More on Week 4 Concepts

This week we goes beyond understanding of information systems as a bunch of technologies allowing to move information between several points and/or create intermediate stocks of data to be properly collected and delivered somewhere later. The systems of the described type are usually classified as Transaction Processing Systems (TPS) but in a more general case can be seen as systems extending information connectivity among systems entities and processes. Such systems are like well trained sportsmen with quick reactions adequate to the changing situation.
Although this is important, there could and should be something else even more powerful with a totally different goal. This something else different from quick connectivity reactions is… intelligence. Very often it is not about being “well connected” and the speed of reactions but intelligent decisions in a more strategic sense. The class of systems attempting to aid this area includes Information Systems (as the verr-ry beginning), Decision Support Systems, Knowledge Management Systems, and Intelligent Information Systems (using artificial intelligence, or AI, algorithms and approaches).

The Web 2.0 technologies combined with social network functionality (if properly designed) create a link between these two classes of systems. They add elements of collective intelligence based on peer-to-peer and peer-to-crowd spiral improvement of the intelligence of ideas and solutions. But they are not enough…

We are back to the systems directly designed for organizational intelligence enhancements either by empowering people or using AI. Of course the combination of Collective Intelligence and such systems might prove to best bet.

This week you will explore the aspects, mechanisms, promises, and real uses of such systems.