London, United Kingdom

Information Systems and Computing

Language: English Studies in English
Subject area: computer science
University website: www.brunel.ac.uk
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Computing
Computing is any goal-oriented activity requiring, benefiting from, or creating computers. Computing includes designing, developing and building hardware and software systems; designing a mathematical sequence of steps known as an algorithm; processing, structuring, and managing various kinds of information; doing scientific research on and with computers; making computer systems behave intelligently; and creating and using communications and entertainment media. The field of computing includes computer engineering, software engineering, computer science, information systems, and information technology.
Information
Information is any entity or form that provides the answer to a question of some kind or resolves uncertainty. It is thus related to data and knowledge, as data represents values attributed to parameters, and knowledge signifies understanding of real things or abstract concepts. As it regards data, the information's existence is not necessarily coupled to an observer (it exists beyond an event horizon, for example), while in the case of knowledge, the information requires a cognitive observer.
Information
There's no going back, and there's no hiding the information. So let everyone have it.
Andrew Kantor, as quoted in The Transparent Society, by David Brin, p. 1. Perseus Books Group, 1998.
Information
Wisdom is dead. Long live information.
Mason Cooley (1927-2002), American academic and aphorist. City Aphorisms (1984).
Information
Information smacks of safe neutrality; it is simple, helpful heaping of unassailable facts. In that innocent guise, its the perfect starting point for a technocratic political agenda that wants as little exposure for its objectives as possible. After all, what can anyone say against information?
Theodore Roszak, The Cult of Information: The folklore of computers and the true art of thinking, 1968, p. 19.
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