Een kort verhaal over genen, netwerken en de filosofie van de geest: Informatiemanagement 'door de schalen heen'

In this working paper we suggest that information management requires a multi-level approach. Although each level has its own discourse and its own vocabulary, levels are also interrelated, thus calling for managing shifts in perspective. Some examples from the philosophy of mind, biology and network theory, respectively, illustrate the power of such a shift. We suggest that a new perspective does not so much replace an older perspective. They continue being applied in a multi-perspective dynamics. Currently, the single perspective, or level, of the computer program dominates information management. It should be clear that such a limited perspective is ill suited for addressing issues of information management at the level of an entire organization, not to mention civil society. A room is different from a building, which is different from the city, which etc. ... In the built environment, each level therefore has its own requirements, its own discipline. Yet, interdisciplinary efforts aim at taking the wider, respectively narrower scales into account for overall cohesion in the built environment. Information management, however, still lacks such multi-perspective dynamics. Complex IS projects habitually fail from hanging on to an oversimplifying perspective. Our working paper calls for recognizing real issues in the information society. Information management includes managing multiple perspectives accordingly.