data information knowledge wisdom

in my continuing quest to understand my own field, I've previously blogged about definitions of informatics. one such definition is that it is "the process of, or the study of the process of, transforming data into information." of course, this gets into tricky question about what constitutes "data" and "information," but for now I'll leave that to this rather old post.

turns out, some folks have argued that this data-to-information process is only one step in a larger trajectory. generally this goes somethings like the following (partially cribbed from the DIKW Wikipedia article, partially from an alternative hierarchy, and partially my synopsis/interpretation):

data - representations of direct observations of the world.
information - data assembled to answer specific "who," "what," "when," and "where" style questions. I might call this, "data made meaningful."
knowledge - the application of information for the accomplishment of a specific purpose, answers "how" questions. I might call this, "data and information made useful."
wisdom - understanding the significance and value of knowledge, answers "why" questions. I might call this, "data, information, and knowledge made valuable."

now, I don't think this is a particularly good categorization of how the world works, or how we work in the world. the Wikipedia article linked above has some pretty good discussion about how these various terms (data, information, knowledge, wisdom, etc.) might be so ambiguous, or polysemous, as to be not particularly useful. however, I think these sorts of hierarchies and typologies are interesting from a rhetorical/critical standpoint, as a way of understanding how different groups of people talk about and thinking about such topics as information and understanding.

this interlude was prompted by the ever-provocative Virtual Politik. now, back to work (in this case, grant writing).

it is done

I don’t usually do posts about my personal life. however, there are few events quite so momentous, and since this particular event spans both the personal and the academic, I thought it appropriate (nay, necessary!) to include here. this is also a bit delayed, but still relevant.

on June 19th, 2009, I became Dr. Baumer. that is, I submitted the final version of my dissertation to the UC library (more specifically, the UMI website whereat I could submit a .pdf of my dissertation, thus sparing me the procurement, and printing of my dissertation on, 100% cotton acid-free 20-25 lb. watermarked dissertation paper) and the accompanying paperwork to UC Irvine’s graduate division. I still haven’t become accustomed to people calling me “Dr. Baumer,” as several people, including my father, my cousin, my advisor, several friends, and the administrative assistant at graduate division, have done by this time. because of scheduling details, I actually walked in the commencement ceremony on June 6, even though my defense was on June 15, because UCI only holds one commencement per year, at the end of spring quarter, for all those graduating any time during that calendar year. thus, even before I was official Dr. Baumer, people were already using that appellation for me.

I had wondered from time to time if I’d feel different. based on what I’d gleaned from others’ experiences, I suspected that I wouldn’t, and indeed, I don’t feel much different. but at the same time, I do, although it’s not a recent thing. thinking back over my time in graduate school (the details of which I will not recount or reminisce here, but were all told quite fabulous), the times that I noticed “feeling different” were quite before I completed the requirements for my degree. there were two I recall specifically.

the first was during my first year, in fact my very first quarter, of grad school. I could feel myself changing, changing rapidly, in ways I could not with specific words describe but could with the utmost certainty feel. in addition to moving such a great distance to California—not just physically, but also socially, emotionally, etc.—I ended old relationships, began new ones, found new friends, strengthened ties with old friends, and reconsidered the very constitution of friendship. I was becoming new, becoming someone new, a new and different person, but, somewhat paradoxically, I simultaneously felt as if I was becoming more myself.

(I must admit, at this point, that I’ve been reading Dave Eggers A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and can feel myself being influenced by his writing style, if only in a pale, imitative sort of way)

the second was some time during the midst of my graduate studies. again, rather than being tied to a specific moment, it was a change that happened over a longer period of time but still felt rapid and sudden. during this time, I experienced a number of realization, realizations that I have been subsequently told are integral to success in graduate school. (1) I realized that I knew more about research than did my advisor, in technical, philosophical, epistemic, and other ways. this was a bizarre sort of realization, even given the fact that my advisor’s primary training (i.e., his undergraduate and master’s degrees) was in biology and animation. why I expected that he’d be knowledgeable about the technical details of my work, I’m not certain. this is not to say that he was unhelpful; quite to the contrary, his was integral advice in getting me “unstuck” during crucial periods, and his was invaluable encouragement in enabling me to finish. this realization was closely coupled with the next, that (2) I cared more about my research than did my advisor. similarly, this is not to say that he did not care, but rather than I was the single most important factor, the driving force behind getting my research done. the third realization is one that’s difficult to express in words, but is potentially the most important, likely most associated with, and potentially definitive of, becoming Dr. So-and-so. (3) I was, as a researcher, intellectually independent. yes, obviously, like any other researcher, I consulted with my colleagues and superiors. yes, obviously, like any other researcher, I bounced ideas off of friends and family. however, I didn’t feel as if I was working for anyone. I was working for myself, following my own agenda, pursuing the research questions in which I was interested. I suspect that some may enter graduate school with such a feeling, knowing at least generally, if not precisely, the path they wish to pursue; and I further suspect that many more leave graduate school without experiencing such a feeling, following rather the belief that they are largely a cog in the research machine of their advisor, their institution, their funding source, or some other overseer. however, it seems to me that such a feeling of intellectual independence is the defining trait, the raison d’être, of an academic, and I count myself lucky to have been given the opportunity to experience that feeling.

as one would assume, I’ve been quite busy over the past several months completing my dissertation work, which is partially the reason for my lack of blogging. I will try to return to something of my previous pace (generally averaging around one post every other week or so), but I make no promises. I’m writing this post on a plane on the way back from Ireland (via a layover in Amsterdam), constituting something resembling an (all-too-brief) post-dissertation vacation. starting July 6, I will be beginning began a position as an Assistant Project Scientist (which is more-or-less a big name for a post-doc) at UCI, largely doing follow-up research on my dissertation research, but also starting in on all the projects and ideas I’ve had to keep on the back burner while finishing up my dissertation. thus, while I envision having slightly more free time as a post-doc, since I won’t be worried about passing quals, completing advancements, or writing/defending dissertations, but I’m assuming I’ll be super busy doing research, mentoring/supervising undergraduates, and trying to figure out what it is that I’ll be doing next.

that seems to be the question on everyone’s mind. whenever I mention that I just finished my Ph.D., people almost invariably ask me “so what are you doing next?” while the later half of the above paragraph describes the near future, I’ve also spent a great deal of time thinking about the more distant future, as in, what I’m going to do after I complete my time as a post-doc. ::insert a long pause while I stare at the clouds out the window contemplating my future::. I entered graduate school, in fact my very motivation to apply to graduate school was, to become a professor. while I’ve had and continue to have certain misgivings about that occupation (if not about academia in general), a tenure-track position at a research institution seems the most amenable to pursuing the goals I want to pursue. with the above-mentioned feeling of being a (relatively) independent intellectual, I’ve been spending a great deal of time considering just what those goals are, and the questions and issues towards which I find myself most drawn (the details of which I won’t explore in this already (almost too) long blog-post) strike me as best pursued in an academic/university context. as any sane person in my position would, I intend to keep an open mind about potential paths to pursue, but for now, what’s “next” is burrowing into some serious research, publishing like crazy, and keeping an ear open for academic research positions. (how pragmatic, I know, but what did you expect?).

the power of names, naming, and knowing names in digital culture

I was just trying to look up the grammatical rules for a certain construction in English wherein two nouns are used together to refer to a single entity. for example, "Computer Science" is such a construction, as it uses the noun "Computer" and the noun "Science" to create a new noun. I started off googling "multiple word noun," "multi-word noun phrase," and similar variants. somewhere along the line, I recalled that this construction might be called a compound noun, and sure enough, that's the right name.

there are plenty of times where, through iterative searching, you can figure out the right search terms to use to find what it is that you're after. however, there are certainly other instances, like this one, where if you don't know the name of something, you can't find out anything about it. there are lots of situations where this difficulty arises. if you want to know the name of the artist who painted a famous work, it's difficult to search for the work itself, even if you know exactly what it looks like, without knows its name (presumably, you could browse various galleries and archives, but now you've circumvented needing to do a search). similarly, if you saw the symbol for British pounds but tried to search for "L with a line through it," you wouldn't get very far. interestingly, though, search "O with two dots" gets several hits for umlaut, making that one pretty easy to find based on the description.

not only does this have potential implications for designers (and users) of text-based search engines performing queries related to non-textual data, there are serious implications with respect to distribution and exercises of power. choosing a name for something is obviously a powerful act. however, knowing a name for something gives you power as well, but power of different sorts. the power of reference, the power of understanding, and, I'd argue, powers of searching and finding.

this line of thinking makes me wonder what other sorts of power come along with knowing names, especially in digital cultures where most digital knowledge-oriented activities and interactions are text based. it also makes me wonder how one might subvert the power of name-knowing. one possibility is, as a namer, choosing a name that is so general it does not refer with any specificity to the thing in question. another option might be something like google bombing, which makes it the case that knowing the name of something might end up leading you away from the thing. I wonder what other sorts of power relations might be involved in name-knowing, and how those power relations might come into play with different ways of naming and ways of knowing.

to split or not to split?

while recently editing a paper, I found myself automatically correcting split infinitives. while I was taught that this grammatical construction is generally to be avoided, there are time when (I think) it allows a certain specificity and precision of expression not easily achievable otherwise. for example "to truly enjoy great music" and "to enjoy truly great music" mean rather different things, namely, truly enjoying music that is great or enjoying music that is truly great. I suppose one could say "truly to enjoy great music," but that starts becoming unclear to which clause "truly" belongs. for example, in "I want Henry truly to enjoy great music," does truly modify "want" or "to enjoy"?

at the Language Log, it was recently suggested that, rather than debate such rules using only argumentation, it may be possible to test some of these empirically. this is not a matter of statistics about which usages are more common, but rather studies about which usages are more readily and easily comprehensible. the specific examples used in that post focus on the use of "they" or "them" as a third person singular neuter pronoun in different contexts, e.g., the presence or absence of a gender expectation for the antecedent. much of the methodology of the studies mentioned have to do with speed of reading and comprehension, based on the cognitivist metaphor of the mind as a computer. while I'm not sure I buy or like this methodology, it might be possible to do similar experiments based on final comprehension as the measure of effectiveness. for example, give the three variants of the split infinitive listed above, and then determine whether people think my wanting is true, Henry's enjoyment is true, or the greatness of the music is true. by and large, I'm not an experimentalist, but it seems like something like this should be via. what exactly the results would tell you is another question entirely. there's also a question (raised in the comment on the Language Log post) about whether the primary purpose of grammar is to be clear or if there are other concerns, such as aesthetic, historical, or cultural ones, that should be considered, as well.

in general, I agree, split infinitives should probably be avoided, but what about when they allow a specificity of expression not otherwise possible? when "fixing" the split infinitive changes the meaning of the sentence in a way not easy to restore, I'm a little hesitant about not splitting the infinitive.

the logical art of technology

yes, that's right, time for another etymological interlude.

over the summer (yes, my backlog of things to blog really is that long), I started wondering, what are the etymological roots of the word "technology?" well, with a little help from dictionary.com's entry on technology, I discovered the following.

from the Greek technología systematic treatment. see techno-, -logy

looking at the entries for techno- and -logy reveal something quite interesting.

techno- is from téchné, for art or skill. it's also used particularly to form compound words meaning "technique" or "technology." -logy, from the Latin -logie, which is in turn from the Greek -logia, refers us to -logue. this stem comes also from Latin, -logus, then Greek, -logos, and makes another reference to logos, the word from this stem derives. the word logos in English refers to rational principles in philosophy. the Greek logos refers to a word, saying, speech, discourse, thought, etc. (the interested reader can also refer to similarities between logos and lection).

to what does this amount? well, techno- is used to refer to a technique, meaning an art or skill. logos is used to refer to logic, particularly that sort of rational logical reasoning in Western philosophy. as I technologist, I find this somewhat inspiring, that technology can be seen, in a way, as a meeting of art and logic. not that it is logical art, not that it is artistic logic, but that it is its own hybrid of the two. however, I also find it in a way illuminating with respect to many of the challenges faced in technology development. by its very nature, technology, especially computational technology, requires codification, explication, and quantification. however, the téchné of the things for which we use computational technologies--social interaction, cultural artifacts, knowledge and meaning construction--by their very nature resist codification, explication, and especially quantification.

I don't think all of this is necessarily implied by the word "technology" itself. the point here is instead to demonstrate how the etymology of the word can be used as an elicitor of (potentially useful) reflection.

on what we should spend our efforts

a little while back, I got into a conversation with a friend, Alex, about research. we were both sort of bemoaning the directions that AI is pursuing/has pursued. I was making the argument that building a general learning machine, or general human-like intelligence, or whatever you want to call the grand vision for AI, isn't necessarily the best use of our time. not only does it seem (at least currently) like an untenable goal, but I'm not entirely convinced that creating such an intelligent machine would be of use. Alex then asked on what research efforts we should be spending our human, monetary, and temporal resources. after a bit of consideration, I came up with three things. what follows is roughly a transcript of the chat log from our conversation. I've added a few things, but this is largely how my side of the conversation unfolded.

ok, I think there are three main areas where I'd like to see work done

1) the mind-body problem, reconciling objectivist/subjectivist myths, and breaking out of Cartesian dualism

2) interdisciplinarity and epistemological pluralism

3) sustainable design, environmental psychology, and reducing/reversing global climate change

1) is something that's sort of plagued science for hundreds of years - how does our subjective experience of consciousness arise from the physical reality of our brains. we've done lots of brain mapping, but we're still pretty far off from understanding how what we experience as daily life is linked to our physical world. I might posit that the physical world can only explain so much, and that seeing a strong Cartesian split between the mind and the body (me in here vs the world out there that I'm studying) as science tends to do might be harmful in gaining a better understanding of the world. we should look for ways to advance our understanding that might not fit into the traditional scientific paradigm. this is sort of a segue into 2).

2) has to do with advancing knowledge. any theory is a lens; some theories put certain aspects of a situation into focus while they blur or entirely occlude others. rather than trying to come up with a single theory or model for the entire world (quantum-gravity in physics (or string theory or whatever), a theory of complex systems, etc.), we should look for ways that different theoretical approaches can complement one another. all models all wrong, some are just more wrong than others (that's a quote from some George Box, a statistician).

3) is really, to some extent, the moral imperative of our time. there absolutely no doubt that we are very rapidly nearly destroying the livability of this planet. if we want a home for our children and the future of our species, we absolutely need to put as much effort as possible into salvaging the environment. this is both from a technical standpoint and from a social standpoint. video cameras are smaller, lighter, faster, have more battery life, take higher quality pictures, and are cheaper than they were even 2 or 3 years ago, yet we don't see this level of innovation with cars. other countries have improved fuel efficiency, but in the US... let's just say that the model-T got 28 mpg. we can do better. cars are a convenient example, but it's not just cars, it's alternative energy in general. but it's not just a technological solution for the problem. society has to support this and, as a whole, think it's really important. I bike almost everywhere that I can; I choose dr's offices and stores that are within biking distance; I live close to campus. my girlfriend bikes to work at least 3 days a week. if everyone made small changes like this, it would have almost as much an effect, if not more so, than government regulation. if every person changed one bulb in their house from traditional incandescent to energy efficient, it would reduce annual emissions by something like 10%, and that's just one bulb. understanding individual and social motivations to engender these sorts of changes will, I believe, be crucial in preserving the environment.

after that, we got into a discussion about how the general thinking machine of AI's grand vision might be a useful, integral, or possible necessary part of achieving parts of each of those goals. however, that unfortunately got cut short and we never resumed the conversation. however, I thought that archiving the above here would be sort of a good way to capture/archive what I think is important right now, as well as hopefully generate some discussion with those who might (dis)agree.

an etymological interlude

so, the academic unit where I'm doing my Ph.D. is called the Department of Informatics. I'd never really thought about it until a little while ago, but what do you call someone who does informatics? biology is practices by biologists, chemistry by chemists, mathematics by mathematicians, statistics by statisticians, therapy by therapists, etc. so, what does one call a practitioner of informatics? I think there are two distinct possibilities:

informatician

informaticist

this quandry was started when David Kay, for whom I was TAing last quarter, used the former term. it threw me off guard, as it took me a moment to parse it. after having done so, I thought, how cumbersome. first, how does one pronounce that? he said it with a small emphasis on the first syllable and a large emphasis on the fourth, the same emphatic pattern as mathematician. this isn't too bad, but it ends up making the "o" pronounced with that soft vowel sound denoted by an up-side-down "e," which I think masks the root word "information." I think the latter alternative, with an an emphasis only on the third syllable, is easier to pronounce, is clearer about the proper pronounciation, and pays clearer homage to the root word.

when I started thinking about that, I said, hm, I wonder what the etymology of information is. turns out it's from a participial form of the Latin informare (which is actually the origin of "inform," the root for "information"), meaning to form into, implicitly to form into a shape. I thought this was particularly striking, especially when one considers the way that one interpretation of informatics, according to Bill, is "the process of transforming data into information." the etymology would seem to indicate not only that informatics could refer to the process of informing, but also the study of that process. interesting indeed.

however, this gets us no closer to the goal of determining the proper form of the word to refer to one who practices informatics. so, I looked into the two suffixes, -ist and -ian. on first glance, it seems that -ist is more appropriate; "one that performs a specialized action ... a specialist in a specified art, science, or skill," as opposed to "one relating to, belonging to, or resembling." dig a little further into the etymology. -ist is from the Latin noun-forming suffix -ista, -istes, which is from the Greek agent noun suffix -istEs, and I believe an agent noun is exactly what we're trying to form. -ian, on the other hand, is from the Latin -ianus, meaning of or belonging to, hence noun forms like "Bostonian" or "Washingtonian." however, -ianus was, it seems (see the third bullet point under that link), used to refer to the original family name of an adopted person, quite literally indicating from whom they had come and to whom they belonged. why, then, do mathematician, statistician, physician, and a number of others use the -ian (or its derivative, -ician) suffix? it could be that these are fields to which one can belong or from which one can come, in a way that fields that get the -ist suffix are less focused on being a well-defined group and more focused on the object of study. in this way, it would be appropriate to say that someone was from mathematics, but not that someone was from physics. however, I suspect that this is far more likely an etymological artifact than as aspect that carries great amounts of meaning.

given all these considerations, I think that "inforamiticist" is a much more appropriate, if not accurate, form of the word. what do you think, which form do you prefer? or would you possibly suggest an alternate formation?