ICT
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08wkict17.pptxLecture 8: Information Networks and Knowledge
&
Social Media
Lecture 6: Information Networks and Knowledge
Outline
Information and Knowledge
The relevance of information for learning
Processes of codification and inscription
Social process related to learning
Implications for business and society
Information and Knowledge
If information was knowledge, then the only thing required for attaining knowledge would be the transmission and receipt of information.
The key ‘intermediating’ step between information and knowledge is ‘learning’ – learning is far more complex than the receiving or memorisation of information
Knowledge more than knowing – it involves understanding which is the ability to reconfigure and redeploy what is known in different contexts.
Any fool can know. The point is to understand.
(also) Albert Einstein
Understanding (knowledge) may have an aesthetic/emotional basis
‘She understands modern art, while it does not make sense to me’
It also may be about ‘instrumental’ (i.e. directed at a purpose)
‘She understands how to use Adobe Illustrator to create illustrations’
Understanding (knowledge) may involve problem solving or symbolic reasoning and analysis
‘She understands statistics’ (meaning that she is able to set and solve problems in the field of statistics)
We also use the term in relation to other processes of comprehension
‘She understands Spanish’
Clearly ‘understanding’ is a very broad concept which we often use. However, we may not be able to prescribe a method for reaching any particular type of understanding or knowledge.
Information and Knowledge
Information and Knowledge
Reductionist approaches
Because of the complexity of understanding and knowledge, several academic disciplines simply ignore the distinction between information and knowledge
Economics – information is taken to be sufficient for purposes of understanding how decisions are made and even more expansively information is taken to be universally available (what economists call perfect information, a condition for the existence of competitive markets)
Computer science – models of communication emphasise the sender receiver model which focus on measures of ‘information content’ and its reliable transmission and receipt. It is assumed that information can adequately represent what is desirable to communicate.
Both of these ways of looking at the world ‘black box’ learning and understanding and make them external to the analysis or simply ignore them
These habits of though have important implications…
Information and Knowledge
Reductionist approaches
Ignoring how people comprehend information and use it in the construction of knowledge and understanding -- this happens when it is presumed that people will understand if you ‘inform’ them
Assuming that providing information that is comprehensible to one group of individuals (e.g. software designers) will be comprehensible to other groups (e.g. software users) – the problem can be made worse rather than better by providing more information (suitable for software designers)
Assuming that the online availability of information will be transformational in terms of knowledge in societies
Assuming that profitable opportunities involving the use of knowledge will be exploited (because information is universally available).
The example of the rarity of £20 notes on the street
Information and Knowledge
Summarising
Information is not knowledge
Knowledge requires the construction of understanding through some process of learning
Assuming information is knowledge can lead to problems
The relevance of information for learning
While equating information and knowledge leads to problems, information obviously plays a role in the learning (knowledge acquisition) process
Examples of ‘information’ related to learning include:
Lectures
Texts
Handbooks and guides
Instruction manuals
Workbooks or exercise books
All of these involve a ‘sender’ model of information (although the last category
makes more explicit the expected interaction of the learner and the information).
Learning related information need not be ‘textual’ –
Video/films
Audio recording
And all of these forms can be digitised giving rise to the additional category of interactive educational software
The relevance of information for learning
Learning outside of schools and universities
Although we have been talking about learning as you are now experiencing it, a substantial amount of learning-related activity occurs in the context
of employment
Job-related skill training
Training to upgrade skills and positions
Specific training for operating equipment or performing procedures
Although societies (and even regions) differ substantially, the rate of turnover in jobs (people leaving and coming) is surprisingly high. New people do not automatically have all of the skills needed for the job or to fit into the organisation so training-related activities are a constant.
In many organisations, it is a major function of the human resources department to provide such training or to arrange with external contractors to provide it.
There is also a major market in ‘life long’ learning both for employment related skills and knowledge and for cultural improvement
Processes of codification and inscription
If our aim is to reproduce knowledge we may create information resources for
learning and if
a) the learners have suitable preparation and motivation
and
b) the nature of the knowledge is suitable
then we may speak of the ‘codification’ of knowledge as information (representing the knowledge as information that this learner group will find sufficient for learning the knowledge)
Knowledge codification is controversial
Some scholars believe that this simply reproduces the problem of ‘black boxing’ the learning process and often refer to the importance of ‘tacit’ knowledge (referred to above in a))
The audience of learners that can be auto-didactic (self taught with only informational inputs) may be quite limited (capacity as well as motivation and preparation may play a role)
An important part of the field of knowledge management is deciding what knowledge might be codified and how best to manage knowledge codification projects such as the construction of ‘expert systems’
Processes of codification and inscription
Economics of codification
Codifying knowledge as information in the sense described above is likely to be
expensive (without the benefit of interaction, one has to be very complete and precise as well as paying attention to motivation – i.e. it has to be engaging for the learner)
Of course there is an advantage – the additional costs of reproducing the information once you have it is very low – so codifying for one person costs as much as codifying for one thousand
A lot of knowledge is ephemeral (temporary) and it doesn’t make much sense to incur the costs of codification
There may be some resistance to knowledge codification in an organisation because it may threaten peoples’ jobs
For these reasons, it will never be economically rational to codify a considerable amount of knowledge even if the costs of doing so are falling over time leading to more knowledge being codified as information.
Processes of codification and inscription
Inscription: A Step Beyond Codification?
The term codification refers to creating information but suggests to many something textual.
If we go further with the idea we can think about this information as being more suggestive or evocative – films and plays are made with scripts and a good film or play can have a powerful effect at several levels (emotional, aesthetic, intellectual)
Inscription is one way to convey this additional possible impact of thinking about codification as being similar to creating a film or play
For example, the performance of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet may provide a deeper understanding (knowledge) about the perils of love and family feuds than reading the script.
Nonetheless, recording such a performance makes it into information with the same economic implications (low costs of reproduction)
Brenda Laurel, a leading computer interface designer previously at Apple, has written Computers as Theatre a book that conveys this idea forcefully.
Social process related to learning
In practice, education and training or ordinarily social activities and the reasons
for this are not only economic (many learners one teacher/trainer)
People studying/training with one another learn from each other as well as the teacher/trainer
They are similarly situated with regard to the learning process (i.e. being novices) and therefore dealing with similar cognitive problems
There are motivated to help each other for a variety of reasons including the possibility of exchange (receiving as well as giving)
Their motivations can be reinforcing (the other person is motivated so maybe I should be as well)
Education researchers suggest the relevance of terms like ‘communities of learners’ and suggest various means for facilitating the formation and strengthening of these communities (something that is often not done very well at this university)
Social process related to learning
Communities of practice
A broader perspective on learning and knowledge acquisition
is that people are always engaged in learning processes even
when they are not formally enrolled in course of training or education
The terms ‘practice’ and ‘practitioner’ are useful for discussing these
more informal processes
Practitioners form communities. Lave and Wenger use the term ‘communities of practice’ and explore how such communities operate
Individuals who are relatively inexperienced (newbies, or noobs) are at the periphery of such communities and have to be accepted (to have legitimacy) for other members of the community to interact with them. The interaction then may be referred to as legitimate peripheral participation.
As they gain experience with practice their relations with others in the community increases and they become recognised as experienced practitioners or experts within a social network in which their expertise is recognised and validated. These processes define a ‘community of practice.’
Communities of practice is a relatively demanding definition of community interaction that applies when people are very intensely engaged with one another. Looser connections are sometimes called ‘networks of practice’ or ‘networks of practitioners’ (e.g. user forums)
Social process related to learning
New means for empowering communities of practice?
The strength of ties and multiple levels of interaction associated with the word community raises question about whether a community of practice can exist ‘online’
An innovation with mixed results so far is the creation of ‘referral’ systems to formalise how one regards others. Online communities of practitioners sometimes employ ‘rating’ systems by which individuals may accumulate reputational points or tokens indicating the regard of others.
Due to the mixed results so far, there may be important opportunities for innovation in such systems to help create structure and value in practitioner networks and encourage the formation or deepening of communities of practice
Implications for business and society
When you recognise the problems of equating information and knowledge you have much better critical capacity to make policies and strategy in areas where learning and knowledge are involved
Example 1: MOOCs
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are mostly based
on the idea that providing online learning material in the
form of lectures and audio-visual presentations
(i.e. information) will make it possible to learn.
MOOCs are heralded as a revolution because they leverage the information content of a course or module of study to thousands of users.
However, for them to be effective their audience has to consist of autodidacts (people able to learn autonomously) and for these people MOOCs compete with other self-learning techniques (reading, hacking code, etc.)
There is not very much evidence of MOOCs offering innovative learning resources and a principal problem in MOOCs is the very high dropout rate (the departure of people who are not autodidacts and some of those who are who find better resources for learning)
However, this critical view presents opportunities for innovation – if the ‘learner community’ in a MOOC can be empowered, the MOOC can be more effective (the UK’s Open University provides important lessons on how this can be done)
Example 2: Online Training for Business
Implications for business and society
When training for job skills is organised online, we expect the same problems as we see with MOOCs although the fact that employers can require employees to complete the course has some implications for motivation
We do not expect such training to be very effective for those who have weak autodidactic capacities unless specific efforts are made to a) create a learner community or b) link the learning to social interactions with practitioners (network/community of practice approach.
The advantage of online business training as an application area is that more substantial resources may be available for learning resource development (e.g. training for social workers using videos of various types of clients enacts some of the principles of ‘inscription’)
Implications for business and society
Example 3: One Laptop Per Child (OLPC)
This initiative began with the perception that laptop computers could be made available at very low cost and in the hope that their ability to present information would enable an educational revolution in poorer countries
Initial efforts were somewhat disappointing for the reasons that we have elaborated.
However, this has not been the end of the process. More effective practices involving linking the use of the technology to social interaction is achieving better results.
Ironically, this involves increasing labour inputs which are more affordable in countries with lower wage rates. Hence, we might expect educational innovations to arise from OLPC programmes confounding the initial scepticism about the ‘technology push’ nature of the initiative
Social Media
Outline:
The Internet and interpersonal communication
Emergent social behaviour
Memes and trends
Crowd processes
Temporality
The Internet and interpersonal communication
Social life involves frequent interpersonal communication
The motives for this communication are varied:
-- Exchange
-- Signalling
-- Identity expression and reinforcement
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Abraham Maslow argues that there
Is a hierarchy of human needs
We orient our activities (including communication) toward meeting these
needs building upwards from physiological needs (e.g. satisfying hunger) towards
‘higher’ levels. Self-actualisation is ‘the desire to accomplish everything that one can,
to become the most that one can be’ and for Maslow this involves satisfying all of the
lower levels – one cannot self-actualise if you hold yourself low esteem (you don’t think you are a worthy person)
Online communication is capable of addressing each of these needs
(sometimes indirectly) – with love/belonging and esteem particularly dependent
on social interaction
The Internet and interpersonal communication
The extent to which we can meet our needs online varies depending on the extent to which we conceive of these interactions as ‘real’ (having emotional significance and verisimilitude)
These attitudes may be influenced by culture and age
An American example from 2013…
Many people across various age cohorts use the Internet for sex and romance, but more millennials [variously defined around the idea of people growing up or becoming adults at the turn of the century, in this article people 18-34 years of age in 2013] could imagine getting into sexual or romantic relationships through online services.
Facebook is the frontrunner for 39 percent of millennials [here defined as people 18-34]
(vs. 25 [for 35-55 year olds] and 14 percent [for over 55s])
followed by dating sites such as Plenty of Fish (36 percent vs. 27 and 14 percent) and chat services
such as Skype and MSN (36 percent vs. 22 and 12 percent).
Even the short-form limitations of Twitter hold romantic promise for 23 percent of millennials (vs. 12 and 7 percent). Prosumer Report 2013 http://www.prosumer-report.com/blog/2013/02/14/the-rising-generation-leads-the-way-in-digital-love-and-lust/)
While American experience may be similar to that in the UK and some other parts of Europe, it is not possible to generalise and a lot of research remains to be done about how people in other cultures regard online communication
Emergent social behaviour
In the physical world we recognise that a number of phenomenon are ‘emergent’ – they arise from small events which are amplified by a reinforcing process
Snowflakes take their characteristic form because a single ice crystal readily attaches to other crystals.
Social behaviour can be said to be emergent when small events prompt processes of reinforcement and feedback that bring ever more people into relationship with one another
Online social networks are capable of generating emergent social behaviours because of their capacity to spread ideas and images, often with substantial emotional power
Such emergent social behaviours or attitudes may be beneficial – e.g. smoking is a filthy habit or damaging – e.g. immigrants are criminals
Memes and trends
Emergent social behaviours often involve ‘memes’ – an idea, behaviour, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture
Memes are about copying and imitation, often with
elaboration or embroidering
Examples of memes are ‘urban legends’
The idea of memes stems from evolutionary biology
where it is observed that ideas, behaviours, and styles
may share the following features:
variation, or the introduction of new change to existing elements;
heredity or replication, or the capacity to create copies of elements;
differential "fitness", or the opportunity for one element to be more or less suited to the environment than another.
This has led to a debate about the extent to which memes arise from human propensities (the ability and interest in copying or conforming in social behaviour)
Memes are related to other ideas about the power of ideas and fashions such as narratives, tropes, and semiotics (the study of signs and symbols) which is associated with the making of meanings
Memes and trends
Trends and trending
It is possible to use techniques of capturing the spread of signals related to memes by ‘Internet scraping’ (counting of incidence and linking relationships) to identify the emergence of new foci of attention of large numbers of people
These techniques have obvious practical value in marketing and advertising
They are also of value in public health – although there have been some conspicuous errors such as the effort to predict the rate of flu infection from online search queries involving flu symptoms
Trend analysis is an important example of a ‘big data’ application where correlation is taken as meaningful even in the absence of a causal model
One problem with such correlations is that the incidence (rate of occurrence) of signals from one period to another may change independently of the phenomenon that is thought to generate the signal – people worrying about flu might be greater in one year than another giving rise to different behaviours
Crowd processes
In addition to the replication of ideas, fashions and styles, emergent online social behaviour can also be related to the collective action
Crowd sourcing is a way of generating variety or resources for the solution of practical problems
In information generation crowd sourcing reflects the observation that a large group of individuals making independent judgements will on average perform well at activities involving estimation tasks (e.g. the number of beans in a jar)
The idea has been extended to ‘prediction markets’ where people can buy and sell options on the future occurrence of events (e.g. Betfair) where a share will be rewarded with a fixed price say £1. The price of a share is an aggregate estimate of the probability of the event.
This is, of course, very similar to other forms of betting where bets amount to votes and the odds are determined (in pari-mutuel betting in where all bets are placed in a common pool after being taxed at point of receipt – and the winning tickets receive an equal share of the losing ticket proceeds).
Crowd processes
Crowd Funding and Grouping
The Internet can be a powerful tool for like-minded people to meet one another.
Sometimes this is positive – crowd funding of projects have got new ideas off the ground and are responsible for a number of innovative projects
Sometimes negative – paedophiles meet online to exchange libraries of images and plan how to generate more
Crowd funding is a specific instance of how like-minded individuals can take collective action to make a difference.
Crowd-funding is big. According to an industry consultancy Massolution, crowd funding raised $2.7 billion in 2012 and funded 1 million campaigns
Update
After collecting data on 1,250 active crowdfunding platforms (CFPs) worldwide and undertaking significant further research, the results reveal that CFPs (Crowd funding platforms) raised $16.2 billion in 2014, a 167% increase over the $6.1 billion raised in 2013.
Temporality
Social media ‘strategies’ are similar to the general objectives of enhancing the
‘user experience’
What is particularly important about social media is the rate at which information is updated – it is less a ‘publishing’ outlet than a ‘communication channel’ – hence the currency of information become important
What makes Twitter work is not the content per se but the rapid interaction it permits – the take up and redistribution of information is what drives the medium
Twitter is a means for merging the temporality of the real word with the indifference of the Internet to time – as a result Twitter achieves a greater living verisimilitude – watch Chelsea football with Lord Sugar
Where this will lead is anyone’s guess – tuning into other’s experience in real time – the ultimate You Channel? We know are living in a Twitter drama orchestrated by the President of the US.
Summary
Social media has moved the Internet from a publication outlet to a communication outlet
Central to this is the aggregation of user online behaviours which provide the basis for collective or ‘crowd’ processes – collective cognition (trending), collective intelligence (crowd sourcing), and collective initiative (crowd funding)
Ultimately, social media addresses several of the levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs framework which is one of the reasons for its power
It is difficult to know, however, whether this is ultimately augmenting or impoverishing for any particular individual as both are possible
