Buckland: Information as Thing

It was a fun argument (especially "antelope as document"), and I was with him for a while, but I ultimately agreed with the other side. It seems to me that information is a mental representation. If there are no thinkers, there's no actual information, just potential. If a book sits in the forest and you're not around to read it, does it make you smart?

And... I don't feel that's a problem. Some scholars feel that information systems/science aren't dealing with "real" information when dealing with tangibles, and that seems to bother Buckland. For me, "information system" is short-hand for "system dealing with representations and transmission of information".

As information professionals we'll deal with information-as-thing and information-as-process, so that people can experience the "real" thing (information-as-knowledge). That's good enough, and important enough, for me.