August_1971 — Page 30

Architecture & Information

by M.G. Munday

Department of Architecture University of Hong Kong

THE WORD 'information' means dif- ferent things to different people. To some it means books, to others data, while to others it means knowing where to get mosaic tiles from. I suggest how ever that what it really means is a re- markable, and in Hong Kong at least, a much underrated, basic commodity. It is really a very precious raw material - a prime resource that is needed by a creative and developing society, at all levels, from individual to Government. Information helps generate know- ledge, and, since this dies out with people, a lot of effort has to be put into passing it on. This is of course being done continuously, and in many ways and places, but one should not make the mistake of thinking it pas- sive, once recorded. It is not. It is alive, the very substance of a subject, and the way in which new ideas are appraised and things changed and developed. Its effectiveness can be measured by the extent to which it in- fluences the way we think and act.

People talk about the 'flow' of in- formation. There is no such thing. Hith- erto largely sought by instinct, infor- mation is incredibly ineffective unless it is pushed. It is a fallacy to think that once published, something is known. An architect immersed in a problem will rarely find the optimum solution solely within the field of his own ex- perience. Albeit reluctantly, he must look outside it, and aside from the very valuable verbal sources such as discussion with colleagues, he relies on the bewildering multiplicity of pub- lished sources to which he is randomly exposed.

The volume of such sources is doubling every 8 or 10 years, so it is becoming economically impossible for him to leave his metaphorical 'drawing board' to conduct anything but the most superficial subjective search - an activity for which he will hardly have been trained anyway, and for which he will be alarmingly un-motivated.

People find it easier to do a job again rather than look up the answer.

Far East BUILDER, August 1971

They don't like finding out someone else has done the job before them, and fear and insecurity arise from informa- tion that brings change.

Most of us of course, through li- brary use, have some familiarity with the 'traditional' methods of 'ordering' information. Fewer of us however are really aware that their drawbacks are being accentuated by overloading often to near breaking point. The problem is not new, and has been with us since the days when the first 'learn- ed societies' were formed to organise the information being communicated by early scientists and inventors. Pri- mary publications were supplemented mary publications were supplemented by secondary ones, and later selective and critical subject reviews were pro- duced. These early efforts at order are duced. These early efforts at order are still valid and in use and are not to be decried, but something further is need- ed to overcome not only the problems of quantity but also those of quali- ty. For, if it is to be effective, we need not only to have the right information available to us, but it must be in an acceptable form, at the right place and time, and in the right amount, checked for authenticity and relevance.

Clearly there is more to it then than just organising literature. For a simple problem in a restricted field with a well defined terminology, the problem is becoming complex enough, but if one allows further for the unac- countable responses of an active mind to a valid analogy, then access to an even broader range of information will be required. Traditional methods need supplementing in extremely sophisti- cated ways to achieve this, and techni- ques such as deep-indexing with pre- ferred defined concepts in formally, variably orderable, related categories, are being developed. Too voluminous for manual manipulation, such deve- lopments bring in the computer, and with it all sorts of fascinating prob- lems and arguments arise. A lot of manual drudgery in the work is al- ready disappearing, but there are still difficulties at an economic level in ensuring that when 'browsing' with a computer we get 'nuts' related to bolts rather than lunatics or fruit, and the concepts Blind and Venetian are suit- ably related.

Organisation then involves more

than just grouping or classifying which after all are our basic methods of learning anything anyhow. In ad- dition, a high-level intellectual con- tribution is needed. One that can analyse, evaluate, manipulate, synthe- sise, translate, reform, promote and persuade even, and generally simulate that part of the user's mind that would be exercised were he to do the job himself.

This organisation operates at the interface of use and producer of in- formation and aims to reduce uncer- tainty. Failure to do this can have far more serious consequences on deci- sion making than most of us realise. Waste in terms of time and effort will abound. It is no accident that firms, departments and even governments which place a strong emphasis on pro- gress also recognise the importance of information within their systems.

The information system of any or- ganisation plans its behaviour, alerts it to changes that signal the need for action in a manner that enables a be- havioural plan to be implemented. This is a management communication function, and it continually forms and reforms an internal representation of the organisation relevant to the external world to make it capable of increasing. ly effective action and prediction. Such systems comprise three parts:

1. Storage and recall - which is the documentation element and involves filing and retrieving from a collection.

2. Processing - which is the intel- lectual element involving analysis and manipulation.

3. Communication which is the knowledge generating and producing element for the transformation of con- cepts, ideas, facts etc., into published form.

I appreciate that in Hong Kong, at this moment, the incentives that cause organisations elsewhere to invest con- siderable sums in Research and Deve- lopment, and therefore in Information Services, are not particularly strong. Other criteria tend to prevail, and al- though there are exceptions, the in- vestment of resources for innovation is small. However, should that per- centage of the GNP of Hong Kong that is applied to R + D, get as high as the 1% or 2% that is prevalent in other

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