I think that you can talk about information as general process, in which everyone has drowned and sunk. It is a special condition of society: I personally am on formal terms with information. It always gives me problems, I don’t know how to use databases effectively and I don’t use portals or other similar things very much. It is a totally different world, in which youth and a large part of society live. By information I mean a fragmentary piece of news, a superficial phrase, meaningless figures or words which on their own really don’t say anything. It is fairly one-dimensional, narrow and contains little importance. I am closer to the world of meaning, sense, comprehension and explanations, which only has an indirect link to information. This world of meaning and sense is that which helps you to live, explain and understand. At the moment a majority of people are enthused by the information society, and live in this shallow plane of bytes.
Of course, you can talk about so-called practical information. In our faculty we now have access to electronic data bases with a very wide choice of articles from various journals. We just received a new notification that we have access to 5000 electronic books. This information is practical, it is necessary, and we have been given access to this. But it is also very purposeful. People with a purpose and understanding can find the theme in which they are interested. I would not attribute anything negative to this kind of information, because it can be further elaborated. However – what can you add to the information in chat rooms or in superficial daily news spaces, which does not have a specific aim and which does not change anything?
Speaking about the communication of sociological studies, information is no longer a worthy argument; no one can be bought or convinced with it any longer. People are more interested in the extraction of the meaning of this communication, rather than the dumping of information over the heads of the consumer. Sociological studies are often equated with surveys, which contain one hundred questions and one hundred different answers. Let us imagine that someone begins to present a lecture about these statistics. No one is interested in them, even if they are told only one statistic: that the president has been supported by 90% of men, but only 30% of women. Alone, this is totally meaningless information and only idiots would be spellbound by it. The thing that people intuitively want is some kind of meaningful or interesting explanation. For example, information is a second-class concept in my research. Although data is significant, of course, this information alone is never studied or used, but rather alongside examples of models of behaviour, or new and existing initiatives, with which the information isn’t essentially connected. I am more interested in types of action and relationships, models, interrelationships between individual institutions, their partners and the state.
This is why, from a sociological perspective, information plays a narrow subsidiary role to meaningful action. Meaningful action is that which is associated with epistemology, the epistemology of reality, its reflection, understanding and relating this understanding to its social position or role – that what you are as a subject. Only after these considerations, and combined with thought and subjectivity, can information be translated into meaningful action. The next question is, what role does information play in this universal scheme of social action. How many people are capacitated in relation to this whole model of life? How many people are able and skilful enough to acquire and process the kind of information they really need? How much are they able to decipher the cognitive and ideological frameworks in which information is often presented? How can they relate this to their own necessities, self realisation, and maintenance of their life styles or achieving their goals? Of course not everyone is capable of this. In the hive of general information many follow the simplest path. They use that which is offered to them, assume this is the truth and begin living in its yoke. These people can often be manipulated.
If we are talking about special information design, then most information, to my mind, is offered with no design. Most news, messages, words or numbers are simply produced: are events which are invented and constructed, which in themselves have no meaning or value. This is because people live with the assumption that information is needed and it is necessary to look at the usual portal to receive the routine meaningless compilation of words and to calm down. Alongside this there can be no talk of design or framing, it is simply the production of senselessness.
In this sense, design differs from information. In a lecture I called design sign planning, or the planning of signs. This, therefore, is a question about a product, commodity and things, as well as setting out processes and relationships in the form of images and signs. Not simply in the form of an image, because the form of an image itself can be applied to many things, but it designates a symbolic meaning to this thing, commodity or service. I would explain design more as the attribution of signs and meanings to anything. What kind of special symbolic value does information have? I don’t believe in the connection between information and design, I believe more in the connection between news and design. News is broader than information; it includes the aspect of significance or a message. For example, magazine design is not just information, because it also has some kind of concept and explanation.
This is why the framework exists and this can be translated at various levels when talking about slightly more expanded information or information with extras, subtext or purpose for example: opinions, editorials or expression of a position. One could be a general cognitive framework, through which people today understand the world, for example, we are currently worried about global warming or climate change. Of course, in this context we again find it easy to generate the news that the dunes are being washed away at Jūrkalne and some island has already flooded. In this general context we can produce idiotic news. At the next level there could be a different ideology.
Today the so-called social demographic segmentation of a product, which is one of the aspects of marketing and used as a means to target a commodity or media product, is divided into at least two. For example, into categories such as Latvians and Russians, women and men or into age groups, nationalities etc: divisions which can be more or less observed in the media market. In turn, another approach is the cultural segmentation based on life styles, convictions, which is a wider category and perhaps now will become more important. People have differing life styles and world views, and marketing offers information or products which are designed appropriate to these life styles and world views. This could be a turn-about for marketing, which is more appropriate to contemporary society, which, to my mind, is no longer as elusively structured by gender, age or nationality, but sooner by world view or life styles.
Alongside diverse life styles, in which almost anyone can create their own unique style, there exist mass production, mass consumerism, mass information and unified product trends, beginning with food and ending with media and television channels. This is why separate individuals or consumers, who create these small worlds and life models to which specific niche markets and products are directed, can also simultaneously consume universally standardised information. All these processes have become entwined. This is why it is currently difficult to orient oneself in the marketing of media and commodities, to know what to emphasise and how to build your strategy. In society this is a never-ending process of change, while in marketing – a never-ending process of searching. But in some way this era does have its own characteristic ideas and concerns. One could be ecology, which speaks to enough people; another could be sentimentality for the past, or localism and rootedness. We don’t always want something globalised, unified and standardised: we want something local, endogenous and distinctive; something that belongs to a concrete place in terms of information, culture, food products and their origins.
Nevertheless these concepts – information and design – are very wide. The design or framework expresses everything. More precise and universal concepts could be whatever and why bother. Therefore the first general approach to information is whatever, whatever, whatever! If it falls through the whatever net: “ah, perhaps then it is useful”. Firstly you must keep a distance and discard it in principle, because it is unnecessary and not needed. After this, when you let the information and design through the first filter, you can begin to carefully evaluate whether it fits your life philosophy, concepts, the necessity of action, general and utilitarian aims, if it contains enough rationality and emotionality. If you can still see that it is still misleading, then why bother. Only then, if you overcome this why bother, you can surmise: “ah, this might be useful!” It probably won’t be, but at least it won’t be complete rubbish.
Text prepared by Kārlis Vērpe