The Information Communication Systems

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Abstract

Information communication systems contextually are similar to the informing science idea and they are conveyed by three main categories making them operational in a real life environment. These categories are about technology, content/information/ knowledge and user interface/ability to state information needs, to find information and to understand presented information and content. We all have information technology and digital content at our disposal yet, but what is about information, knowledge and overall heritage preservation for the future generations? Thus, we are confronting with the problems dealing with the preservation of information age heritage in the context of the continuous technology change as well as continuous digital content explosion. The idea of openness in the world of information technology is slowly accepting through the information technology community. The information and digital content delivery space also need stronger emphasis on openness in order to achieve better and wider possibilities to preserve information age heritage. This is urgent need because of a strong emphasis of cloud computing and networked media storages making the scene that in some way can produce mental atrophy, not only of individuals but also of entire society. Some crucial observations as well as scope of actions and typical assumptions on this matter are also presented.

Keywords: Open system, Information-Communications systems, Heritage, Preservation

Introduction

Material published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. Contact [email protected] to request redistribution permission. From the first days of human history, people wanted to store information making collective memory for future generations. The history of information storage started in pre-historic time which represents first stage of collective memory made by writing or putting art on stones and walls. The process of information storage development is continuously increasing information density and the need for more and more sophisticated tools to gather and read information from the medium. Hence, the electrical storage techniques of the late 19th century discarded old media formats in favor of an electrical recording. At the same time, these techniques also introduced a crucially new dimension of storage medium - the interface, as the way to represent and control the signal bearing data. It changes how media functions. Media properties are no longer depending on the data stored inside but also depend on the interfaces provided by technology. The move to digital data and digital media software in twentieth century extends this principle further. Since almost all data were encoded in digital form, they can only be accessed by programmed interface. Consequently, the properties of digital media are now defined by the computer programs instead of being contained in the actual content.

The relations between electro-magnetic techniques developed in the last decades of 19th century, and digital media developed 100 years later shows interesting points. While preceding reproduction technologies retained the original form of media, the media technologies of the late 19th century discarded it and an electrical signal became the base for any kind of data recording. In other words, they introduced coding as a way to store and transmit media (Manovich, 2013). Further, the way we form memories in information age is under the interaction with external information repositories, making possibilities for entering new period of time when we will store fewer information inside our brains.

Information sources interlinked through the communications networks as well as overall human activities rely on communication that becomes the information age fundament. As Edwards (Edwards et al., 2012) pointed, we are currently in the communication age where all members of a society are connected through the Internet, not just to it. Internet with the whole set of new information technology has decreasing our brain power and the brain has a certain area to memorize stuff for a short time span. Individual memory shapes the personality and personal memory. The sum of individual memories shapes the collective memory. Hence, memory becomes an important part of culture (Carr, 2011).

In the years since its start in 1992, UNESCO’s Memory of the World Program has supported dozens of preservation projects to preserve original documents from the earliest history. The program is aimed to maintain a register of important collections from the earliest history to modern times, which urgently require preservation. The entire heritage needs to be preserved in a form that will enable its consumption to future generations. And, unless there is intensive international effort to digitize our information heritage, the knowledge we have today will fade away. Sooner or later, all old magnetic records will not be playable, as well as old replay machines are disappearing. In fact, although we made preserved collections, we will not have the tools to access them. On the contrary, we can found old paper more stable than the paper from the modern time that is losing its readability through the time. Solutions could be aimed toward digitization of the paper texts but not without their context.

This digital content is in a form of any individual media or interconnected hypermedia where the interconnection is executed through a variety of technologies. Hence, the uniform communications system is prerequisite for fully operable open systems where Information-Communication systems provide a huge set of information that can be accessed as the information commons by anyone, anywhere, and any time. The concept of information openness is of vital interest in Information age society which is dominantly based on internationalization of the content making it more accessible to more people around the world. Information age society is able to record knowledge by digital technology, and with the open system concept the world knowledge becomes the legacy of our civilization. Open information technology is also providing platform for storing and distributing information. However, with the increasing digital content stored and available for sharing, the long-term preservation of the digital repositories must be assured in order to preserve our heritage for future generations.

These notions lead us to conclusion that preserving information heritage of information age society will require a new generation of digital curators, informing professionals whose role is to manage a trusted body of information in digital form for current and future use. This new class of information expert will draw insight and knowledge from the fields of information sciences and information technology and will help bridge the gap that has existed between the two. In the same time, information technology has given us faster, cheaper computing, improved interfaces, and rapid prototyping approaches that have allowed the library sciences to develop effective systems in an efficient way.

Information science has put design and deployment of information collections at the center of its interest. In the same time, information science is currently aimed toward evaluation of the content and ranking its relevance to user communities. Here we can find the process of adding metadata as the process of making the information about information. In this process, digital assets management tools support automating metadata capture, intelligent indexing and appropriate handling documents. With the modern information technology data capture and storing has become easier, but preservation of this has become less consistent without proper methods and techniques. As media degrade and interface to digital asset become obsolete, information is lost. Thus, we need an information-communications systems infrastructure that supports an efficient and vigorous preservation process. Outsourcing of collective memory, through the cloud and virtual storage could lead us to collective mental atrophy. Thus, such scenario leads us to more complex observation on our duties to preserve legacy and heritage of information age civilization.