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I fInformation Systems ti S t
Engineering
information, communication and meaning
additional reading
0415146726 Fiske Introduction toCommunication Studies Routledge 1990 0415265940 Chandler Semiotics – The Basics Routledge 2002 1578517081 SeelyBrown & Duguid
The Social Life of Information
HarvardBusiness & Duguid School^2000 Press 0749397055 Eco The Name of the Rose Vintage 1992 0140282688 Toole The Confederacy of Dunces Penguin 1981 0099450259 Haddon The Curious Incident of theDog in the Night-time Vintage 2002 0571216420 Pierre Vernon God Little Faber &Faber 2003 0552771155 Ali Brick Lane Black Lane 2004
Interpreting the meaning
- How do we interpret?
- How do we know the interpretation is correct?
meaning and understanding
What does this sign mean?
meaning and understanding
What does this sign mean?
meaning and understanding
What does this sign mean?
meaning and understanding
What does this sign mean?
meaning and understanding
What do these signs mean?
1
The meaning of information
- what do we mean by information engineering? - a sinister form of government controli i t f f t t l - telling lies or is that telling the truth? - What is information? - What is engineering?
so what is information?
- come up with your own definition…
so what is information?
Information is knowledge communicated concerning some particular fact, subject, or event Oxford English Dictionary
- The Communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence
- Knowledge obtained from investigation, study or instruction Webster’s Information is data with meaning
Information is only a measure of the difficulty in transmitting the sequences (i.e. messages) produced from some information source Shannon and Weaver
The distillation of data through its being processed results in the creation ofinformation Clifton
what is information?
- information cannot exist independently of the receiving person
- reaction to information is some kind of analysis or at least interpretationanalysis or at least interpretation
- differences between data and information must be preserved
why information is important to
us…
we are concerned with:
- formal aspects of organisational systems and methods of information requirements analysis
- impacts upon organisations of computer based systems
- decision support systemsdecision support systems
- office automation
- database management systems
- social impacts of computing and telecommunications
- privacy and data security All of which use information
and engineering?
We use the word “Engineering” in the title of this course. What do we mean by this?
- Constructing something usefulConstructing something useful
- Breaking a problem down into a number of parts
- Understanding, modelling, building…
- Applying engineering principles
- Professionalism?
semiotics
- The analysis of signs and symbols and how they function
- A study of meaning and communicationA t d f i d i ti
what is communication?
- An act of communication has been successful when the intentions of the sender are understood by the receiver.
Source receiver
Message
noise source
transmitter
destination
Shannon and Weaver
signs
Communication takes place via a number of signs. These signs have a number of properties:
- Pragmatics - content
- culture and context in which the communication takes place
- assumptions, expectations, beliefs
- Semantics - purpose
- the connection between the signs and the resulting behaviour and actions
- Syntactics - formalisms
- Empirics - signals/codes
semiotics
Modern semiotics has come out of a number of different sources
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- a Swiss linguist
- Interested in structure
- Charles Peirce
- an American philosopher
- Interested in process And others….
- Charles Morris
- Claude Levi-Strauss
- Ogden & Richards
- Roman Jakobson
- Umberto Eco
saussurean model of a sign
SignifiedSignified
Signifier
peircean model of a sign
sense Sign vehicle Sense Referent : the sense made of the sign: what the sign 'stands for': the form of the sign
sign vehicle (^) a semiotic triangle referent
Sign
hidden meanings pragmatics
consideration of the context of activity characteristics of:
- people
- organisations
- and acts of communication which affect information Pragmatic analysis will look at:
- shared assumptions
- "common knowledge"
- how ambiguities arise and dealt with an understanding of the informal nature of human interaction
culture and context
- Culture - the set of beliefs and assumptions associated with a community
- the context is composed of the culture andth t t i d f th lt d its most important feature is language.
shared thought
- People who share a common culture see the world in a similar way
- Where does shared thought come fromWh d h d th ht f and how does it exist?
- Norms…
syntactics
- study of the rules which govern communication
- vocabulary, grammar and a syntax (also phonetics for verbal communication)phonetics for verbal communication)
- logical analysis
- propositional logic
- predicate logic
- Objective and subjective theories
empirics
- Understanding the code used
- the study of communication theory and information theory
- looking at the physical aspects ofl ki t th h i l t f communication
- modulation - noise, distortion, accuracy, speed and redundancy
Different kinds of systems
- Hard systems
- Technology based
- Easy to predict
- Little complexityp y
- Soft systems
- Human based
- Hard to predict
- Complex
hard systems approach and soft
systems approach
Ontological Approach to Systems Analysis
- the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being
- (from the Greek ont - being)
- “There isThere is thethe system”system
Epistemological Approach
- the theory of the method or grounds of knowledge
- (from Greek episteme - knowledge)
- “I can consider any collective set as a system”
