Abstract
<jats:p>The modern era is defined not by a shortage but by an excess of information. The growth of data and the acceleration of communications do not enhance understanding but often lead to cognitive overload, fragmentation of perception, and a decline in the quality of decisions. As Herbert Simon (1971) noted, “a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention,” emphasizing that an excess of information leads to a deficit of attention as a key cognitive resource. Later, Neil Postman (1985) pointed out that information flows in the media environment are beginning to serve not the function of deepening understanding, but rather the function of entertainment and the fragmentation of reality. Manuel Castells (1996) linked this to the formation of a network society, in which information becomes not only a resource but also a mechanism for structuring power and social relations. Text-centric management models, based on codification and regulation, become a source of rigidity in complex conditions: they increase regulatory overload, reduce adaptability, and lead to decision paralysis, as they handle uncertainty poorly and fail to foster innovation. In this context, the importance of image-centered and creative strategies for working with information is growing. Contemporary research on the “visual turn” (Mitchell, 1994; Boehm, 1994; Mirzoeff, 1999) shows that the image is not secondary to text but functions as an independent form of cognition that precedes the verbalization and structuring of experience. Images allow us to work with uncertainty, a premonition of change, low-signal processes, and scenario-based thinking. This is precisely why visual thinking, applied dramaturgy, scenario design, and creative methods of information processing are becoming not merely auxiliary but strategic management tools. Artificial intelligence occupies a special place in this context. In public discourse, AI is often viewed as a tool for generating new knowledge. However, this study proposes a different interpretation: artificial intelligence is primarily a tool for capturing, scaling, and reproducing existing patterns, rather than a mechanism for genuine understanding. An algorithmic system is capable of enhancing the processing, structuring, and reproduction of information, but it does not replace the processes of meaning-making, cognitive transformation, and the dramaturgical transition from situation to event. AI represents the culmination of text-centered logic, but not an overcoming of its limitations. In this context, creative thinking should be viewed not as a soft skill or an optional competency, but as a management technique. Research by Guilford (1950), Torrance (1974), Csikszentmihalyi (1996), Boden (2004), and Sawyer (2012) show that creativity serves as a mechanism for overcoming uncertainty, a tool for generating new solutions, and a means of adapting systems to an unstable environment. For business, this means a shift from process management to meaning management; for public administration, a shift from normative administration to scenario-based management; for advertising and PR, a shift from message delivery to the architecture of trust and the construction of interpretive models. This monograph is a logical continuation of the previous study, “The Information Evolution of Thinking: From Data to Understanding. Information Methodologies, Perceptual Paradigms” (Ivanova, 2025), in which the methodology of “infology” was developed as a tool for information analysis, cognitive diagnostics, and the transition from data to understanding. The central question in the first monograph was: what is information, and how can perceptual distortions be overcome in the context of an information crisis? A formula for the meaning of information was proposed, and it was demonstrated that information is not reducible to data but constitutes an adaptive process of organizing uncertainty. The second monograph develops this methodology and shifts the focus from the analysis of information to the processes of generating the new. While the first work was devoted to infology as the study of the nature of information, this work establishes the field of creative infology – a disciplinary approach that examines the mechanisms of transforming information into solutions, strategies, innovations, and managerial actions. Thus, the research aims to develop theoretical and applied models of creative work with information that enable a transition from recording to understanding, from understanding to meaning, and from meaning to strategic action. In this work, human perception is viewed as the foundation of information processing. It is worth emphasizing that people, while working with information on a daily basis, rarely realize that they are dealing not with the objects of reality themselves, but only with their representations – fluid, incomplete, interpretive, and often distorted forms of the world’s presence in consciousness. Information is perceived as something self-evident: data, facts, messages, news. However, behind this apparent self-evidence lies a far more complex phenomenon – a special medium between the object and perception, within which the formation of meaning, decisions, and the very subject of cognition takes place. Every day, a person solves the canonical task of working with information: “Go I Know Not Whither and Fetch I Know Not What.” This activity is so embedded in everyday life that it ceases to be perceived as an independent cognitive process. The search for the right meaning in a stream of disparate signals, messages, interpretations, and signs becomes the natural backdrop of existence. People look for a “needle in a haystack,” not always realizing that this “haystack” itself is not objective reality, but a complex construct of representations, interpretations, and social fixations. Contemporary society, on the contrary, actively imposes the idea that it is information that governs the world and the future. To a significant extent, this statement is true: decisions are made based on data, social processes are regulated by communication, reputations are built and destroyed in the information space, and governance is increasingly becoming the management of streams of interpretations. However, it is fundamentally important to understand: information does not act on its own, but only to the extent that its representations more or less correspond to reality, rather than being artificially constructed illusions, simulacra, or instruments of manipulation. This is precisely where the key problem of perception arises. A person works not with an object, but with its image; not with reality, but with its cognitive model. There is always a gap between an event and its understanding – a space of interpretation where trust, doubt, distortion, emotional reaction, and decision-making take shape. This layer between the objective world and perception is the true medium of human informational life. This is where not only knowledge but also values, beliefs, fears, identity, and modes of action are formed. Nicholas Luhmann defined information as “a differentiation that alters the state of a system, that is, produces another differentiation” (Luhmann, 2005). This definition is particularly important because it takes information beyond the understanding of it as a static set of data. Information is not a thing, but an event of change. It does not exist outside the system of perception: information becomes information only when it triggers a transformation of a state – cognitive, emotional, social, or institutional. Thus, a person works not merely with messages, but with the potential to change reality through interpretation. Global crises – pandemics, economic collapses, political conflicts – serve as a telling example. Often, it is not the physical event itself that has the decisive impact, but rather the informational differentiation – the message that enters the environment and triggers a cascade of new changes. Stock markets react to expectations, societies to interpretations, and people to fears, hopes, and visions of the future. In this case, information becomes a trigger for the transformation of the environment, rather than merely a reflection of what is happening. On an individual level, this mechanism is even more evident. A single remark, a chance phrase heard at the right moment, can change the course of a person’s life; a single message can destroy trust; a single word can shape a new identity. Or, conversely, go unnoticed. This underscores the most important feature of perception: information is not equal to meaning. Meaning arises only at the point where information and the subject meet. This is precisely why the task of a person who realizes that they are working not with “things” but with representations does not become simpler, but rather significantly more complex. It is necessary not merely to receive information, but to be able to recognize the degree to which it corresponds to reality, to distinguish meaning from noise, reality from simulation, knowledge from fixation, and understanding from repetition. Working with information becomes not a technical data-processing procedure, but an intellectual practice of selection, structuring, and meaning-making. In this context, the ability to structure information becomes particularly important. People strive to live in a world that is at least relatively predictable, whereas the information environment is inherently unstable and fluid. Changeability is its natural state. Consequently, the main task lies not in accumulating facts, but in creating stable cognitive frameworks that allow one to navigate change. If a person refuses to do this work, choosing instead to ignore new information and avoid change, they find themselves in a kind of “Groundhog Day” – in a world of repetitive patterns where there is no development, and stability is achieved at the cost of turning away from reality. Conversely, creative work with information requires the ability to enter a space of uncertainty, to manage complexity, to construct new models of understanding, and to transform the chaos of change into a manageable structure. Thus, human perception becomes not merely a psychological characteristic, but the fundamental basis of all information. It is through perception that information is transformed into meaning, meaning into a decision, and a decision into action. Consequently, the study of creative strategies in information activity is impossible without an understanding of how humans perceive, interpret, and construct their own reality.</jats:p>