Orange Unit: A Person-Centered Launch
1A: Information Systems
Background Knowledge Probe
- What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone brings up the term “information system” in a conversation?
- What components, if any, do you consider to be part of that information system?
What is an Information System?
Information System: An integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data and for providing information, knowledge, and digital products.
As we work through the Orange Unit, we’ll explore the basic parts of our everyday information systems. Over the millennia of human existence, devices have been created for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating and using data, the symbols used to represent real-world entities. Sociotechnical strategies have also emerged to advance understanding of data in the form of information and to make this information actionable in the form of knowledge. The accumulation of knowledge and a refined understanding of this accumulated knowledge advances what some refer to as wisdom. The data, information, knowledge, and wisdom pyramid has proved very useful in the information sciences as a means of investigating how different aspects of this pyramid have influenced the shaping of individuals, communities, societies, organizations, and governing bodies. [1]
For much of our history, humans have worked with mechanical devices to create information systems. Consider for instance Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press or Herman Hollerith’s census calculator as but two examples of Euro-American inventions. But you can go back much further, to devices like the abacus, and even earlier still — to find innovations of mechanical technologies from around the world that have facilitated progress along the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom pyramid. Carolyn de la Peña provides a very useful lens in her article “Slow and Low Progress”:
Defined here as the material or systemic result of human attempts to extend the limits of power over the body and its surroundings, technology has been an essential tool in our ability to feed, clothe, house, and protect our bodies. It has unified individuals across expanses of time and space in a manner that has extended pleasure and prevented pain.[2]
Rapid growth of the human population in the 20th century, combined with growing organizational and governance structures shaped via the industrial revolution and the impact of two major world wars, led to the rapid advancement of electronic computing systems. Key electronic systems were developed during World War II. After the war, new searches began for innovative uses of these systems and the components from which they were created. Business, academic, governmental, and other research institutions began a dedicated effort to consider what to do with the machineries of war, things like large tractors and poisonous gases. During World War I, there were posters proclaiming that Uncle Sam wants you to have two chic