MudisSalkauskas asks What is information?

Books

Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd

Information

FranzNahrada:Global Villages, February 5, 2007 For me it was most important that a wiki has a table of contents like a book. A garden plan so to speak. A topology of all content in which I can orient myself. A map. I like to see a common "information landscape". Some stable ground to build and to return. I even think in topologies, I organize my mind as landscape. I like to communicate my mind as a landscape. This landscape should be constantly nurtured by the findings of the mailing list. Things should be put at the right place, like collecting nuts and bringing them home before wintertime.

FlemmingFunch: Siavash, yes, I think what is the bright spot is the potential for the availablity of information. If we're informed and aware enough, things will change. Because, no matter how much power any particular organization has, it still all flows from the individual choices we make, and the collective effect of those individual choices. And most people aren't dumb or mean. If they have good information, if they're aware of what is going on, they will choose accordingly. And that's the basic of a free economy and a free society. Many people making many informed decisions.

That's where I have the highest degree of hope. Our ability to access information is increasing rapidly. There's a bit too much of it, but it is very likely that tools appear along the way that will allow us to better understand what we're looking at. It is not possible to keep us in the dark forever.

And, yes, the power to change what a corporation is, and what its boundaries are, is still with the governments. They can change the laws, and even the most powerful corporations have to go along. OK, unfortunately, most governments have submitted themselves to some trade agreements that limit their ability to regulate corporations, but there's for sure still ways.

And, again, governments will have to go along, if enough people start thinking differently about things, and they demand changes.

Sign

RonaldStamper, Living By Truth, July 17, 2007 I've only observed so far but here is a question where I might help,

During my time in industry I noted that computer-based systems often failed organisationally although they were fine technically. To cut a long story short, this led me to discard 'information' as a very vague term in favour of 'sign' which refers to anything standing for something else. Signs are the basis of information and examining the properties of signs, we arrive at numerous, precise meanings for 'information'.

I'll attach a paper on this topic. Sorry, it is so old, dating from 1971 that I cannot find a machine-readable version. However the following may serve.

with more on the defintiions in

Finally I wrote a book 'Information' published in 1973 in New York by Wiley (Halstead Press) and in London by Batsford. It's out of print and I'm scheduled to write a second edition. (Whether I have time before I die, I cannot tell!)

That has led to a research programme that started in 1971, as soon as 'Information' was handed to the publisher, dealing with Organisational Semiotics, the application of the Doctrine of Signs (John Locke, CS Peirce, Charles Morris, and many others) to understanding organisations treated as information systems.

I'll attach another paper that I'm giving to two conferences in joint session next week. They are the International Conference on Organisational Semiotics and the International Conference on Conceptual Structures.

This second paper sketches the main results of the work on a semiotics-based theory of organised human behaviour. .

Best wishes for your deliberations. Unfortunately, I'll be unable to participate.

I would welcome feedback if anyone takes the trouble to look at these papers.

Regards,

RonaldStamper