2007 Nature of Information workshop

The first workshop that was organised within this research programme was held on 8th October 2007, under the title of The Nature of Information. This was an internal workshop for colleagues at The Open University. The workshop was co-chaired by David Chapman and Magnus Ramage. There were 25 participants from six academic departments and two support departments of the university.

The workshop consisted of 11 presentations organised into three sessions, plus a final plenary discussion. Write-ups of the presentations and discussions are linked below.

Session 1: Historical and systems perspective

Magnus Ramage, Communications & Systems: A historical perspective on information in Cybernetics

Chris Bissell, Communications & Systems: Information revolution

Sue Holwell, Communications & Systems: 'Information'

Session 2: Information handling

Liz Daniel, Business School: Information governance in organisations

Juanita Foster-Jones, Library: Information and libraries: impact of Web 2.0

John Monk, Communications & Systems: Signs & signals

Paul Lefrere, Institute of Educational Technology, Information that matters: Action Analytics

Session 3: ‘Hard’ information

David Chapman, Communications & Systems: Information in telecommunications and art

Paul Piwek, Computing: Logic-based models of information exchange

Tony Nixon, Communications & Systems: Information in quantum computing

Kirstie Ball, Business School: Nature of information in the employment relationship

Session 4: Closing discussion

The workshop resulted in a book, Perspectives on Information, ed. Magnus Ramage and David Chapman (Routledge, 2011). The book contained ten chapters (plus an introduction and conclusion), most based on a heavily amended version of a paper presented at the workshop.