Anthony Debons

Interrogative theory of information and knowledge

This report offers an interrogative-based approach to differentiating and quantifying information and knowledge within text. We examine the work of Popper, Shannon, Weaver, Brookes, and Debons on information and knowledge. We offer a new synthesis of their perspectives, which provides the theoretical background for Interrogative Theory. Interrogative Theory suggests that text is a heterogeneous mixture of data, information, and knowledge, which can be separated and quantified through the interrogatives. Several exploratory research efforts based on this interrogative paradigm have been undertaken, including a study of the effects of differentiated information and knowledge on problem solving. Data are presented from these studies. Applications of this approach are described including information system design, problem solving and decision making, text indexing, information overload, meta-data, and knowledge management.

Information Systems: Failure Analysis

Systemic Aspects of Information System Failure.- Disaster Warning Systems: Learning from Failure.- System Issues in Information System Failure.- System Failure Models as a Result of Design Inadequacy.- Failure of Business Information Systems.- The Relationship Between Information and Decision Making and the Effect on the Reliability and Failure of Information Systems.- For the Record - Some Difficulties of Generating, Discerning, Transmitting, and Receiving a Signal.- Two Examples of Partly Failing Information Systems.- Investigative Methods for Analysis of Information System Failure.- Application of Team Concept/Systems Approach to Investigation of Major Mishaps.- The Investigative Techniques Used by the Challenger Commission to Address Information System Failures as They Related to the Space Shuttle Accident.- Accident Analysis and Information System Failure Analysis.- Factors in the Investigation of Human Error in Accident Causation.- The Investigation of Information Failures in Organizations.- Information System Failures During Hazardous Material Spills.- Control of Information Generated During Failure Analysis of Information Systems.- Human Issues in Failure Analysis.- Management Strategies and Information Failure.- Investigating Sources of Error in the Management of Crises: Theoretical Assumptions and a Methodological Approach.- Fallible Humans and Vulnerable Systems: Lessons Learned from Aviation.- Human Reliability in Information Systems.- Error Auditing in Air Traffic Control.- Failure Analysis of Information Systems: Reflections on the Use of Expert Systems in Information Systems.- Fault Management, Knowledge Support, and Responsibility in Man-Machine Systems.- An Interactionists View of System Pathology.- Mental Models and Failures in Human-Machine Systems.- Technological Issues in Failure Analysis.- Failure of Process Plant Monitoring Systems.- Use of Software Reliability Tools in Information System Failure.- Failure Analysis of Information Systems with a Cybernetic System Perspective.- Artificial Intelligence Techniques for the Distribution of Critical Information.- Failure Analysis of Information Systems: An Overall Discussion and a Simple Calculative Rationality Model.- A Practical Approach to Automated Testing in PC Boards.- Failure Analysis of Information Systems in Small Manufacturing Enterprises : The Importance of the Human Interface.- Group Reports.- Group Report: System Issues.- Group Report: Investigation Techniques.- Group Report: Organizational Issues.- Group Report: Hardware and Software.- Workshop Participants.

Foundations of information science

Publisher Summary Information may be something contained in a conveyer, which can be objects such as paper packages, film, electronic devices or even humans, who hold such facts and news in their heads. This chapter describes the nature and science of information, and theory of foundations. Determining the essence of information is secondary to more practical concerns, which involve the determination of the most efficient and effective way to access, store, use and disseminate the record of human experience. These concerns also represent the focus for the education of future scholars and professionals, and continue to be influenced by advances in technology, particularly computers, the use of which has permeated a wide range of public and private institutions. These advances have tended to emphasize the vital role that the access to information and knowledge has in institutional operations, particularly in decision making and problem solving. Tackling with the logistics of such commodities permeates the writings and interests of many scholars and professionals in the field. As it now stands, information science is a field whose basic principles, theories, and laws lie in many disciplines, both applied and theoretic. In its attempt to obtain a definition of form, namely, the principles governing information and knowledge that link human and technological potentials, a metascience could come out with the power to serve all disciplines.

Effects of Amount of Visual Feedback on Typing Performance

Current hardware and software make it unnecessary to provide visual feedback for a typist. There are little data regarding whether visual feedback is necessary. Prior studies are unclear on this question. Some researchers (Long, 1976) suggest that visual feedback is an important component of the typing task. In the present study, typists of various skill levels typed text, computer programs, or numeric data under conditions which allowed 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 15, 26, 46, or 79 characters to be seen. Analysis of typing speed, typographical errors, semantic errors, and an analysis of errors with speed as a covariate revealed that amount of feedback did not affect performance. Visual feedback had an effect only on the number of erasures (corrections) made by the typists.

Command and Control: Technology and Social Impact

Publisher Summary This chapter examines the field of command and control, areas in science and technology that are now contributing directly to matters of command and control, efforts in developing systems such as command and control for application to the civic sector, and assesses whether the combined knowledge gained from such developments contributes to the basis for creation of a new science and profession of information. The underlying implications to the functioning of society at large are also examined. The science and technology related to the command and control functions are primarily directed in achieving one objective—that is, aiding man to make the best use of the data about his environment for decision making. In the attempt to achieve this objective, efforts underlying command and control in four main areas have revealed the importance of the transformations that occur from the initial acquisition of the raw signal from the event world to the time it is received and processed by the human brain. Concepts in communication, computer, behavioral science, and system theory provide the core of present understanding of these processes.

NATO Advanced Study Institutes of information science and foundations of information science

The purpose of this article is to give an account of the role that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), NATO Scientific Affairs Division, NATO Science Committee, Advanced Study Institutes, as well as the events preceding them at MITRE Corporation and the Electronic Systems Division, United States Air Force Systems Command had in the development of Information Science. These two activities, and others that preceded them, are presented from a historical perspective as a part of the evolution and development of Information Science. During this period (1960–1964), as the result of a number of converging initiatives, a synthesizing concept emerged that could be applied in undertaking the analysis and design of C2 (information) systems. This concept, grounded in cybernetics and related to the idea that all organisms are information systems, would constitute the framework for the analysis and design of such (C2) systems. This construct provided a basis for the generation and conduction of three MITRE/ESD congresses and later, the NATO Scientific Committee Advanced Study Institutes. The theoretical and technical challenge to an understanding of command and control (information) systems, and the importance and influence of this challenge in the evolution of Information Science, as a discipline, is discussed. The content of both the MITRE/ESD congresses and the four NATO Advanced Study Institutes are abstracted and presented.

Trends in manpower needs in information science from 1967 to 1982

The Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Information Science (IDIS) at the University of Pittsburgh conducted a survey of the need for professionals in information science at three levels of education; B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. About 6,000 questionnaires were sent to potential employers randomly selected from lists of industrial concerns, government agencies, research and educational organizations, defense contractors, and professional associations. A brief survey of the field of information science and a summary of the manpower needs are given.

Principles of Film Editing and Display System Design

Contemporary display systems are notorious for their lack of flow across display pages. The capabilities to dynamically change the makeup and layout of a display that are resident in windowing and sensor fusion systems are beginning to present the display system designer with even more complex display transition problems. The motion picture industry, on the other hand, has for years successfully presented a series of dynamic visual displays, where changes from one scene (or display) to the next has been accomplished with no notice, or where the change has actually enhanced the information flow to the viewer. This paper discusses how some of the techniques and principles used in making editing decisions might be applied to the design of display systems.

Information science in action : system design

Proceedings of the NATO Advanced Study Institute on Information Science, held in Crete, Greece, August 1-11, 1978

Complex and Integrated Human-Machine Systems: Retroflections

The proceedings of NATO Advanced Study Institutes provide invaluable data, information, and knowledge to scholars and students of a wide spectrum of theoretical and applied areas of interest. Given the educational objectives of the NATO Institutes, the proceedings represent a rich resource that can be used as reference and as texts for instruction. If this objective is to be achieved, one major task of the directors of these institutes is to assemble, assess, correlate, align, juxtapose the content of the formal presentations, deliberations and discourses in a manner that aids arriving at a synthesis of the intellectual content of the activity. The objective of this paper is to provide a method that can be used for this purpose.