Library Class Post

This is a post I did for a class, but I thought I came up with some interesting ideas about information.

"As soon as something happens information is created, and it is a tendency for us humans to make that information more structured as time ebbs on. Knowledge appears in fluid formats in its nascent stages such as: word of mouth, radio, television, and the internet. Generally, these beginning formats of information are meant mainly for dissemination, and because of that they tend to be more basic in form and can lend themselves to being amended. As time goes on more information is added to the subject until the information has been completely solidified, catalogued, and analyzed with scholarly journals and books.

This is the information cycle that Dr. Bob Baker described in the video. It is a concept that I never really thought about consciously, but it is not entirely new either. Solidifying knowledge is something we all do on a regular basis, so it makes sense that we would do so on a grander scale with information that is outside of our heads.

Example: For a child the world is filled with wonder, because it has not completely understood or categorized the information in it. An older child will have less difficulty understanding the world around them, because they are more familiar with the data they are encountering and have made associations with that data to help them define that data more clearly, generally speaking. We may see an animal that is new to us and wonder if it is a cat, a dog, or a fish, but the information becomes more stable as we become more familiar through investigation. Then we can confidently say that this animal is a fish, because we have synthesized the information that tells us what a fish is with the information that is available to us about the animal we are looking at. "