Modes of Correspondence between Information System and World

For an information system (IS) to be useful, it must correspond in some way to the world. This is often described as a relationship between the model of the world that the IS maintains and the ‘real’ world outside the IS. But this talk of models and correspondence begs these questions: what does it mean for an IS to correspond to the world, and what is the purpose of this correspondence? Since an IS is a practical artifact, it is not surprising that these two questions, the question of meaning and the question of use, are tightly related. The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the relatedness of the questions, to sketch answers to both, relate the discussion to current debate in the field of requirements engineering research, and to ground the discussion in the context of a real example. The word ‘philosophy’ today has acquired unfortunate connotations among some technical designers, as though it were a synonym for worthless speculation. Lest there be any doubt about practical significance of such analysis, the focus of this paper is on the type of IS, fiduciary applications, in which people place a lot of trust and invest a part of their personal identity, and for which the theoretical issues discussed herein are of great practical, moral and political significance.