Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Technology. Research in Philosophy and Technology. This paper deals with the perspective of interpretation theory or hermeneutics of the process of information storage and retrieval as it was conceived in the early eighties. Further developments in the information technology as well as a broad international discussion on the hermeneutic paradigm in the information field were added to the original paper from 1986. The main thesis concerns not only the interpretative nature of information seeking processes but also the role of interpretation with regard to the fragmentation of knowledge.
Information is the shape of knowledge at the end of modernity.
On the basis of the existential turn of interpretation theory the role of pre-understanding is stressed not only with regard to the information retrieval processes but also to the specific worldly situation in which the inquirers are embedded. After thirteen years, obviously, things have changed and I have done some further work too. Some of the articles as well as a list of publications can be found in my homepage . The present text is an enriched version of the original one. I have added some later insights without changing the basic ideas which I still think are valuable and can also be of help when reflecting, for instance, about the nature of communicating and searching for information in the Internet.