What does it mean to network information?
In a very broad sense, networking information is reasoning. Reasoning can be summarised as connecting existing pieces of information (connecting the dots). Expert reasoning is reasoning with a good understanding of how connections between pieces of information work, and a good understanding of how the pieces of information themselves are built out of other pieces of information. Expert reasoning is also characterised by appreciation of the contextuality of information, and by awareness of what is not known.
All existing ‘information networks’ so far are non-expert information networks: the expert information they contain is located in the the nodes of the network. Nothing outside of the nodes, neither the links between the nodes nor the structure of the network per se, convey any domain specific expert information.
In an expert/smart information network, the structure of information, i.e. how the different pieces of it relate to one another, can be conveyed more directly through the network structure.
In a non-expert network (e.g. the Web), a link (e.g. a hyperlink) A ⟶ B between two nodes A and B (e.g. two webpages), has a generic, non-expert, non-domain-specific meaning like “Something in document A relates in some way to something in document B, and to understand the nature and specifics of the relation, one must read either or both documents”.
In an expert or smart network, a link A ⟶ B between two nodes (two pieces of information) conveys expert information. It can for instance mean that A is a supporting argument for B and, importantly, the link itself may specify how exactly A supports B.
Information is highly contextual: a piece of information looses its capacity to properly inform as soon as it is severed from the context that gives it its meaning, i.e. as soon as it is considered independently of the details of how it connects to environing pieces of information and to pieces of information it is built with. In other words, to appreciate information properly, entails to appreciate a network of pieces of information.
How does one tell the limit of this network (context) that is to be appreciated? In theory one can’t. For all we know until evidence of the contrary, any piece of information in the world could be related to any other. In practice however, no reasoning mind is able to appreciate the whole indefinite extent of a piece of information’s context. The reasoning mind must limit – often arbitrarily – its scope to an appreciable bounded version of the network. The characteristic of expertly reasoning minds is that they know how to safely do that (limit the scope of their appreciation of the network). They trade appreciation of the network for appreciation of the arbitrary limit of a network. This gives them solid grounds on which to build further information. This is the very principle and magic of science: by restricting attention to a well circumscribed context, we produce reliable actionable information in that context.