Replying to LO29314 --
Dear informATs, please form this::
the essence of information is change and nothing else. A stone in the
riverbed "informs" its surrounding of its shape and changes its
surrounding. These changes - some may call it data, others energy - are
continous and everywere. We are in-formation too. But we - human beings
- have a disposition to abstract, to reificate, to form data into a
format and to treat these reifictions as real. The - reification - are
real in their implications - just because we act as if they are real -
but "dass Ding an sich" remains what it was, is and shall be: a
continuous process of change, changing. Information, to put it
differently, is a class and not an object. And of a peculiar class too:
it is self-referential, as you might have noticed.
You might also say: information is energy, the potential to change
(reification: data) or information is force, the power to change (and
its reification is called knowledge, knowledge is power, isn't it? That
is why organisations hunt for Knowledge Management) and information
comes also in the form of impulse: the trigger for change. There is
physical information, chemical and biochemical information (all =
change). In all these forms information had no real choice. Now
information has also become mental energy: it also shapes the world
inside our heads, directs the flow of inputs. Finally, information
became aware of itself in language - (doesn't your scripture says
somewere: "in the beginning was the word and the word was god.."?)
meaningful, as we're closing the circle and reason about the assumptions
we have for living. We're here to process information, to change.
Have to run, regads,
Jan Lelie
AM de Lange wrote:
>I wanted to call this topic "The Nature of Information". But somehow the
>word "nature" is not fittingly for me because I often perceive information
>and its use as unnatural.
>
>I snipped
>
>My fundamental stance, if i may call it that rather than a thesis, is that
>I think of knowledge as something which dwells within a person whereas
>information exists outside that person. A person requires knowledge to
>create meaningful information. A person also requires knowledge to create
>meaning from information and thereby possibly add to his/her own
>knowledge.
>snip
>
>The free energy landscape of information is even worse. Since information
>lacks in each of the 7Es, for example, it has no "becoming" in each
>"parcel", there is not even small dunes in the free energy landscape. It
>is absolutely flat from horizon to horizon. Hence the free energy cannot
>decrease to dr
>ive any other change. Among other things it means that
>information on its own can never give rise to other information.
>Information is sterile. Information is like the Skeleton Coast desert. It
>is worthless without knowledge to digest it. All the flagging of this dead
>beast with expert information systems will not give even one heart beat of
>life to it. Information is dead. Long live knowledge!
--Drs J.C. Lelie (Jan, MSc MBa) facilitator mind@work
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