MIS and You

What is information made of? An information system is an assembly of hardware, software, procedures and people that interact to produce information. This information can be defined as: Knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction. Data presented in a meaningful context. Data processed by summing, ordering, grouping, comparing. Information is any kind of knowledge that can be exchange among people, about things, facts, and concepts.

If you have more information, do you weigh more? Why or why not? Having more information doesn’t always mean that you weigh more because of it. The weight of one person’s information varies on the context it is used. How the person uses the information shows the weight of it. Many times one person’s information is another person’s data. Information is subjective on to which context it is used, in different situations it could weigh more or less. When the context of the information is changed the weigh of the information also changes. An example that the book gives is how a manufacturing department daily activity is just a small portion of data to that the accounting department is going to use to provide information to the company that might just use it as small information given to investors. The investors will use the company’s data as their own data. To conclude, the more information you have does not mean the information weights more, it all depends on the context it is going to be used.

If you give a copy of your transcript to a prospective employer, is that information? If you show that same transcript to your dog, is it still information? Information=knowledge derived from data, presented in a meaningful context, Transcript=perfect example of good information, giving a copy of my prospective employer, I’ll give him all the important data that can be processed to conclude a good information. Giving the same transcript to my dog, would still be a good information but in this case will be irrelevant

Give your own best definition of information. Detailed message about a certain subject or material that adds to your knowledge in some way. It varies depending on who is looking at the message or what they expect to get out of it.

Explain how you think it is possible that we have an industry called information technology industry, but we have great difficulty defining the word information Everything today is about new innovation, new machineries, and equipments to achieve the business’s goals easier and to perform the job faster. Technology does not exist without information and information can not exist without technology they are both integrated Defining the word information can be confusing and difficult because the information always comes with a message or a concept and not everyone has the same perspective