Michael Buckland's Information As Thing

In Michael Buckland’s article, “Information as Thing”, there are three different meanings given to information- information-as-process, information-as-knowledge, and information-as-thing. Buckland begins his article by declaring that there is a certain ambiguity surrounding “information” as a whole- with this, he proceeds to describe the three different meanings of information, some of which compare and contrast to my own information-seeking experiences. Information-as-process, as defined by Buckland, is “the act of informing…; communication of the knowledge or ‘news’ of some fact or occurrence; the action or fact of being told something.” By comparing this definition to my own information-seeking experience, I agree with Buckland in that …show more content…
Information-as-thing is “used attributively for objects, such as data and documents, that are referred to as “information” because they are regarded as being informative.” He then proceeds to add that information-as-thing is something that is tangible and can include data, text, film, and anything that provides one knowledge. I agree with this statement in that I’ve used various types of sources as information ranging from magazines to books to film. Buckland then later explains that almost anything can be used as information if put into context, such as textbooks or photographs or even citations. Information that has been processed in some way for use is also known as data, though I can agree more with the definition of data in the “Differences Between Data, Information and Knowledge” article. In it, data is defined as the “facts of the world” and with it, we can gather information which can turn into knowledge and eventually lead us to making decisions. While Buckland gave a good definition of how we can process data, I believe that by connecting it to information and knowledge, the reader is better able to understand how data can be used to change one’s circumstance. In prior experience, I’ve used different forms of data to reach a conclusion about a topic. Once, when doing a project on how recreational drugs affected students in High School and their motivation towards school, I did a survey and used that as data for my project. From there, I turned my data into information to present to my class and thus gave my classmates the knowledge about how recreational drugs affected High School students. From there, my classmates were given the proper resources and knowledge necessary to make any future decisions on the topic. Later on in the article, Buckland presents his definition of text and documents as “the other informative objects, such as