Information Systems And Career Paths

Information, by a broad definition, is structured, organized and processed information that is intended to provide information to users. It gives meaning to data and allows decision making about behavior. For instance, a single consumer’s sale in a restaurant is personal data, which becomes information if the company is able to classify the most popular or least common dish. The process of information processing includes creating knowledge, storing and retrieving this knowledge for future use and providing information to users as a response to their queries.

In information processing, two broad assumptions can be distinguished: namely, that information is not self-replicating, and that information is controlled and changed by the user. The first assumption is often called the strong form of information theory. According to the strong form of information theory, information is non-self replicating because it is controlled and altered by the user. The strong form of information theory can be considered as a particular model of information processing in which information is self replicating, but the user alters the information and changes the internal representations of that information in a way that the original representation is in agreement with the user’s desires.

Although this information theory is a useful tool for understanding information systems and career paths, it has limitations. In particular, it fails to account for the way in which people work and the variety of motivations they may have to develop information systems. It also fails to distinguish between processes that produce and information and processes that require information and produce information. Finally, it does not distinguish between informational processes that produce value and processes that merely make things easier to do.