Re: Organizational Change Impacts LO4063

William J. Hobler, Jr. (bhobler@cpcug.org)
Mon, 4 Dec 1995 21:49:45 -0500

Replying to LO4021 --

On Sat, 2 Dec 1995 14:52:48 +0000
Michael McMaster wrote

> I think that one of the hindrances we have when we think of
information flows is that we think of "flows between individuals".
But information doesn't necessarily flow between individuals.
*** end of quote ***

I agree that thinking of information flows is a restrictive model of the
reality in most organizations. I like to think of providing information
to organizatioins in terms of using memory. In our minds is stored our
learned information. In a business much of its learned information
(knowledge?) is stored in its people's minds. Technology can capture some
ogranizational data that can be returned as information. Think of
building a 'memory' for the business. There are a number of techniques
for building a 'memory' that allows the kind of recall one does from
memory. I should think that this will better serve the need to 'flow'
information among individuals in an enterprise.

Michael McMaster wrote
> If information flows between storage media,
display media, processing media, etc where individuals facilitate the
flows then we can open up information to the organisation.
*** end of quote ***

The difficulty, I think, is the inclination to predefine how data is
combined into information presented on a screen or on paper. The beauty
of our minds is our ability to draw relations between seemingly unrelated
information and to be able to test the validity of the relationships.
What is needed is the ability to recall data in forms that are defined at
the moment the human operator defines, in their own minds, the form
required to augment their own thinking. What was the coorelation between
the force of gravity and the orbit of the moon that caused Newton to
define both in several weeks?

With respect to information systems we are all to used to having
information defined by the system designers and frozen in computer code.
Computer systems are usually built to serve a set business process,
usually linear processes with well defined boundaries. To open up
information to the organization we must look for another model, one that
caters to imagination, intuition and creative thought.

--
Bill Hobler
bhobler@cpcug.org