Introduction
The subjection of routine tasks to mechanical means gained thrust in the industrial age where automation became the norm of the factory production. Although, automation initially was detested by workers for slashing their jobs (as can be seen in the agitations of the Luddites), these feelings reduced as the Industrial Revolution marched on due to the migration of skilled workers into other avenues of employment. Thus, automation even though faced with initial resistance, achieved its ultimate aim of making easy the processes of industry. With the advent of Computers post-WWII, it was only time before information and data were also automated. This too happened, with some resistance, but it has not been quite successful as it is yet to reach full potential, for while it automated data, it failed to informate it. I would like to discuss the essential difference between these two and the significance this understanding plays in contemporary life with help of an example.
The Difference and its Challenge
Take the instance discussed in Alan November’s work Empowering Students with Technology of Schools where academic data records of students have been automated i.e. the schools have computerized the Grade Records of each Student and have made the calculation of functions based on these (say average, etc,.) automatic. This does automate the process of the making the Report Card of Students and hence is a definite improvement as it solves the problem with less effort than traditionally required but real informating this Data means to use it to give “more” information, achieve more control and make available more access than would be other not be possible – An explosion of new interactions and derivations with minimal effort enabled by the automating driving the informating. For example, with this computerization, the school could make the Grade card accessible to parents as an online Web-Grade Card which helps in tracking their Ward’s progress or they could schedule it to send emails to parents when their wards perform poorly or commend them when they do well. It could be used to inform the students themselves about the trend in previous years for electives chosen and how students before them performed, it could be used to help them find specific areas they need to concentrate on given their pursuit for higher education or it could even simply list the number of hours they need to put in to study based on their current score (possibly depending on a survey from previous batches of students). As can be easily realized, the variety of possibilities when one shuns the veil of automating and explores the possibility of informating are vast (even with such a small application as school student academic records) It only takes a little application, some insight and a little drive to achieve more than that offered by the plain platter of automation.
In Conclusion
As Technologists claim, we are in the Information Age and we need to take advantage of the possibilities offered by informating. The Main struggle against this currently I feel is the lack of understanding of the possibility offered by technology like the computer – most people do not know fully how to operate and take advantage of their computer, they are more than content with it for using it in sending, receiving email and surfing the web. This situation has to be remedied, at least by the next generation, where computer literacy should gain the foremost significance in education (both in spread and in depth) and an understanding of the essential difference people can make with computers (essentially a shift in people’s perspective from ‘computer as a tool for data crunching’ to ‘computer as a information deriver’), a complete integration of technology into education and work. With the realization of the vast possibilities of informating over plain automating, I feel confident that society will move towards this new information horizon and as we move through this stage of the information revolution - which is similar to what the initial stages of industrial revolution was for automating, I hope we will reach a time when informating, whose impact is currently only being realized in contemporary work life, will become an activity as mundane as automating - a preprocessing for newer and better analytics to come.
bibliography:
1) Alan November's Empowering Students with Technology
2)http://www.doug-johnson.com/dougwri/informate-not-automate.html
Barath A
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