Information gets modified all the time.
Think about sharing music. We’ve gone from traveling minstrels, to sheet music, to phonographic cylinders, to records, to 8-track tapes, to cassette tapes, to cds, to downloadable files, to streaming files. Each iteration not only increases the breadth of geography in which music can be shared, but increases the quantity of information available in each form factor and (except for early streaming) the legibility of the sounds.
Music is information.
At the same time, we’ve developed new musical instruments. We’ve created rhythms and expressions, developed complexity, added music to other information to create richer communications. So while the ability to share information has changed, so has everything about what that medium can do and share and what tools are involved.
The information about music has ripened.
I think this happens to every information endeavor we do, and that it happens in multiple ways. I’ve yet to work with an information trove where I did not see signs of this happening, usually in real time as the scope creeped. 😉
- Ideas move towards truthiness
- Data gets less fuzzy, more focused, and more connected
- Tools are developed that refines various aspects of the information
- Meaning becomes more nuanced
- Meaning can be prioritized
- Tools are developed that allow findability from multiple lenses/bets, metadata, structures, etc.
- Information structures move towards complexity
- The complexity becomes overwhelming for non-expert scannability, and lenses (domain-level chunking) are developed
Springboards
Data Is Beautiful. (2019, October 21). Most Popular Music Styles 1910 - 2019.
Herzog, K. (2014, March 17). 24 inventions that changed music. Rolling Stone.
The Wall Street Journal. (2018, Apr 27). From phonographs to spotify: A brief history of the music industry. Youtube.
Wikipedia contributors. Musical instrument. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia.