David Weinberger’s article about information. Information is dependent on the context of usage. This is a concept that Karen Holtzblatt and Hugh Beyer presented in their seminal work, Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Design. Providing your customers and users the information they need/want requires taht you understand the context it will be used in. If an information is removed from a particular context it’s meaning can change.
"Decontextualizing something constitutes changing its nature since context comes first: Things are only what they are in context. Meaning is emergent and irreducible.
Understanding the context of usage has lead to companies using ethnography and anthropology to understand their customers and the world they live in. Intel is working to understand people’s lives, and then figure out how technology might help them in every day life. IDEO demonstrated the value of observing customers in context during their 1999 ABC News special "The Deep Dive". Other firms like PointForward have discovered the value of anthropological and ethnographic methods to understand customers, their lives and create innovative products.