March 19, 2010
Who invented "information"?
I've been ranting on the OpenURL listserv lately about the potential of Linked Data and occasionally making a fool of myself by referring to "information resource" when I really meant "non-information resource". What on earth was the person who originally coined the word "information" thinking? Didn't they know that Linked Data would come along someday and transform our understanding of reality based on the novelty of "non-information"? Couldn't they have invented a term signifying the negation of "information" instead so that people like me wouldn't get confused by people like me?
1 comments so far
Part of the problem with 'information' is that it takes work to distinguish it from 'data', 'knowledge', etc.