What is IT? It’s Information Technology, clearly but why is it that rather than “Information and Communication Technology”, as UK schools call it? Is communication simply information on the move? Are messages only data in transit? Conversely, ‘are’ data messages that have been frozen? Is communication more than messages? Perhaps communication is related to messages as information is related to data?
What are data, information, knowledge, wisdom and enlightenment? Most of modern computer science is built upon Claude Shannon’s Information Theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory
“Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science” How would the worlds of applied mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science take it if I publish a book that points out that Shannon’s definition of Information is, at best, unhelpful and possibly wearing holey clothes? Well, I’m sure that because of the enquiring minds of scientists etc.
In ‘A Mathematical Theory of Communication’:
http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf, Shannon said,
“The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a set of possible messages.”
Shannon’s theory appears not to relate to what we would now call ‘information’ at all but to data or even pattern.
Since we are questioning the foundations of computer science, what is art? Is art everywhere?
Donald Knuth produced a 3-volume ‘Art of Computer Programming’. Clearly he saw the creation of new algorithms as a creative act.
Does Software Engineering deserve it’s name? Or is it Software Craftsmanship? Agile software development is a recognition that the project management methods from hard engineering cannot be applied to software, where the butterfly effect of uncertainties in requirements can lead to chaos. Agile works by leaving decisions later in the process when a feedback loop from incrementally delivered software better informs the requirements and allows emergent designs. But are Agile/Lean teams doing incremental delivery ever able to create beautiful design? Does great art/design need an architect who owns and drives the creative vision?
I remember going to a talk about Smalltalk where the speaker claimed that “No worthwhile piece of software has ever been written by a team of more than 2, maybe 3 people.” to an audience largely made up of the Inland Revenue IT department.
How to make friends and influence people. You know that Shannon bloke? Pah!
On The Outside 