I was just perusing one of my favorite blogs, Resource Shelf . I enjoy this blog because it's easy-to-navigate and straightforward about what's going on in info science and related disciplines. One particular post from this week got more of my attention because I find it to be a key issue from now until far into the future. What's that issue? Information Management. The post title is "Managing Information: A Special Report (10 Articles+ from the Economist)". Here's a quote from it that surprised me:
"Only 5% of the information that is created is “structured”, meaning it comes in a standard format of words or numbers that can be read by computers. The rest are things like photos and phone calls which are less easily retrievable and usable."
(here's the link to the Economist article I took the quote from, "Data, data, everywhere".) Note that in the article the terms "data" and "information" are interchangeable.
Wow. I had no idea that 95% of data was so "unstructured". If it isn't structured, then how will it be organized and maintained? Does most data need to be organized and maintained? My gut reaction to these questions is maybe. It truly depends on the context. A car company will need to organize and maintain information far more stridently than a 5-person book club.
Who is a stakeholder in this whole business of structuring information? If you take prescription medicine, drive a car, have a bank account, own pets, buy things, etc... Everyone who owns, uses, makes, sells, contributes to, analyzes and does things because of data is a stakeholder. I could have stopped at "everyone".
No comments:
Post a Comment