Information and communication - Essay Example

13 March 2008 Information and Communication (2) Information influences all aspects of life and human activities, economic and political spheres, education and knowledge transfers. In general, information is the raw material of work. The daily activities of people and machine tools involve the processing of information. In order to arrive at decisions a modern man has to interpret the external environment, co-ordinate internal activities, handle problems, participate in meetings, and send and receive reports. The core of information society is information technology which supports dissemination and transferring of information. In the book Theories of the information Society Webster (2002) admits that it is difficult to define the term 'information society' because of diverse concepts and ideas involved in this concept. He identifies five main definitions based on ethnological, economic, cultural, occupational and spatial characteristics (8-9). These are all information-processing activities. The processing of information demands the use of communication media. Since the early 1990s, poeple have relied increasingly on new communication technologies to improve their performance. This trend can be observed across various countries and in companies of different sizes. There are two major reasons for this increased emphasis on communication technologies. Webster identifies information society as "one in which theoretical knowledge occupies a pre-emptiness" (26). Information is a core of information society. Information" has never been an easy construct to define. Dennings (2001) attempts to develop a precise measure of information in terms of the selection and reduction of alternatives. Given a set of possible alternatives, the amount of information in a message is the amount of uncertainty that is removed by virtue of the message. For example, if there are 10 possible alternatives, a message that narrows the set to 2 has more information than a message that narrows the set to 5. This definition of information can be applied to questions in a straightforward manner. That is, an informative question or answer would dramatically narrow down the space of possible alternatives. Unfortunately, this definition of information has had limited value when applied to the study of cognition, perception, and information systems in the real world. In order to measure the amount of information in a message, it is necessary to know the number of alternatives and the likelihood that each alternative would occur (Dennings 54). Webster (2002) states that information is "meaningful; it has a subject; it is intelligence or instruction about something or someone" (24). Individuals constantly need to acquire information in order to support goal-directed behavior, problem solving, and decision making. Once again, these goals and information needs are reflected in the questions that individuals ask as they complete tasks. Conversely, the goals and information needs of a person are central to any mechanism that explains question generation. For example, individuals ask a comparatively large number of questions when they encounter obstacles to their goals and when they have problems explaining anomalous events in the world. One productive direction for research is to clarify how our goals and plans constrain the questions that we ask when completing tasks (Negroponte 43). Technology is the main element of information society. "New technologies are one of the visible indicators of new times, and accordingly are frequently taken to signal coming of an information society" (Webster 9). With the introduction of new communication technologies the basic economic laws of information processing are changing. The ability to unbundle information from its physical carrier is having an impact on the trade-off between 'richness' and 'reach'. Richness can be explained as the amount of information that can be transferred and its ability in changing human understanding - for example, voice mail is less rich than face-to-face communication, since it does not allow for visual cues. Reach basically refers to the number of people who can exchange information (Bakardjieva 43). In the past, communication of rich information required proximity, and the cost of this has limited the size of the audience to which information could be sent. In particular, communication to a large number of people required compromises in the degree of richness. With the increasing breadth of communication choices, the economics of information exchange have changed, since the boundaries of cost-effectiveness for richness and reach have blurred. With the increasing standardization of communication technologies, however, communication costs are reducing for both richness and reach, thus diluting the economics of the boundary of organizations. The increasing standardization of communication technology, and more specifically its use, is changing the quantity, quality and means of production and distribution of information (Castells 39). Economic aspect of information society involves financial benefits and gains brought by information. According to this factor, "information society is where the major arenas of economic activity are the information service and goods providers, and the public and private bureaucracy" (Webster 12). This raises substantial questions for the theoretical understanding of organizations, since information is at the core of co-ordination within organizations. Yet it also evokes inquiries into the resulting managerial implications that enhance business success. With an increased number of communication technologies available and the expanded complexity within organizations, their management becomes an increasingly difficult task. Managers are faced with a number of obstacles to be overcome. Occupation is also a part of information society structure. "We have achieved the information society when the preponderance of occupation is found in information work" (Webster 12). Thus this process is closely connected with information overload, increasing already high levels of stress. Information workers are not capable of dealing with the information that various communication technologies such as fax, voice mail or electronic mail (e-mail) are sending to them (Stoll 65). On the one hand, they feel that they cannot operate efficiently without high levels of information, but on the other, the heavy load of often irrelevant information decreases their efficiency and slows down decision-making (Charp 10). Spatial factor usually stresses "the centricity of information networks that may link together different location within or between an office, a town a region" (Webster 17). Within the context of computer-mediated technologies, spatial factor covers the use of computer-mediated technology in the context of information processing in general. Information technology refers to the application of computer technologies in the acquisition, analysis, application, distribution and storage of information. Communication technology narrows this scope down to the acquisition and distribution of information, basically enabling communication within organizations (Solove 34). It is based on the use of sophisticated information management to enable multiparty participation in organizational activities. Electronic meeting systems are an example of advanced communication technology, which support groups by integrating the task focus of group support systems (GSS) and the communication focus of computer-mediated communication systems (Jungwirth and Bruce 400). Taking into account cultural factor, information society can be explained as a circulation of cultural factors. Although the classification of various terms used for communication media helps in illuminating the differences, a blurring of distinctions remains between media, channels and features (Jungwirth and Bruce 400). While channels are the conduits of information or the transmission method of information, many different channels can be combined into a medium. A medium is therefore a larger concept, incorporating a constellation of channels. These channels have certain features, which can be either objective or subjective. Objective features of media include the speed of information transmission, the number of synchronity, and so on. According to Dennings (23) the findings can be summarized as shown in the following. Communication media essentially refer to pipelines, the carrier of messages. Frequently, communication media have been divided into 'old' and 'new' media. Whereas 'old' media traditionally refer to media that have been used extensively within organizations in the past - for example, written letters, memos, or the telephone, 'new' media are usually computer-mediated. Computer-mediated communication media cover all kinds of human communication involving the transmission of electronic signals between computers (Dennings 82). The information society is connected with such notional as digital divide. It means that there are many regions in the world technologically isolated from other parts. These people do not have a possibility to access to information technology and do not use information networks to disseminate information. In contrast to this society, information society can reduce both decision information costs and agency costs. Communication technology reduces decision information costs by improving the speed, and potentially the quality, of information-processing (Negroponte 43). Communication technology can, however, also reduce agency costs by improving monitoring and bonding capabilities. To reduce agency costs, an organization requires an appropriate incentive system, so that workers use their decision-making authority in the interests of the firm. If investment into communication technology has not increased the value produced, management must rethink communication technology strategies (Katz 3). In sum, information society has different facets connected with a new use and understanding of information and its dissemination. Many interesting problems however cannot be solved by relying on formal reasoning alone. This has put managers responsible for determining the level of communication technology expenditure in a difficult position. While communication technology is viewed intuitively as an important asset, managers do not know how to measure its impact, how to decide on the area in which to invest in it, or even how much to invest into it. Works Cited 1. Bakardjieva, M. Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. Sage Publications Ltd, 2005. 2. Charp, S. Information Overload. T H E Journal (Technological Horizons In Education) 30 (2002): 10. 3. Castells, M. The Rise of the Network society. 2nd edition, 2000. 4. Dennings, P.I. The Invisible Future: The Seamless Integration Of Technology Into Everyday Life. McGraw-Hill Companies; 1st edition, 2001. 5. Jungwirth, B., Bruce, B.C. Information Overload: Threat or Opportunity. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 45 (2002): 400. 6. Katz, James: Social Consequences of Internet Use. The MIT Press, 2002. 7. Negroponte, N: Being Digital. Vintage; 1 edition, 1995. 8. Webster, Frank. Theories of the Information Society, 2nd edition Routledge; 1 edition, 1995. . 9. Solove, D. J. The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. New York: New York University Press, 2004 10. Stoll, Clifford. High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian. New York: Random House, Anchor Books, 2000. Read More