Data, Information, and Knowledge

Abstract

Phenomena of data, information, and knowledge are important for an organization to function. It is therefore important to agree on concepts for those terms. But the nature of such phenomena may not allow for a broad and lasting agreement, because they possess a historical dimension. In this situation we offer semiotic explications of the three terms. Data is viewed here as the syntactic reduction of a sign, information as its semantic reduction, and knowledge appears tied to the pragmatics of the sign. While we do not suggest that the views expressed here are overly new, we feel they offer a useful perspective on the difficult relation between precise formalism and vague insight.

Keywords: Data, information, knowledge, Peircean semiotics