SESSION 02 | ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXTS

As the title of the session says, we will consider the role of information in organizational contexts [loosely defined]

Start by thinking about "organization" in a very broad definition

Allegro non troppo - Bolero (1977)

Don't let your tools get in the way of thinking about information

The challenge for the scientist, particularly in the era of Big Science, is to keep the instrument in its place. The best scientific kit comes from thinking about how to solve a problem. But once it becomes a part of the standard repertoire and acquires a lumbering momentum of its own, it might start to constrain thinking more than it assists it. As the historians of science Albert van Helden and Thomas Hankins said in 1994: ‘Because instruments determine what can be done, they also determine to some extent what can be thought.’

Machine Envy by Phillip Ball in Aeon Magazine

You don't have to read these unless you wish to, but we might touch upon them in conversation

1. Perhaps a bit more abstract than usual, but you might want to read Do we matter in the cosmos? by Nick Hughes, in Aeon Magazine.
2. Buckland, M. K. (June 01, 1991). Information as Thing. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 42, 5, 351-60.
   [PDF]

things we'll talk about

• how do we define information
• how do we decide what qualifies as information
• how do we use and interact with information

Group exercise

We'll form groups after having all taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Look ahead to the preparations for the next session.

All Sessions.