Klempner, I. (1969). Information science unlimited?... a position paper. American Documentation., 20(4).
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Abstract of the Article:
Kempler (1969) explores the concept of information and calls for a re-evaluation of the Information Science curriculum to make it more responsive to the changing needs of his time. He jumps-off from the definition provided by the American Society for Information Science, viz “information science investigates the properties and behavior of information, the process governing the transfer process, and the technology necessary to process the information for optimum accessibility and use”. For him, the inability of the discipline to develop theories is mainly attributed to the way information is defined, as the “product of conceptualization”. As such, information is presented as a highly subjective matter. He contends that in order to strengthen the discipline one must understand and build a framework around the various segments of information as provided in the above definition, viz conceptualization, storage or transmission, and utilization. One does not stop at the conceptualization segment. In the end, information should be evaluated not just in terms of its value in a technological system, for lack of better term, but also in terms of its relevance to the human person.
Kempler (1969) explores the concept of information and calls for a re-evaluation of the Information Science curriculum to make it more responsive to the changing needs of his time. He jumps-off from the definition provided by the American Society for Information Science, viz “information science investigates the properties and behavior of information, the process governing the transfer process, and the technology necessary to process the information for optimum accessibility and use”. For him, the inability of the discipline to develop theories is mainly attributed to the way information is defined, as the “product of conceptualization”. As such, information is presented as a highly subjective matter. He contends that in order to strengthen the discipline one must understand and build a framework around the various segments of information as provided in the above definition, viz conceptualization, storage or transmission, and utilization. One does not stop at the conceptualization segment. In the end, information should be evaluated not just in terms of its value in a technological system, for lack of better term, but also in terms of its relevance to the human person.
3 Things I learned:
1. As academic disciplines, Information Science and Information Technology are distinct but complementary to one another.
2. Based on its various segments, information has its technological and human component. The conceptualization and utilization segments represent the human component, whereas the storage or transmission represents technological part. Being segments of a whole, man and technology do not contend but rather complement each other.
3. Shannon’s (1948) definition of information is placed in a more appropriate context and that is in the storage or transmission segment, as it deals with the “physical nature” of information.
Application / Implication:
Reading this article reminds me of the metaphor of the elephant, which I first heard from Prof. Clarita Carlos way back in 2000. As discrete persons, our perspective is merely one way of looking at things. Philosophically, we can only claim the truth based on our limited sense-perception and established mechanisms but we cannot prove it. The same is true when dealing with the central object of our study; information has to be approached from various segments. But then again, have we exhausted all segments of the object? I believe that there are still a lot of things to explore, and that makes the study of information interesting.
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