Understanding the dimensions of information...

[Graham5]

I originally posted this on Wikipedia. It was deleted within a month
because it was original research by myself. Fair enough. Would anyone
like to comment on the content, particulary my contention that
information has two components, a 'flow' component (i.e.
communication, e.g. this text to your eyes) and a 'know' component
(i.e. knowledge, e.g. the concept that I wish to introduce), and that
flow-based tools such as Visio, UML, Aris, RUP, ABC-flowcharter, etc.
(series based) are spectacularly useless at extracting 'know', for
which you need know-based tools (parallel based). In other words, flow
doesn't know (these squiggles mean nothing by themselves) and know
doesn't flow (my knowledge stays right where it is when I share it).

Starts...

Informational Management (IaM) is the management of the semantic
content of information. It is the management of the management of
information. As Information Management (IM) is 'getting the right
information in the right form to the right person at the right time'
with the emphasis on 'getting', so Informational Management is
'knowing what information to gather, knowing what to do with
information when you get it, knowing what information to pass on, and
knowing how to value the result', with the emphasis here on 'knowing'.

The differences between IM and IaM are similar to the differences
between Finance Management and Financial Management. The former is
managing the movement of money (e.g. lend me the money to buy this
car) and the latter is managing the investment of money (e.g. take
this income and use it to double my investments by year end). The
first is largely 'flow' based and much of its intricacies can be
learned at mother's knee. The latter is largely 'know' based and
usually requires specialised or even university education.

So it is with Information Management and Informational Management. The
former is managing the movement of information (e.g. get me this
information from the database) and the latter is managing the
investment of information (e.g. take this knowledge and use it to
double my productivity by year end). Again, the first is largely
'flow' based and much of its intricacies can be learned at mother's
knee. The latter is largely 'know' based and has, until now, lacked
much formal attention.

The practitioner of IaM needs a special understanding of information
and its characteristics if (s)he is to be effective at the investment
of information to improve the target org. Methods to enable this are
being developed and will be expanded here as they become available.

The first and most important starting point is to understand that
language is too imprecise a form of information to be precise about
information. It requires a different view of information from the
traditional views (or lacks of them) that have existed until now. It
requires the user to see information as tangible and quantifiable.

It also requires a division of the information 'flow' components (e.g.
communication) from the information 'know' components (e.g.
knowledge). IM focuses primarily on the former and IaM primarily on
the latter. Importantly, flow doesn't know (there is no knowledge in
this page of squiggles called writing, only in their interpretation),
and know doesn't flow (the originator's knowledge does not reduce - or
flow away - when it is communicated).

So Informational Management is managing the 'know' of information. It
is determining what information an org must have in order to achieve
anything. It lives hand-in-hand with Information Management that
provides the means to get that information to the right org (in this
context, 'org' means organisation or organism, being the only possible
recipients of information).

...ends

G R Swanborough