© Roger M Tagg 2008, revised 2010
Welcome to FROLIO – a new attempt to merge philosophy and the "semantic web".
Organizational Semiotics is an area of study in Management and Information Systems. It has become of interest because many practitioners feel that the techniques used for computer systems development (analysis, design, programming etc) do not recognize sufficiently the socio-technical aspects. This means how humans see the system (both its automated parts and its non-computerized parts) and how they carry out the real-world functions that the computer technology is intended to support.
Semiotics is the study of signs, and the wider discipline developed out of the work of the American philosopher C. S. Peirce and his contemporaries who formed the Pragmatist school, and also from Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistic philosophy.
Ron Stamper (now retired) was a professor at London's LSE and also the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He published his book "Information in Business and Administrative Systems", which contained the basics of his ideas, in 1973. He continued as an advocate of his ideas and a supporter of research groups. I knew him briefly during the 1970s.
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Human Information Functions
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SOCIAL WORLD - beliefs, expectations, commitments, contracts, law, culture, … | |||||||
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PRAGMATICS - intentions, communication, conversations, negotiations, … | |||||||
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SEMANTICS - meanings, propositions, validity, truth, signification, denotations, ...
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The IT Platform
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SYNTACTICS - formal structure, language, logic, data, records, deduction, software, files, …
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EMPIRICS - pattern, variety, noise, entropy, channel capacity, redundancy, efficiency, codes, … | |||||||
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PHYSICAL WORLD - signals, traces, physical distinctions, hardware, component density, speed, economics, …
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The ladder (it looks more like a staircase) rises from the "ground level" of the Physical World where physical things actually happen and are measured. I guess "economics" here means "money changing hands", rather than any grand theories. The next two "IT Platform" steps represent increasing abstraction of information up to the concepts that form the mainstream of computer systems development work. One could comment that some of the "Syntactics" could apply to more than just IT. Certainly deduction, files and records are just as much elements in a paper information system; while "language" covers a still wider range of human information and knowledge sharing modes.
Above the halfway line the functions are mostly outside any computer system, although some computer systems may still be used as support. Whereas the bottom four steps have been included for many years, it is the top two that Stamper added.
Many specialists, for example computer analysts and programmers, accountants - even some engineers - tend to forget about any levels above the half-way line. FROLIO attempts to offer a contribution to making more sense out of the world we face, by using the Relationship concept to link the elements that are included in these higher levels. Some business-based approaches to planning the information strategy of large organizations do take into account some of the functions higher up the ladder.
While it is easy enough to agree with the thinking here, the question of how to incorporate the ideas into the development of systems (whether computerized or not) is harder to answer. One can concentrate on how well signs (e.g. icons on computer screens) indicate their function correctly and helpfully. However trying to formalize a procedure for bringing the higher level elements into consideration may not be worthwhile; situations in the organizations being studied may just be too variable, and too much depend on how the humans who need to communicate can get on together.
This version updated on 27
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .