Thinking back at a past conversation with some friends regarding the statement "lie to me", or how honesty is inferior in the context of relationships between people. It occurs to me now that it can also be explained by the dynamics between data and information.
A machine takes what comes from the sensor on one end of the wire and produces data at the other end. In this sense, a machine is always absolutely honest. Between machines, data is perfect. With people, raw data is problematic. Data is difficult to consume in an efficient way, requires too much processing time and energy, and in time isn't interesting enough to keep a person engaged. People fixed this with design. An information designer turns mechanical data into meaningful information. Design is of course manipulation, and in said relationship context, that might sound like a bad thing, but it can be a good thing with good intent. That's where trust plays in.
If people were absolutely honest with each other, we would be communicating with data. You could imagine being offended by someone telling you one morning that he thinks your shirt is the ugliest he's seen in 128 days, 22 hours, and 12 minutes - but it can be argued that you'd be so used to such comments as it would be normal. However in reality what has become commonplace is closer to lies. When you wear that awful bright floral shirt to work on casual-fridays and your cubicle-mate says "hey man nice shirt!", he did not produced data. He is efficiently communicating with information. With that simple statement, you get it. The honest data behind that statement could have been good or bad, and that is determined by the trust between you and your cubicle-mate. With such, you would parse that information accordingly in the background.
For example, the data you might have parsed from that statement could have been: "your shirt is ugly; so ugly that it is worth a remark; I needed a unique greeting to you so you don't think I am unfriendly; I like to think of myself as a polite person". In this example you trust that your cubicle-mate's intent is not very good in how he manipulated the data.
There are other hurdles worth mentioning that could be at play in such scenarios. There are flaws in the language itself which limit the conversion of data to accurate information. Some languages might be more or less capable of communicating particular ideas. Language then evolves through slang. There are also cultural differences that misalign and lead us to misinterpret.
More recently we've turned toward email and text messages to do much of out communication. This format leaves out the aspects of vocal intonation, facial expressions, and body gestures which are most useful in evaluating intent, establishing trust. Shorthand expressions, emoticons, and other ascii symbols have played a role in alleviating some of this for some time now, but insufficient. As publishers and recipients of such communication we seek and struggle to inject/gather meaningful signals. We actively read between the lines.
