What if you got the information you needed in the format that you needed it at just the moment that you needed it?
Yeah, “what if” and then again not bloody likely.
It is the promise of tech – from search engines, databases, tablets and all the way down to your smart phone. The irony of this is that it isn’t really anyone’s intention to make this happen.
There are a myriad of valid and not so valid reasons for this. The valid reasons have something to do with data security and ‘ease of use.’ The less valid reasons have to do with business needs and the need to keep people locked in.
And of course, the whole notion of the right information at the right time is based on the impossible premise that you can have the right information at the right time. This is an illusion based on an overly linear and deterministic view of the world.
Despite the dominant idea that data is objective, the reality is that information is incredibly subjective. It is always open to interpretation and reinterpretation. Moreover, data is often simplified because complexity and nuance don’t really lend themselves to models.
What you are left with is fragments of data that may or may not represent some truth at some period of time. The implications of that are a long way from the right information at the right time.
