Information Vs Data

Information is fuzzy. Data is precise. Information is optimized for people. Data is optimized for computers. Information is what people can understand. Knowledge is what they do understand. Information is the primary subject for Informatics and InformationScience. Data is the primary subject for Programming and ComputerScience. A person who works with information is called an InformaticsSpecialist? (how about librarian"'') and may sub-specialize in BioInformatics, ChemicalInformatics?, CognitiveInformatics?, NewMedia? etc. A person who works with data is called a programmer and is likely to specialize in one or more ObjectOrientedLanguage.

Data is more like a gif. Information is more like a jpg.

I may have come up with a native data structure for information. I call it an EnDeme. An Endeme is a specific instance of an EndemeSet. -- JonGrover

Brief rant: We think of users as being not very smart, and not being able to handle much complexity. I say the problem is not with the users but with the programmers. As programmers we live in a data world, and our users live in an information world. As long as we avoid InformationProgramming, we will not speak our users' language. This is the real reason why users can not handle our data complexity. It is because we have not made it up to their level yet in our software. -- JonGrover


discussion about WhatIsInformation moved.


CategoryInformation, CategoryRealData, WikiStub


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