Information Science and the Phenomenon of Information
This paper aitns to deduce the fundamental phenom-
ena of information science, starting from two premises:
that information science is a problem-oriented disci-
pline concerned with the effective transfer of desired in-
formation from human generator to human user, and
that the single notion common to all concepts of infor-
mation now extant is that of change of structure.
From these premises, a spectrum of information con-
cepts is derived, and a partition of that spectrum particu-
lar to the purposes of information science is described.
From this partition, the terms text and information
(both in information science) are defined, and the funda-
Introduction
In this paper, we attempt to determine the funda-
mental phenomena of interest to information science,
based on an analysis of the information phenomenon in
general. In order to carry out this analysis, we must
begin with some basic assumptions about the nature of
information science qua science, and from these assump-
tions deduce some corollaries about the particular
aspects of information of interest to information science.
Our assumptions are certainly not unique (although our
further analysis may be), and we would like to empha-
size this quality by relating them to the work of others,
and in particular to a paper by Wersig and Neveling (7),
which discusses (among other subjects) the nature of
information science in the light of its historic develop-
ment.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science-July-August 1976
mental phenomena of information science are deduced:
the text and its structure, the structure of the recipient
and changes in that structure, and the structure of the
sender and the structuring of the text.
These phenomena are seen as the basic components
of the mechanisms of the channel, which have been the
traditional area of interest to information science. Some
implications of this approach for research in information
science are discussed in this paper.
And, finally, the question of the ethics of theoretical
research in information science is raised, and a restrictive
condition is proposed.
Nicholas J. Belkin
Centre for Information Science
The City University
London ECl V4PB, England
Stephen E. Robertson
School of Library, Archive & Information Studies
University College
London WCIE 6BT, England
In their paper, Wersig and Neveling find that what is
now called information science developed, historically:
". . . not because of a specific phenomenon which al-
ways existed before and which now becomes an
object of study-but because of a new necessity to
study a problem which has completely changed its
relevance for society. Nowadays the problem of trans-
mitting knowledge to those who need it is a social re-
sponsibihty, and this social responsibility seems to be
the real background of 'information science'."
Their argument, essentially, is that the present discipline
arose from the rather disconnected previous activities
generally aimed at the problem stated above, especially
because that problem has become vastly more important
(to society) in recent years. But the common thread re-
mains the problem itself. We agree with Wersig and
Neveling that information science is a problem- or pur-
197
pose-oriented discipline, and base our further deductions
and analysis on their basic premise.
If information science is problem- or purpose-oriented,
then its problem must be that stated by, inter alia,
Wersig and Neveling:
". . . of transmitting knowledge to those who need
it." (1)
Although this statement of the problem can certainly be
elaborated upon or slightly modified [as it has been in
(2, 3) for instance, and later in this paper], it is suffi-
ciently specific and clear for our purposes here. For it
implies that information science is specifically con-
cerned with information in the context of human com-
munication.
A wide spectrum of information concepts are in cur-
rent use, in a variety of disciplines; the choice of con-
cept is (hopefully) appropriate to the discipline con-
cerned. Shannon (4), for example, was concerned with
information in the context of telecommunications; his
definition of information is appropriate to this context
(and not necessarily to any other). Our contention is
that information science should concern itself with a
specific, delimitable section or portion of the informa-
tion spectrum; one object of this paper is to establish a
suitable specification and delimitation.
Specifically, what we propose below is an analysis of
the information spectrum based on the concept, or
rather category, of structure. Through this schema and
analysis, we aim to determine, logically, the fundamental
theoretical phenomena of information science, based
upon the characteristics of the infonnation concept of
concern to information science, and to discuss some
implications of these characteristics.
Structure and the Information Spectrum
Wersig and Neveling make use of the concept of
"structure" with particular reference to the structures of
the real world (our environment). They also refer to the
"reflection" of these structures in individual or social
images. We, on the other hand, start from the image [in
Boulding's (5) sense: the mental conception that we
have of our environment and ourselves in it], and con-
sider the structures of the image itself. These structures
may or may not represent refiections of real-world struc-
tures.
We should note here that structure should be regarded
as a category, rather than a concept; that is, it is of uni-
versal applicability (in a sense, everything has structure).
This does not affect our argument: all it means is that
198 Journal of the American Society for Information Science-July-August 1976
we have to be careful when defining things in terms of
structure.*
When we consider the term "information" as it has
been used in the past, it is difficult to understand what
the various uses have in commonthat is, what the basic
notion conveyed by the term is. In our view, the only
basic notion common to most or all uses of information
is the idea of structures being changed. We are therefore
tempted to define it as follows:
Information is that which is capable of transforming
structure.
This definition, however, is clearly far too broad
(particularly in view of the categorical nature of struc-
ture) and encompasses many notions for which the term
information is never used. So we leave information (in
its general sense) undefined; but we discuss the various
uses of the term with the idea of transforming of struc-
ture in mind.
The various ways in which the term information has
been used can best be described by the contexts in
which they occur. Thus, for example, in the context of
heredity, (genetic) information is that which is carried
by the genes. We categorize these contexts in terms of a
spectrum; the continuity of the spectrum represents in-
creasingly sophisticated and complex concepts of infor-
mation. The spectrum is shown in Table 1; the various
information concepts and their associated structures are
discussed in detail next.
Table 1. The Information Spectrum
( Heredity
INFRA-COGNITIVE \ Uncertainty
' Perception
INDIVIDUAL COGNITIVE j Individual concept-forming
(. Inter-human communication
SOCIAL COGNITIVE jSocial conceptual structures
META-COGNITIVE j Formalized knowledge
1. HEREDITY
The concept of genetic information is well under-
stood. It transforms structure in a degenerate sense, in
that it imposes structure on chaos. The structure is al-
most completely determined by the genetic informa-
tion; there is little or no sense in which the information
reacts with an existing structure.
We wish to thank Professor Silvio Ceccato for clarification on
this point.
 2. UNCERTAINTY
The main concept of information in this context is
that of Shannon's communication theory. Prior to the
receipt of a message, there is an explicit structure which
is the set of probabilities associated with the different
possible messages. The receipt of a message modifies this
structure in a specific way: in a noiseless channel, the
probabilities are replaced by certainty that a specific
message was sent; in a noisy channel, the probabilities
are modified. The information content of the message
is defined as the extent of the modification.
Shannon's idea is extended somewhat in Bayesian
statistics. Here the prior structure consists of prob-
abilities relating to hypotheses about events, rather
than to events (messages) themselves. Again, the prob-
abilities are modified by incoming data. (Classical or
frequency statistics, it may be noticed, are more closely
related to the heredity concept: no prior structure is
assumed, all structure must derive from the data.)
3. PERCEPTION
Sense organs and their associated systems structure
incoming data into forms capable of building up and
modifying the (structural) image that the organism has
of itself and its physical environment. The complexity of
the structuring of the image varies with the complexity
of the organism. The image of a single-cell organism, for
example, may be a simple binary classification of every-
thing it touches into food and non-food, each with its
appropriate response. At the other extreme, we might
consider the optical system of the cat, which has a
sophisticated set of traps for detecting certain kinds of
structure (lines, movement, etc.) in the data received by
the retina; presumably these structures are used in turn
to build up or modify the cat's image of its surroundings.
In a sense, we can say that sense-data contains infor-
mation; if the organism's image takes a Shannon form,
for example, we could analyze the sense-data in Shannon
terms. But it is worth pointing out that different orga-
nisms will find different structures in exactly the same
sense-data. This point will be taken up again.
4. INDIVIDUAL CONCEPT-FORMING
a. We now move inside the mind ofthe organism. We
have already seen that the mind receives messages which
have been structured by the sense organs and associated
systems. In the higher animals, these messages serve to
build up and modify not only the image (reflection) of
the physical environment, but also the more abstract
parts of the image-the animal's conceptual view of the
world. Further, the conceptual view of the world can in-
Journal of the American Society for Infonnation Science-July-August 1976
teract with itself; that is, the animal can, by cogitation,
cause different parts of its image to interact and modify
each other.
b. In humans, and perhaps in some animals, these
meta-perceptual images are modified not only by
messages deriving from sense data or from other meta-
perceptual images, but also by messages received from
other humans (and structured by them). These messages
are linguistic in the most general sense; that is, semiotic
structures. The usual semiotic term for these structures
is text, and in agreement with this terminology and in
order to avoid confusion with the terminology of infor-
mation theory, we will continue to refer to such mes-
sages as texts.
5. INTER-HUMAN COMMUNICATION
We now look at these semiotic structures themselves.
A semiotic structure in this context is constructed by a
human (the sender) with the intention of changing the
image of another human or group of humans (the recip-
ient). Presumably the semiotic structure is related to
the structure of the sender's image, and in particular to
the sender's image of the recipient's image.
6. SOCIAL CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES
Here we are concerned with collective knowledge;
that is, with those knowledge structures shared by
members of a social group. In this case, the structures
themselves may or may not be overtly semiotic. For in-
stance, the "tacit knowledge" discussed by, among
others, Ravetz (6) and Collins (7), is often incapable of
being expressed in an overtly communicative form,
whereas a textbook is a definite semiotic structure re-
lated to the social conceptual structure. In both these
cases, however, the communicative situation of inten-
tional change in structure exists just as in the previous
paragraph 5.
7. FORMALIZED KNOWLEDGE
Because of the lack of research in this area, we will
not have much to say about it. However, we consider
that such structures are semiotic, and we can propose
as an example any formal theory or model. However,
in this case, purposeful communication appears to be
one-way. That is, structures input to the formal struc-
ture may change it, but that structure itself although
capable of changing individual or social structures, can
do it actively only through its realization in a structure
of those sorts. From the point of view of the formal
structure, the form of the structure with which it inter-
acts is of no interest.
199
 We started with the concept of structure, in particular
the structure of an organism's image of itself and the
world. Information, in its most general sense, is that
which changes or transforms this structure. But as we
built up the concept of information through the spec-
trum, other structures came into prominence: the struc-
ture of the text itself, and the structure of the sender's
image. We will see in the next section how these three
structures are necessary components of a concept of
information for information science.
Information Science
As stated previously, information science is purpose-
oriented. Here we modify (and perhaps extend) the
Wersig and Neveling statement of its problem (1) as
follows:
Its purpose is to facilitate the communication of in-
formation between human beings. (2)
Although at the moment the attention of information
science is restricted to scholarly (wissenschaftlich) and
perhaps management information, this is strictly a prag-
matic decision, based both upon source of funds (pre-
sumed need) and ease of research (normal delimitation
of the problem). This restriction certainly need not re-
main forever in force, and we believe that it does not
influence the basic theory which follows from this state-
ment of purpose.
From the statement of purpose (2) we postulate that,
on the structural scale of Table 1, information for infor-
mation science begins with the advent of semiotic struc-
tures (at the interface of individual concept forming and
inter-human communication), and continues to the
neighborhood of the interface of social conceptual
structures and formalized knowledge. The question then
arises: Is this a sensible partition of the spectrum? Or
rather: Is there anything about this domain of informa-
tion both unique and likely to be of use in solving the
problems of information science? Our answer, not sur-
prisingly, is yes. and we support our contention by
noting that, again on our structural scale, that part of
the spectrum which we have indicated as being of inter-
est to information science is characterized by:
the deliberate (purposeful) structuring of the message
by the sender in order to affect the image structure
of the recipient. This implies that the sender has
knowledge of the recipient's structure.
We consider below how these characteristics are re-
flected in the examples used in our earlier discussion of
the information spectrum.
200 Journal of the American Society for Infonnation ScienceJuly-August 1976
1. HEREDITY
Biological (especially genetic) information is not de-
liberately structured. That is, there is no purpose; nor is
the prior structure of the recipient (that which is to be
structured by the message) of any significance in the
communicative process.
2. UNCERTAINTY
In both of the uncertainty examples above, the struc-
ture of the message and the prior structure of the re-
cipient are pre-determined and are thus assumed not to
be significant in themselves. The important factor in
these situations is the final structure of the recipient;
that is, the change in the recipient's structure. Especially
in the Bayes situation, there can be no question of pur-
pose, or of knowledge of the recipient's structure on the
part of the message sender, for the sender does not enter
the picture.
3. PERCEPTION
Sense data are not purposefully (deliberately) struc-
tured, if they may be considered to have any structure
at all in a communicative sense. That is, the physical sig-
nals perceived by an organism do not have one particular
structure. At this point, which it must be admitted is
largely philosophical, we depart from the Marxist-
Leninist idea of reflection (and similar doctrines), which
postulates orderly structures as the reflection of the reaJ
variety of the physical world. We would rather take the
position that sense data are structured only insofar as
structures can be selected from them by the recipient (as
does the cat's optical system). In themselves, sense data
present an infinity of structures, which are limited (or
attain a singular structure) only through action on the
recipient's part.
4. INDIVIDUAL CONCEPT-FORMING
a. Here we are concerned primarily with the inter-
action of internal structures. This situation, since there
is neither sender nor message in our previous senses (al-
though it may be possible formally to consider cogita-
tion as communication between separate partitions of
the total image), cannot share the defining characteristics
of information science information. This may, however,
be a problem of the message situation's being inaccessible
to observation. Thus, the situation is of potential in-
terest to information science because of the relationship
between cogitation and the formation of semiotic struc-
tures, but we must drop it at this point because of its in-
accessibility.
 b. At this level, all the components of our defining
characteristic of information for information science
first appear together. Thus, there is: 1) a purposefully
structured text (from another human being), 2) a
recipient whose structure is significant, because 3) the
purpose of component 1) above implies that the sender
has knowledge of the recipient's structure through his
intention to change it.
5. INTER-HUMAN COMMUNICATION
This level involves dialogue, which is an extension of
the monologue of previous level 4.b., and merely makes
more plain the characteristics of deliberate structuring
for the purpose of changing, and especially of knowledge,
of the recipient. These texts, if not the underlying
knowledge structures, are certainly semiotic.
6. SOCIAL CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURES
We might consider that it is such social structures
which permit communication among more than two in-
dividuals, since they are the common basis for broadcast
methods of communication. A formal semiotic manifes-
tation of a social conceptual structure might be a text
book. At this level, then, one form of communication
might be as follows. The social structure (through its in-
dividual manipulators, the teachers) attempts to affect
the structures of the recipients (students), especially
through (presumed) knowledge of their structures
(staged teaching). Or, another form might be the individ-
ual (or perhaps group) attempts to change the entire
conceptual structure of a discipline (or a part of a disci-
pline). In either case, the characteristics of intent to
change and knowledge of recipient's structure must be
present, thus putting this level (at least in some aspects)
within the range of the delimitation of information for
information science.
7. FORMALIZED KNOWLEDGE
This level may be where our partition ends. For
although a textbook (which, with its concomittant pur-
pose, certainly falls within our scope) may be considered
formalized knowledge to some extent, there is some
doubt that there is such communicative purpose to a
purely formal schema representing knowledge. Thus,
although in Lakatos' masterly analysis of the develop-
ment of Euler's Theorem (5) there is a good deal of per-
sonification and thus of apparent purpose on the part of
the theory, that theory or formal structure changes, but
does not itself act purposefully to change the structures
of those interacting with it.
Journal of the American Society for Information Science-July-August 1976
Thus, by considering our defining characteristic of in-
formation for information science and its components,
we have succeeded in isolating a very particular domain
of the structural information spectrum. And, just as in-
formational aspects of (purely) formalized knowledge
appear to be independent (for their elucidation) of the
preceding concept of information, so is that concept in-
dependent of its predecessors. The combination of in-
tent, knowledge and effect constitutes a concept of in-
formation which qualitatively differs from those which
appear both earlier and later in the spectrum. And this
qualitative difference can allow us to study profitably
that concept in (relative) isolation from those before and
after it.*
Next, we show how this concept could be helpful in
defining, and studying, the phenomena and problems of
infonnation science; that is, having shown that this parti-
tion of the spectrum is unique from at least one view-
point, we consider how it is likely to be of use.
The Basic Phenomena of Information Science
We beheve that the previous discussion has demon-
strated the validity of a unique concept of information
specific to the needs and purposes of information
science. Given this, and the context in which it arose,
i.e., structure, we can now define two basic concepts in
information science. It should be emphasized that the
definitions are not context-freewe are not trying to lay
down unalterable laws about the use of certain words in
all circumstances. Rather, we want to make sure we
understand what we (in this field) mean by the words.
The basic concepts of information science are defined
in Table 2. We leave undefined the terms purpose and
intention and assume structure to be understood in its
most general form as order.
Table 2. The Basic Concepts of Information Science
A TEXT (in information science) is a collection
of signs purposefully structured by a
sender with the intention of changing
the image-structure of a recipient.
INFORMATION {in information science) is the struc-
ture of any text which is capable of
changing the image-structure of a
recipient.
*We should note here that such a concept could be applicable to,
for instance, fiction as well as scientific literature.
201
 We can now state that the basic phenomena of infor-
mation science are the text and its associated informa-
tion, and the relationship of these to the sender and reci-
pient. This statement is a direct consequence of the
definitions above, because our conceptual framework re-
quires us to introduce into the definitions two specific
entities: the image-structures of the sender and recipient.
In other words, we cannot study the phenomenon of the
text and its associated information, except in association
with the phenomena that relate the text to the sender
and recipient.
This statement is, of course, hardly surprising and has
been made many times before. However, it tells us noth-
ing as it stands if we lack a firm idea of what text and
information mean, or a conceptual system within which
to relate these to the sender and recipient. Our deriva-
tion of the statement from the definitions of the more
basic concepts, and within the framework developed in
this paper, does allow us to define the phenomena in
terms of the concepts. These definitions are given in
Table 3.
Table 3. The Basic Phenomena of Information Science
I The text and its structure (the infonnation).
II The image-structure of the recipient and the
changes in that structure.
III The image-structure of the sender and the struc-
turing of the text.
Of these three phenomena, information science has
up to now regarded the first as its major concern; some
interest has been shown in the second, but study of this
phenomenon has largely been concentrated in the con-
text of psychology or education. The third phenomenon
remains virtually virgin territory.
It may be noticed, in fact, that the area of primary
concern to information scientists in the past and present
has been omitted from this list of basic phenomena. The
more familiar problem area, which may be loosely
termed channel, can be defined in terms of the basic
concepts thus:
The text and its structures, and the activities and
mechanisms which alter those structures between
sender and recipient.
A channel in information science almost always has
several stages and components; indeed, traditionally the
area of interest of information science has been defined
as certain parts of the channel. More particularly,
channels contain mechanisms: devices which operate on
202 Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceJuly-August 1976
texts, either physically or intellectually or both, to put
them in a suitable form for further transmission, to ex-
tract subsidiary (pilot) texts such as abstracts which
might help guide the text to the correct destination
(recipient), and so on.
Traditionally, information science has been concerned
with these mechanisms, since the mechanisms are the
major (indeed, at present, the only) means available to in-
formation science to solve the problems which gave rise
to its existence. But it is clear that the channel phe-
nomenon, and all the mechanisms and activities which
are its parts, can be considered as constructs made up of
the three more basic phenomena which we have defined
above. For instance, one important activity which takes
place in the channel is abstracting.
Now, abstracting can be considered as an activity in
its own right, but it may also be considered as the follow-
ing sequence. A text and its structure interact with the
recipient's (that is, the abstractor's) image-structure; this
interaction results in a change of role on the part of the
abstractor, who now becomes the sender or generator of
a new text, based on his (modified) image-structure, but
also at least partially determined by a formal set of rules
for structuring this new text.
Indexing, classifying and the other activities and
mechanisms of the channel may similarly be analyzed in-
to a series of events, each of which is a manifestation of
one of the three basic phenomena. The question of rele-
vance, for instance, is concerned with the text structure
and the image-structure of the recipient.
It is probably safe to say, without being thought too
reductionistic, that to understand complicated mecha-
nisms, it is necessary first to understand their compo-
nents. That is, in this case, in order to understand the
complicated activities and mechanisms of the channel,
we must study the (relatively) less complex basic phe-
nomena which are their constituents.
Implications for New Directions in Research
As noted previously, the bare statement of the basic
phenomena is nothing particularly new. But defining and
relating these phenomena in terms of structure does lead
to something new, which has implications for research in
information science and possibly for the integration of
various now more-or-less autonomous aspects of infor-
mation science into a coherent whole.
For instance, methodologies for the study of the
image-structures of recipients of text, and of the struc-
tures of texts themselves, are potentially applicable to a
wide range of problem areas which at present have little
in common. Thus, studies of image-structures (or states
of knowledge) and text structures (information) could
be applied to problems of relevance, to problems of ab-
stracting and indexing, and to problems of text genera-
tion, uniting these problems within a single theoretical
framework and allowing results from one of the problem
areas to be applicable to investigations in the others.
We can also indicate some of the implications of the
ideas presented in this paper for the design of informa-
tion retrieval (IR) systems. It has been suggested that
document retrieval, the most common form of IR, is
likely to be superseded by developments of the present-
day fact-retrieval systems; that is, by systems which con-
tain infonnation in a coded form and can operate on this
information in an inferential manner to derive an answer
to any question. However, all present-day fact-retrieval
systems regard information as an essentially atomic phe-
nomenon: the basic units of information are single state-
ments which can be taken out of context and combined
in new ways. Our structural view of information (in
which the information content of a text resides in its
structure) implies that the atomic view is inadequate,
and it therefore suggests that systems based on the
atomic view cannot hope to deal with the fundamental
problems of information retrieval.
Secondly, we can imagine document retrieval systems
which make direct use of the idea of the recipient's
image. A person making a request to a retrieval system
does so because of a perceived gap or incompleteness, or
inconsistency, in his image of the world: he is looking
for texts that will help him correct that anomaly. A
sophisticated retrieval system might then attempt to
build a structural model of the requester's image, using
clues provided both by the linguistic formulation of the
request and by the requester's response to particular
documents which the system retrieves (relevance feed-
back). This model would then be matched against the
structural representations of the documents, to deter-
mine which further documents should be retrieved.
Several recent developments in IR contain the germs of
such a system [e.g., Oddy (9)]. Further work along
these lines may well be profitable.
The characteristics of social (or shared) knowledge
may also be analyzed in a structural sense, and related to
the individuals who make up the social group. The point
here is that once the underlying framework of both
types of investigation is recognized as being structure
and changes in structure, then the two levels may be
modelled by compatible structures (which we might
term qualitative metrics), allowing results from one to be
applied to the other. There are certainly many possible
models of both individual and social image-structures,
the latter having indeed already been modelled in various
ways by information scientists [e.g., Griffith and Small
(10, 11)]. Understandably, most such models have
been related to characteristics of the literature, but not
Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceJuly-August 1976
so explicitly to characteristics of the individuals who
make up the social group.
One possible structural approach which could relate
individual, social and literature structures is based on
word associations. For instance, individual word associa-
tion matrices taken from members of a coherent social
group and limited to that group's intellectual interests
might be combined across the group to determine the
group's response hierarchy for that subject (a common
practice in psychology and anthropology). This
approach assumes some meaningful relationship between
word associations and image-structure, which is admit-
tedly a moot point, although it has received some sub-
stantiation [e.g., Deese (12), Johnson (13), Kiss (14)].
This point granted, we now have some way to relate in-
dividual and social image-structures (or at least compar-
able aspects ofthose structures).
These structures might themselves then be related to
the literature of the field by studying similar associative
structures in the literature. Such an approach could be
used, for instance, to facilitate retrieval from multi-dis-
ciplinary data bases by studying their associative struc-
ture and then partitioning that structure according to
previously determined social associative structures. Al-
though the above description is meant to be only a
hypothetical example of the benefits to be gained from
a structural approach to our problems, some aspects of
such a research program have in fact been implemented
by one of us (15).
The significant point of all of the above examples is
not to advocate any particular structural representation.
Rather, we wish to indicate some ways in which the
unifying characteristics of our basic phenomena, in par-
ticular that of structure, could lead to research method-
ologies and results in what have been largely discontig-
uous research areas, which are interpretable and appli-
cable across the spectrum of information science
activities.
Finally, we suggest that investigation of our basic
phenomena is fundamental to progress in information
science. Their fundamental nature arises not merely be-
cause they wUl enable us to understand better and im-
prove the sorts of mechanisms we have been concerned
with in the past, but also because information science is
likely to become more and more involved in re-structur-
ing texts; that is, in actively participating in the commu-
nication process with the object of improving the use of
that scarce resourceknowledge.
A Final Note
Before ending, we would like to point out one other
characteristic of the concept of information as it is cur-
203
rently interpreted in information science. This char-
acteristic may or may not be technically relevant to the
problem of identifying a coherent field of study, but
certainly it has ethical implications.
We have talked about intention on the part of the
sender, but not about intention on the part of the
recipient. In the operational situation which gave rise
to the field of information science, the recipient usually
plays a more active role than that implied by his desig-
nation. Usually, as indicated previously, he is acting
because of a perceived anomaly in his image of the
world: he tries to find messages which are aimed at cor-
recting that anomaly. This intention on his part implies
not only that he recognizes the anomaly, but that he
desires to correct it.
But our concept of information, as we have identified
it so far, has no such implication and applies to situa-
tions where no such intention or desire can be said to
exist. We might cite two (related) categories of human
communication as examples. The first is education: here
the recipient may or may not recognize an anomaly, but
he is not normally expected to try actively to correct it.
The second is persuasion, where the sender tries to
change the recipient's image structure without his know-
ledge or consent.
We can foresee a situation in which the theoretical in-
formation scientist is faced with the classical dilemma
which has confronted physical scientists since World War
II and (more recently) biological scientists; whether to
continue on a line of research which may have useful
applications (in the traditional area of information sys-
tems, for example), or be of great theoretical interest, but
which might also have undesirable uses (e.g., in develop-
ing techniques of persuasion).
Perhaps, therefore, it might be best to restrict the
area of concern of information science to human com-
munication processes in which there is intention on the
part of the recipient to find a message or messages which
fulfill his needs. Such a restriction does not constitute a
delimitation of the fundamental phenomena under con-
sideration (persuasion certainly has an important place
in scholarly writing); nor does it constitute a solely prag-
matic allocation of effort to solving the important social
problems identified by Wersig and Neveling. Rather it
constitutes a purely ethical decision to avoid possible un-
desirable uses of the research.
It may not in fact be possible to maintain such a re-
striction, in that it may confiict with needs of basic re-
search; or we may find that such a condition is not
sufficiently restrictive. If such difficulties arise, we must
cross those ethical bridges when we come to them.
Nevertheless, the problem must be recognized and acted
upon now, if we are not to find ourselves stumbling
204 Journal of the American Society for Information ScienceJuly-August 1976
blindly into an ethical abyss analogous to that of genetic
engineering (if not the H-bomb).
Acknowledgement
This paper was presented in an earlier form at the In-
ternational Research Forum in Information Science,
London, 1975. We wish to thank the participants in that
meeting, and also Mr. Chai Kim, for their constructive
criticisms.
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