Understanding Information

Citation

Calvert, P. (2002), "Understanding Information", Online Information Review, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 122-129. https://doi.org/10.1108/oir.2002.26.2.122.6

Receiving a new book by Jack Meadows always sparks some interest, even excitement, for there are few others writers in information science who can match his combination of scientific knowledge and clear style. This book is rather an odd piece, yet I can recommend it without hesitation to all who are interested in the raw material of information management, whether they be students, faculty or thinking practitioners. Most LIS programmes have an introductory paper called “Information and society” or the like, and this short book (only 112 pages of A5) is doubtless intended as a text for that kind of course. The chapter headings illustrate this clearly: “Data”; “Information”; “Classification”; “Storage”; “Retrieval”; “Communication”; “Knowledge”; “Intelligence and wisdom”; with the final section having the intriguing title “and so … ?” Readers familiar with this topic will note that Meadows has varied the usual order slightly, with his chapters on knowledge and wisdom coming at the end of the book after the material on information management basics and on communication, rather than following the traditional T.S. Eliot hierarchy. This is because he regards classification, storage, retrieval and communication as “necessary processes in the conversion of information to knowledge”.

For those who do not know of him, Meadows came to information science after a successful career in astronomy, and he uses his scientific background to help explain concepts of data, information, knowledge and so on. Few other writers would explain information as the reduction of disorder: “in other words, data selection is a process for moving from a state of higher entropy to one of lower entropy”. The use of scientific examples is done at the cost of removing nearly all references to philosophy, which is the other discipline that is commonly employed to explain the basics of information. In this book there are few references to Plato, Bacon, Popper and other thinkers who have tried to explain the world by our sensory experience and our thoughts. Meadows occupies a much more practical world, and there are many students who will be grateful for that.

Presumably to maintain the linear logic of the text, there are no references at all. The book has only a brief bibliography of key texts and no index. Are these weaknesses? In a conventional sense, yes they are, but the result is such a “neat” book that most readers will be happy with what remains.