Infonomics
Infonomics is a recently coined term for information management. It purports to be about the interrelationship between "people" and "organizations", on the one hand, and "information", on the other. People who use the term describe Infonomics as an emergent discipline, involving various disciplines, and requiring "people participation" from both a theoretical, as well as a practical standpoint.
Infonomics is a growing discipline, and while nobody has as yet referred to himself/herself as an "infonomist", there are millions of people who spend most of their time doing just that: exploiting intelligently the information that falls into their hands, or even better, into their minds.
The term is derived from info- (information) plus -nomics (law).
[edit] Areas of Infonomics
Infonomics requires a theoretical development, and the following are some of the areas that Infonomics deals with:
[edit] Knowledge Economy
The competitiveness of nations lies in its capacity to generate ideas, to turn them into innovations, and to invent new companies. Infrastructures ("information continents") are combined with infostructures ("contents") in order to multiply and generate value, both in organizations, as well as in nations. Infonomics should clarify whether rules in the "traditional economy" can be applied to the "new economy" or whether those rules need to be modified or improved.
[edit] Organization as an Information System
An organization is an informational ecosystem; it is a complex entity where people, machines, publications, processes and policies are combined. Designing information systems "for" an organization is a mistake, as an organization "is" an information system. The future of organizations depends on the discovery of ways to multiply the value of their employees' minds through the use of technologies that increase their capacity.
[edit] Information Laws
Infonomics does not exist as a science as long as there are not a few basic principles — perhaps derived by induction — that allow us to deduce and predict results. In the information field, there are many laws, pare-laws, pseudo-laws and just plain lies. What are the fundamental information laws? Could any essential theorems be derived? What are the research lines that ought to be developed in the future?
[edit] Search for Relevance as Informational Energy
Information is scarcely useful if it is not relevant to anyone at some moment, or in a certain situation. It is necessary to learn what makes an "information" relevant, either for an individual or an organization (through the development of useful mechanisms for an "information audit"). The current search systems for information, however, are quite primitive, and there is still quite a lot of work to be done. These systems should be susceptible to adaptation and evolution, according to the user's requirements and learning process.
[edit] Knowledge as Value
There is too much information, but too little knowledge. We need to have a better understanding of the situations under which an individual transforms his/her "information" into "knowledge". Also, organizations must consider knowledge as an asset, and as an asset, it must be taken into consideration in its balance sheet. The evaluation methods in the educational systems need to be reviewed, as they are focussed more on evaluating what one does not know, rather than what one does know. Companies are now developing ways of improving their intellectual capital, and are favoring knowledge generation.
[edit] Understanding as Business
In a society with an information overload, the challenge lies in making information easier to understand. There is little time to digest inputs, which is why much more time will be spent in order to create an informational stimulus, so that people spend their time in understanding, and not just in accessing or reading. This is a society that is ruled by the attention economy — without much time and stimulus, creators will fight in order to catch people's attention. For that, it is essential to design information that can be more easily understood. People must learn more about how to understand each other (cognition about the different ways of transmitting information efficiently — the field of man-machine interaction). "Information visualization" will become a crucial factor in Information Management, fostered both by technological advances (3D terminals, virtual reality, etc.), as well as by people's better understanding about their relationship with images, the latter of which is about how people's brains process and organize information in a particular way.
[edit] Internet as a Transformational Factor in Business
Internet is information. It allows companies to be thought again in their actuation form, as well as in how they relate to their surroundings (market agents, clients, partners, etc). The key to business in the Net lies in understanding the digital relationship between the one who sells, and the one who purchases. This informational relationship is completely different from the one that happens in the "real world". e-business is then "i-business": The "New Economy" is the economy of intangible assets, specifically of information management.
[edit] Information Policies
A background of technological, legal and administrative infrastructures is needed in order to make the New Economy work. It is very difficult to move forward towards "Information Society" without a set of laws, specifically for the "Digital Age". Moreover, public administrations must act as role models in making intelligent use of technologies in order to improve their relationship with the citizens, as well as to improve their provided services.
[edit] The New Information Professional's Education
There is no "infonomics" without infonomists. Infonomics as a discipline does not exist, unless there are people who are willing to develop it, not just from a corporate viewpoint, but always bearing in mind the search for new knowledge. The establishment of a search program for infonomics is the first challenge for the discipline: in such a wide field, the search starts by determining what should be searched for.
[edit] General Information Theory
All information must be organized in a coherent body. Ways must be devised to filter, organize, and relate current and future knowledge in order to establish the principles for a "General Information Theory". This General Information Theory will go beyond what has been said to date by engineers, computer scientists, economists, statisticians, linguists, psychologists, chaos scientists, and others. Infonomics will perhaps be the first discipline where Edward Wilson's consilience principle is applied: only the union of different visions from various disciplines will shed light on this field. According to what is known up till now, "infonomics", as a general information theory, will be divided into two big parts:
- Microinfonomics: dealing with the relationship between information and people, and subdivided into several sections, such as cognition, interfaces, communication, etc.; and
- Macroinfonomics, devoted to the use of information in organizations and in society in general, analyzing subjects such as organization theory, general systems theory, information systems, information policies, knowledge management, etc.
