the time. Local Area Networks that would have facilitated data entry from the various sections of the company and real-time computing which would have solved the problems of updating data on the constant changes the movement of ships, were still very much in their infancy and indeed unknown in Guyana.
Understanding
Understanding requires learning and adaptation, which are prerequisites of intelligence. Learning and adaptation may take place by trial and error or systematically by error detection and correction. At present, computer systems that display understanding - a capability for error detection and the use of such information to learn - are still in their infancy and require a great deal of human participation. For this reason they are sometimes referred to as man-machine systems displaying a quality that has come to be known as "artificial intelligence".
Wisdom
Ackoff posits that the production of automated data, information, knowledge and understanding systems are primarily functions of science. The production of an automated wisdom system which presupposes all four is primarily a function of ethics and aesthetics because it involves the conscious insertion of values into human decision-making and evaluation of its outcomes. Of what would such a system consist, he asks. In the end he concludes that wisdom generating systems are ones that man may never be able to automate since wisdom is essential to the effective pursuit of ideals, and the pursuit of ideals itself, and these are characteristics that differentiate man from machines.