Significance: exploring the nature of information, systems and technology, introduced by the author Paul Beynon-Davies

Citation

Beynon-Davies, P. (2010), "Significance: exploring the nature of information, systems and technology, introduced by the author Paul Beynon-Davies", Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Vol. 12 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jsit.2010.36512dae.001

Significance: exploring the nature of information, systems and technology, introduced by the author Paul Beynon-Davies

Article Type: Book announcement From: Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Volume 12, Issue 4.

Keywords Information systems, Semantics

Review DOI 10.1108/13287261011095824

Signs have become cool, due largely to the enormous success of a trilogy of novels by Dan Brown (Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol). Within these thrillers archaic and religious signs open up conspiracies and offer secret, sacred knowledge. But signs play a much larger and much more mundane part in our world and are no less magical for this.

Consider the following recent case (Webber-Maybank and Luton, 2009). The orthopaedic unit at Llandough Hospital in Cardiff, UK introduced a simple initiative using signs which radically improved discharge times for patients. It costs up to £400 per day to care for an average patient on a UK National Health Service (NHS) surgical ward. It is also estimated that a reduction in the length of stay for a typical patient of between two to six days could save the NHS up to £47 million per annum. Shorter lengths of stay are also associated with increased patient satisfaction and lower risk from infections related to healthcare.

On entry to hospital an expected discharge date is typically recorded and held within records maintained by administrators, clinicians and nurses, but it is never immediately available to patients. The orthopaedic unit manager at this hospital thought it would be a good idea if patients themselves were given notice of this date on arrival. The main aim was to improve the patient experience, particularly allowing them to feel more in control of their own recovery.

The unit therefore instituted a system in August 2008 which they referred to as the “ticket home” initiative. On arrival at the hospital unit the patient is given an A4 laminated card on which is printed the patient's name, clinical consultant and their expected date of discharge. This date is predicted on the basis of appropriate lengths of stay for specific surgical procedures and clinical diagnoses. The “ticket” is then placed on display for all to see on the patient's locker next to the patient's bed. The various multi-disciplinary healthcare teams which care for the patient while on the hospital ward can add information to the ticket such as whether the patient needs transport home or whether their take-home X-ray and medication have been completed.

To their surprise this initiative, which had the simple intended purpose of making information more visible to patients, had an unexpected side-effect. For some reason it improved their discharge rates to a level at which over 70 per cent of patients were discharged on their expected date. As a consequence, the average length of stay for a patient needing a hip replacement fell from 6.2 days to five days and the initiative also seems to have contributed to increased patient satisfaction.

The key aim of this book[1] is to explain how and why things like this happen. Why are signs so magical? We want to argue in this work that the side-effects experienced at Llandough hospital can be commonplace, but only if we understand the ways in which the nature of significance arises at the intersection of signs and systems. It is at this intersection that significance is enacted. Signs are created within systems of activity, communication and representation but they are also resources for activity, communication and representation.

Both the concept of a sign and that of a system are what Conrad Waddington referred to over three decades ago as tools for thought. Our purpose in this book is to demonstrate how understanding something of the nature of signs and systems as well as how they interact in various ways enables us to better understand the world and how it works, particularly, the many and varied ways in which humans organise. The combined use of these two tools gives us enormous power not only for understanding how humans organise themselves as they do but how to make such forms of organisation better.

Having over 30 years of experience as an information technology practitioner, as a business analyst and as an academic, I have become increasingly concerned with a developing range of taken-for-granted assumptions underlying the nature of the modern world, particularly as it concerns the nature of information, information systems and information technology. For instance, a number of recent books in the popular genre have considered information as the stuff of the universe or contemporary information technology as heralding in a new world order in the way in which we produce things. There is a grain of truth in both these positions but neither provides the whole picture. I wish to attempt something radically different from conventional approaches to considering issues such as “information” and the “information society” and in the process I want to challenge conceptions and build what I hope is a more holistic or rounded picture of the way things are.

On the one hand I want to broaden our notions of information, information systems and information technology, and in the process challenge accepted connotations of these terms. On the other hand I want to demonstrate the universal character of these concepts based within the nature of significance. In this sense, I wish to challenge the modern notion that our contemporary society is of an order of difference from previous forms of human society. Instead, I want to argue that significance is a continuing accomplishment related closely to what it means to be human. Taken literally, it is impossible to separate man from the notion of an information society because man is by nature Homo signum: the animal that signifies. We shall maintain that the defining characteristic of Homo sapiens is its species ability as a complex user of signs. It is through such sign use that our capacity to think about things, to represent things, to communicate about such things and to organise ourselves in relation to things takes shape.

Therefore, in considering the nature of significance we shall have to provide a better basis for lots of key terms that are used very loosely within literature from a range of different disciplines – terms such as data, information, information technology and information system. Providing better definitions for these terms is important for a number of reasons. First, it allows us to demonstrate the ubiquity of significance and also the inherent inter-connections an understanding of the nature of significance provides to a large range of areas. Second, as we have mentioned, it allows us to illustrate how many of these terms refer to concepts that link closely to some universal features of what it means to be human. Third, and perhaps most importantly, providing more precision to key terms allows us to get a better grip on understanding a large number of problems in the modern world, particularly in areas such as business, management and information technology but also more widely within the economy, society and the polity.

But shifting established conceptions of things is not easy; many of the meanings we associate with terms such as data, information and information technology are “bracketed” by our understanding of modern digital computing technology. As more and more of us use computers as part of our everyday lives it becomes more and more difficult to understand such simple questions as “what value do computers have for us”; after all, a simple piece of card on a hospital ward appears to have had just as much effect on the efficiency of this system as the introduction of any desktop computer.

This has resonance with a familiar problem experienced by social researchers such as social anthropologists who seek to understand the workings of a society of which they are a part. Such researchers are therefore provided with a number of techniques to help them make the familiar strange. Many such techniques encourage a breaking down or breaching of the “methods” that people employ to act appropriately in particular social situations. In this book, we use a similar approach and seek to breach over-socialised current conceptions of information, information systems and information technology.

Our overall aim then is to attempt to identify a number of universal characteristics associated with the notion of significance. Take, for instance, the concept of an information system itself. We work from the premise that information systems are nothing new. Indeed, they are a natural consequence of the need for humans to communicate and coordinate their activity. Hence, we would expect information systems to exist across time, space and human cultures. This leads us further to suggest that all information systems have a number of characteristics in common (universals) and that to determine the essence of what an information system is, we need to analyse examples of information systems used by different human societies at different historical periods.

Take also the nature of communication. We deliberately consider a number of cases of animal communication within this book and argue that this is important to help us get a grip on the essence of communication. Considering such cases allows us also to identify some crucial differences between animal and human communication. Further, it enables us to get a better handle on the nature of man-machine communication.

Therefore, to demonstrate the universality or deep structure underlying core concepts we utilise a range of examples which are deliberately strange in a number of senses. First, we have deliberately steered clear of much discussion of the modern information and communication technology revolution, although we do make the case for it being more an evolution rather than a revolution. Second, most such cases have not appeared in literatures that traditionally deal with the topics I shall be discussing. Hence, for instance, a close examination of Sumerian clay tokens and the Inka Khipu offer new ways of considering what we actually mean by “information technology”. Third, and perhaps most importantly, the cases are interesting in that they demand that we step outside our own entrenched worldview of our own culture and time and consider different artefacts, forms of communication and modes of activity within situations in which they achieved significance.

In making this excursion into the realms of the “strange” we shall assemble elements of a conceptual framework which we believe helps us unpack the nature of significance. The three main facets of our “prism” which we use to illuminate this phenomenon are illustrated in Figure 1. To summarise our perspective: we maintain that the issue of significance is naturally located at the intersection of signs and systems. Signs are critical to sense-making because they encapsulate issues of intentions (pragmatics), meaning (semantics), structure (syntactics) and form (empirics). Such signs are enacted through three patterns of organisation: through forma (the substance of a sign), informa (the content of a sign) and performa (the use of signs in coordinated action). Such a conception of enactment allows us to define more clearly and to relate three classes of system important to human organising: activity systems, information systems and data systems. Such systems consist, respectively, of the patterning of performa, informa and forma.

Figure 1. Three facets of the conceptual framework

Our aim in developing this framework has not been to “re-invent the wheel”. Instead, we have attempted a synthesis of elements from a number of areas. Broadly we see no value in the intellectual gulf between the physical, psychological and social sciences and wherever possible attempt to bridge this divide. For instance, systems theory or systemics is having a renaissance in many of the physical sciences, particularly biology. In contrast, semiotics is still largely positioned as a bridge across many social sciences. But semiotics as we shall see has a clear physical foundation and the systems viewpoint has much to offer an understanding of the social.

It is also difficult to discuss the interaction of signs and systems and how this interaction contributes to the phenomena of organisation without some reference to “mind” or what we shall more broadly refer to as “psyche”. Hence, we attempt to demonstrate how a systemic and semiotic outlook helps us better understand how the noun information is better expressed as the verb in-formation and how this process of in-formation relates to the control of action both at the individual level and at the level of groups. This is one clear example of the way in which we attempt to form better ways of considering the nature of significance not only as it concerns humans but also as it concerns other organisms and indeed machines.

Although our aim is primarily to build stronger theory, having stronger theory does not mean less relevance to practice. In fact, we would argue the opposite; as the American sociologist Kurt Lewin once said “nothing is as practical as a good theory”. This is because good theory guides good practice. In the final chapter we paint some of this landscape. We consider the relevance of our framework to understanding and suggesting some solutions to a number of modern problem situations, particularly in the areas of business, management and information technology.

So let us see what is significant about the enactment of significance …

Note

1. Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, Year of Publication: 2010, ISBN-10: 0230275192 and ISBN-13: 978-0230275195.

Reference

Webber-Maybank, M. and Luton, H. (2009), “Making effective use of predicted discharge dates to reduce the length of stay in hospital”, Nursing Times, Vol. 105 No. 15, pp. 20-1.

Paul Beynon-DaviesCardiff Business School, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK