Information Ecology

I once read a book which mentioned the word "Information Ecology". It didn't talk much about the topic and ever since I've been thinking about what it means. Taste the words ... Information ... Ecology.

Information can be so much and so little. Useful and useless. Mean something and be totally false. Data is something we collect with our five senses and interpret with our filters or glasses. The remaining data could be called information. Already here it is filtered and with the right filters it is actually worth more than in the raw form. But if you have the wrong filters or draw the wrong conclusions it becomes false and will certainly lead you wrong. So the data has now become information. It is what we do with the information that determines the outcome and result. Finally information may turn into knowledge if we manage to embrace it and make the information our own and take it to our heart.

The process of turning information into knowledge is a sort of ecology. Ecology for me is how a thing circulates in a closed system, interacting with other artifacts in that system. In the interaction process it gives and takes parts from the surrounding environment and the context in which it exists. For example information is collected in one place. It then traverses different paths between people who act in different contexts. Depending on the circumstance for each person that person is affected by the information which is interpreted and filtered by his/her experience and taken into consideration. The person gives the information to the next person who handles the information (now changed a little bit, at least interpreted) according to his/her experience. The information may be stored at different stages in this process, so you can find the same information in different stages of interpretation at the same time when searching.

Does this makes sense? I don't know yet, I probably have to think more of it. But my general thought is to view "Information Ecology" as the process information traverses and becoming transformed as it is used and interpreted in different contexts/environments. This is the ecology of information. Hopefully it will come to use as it moves around and information is removed and added. Finally it becomes not only information, but also Knowledge, the key to understand the world around us.