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Widely varied in defintion, many diffferent types of entities seek to define the phrase for many different reasons. It is usually defined in the broadest of terms. In an academic sense I would define it as the study of the use and theory of information and information technologies by people generally, and the refinement and strengthening of one or more of these methodologies, technologies, and bodies of information throughout the lifecycle of re-conception, re-design, developement, implementation, use, maintenance, re-use, re-placement, dismantling and re-cycling.

About the UWM SOIS IR program

UWM BSIR progam mission and competancies

UWM BSIR progam components

Why Choose UWM's Information Resources Program?

Information Resources Management Association (IRMA)

Evaluation of Internet information sources

ERIC database of educational resources

Gnosis:

An ancient Greek word often translated as wisdom,
it actually refers to a specific kind of knowledge.

Gnosis is knowledge based on first hand direct experience
of the divine or transcendant qualities of existance.

It refers to revelation and other transcendant methods of knowing, or divining,
as well as any direct experience of contact with essential reality.

I like to call it the inner echo of the Allness spirit.
It is the song of being vibrating thru us all.

While most would call gnosis "hands off" knowledge, I see it as very "hands on",
especially in regards to surfing the sea of information in search of wise use.

Many see a distinct division between spiritual and material reality, I do not.
A deep materialist, I consider wisdom inextricably linked to technologia.

Wikipedia on Gnosis

Gnostic Society Library

Gnosis magazine

InfoGnosis:

Much of Information Resources is about extracting knowledge from information and using it wisely. The most important criteria for this can be the wisdom from experience with knowledge, the expertise of practise in use of metainformation, and other such emergent principals of mind and material.

These are often results improved over time by repeated exposure to, and manipulation of, each other by the mind and material in question.

Direct knowlege of obtaining wisdom from information through practice and use, and of knowing effective tools for finding, organizing, and evaluating information, cannot be substituted for.

It also helps to have a wide range of understanding, to provide context (and other information meta to the info at hand), a sense of general direction, and a visceral estimation of the likelihood, or accuracy, of, information sought, used, and/or assessed.

Meta Understanding is a very hard thing to measure, and almost as hard to define or automate. One knows what it is when one has it, but everyone thinks they do.

As Lao Tzu wrote of the Tao, "I don't know where it comes from", "that can be told of is not the Unvarying", "can be neither sensed nor known", "The more you experience, the less you know".

To glean wisdom and knowledge from information in this culture, one should have a wide understanding of the events of human discourse and material operation, a deep understanding of an effective set of tools and conceptual frameworks pertinant to the question at hand, a way to organize, evaluate, and improve those resources, and enough background in the context of the question to have a gut level expertise "feeling" for it's veracity and usefulness.

These things can only be had by direct personal contact, and experience, with the concepts tools, and information involved.

So it is I refer to meaningfully effective work in today's Information Resources culture as Infognosis.

Gnosticism:

Gnosticism refers generally to a wide vein of historical heretical christian movements and cults, a cosmopolitan blend of Judaism, Platonism, and other strands of thought.

Wikipedia on Gnosticism

The Gnostic World View

What is a Gnostic?

Nag Hammadhi Codex:

Untill this recent find, we had only historical detractors' accounts to tell us about Gnosticism.

Brief history of the codices

Wikipedia on the Nag Hammadi library

The Gnostic Society Library Nag Hammadi Library Codex Index

List of links to the texts in the Nag Hammadi and Berlin Gnostic Library Collections

What is Technologia?

What is Meta Understanding