Patterns in the use of information: The right to be different

Homer J. Hall

Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 1981, vol. 32, issue 2, 103-112

Abstract: Axioms or priorities in the value of information are a dynamic function for each user which changes with the intended use. The viewpoints of users can frequently be grouped into related “dimensions of value”: what is chosen as most important in STI is quite different from the viewpoints of science, of technology, and the information itself. There are many such sets of interacting viewpoints. Values differ for use for information operations, for planning, or for research. Preferred information may be qualitative or judgmental and not quantitative, or subjective/intuitive and not rational. Other differences may depend on the environment of use, in government/industry/academia, in business/economics/statistics, or in the argument between public versus private versus the basic urge to know. Two dimensions in any of these sets is not enough and each has to some extent its own language, with characteristic shifts in the meanings of words. The recognition of patterns in value has a direct bearing on the conservation of the energy put into evaluation. Information analysis and evaluation can be envisioned as a pyramid of work where progressively smaller parts of the original are pointed at a desired target, by being pumped up through successively higher energy levels of selection and rejection. It is possible to convert part of this work into potential energy for future reference, but information systems designed to handle facts alone have a chronic problem: they try to convert all input on values into the quantitative dimension, and they make no provision for sending the user's opinion along with the product. Intractable conflicts in information policy can be expected whenever such a reduction in values is imposed upon a multidimensional pattern, if this allows one protagonist to deny to another the right to be different. Help can come from the user's learning to recognize his own changes in identity, and where his friends are.

Date: 1981
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