Information Fundamentals (Lesson 7)

Question 1

What are the four ways that information is perceived?

Answer 1

• A critical success factor
• A commodity
• A substance
• A process

Question 2

What is a ‘critical success factor’ in the context of perceiving information?

Answer 2

We need the right information to make the right decisions.

Question 3

What is a ‘commodity’ in the context of perceiving information?

Answer 3

What is the product being bought and sold? What is the value that it has?

Question 4

What is a ‘substance’ in the context of perceiving information?

Answer 4

Information can be used, stored, and turned into new information and therefore it has substance.

Question 5

What is a ‘process’ in the context of perceiving information?

Answer 5

Information is knowledge about procedures and turns data into new information and a higher order.

Question 6

What is Semiotics the study of?

Answer 6

The study of signs and covers the full cycle of a sign from creation, processing, use and ultimately its effect.

Question 7

What are the three key ways that Semiotics relates to information?

Answer 7

• Information is sourced from signs
• Everything you see is a sign of some sort
• We measure and quantify the properties of the information in the sign

Question 8

What is the relationship between Signified, Sense and Signified?

Answer 8

The form is the Signifier, you need ‘sense’ to understand the form and Signified is the content or message.

Question 9

What are the three categories of a sign?

Answer 9

• An icon - a realistic resemblance of the signified eg. man/woman black figures
• An Index - a simple which identifies the concept, such as smoke is an index of fire.
• A symbol - an arbitrary representation of the signified eg. the symbol for man / woman or can be a word.

Question 10

What are the upper disciplines of the semiotic framework classed under ‘Human Information Functions’?

Answer 10

• Semantics, Pragmatics and the Social World - these are concerned with the use of signs, how they function in communicating meaning and intention and what the social consequences are.

Question 11

What are the lower disciplines of the semiotic framework?

Answer 11

• Syntactics, Empirics and the Physical World - these will answer questions as to how signs are structured and used in language, how they are organised and transmitted and what physical properties they have.

Question 12

What are the most commonly used disciplines of semiotics?

Answer 12

• Semantics - relation between signs and what they stand for
• Syntactics - relation between signs and their formal structure
• Pragmatics - relation between signs and their interpreters.

Question 13

Semantics are the relation between signs and what they stand for - what are six areas this could be explored?

Answer 13

• Meaning
• Proposition
• Validity
• Truth
• Signification
• Denotation

Question 14

Syntactics are the relation between signs and their formal structure - what are seven areas this could be explored?

Answer 14

• Structure
• Language
• Logic
• Data
• Records
• Software
• Files

Question 15

Pragmatics are the relation between signs and their interpreters - what are the four areas this could be explored?

Answer 15

• Intention
• Communication
• Conversation
• Negotiation