Understanding Context

Part I. The Context Problem

What It Is and How to Think About It

PEOPLE HAVE BEEN TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW WE UNDERSTAND THE WORLD FOR A VERY LONG TIME; and from all evidence, there are no certain answers for many of the most important questions. So, it would seem that writing a book about “context” would be a fool’s errand. Why try to tackle it to begin with? What do we mean by it when we say it? And after going to all this trouble, what real-world problems will it help us to solve?

Figure I.1. A seventeenth-century illustration by Robert Fludd, illustrating his somewhat occult, prescientific ideas on metaphysics, bodily senses, thought, and inspiration^[1]

Part I helps to answer these questions. It introduces the basic challenges of a growing “context problem” to establish reasons why we should bother with understanding context at all. It also presents common scenarios to help illustrate those challenges. Finally, it introduces a working definition of context, and some models we will use to explore how information works to create and shape context in the chapters to come.

^[1] Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris [...] historia, tomus II (1619), tractatus I, sectio I, liber X, De triplici animae in corpore vision (from Wikimedia Commons)