INDEPTH
Why is information like beauty?
Andrew K. Shenton takes a philosophical look at what makes information relevant and asks what information professionals can do to ensure it reaches the right audience at the right time.
NO doubt many readers are familiar with the age-old question, “If a tree falls in a wood and there is no-one there to hear it, is there a noise?” Although it is perhaps most associated with philosophy, the question is heard so often that even those of us outside this discipline may well at some point have exer- cised our minds in attempting to arrive at a rational answer.
Variations have been suggested by academics in other fi elds. In the 1980s, Ian Inglis, a Sociology lecturer at Northumbria University, reworked the question in a mass media scenario: “If a revolution occurs in a remote part of the world and it goes unre- ported, is it news?”
It takes little imagination to reformulate the question in LIS terms – “If a source is written and then published but it goes unread, can its content be considered information?” All three situations share a common basis. In each case there has been an event that is seemingly relevant to the concept. Still, in a very signifi cant respect, its impact has been non-existent. A July 2022 episode of the radio series CrowdScience, broadcast by the BBC World Service, revisited the original question and, if we transfer the ideas discussed to an LIS context, they off er considerable food for thought.
Realism vs idealism The CrowdScience programme explained that the tree-in-wood conundrum can be approached from two perspectives. A realist stance would emphasise the actual existence of the wood, the tree and the wave of sound vibrating through the air caused by the tree falling and hitting the ground. All these
44 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL
Andrew K. Shenton (
shenton1@outlook.com) Curriculum and Resource Support Offi cer at Monkseaton High School and Consultant/Researcher.
are indisputable. The contrasting idealist position maintains that nothing is actually heard, however, unless there is a mind to experience it.1
Similar distinctions can be made with regard to information. A realist would point to the physical properties of the stimulus that conveys meaning to the recipient, whereas an idealist may claim that infor- mation – involving the process of becoming informed – should more properly be under- stood as a sensation that takes place within our own heads. Without a receptive recipi- ent, stimuli are mere text, images, sounds, etc. This is by no means an idiosyncratic view. It is consistent with the “process approach” to understanding information outlined by Gernot Wersig and Ulrich Neve- ling2
More generally, the information/user relationship presented here is an extension of that between book and reader which is so much a feature of S. R. Ranganathan’s classic Five Laws of Library Science.4
that can be traced back at least as far as Robert A. Fairthorne’s work in the 1950s and which is favoured by Michael Buck- land.3
April-May 2023
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