Re: Is Information a Disease?The myth of Psyche

John,

*Du spricht es mir aus der Seele* (you
say/write something that I would like
very much to be spoken out...), if I
may say... Yes, I completely agree with
you that the *thin* concept of information
as *contextualised data* (there is the
other perspective: information as
decontextualised knowledge) is very
common in *information and library
science* and... in knolwedge management
(i.e. particularly in the business world).
I found the new book by von Krogh, Nonaka
and Ichijo: Enabling Knowledge Creation
(Oxford Univ. Press 2000) very exciting,
but there seem to be (as usual....) no
explicit connection with what we call
in the humanities *hermeneutics* (theory
of interpretation) although there are similar
insights... According to the authors
knowledge cannot be managed (it exists
only in the *heads* of people), we can
only manage explicit knolwedge (i.e.
information). Another interesting approach
to this question, related also to business,
is the book by Spinosa, Flores and
Dreyfus: Disclosing new worlds (MIT 1997).
What seems particularly interesting in this
approach is the (Heideggerian) idea that we
live already in a *world* i.e. in an open network
of semantic relations that we may change.
Before we can create the *myth of the soul*
as something separate of the *outside world*
and to look for a *bridge* between both
(Cartesian cut), we presuppose the factum
of being-in-the-world-with-others (*world*, once
again, not in the physical sens = planet earth).
So the *psychological* problem of *too much/
not enough* information may be seen as a problem of
*forgetting* the horizon of indeterminacy and
finitude of human life and dealing *only* with
*beings* (managing information) in such a
way that we may become more or less
neurotic or psychotic. The way outside of
this *information dilemma* is to let us
address by our own finitude. *Das ist
leichter gesagt als getan*= this is easier to
say than to do. By the way: Psyche was/is
very much in love with Amor.
Cheers
Rafael
Received on Wed Sep 25 13:19:15 2002