Michael Lissack optical fibers, rather indifferent to the meaning of it all. What constitutes information to one person may be data to another. If it doesn't make sense to you, it doesn't qualify for the appellation. In their landmark treatise in 1949, The Mathematical Theory of Communication, authors Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver define information as "that which reduces uncertainty." The differences between data and information become more criti- cal as the world economy moves toward information-dependent econo- mies. Information drives the education field, the media, consulting and service companies, postal services, lawyers, accountants, writers, certain government employees, as well as those in data communications and stor- age. Many countries already have a majority of their work forces engaged in occupations that are primarily information-processing. The move to an information-based society has been so swift that we have yet to come to terms with the implications. Understanding lags behind production. However, to use information productively, i.e., toward some valued end or purpose, people must know what they are doing and why. A brief story borrowed from Richard Saul Worman makes the point: "I remember watching Larry Bird steal a pass in a Boston Celtics Houston Rockets game. He dribbles down the court, he slides around one defender, he fakes-out another, and he flips the ball behind his back to Kevin McHale, who dives towards the basket and scores. There is pandemonium in the Boston Garden. . . The coach and former player Tommy Heinsohn is at the mike . . . He shouts: 'The computer mind of Larry Bird! He's three steps ahead . . . He out-thinks you!' The computer mind of Larry Bird? The computer is hailed as the paragon of intelligence. Bird's extraordinary feat of human information processing is so good, ergo: he must have a mind like a computer." "The problem is not that we think so highly of computers but that we've come to think rather less of humans. We simply don't recognize what Bird is doing from an information-processing point of view. The beauty of Bird's performance on the court derives from his seamless integration of: new data (where he is, where other players are and might be going), old knowledge (what he knows from playing basketball all those years) and clear goals (scoring).
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