What is Information?

(Tema 2.1, ver programa)

Upon this gifted age, in this dark hour,
Falls from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts...they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leach us of our ill
Is daily spun: but there exists no loom
to weave it into fabric...
(Murray Gell-Mann)

+ Introduction

"Information gently but relentlessly drizzles down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain. Encoded in radio waves that fill the atmosphere, its mists fill the air, passing trough the walls of our houses and penetrating our very bodies" (3)

"Symbols furnish the substrate - information carries the meaning" (3)

"The information universe (...) grow exponentially" (4)

• University of California, produce more information in 3 years than in the preceding 300,000 years. [IBM- Info Services]

"Information is information, not matter or energy" (Norbert Wiener)

+ The Spell of Democritus

• Information will transform physics by inducing the observer's position: "Ours is therefore a participatory universe; in which, according to John Wheeler, the observer cannot be redacted out of the picture" (13)
• Democritus of Abdera: a) the world is made of atoms; b) Convention (subjective reality) as opposed to Objective Reality, there is not an obvious split between them [Kant, phenomenon & noumena]
  
• Richard Feynman: Information is the ability to compress data

"Information mediates between the material and the abstract, between the real and the ideal" (17)

+ In-formation: the roots of the concept

"The aim of science is not things in themselves, as the dogmatists in their simplicity imagine, but the relations between things; outside those relations there is no reality knowable" (Henri Poincare)

• Relationships are not necessarily spatial (causal, logic, ...)
• [Italo Calvino, Las Ciudades Invisibles]

"Information carries the connotation of activity that is absent from mere form. (...) Information, then, refers to imposing, detecting or communicating a form (...) Information is the transfer of form from one medium to another (...) We can tentatively define information as the communication of relationships" (25)
"In-formation -the infusion of form- the flow of relationships - the communication of messages" (26)

+ Counting Bits: Classic Information

• Claude Shanon Information: yes-or-no (0-1). Shannon did not considered the semantic dimension of information. Engineering problems of transmission
  
• Weaver: identified levels of complexity in information and its communication
• Shannon reduced information to its most basic unit, and measures it adding up BITS
• The question will be: ¿2 bits carry more information than one bit?

+ Qubit: Information cannot be explained only through addition

• Quantum Theory: Blending contradictory attributes is the normal state of affairs of atomic systems; Hence, measurement is a creative act!
• Zeilinger: the bit -act of creation- is the nugget that we can get from the qubit -information magnicorpus, substrate-.

FUENTE: Astrosurf / Universe Review

• Quantum Gadget: Bring to the public eye the previously unseen.
• Reliability: probability that a message is correct [concesiones de certeza]
• Semantic information order
  

+ "What is information? The Flow of Bits and the Control of Chaos"

• Information society: Economic Philosophy, Business Logic, and Democratization? [Techno Utopias vs. Distopias]
  
• Sociedad de la Información: de la falacia lingüística a la tautología; Ideological debates & Popular Culture.
  
• Use of term "information" has come to absurdity
• Most groundroots (classical view, von Baeyer) forget meaning
• Information & Knowledge diverge (Multiplicity, Spatial, & Temporal)
• CONJUNCTION OF SCIENCES:
  
• a) Cybernetics: N. Wiener, self-correcting & self-regulating systems [Guerra], [Wiener, A. Rosenblueth & W. Pitts; Theleology & Circular Casuality: FEEDBACK, governed by entropy] [Cybernetics Society: von Neumann, Mculloch, Bateson, Mead, etc...]
  
• Information: concrete bundles, discrete physically, decontextualized and fluidly moving (8)
• b) Systems Theory: "oil flow model" of information: undifferented fluid through communication circuits; Values cannot be "information regulators" within a system; Mening is a matter of form, not amount ---- Message & preexisting form of the reciever
• c) Computer Sciences: Cognitive Science & AI; Descartes: Information processing device: Rationalism [Edelman, Second Nature: discard Cartesian dualism]; Ideas as objects & Intelligence as their Manipulator [Gitelman, Record and Document; Types & Tokens]: Communications Metaphor.
  
• d) Information Theory: Transmission & Engineering problems; "Information has to become a singular element with unique character"
• Information Economics: Economists reduce information from its semantic content; 2 functions: resource, INPUT (control of market & reduction of uncertainty, mostly in prices; OUTPUT, materialized & sold as a commodity (KEY ELEMENT of the so called Information Society); Producer Consumer in relation to information consumption [Tapscott's Prosumer & IT]; Disorganizing Information: Can we solve the destruction of meaning?
• "Information sciences operates within a binary logic of reflection which results in a multiple paths, but these paths are always circumscribed by laws of combination" (Delleuze & Guattari) ---- Fragmented time & space of information flows.
• Information: disorganizes, interrupts, remain & disperse; Is an heterogeneous remapping of space and time