Dear Klaus,

This is a brief reply to your post of the 11 October. Thank you for your
comments. They made me think hard about why and how we should view such a
simple issue so differently. I agree with you in the tests you set about
trying to understand the phenomena. We come to similar conclusions about the
outcomes of those tests. It seems where we differ is in how we interpret
those outcomes into theory and concepts. Here is a more nuanced picture from
my side.

The phenomena that we refer to in terms of 'information' are tightly linked
with the phenomena of change. On one side, we can see it as an aspect of a
person gaining experience in the sense that a person is 'informed' by their
perception of the world, i.e. a change is 'formed in' them. On another side,
we can view information (process or object) as resulting from intention and
design. That is, information is used to cause change in people. On a third
side, we can view information as the perceivable aspects of a process (the
shavings on the floor). On another side, and one that is central to your
comments and my earlier comments, we can view information in terms of how we
conceptualise it into theory in ways that integrate with existing theories
and concepts and with how humans use language. On another side, we can view
how accurately the way we conceptualise the phenomena of information in
terms with our other observations of the external world and out internal
perspectives of it.

There are many different epistemological and ontological perspectives we can
take on each of these.  You seem to be trying try to force my comments into
a simplistic mechanistic paradigm. That is unhelpful except as a straw man
argument . We do differ in perspective. My focus is less psychological and
sociological. Probably the deepest difference between our positions is in
relation to subjectivity. As I understand it, for you a person's subjective
understandings of, and feelings about, the world are central and paramount
(a similar position to that of Varela). In my perspective they are less
central, regarded with caution as primarily false and relatively
insignificant. In other words, I'm often coming from the point of view that
the sense of self and all that goes with it (subjective thought and
feelings) is an incidental illusory artifact of our condition as animals
(i.e. an ethological rather than neurophenomenological perspective). I'd
welcome your comments on this.

These differences in perspective explain some of the reasons why you would
opt for one explanation and me another. Four things stood out as important
to respond to in your post.

First, to burn two straw men before you use them again. I'm assuming people
subjectively (and objectively) change differently as a result of reading
something or reading the same thing at a different time. In addition, from
my perspective, there is no requirement for an accurate one-to-one
correspondence between individuals' perception of the world (seen
informatically or in other ways) and the internal changes to the
individuals. Examples of evidence are the relative lack of success of
advertising, our ability to think differently from authorities, that we can
think beyond existing theories, and that we can fall in love.

On the variety issue, I feel you are trying to be unnecessarily difficult or
obtuse or setting up another straw man argument. Of course all theories are
a simplification of the world. That is obvious. As is obvious that we can
only read into a theory what it represents in its variables. A core issue of
all theories, often unsaid for brevity, is that they also include a very
specific set of delimitations as to the specific small aspects of the world
they are attempting to represent and the limitations on how they do this. It
is in this context, theories must have at least the amount of informational
variety as what they _claim_ to represent - otherwise they fail as theories.


There seems to be some confusion about 'what is an entity' with you taking
the position that my suggestion that information is best theorized in entity
terms conflates information (content/meaning) and message
(container/carrier). This appears to be another straw man?  I clearly
differentiate content, container, meaning, effect and intention. 

In contrast, to say 'information is 'a measure of the difference in
uncertainty' (your words) is to describe information wholly in entity terms.
'Measure', 'difference', 'uncertainty' are all theoretical entities. If it
was of interest, as a design method, you could 'gather' figures about
'measure', 'the difference' and the 'uncertainty'. There is an alternative,
to view these in terms of subjective perception and feelings. In which case,
we would be in a different ball game as we have very different perspectives
on this realm of phenomena. 

I'm wondering whether we are that different in understanding on
'information', and how much of the difference in how we describe the
phenomena is due to the differences in underlying perspectives on for
example subjectivity? 

Best wishes,
Terry

-----Original Message-----
From: Klaus Krippendorff [mailto:[log in to unmask]] 
Sent: Saturday, 11 October 2008 3:31 AM
To: Terence Love; [log in to unmask]
Subject: RE: information as an entity rather than an activity

terry,

your post is long and tries to make logical arguments that associates the
concept of information in the mathematical theory of communication with
process, and ends with justifying your notion of information as entities
independent of human functioning.

in information theory, information is a measure of the difference in
uncertainty between say, reading and not reading a text.  while reading is a
process, the differnec is not. 

if information is some thing that one could gather, hence exists outside of
human beings, 

can you explain that one message which provides a certain amount of
information, if sent a second time does not add to the former? information
theoreticians would say the second message is redundant, you would have to
conclude that each conveys the same amount of information.  it follows that
information cannot be an attribute of an entity (message).

can you explain the fact that one message affords different readings for
different people?  if information were an entity, this would not make sense.
the concept of information as an entity is associated with an
authoritarianism that insists messages have but one reading.

you seem to want to time-tag information by talking about new and old
information.  obviously, this time-tag has something to do with when someone
reads it not with the entity in question.

you refer to cybernetics without saying anything about the concepts you are
alluding to by that name.

you are saying that a theory must have more variety than what it represents.
just the opposite is the case.  any theory reduces the variety of phenomena
to the variables it theorizes.  the theory of free fall does not say
anything about aerodynamics and weather conditions of the experiments
conducted.

sorry, your getting into abstractions and meta-abstractions does not
convince me at all.

let me add that there are theories other than shannon's and i am not taking
what i said as the only approach.  but whatever approach is taken,
information is -- in varela's terms "in-formation"  and according to ashby,
cybernetics the study of systems that are informationally closed, an idea
that is totally different from what you assert and i wished you wouldn't say
you could speak as cybernetician.

you asked for my thoughts

klaus 

  

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design on behalf of Terence Love
Sent: Mon 10/6/2008 12:27 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: information as an entity rather than an activity
 
Dear Klaus,

Apologies for the delay in replying to your messages of last week. Your main
point as I understand it (see below) is differentiating two ways of viewing
information. The first is as an object and the second as  "the difference
between two states of uncertainty". As I understand it, you regard the first
as independent of human functioning (i.e. ahumanly objectivist) and the
second as a fully engaged process of being human. From your messages it
appears you tend towards the second position and regard that as correct, and
you regard my position as being 'objectivist' and regard that as wrong.

I'd like to suggest you are mistaken - for three reasons - and hope to
persuade you to take a different view.

First, I'd like to remind you about the meta structure and dynamics of
theories. This is sometimes conceived as part of the core of cybernetics,
where (in the simple view) theories typically consist of  combinations of
'representative things' and 'representative processes' (or 'activities')
that are arranged together into coherent chunks to represent situations and
(with a bit of luck) offer us the ability to guess what might happen if we
do certain things in the realm of what the theory covers.

One way of describing the difference between our positions is to say that in
talking about information I use a 'representative thing'  type of approach,
and you talk in theory terms about information as a process or activity. 

In terms of the everyday view of 'what it is to be human', your approach
makes more sense. Humans are about doing things, processes and activities;
like reading and thinking and processing.

Stepping back to the abstract world of theory, as a cybernetic theoretician,
things can look a little different - or perhaps the same. There are several
characteristics we know about theories. One is that any theory must have the
same or more amount of variety (sometimes seen as degrees of freedom) than
the situation being theorized about. Otherwise, the theory simply can't be
complicated enough to fully represent that situation. A crude application of
this is the argument that we are not clever enough to understand how our
brains work because that would need more brain  etc. 

Another meta-characteristic of theories is that there always exists a large
number of theories all equally capable of theoretically representing a
situation provided they have sufficient variety (as described above). The
variety approach suggests the number isn't infinite and its bound is related
to the factorial of the amount of variety in the theories.

In this abstract view, it doesn't matter whether real world aspects of a
situation are related to 'representative things' or 'representative
processes' in the sense that the entity-operator relationship is
commutative. This is in much the same way that the theory of planetary
behaviour that had the sun going round the earth works just as well as
having the earth going round the sun (in fact many navigators still use the
first). The situation is on one of differences of frames of reference.
Solving some of the equations is easier one way but in essence both can
accurately represent the situation. This is why  Activity Theory can be (as
I read recently) 'agnostic to agency' (if anyone has the reference I'd
appreciate it). Humans and objects both have equivalent status in terms of
being active.

I suggest to you that the situation is similar with respect to information.

A good reply would be that it is easier and makes more sense (as I said in
para 4) to view information as a human activity. 

The problem is that this only takes you so far. At a certain point someone
will want to know how this 'informationing' or 'informing' activity/process
happens.  To say it is a 'difference between two states' (as you said - see
below) doesn't solve anything, and, as I'll suggest in the next section,
moves you into the other camp. The problem is that if you look at the
informationing/informing activity deeply it falls into two subactivities.
One group of information activities is outside humans and the other inside
humans. For the information activities outside humans it is fairly
straightforward to use theories in which the idea of information is
represented by objects. It is when humans are more intimately involved that
the difficulties arise and it appears to make more sense to see information
as an activity. The question then 'How does  'informing' or 'informationing'
activity happen?' can be looked at in a variety of ways, e.g.
psychologically, behaviorally, biologically, neurologically, informatically
etc. At many points in any of the possible approaches, however, the
information activity becomes a focus, in theory terms, 'an object' of the
exploration or study. As far as I can see, this means there is always a
fundamental 'object-ness' about the idea of information, even when it is
regarded in some situations as a process.


The third point is that (as a touchstone) you suggest that the alternative
to seeing information in terms of it being an entity is that it is a
'difference between two states of uncertainty'. A 'state' is an objective
phenomenon, i.e. it is a theoretical entity rather than a process. One of
the theory characteristics referred to earlier applies to differences. A key
characteristic of a 'difference' is that it always has the same properties
as the two things it differentiates. That is, in terms of information, the
difference has the properties of the 'states', i.e. information is an
objective thing rather than a process or activity.

Looking at things practically, I think what both of us are trying to achieve
is to bring in the subjective dimension of what it is to be human with all
the feelings, confusion, unpredictability and dependence on social influence
that that entails. Its possible to build sound theory with information as a
theory entity or a theoretical activity. There are advantages both ways in
different situations. 

My feeling the advantage is with 'information as an entity' to bridge across
all the theory realms of interest in understanding design and creativity.

Thoughts?

Terry

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<snip>Klaus (30/9/08),
"all of this is secondary to the issue of whether information is an entity
that you can search for, gather, or organize.  this objectification hides
the human participation in what is information, manifest in many of your
assertions, including in your distinction between old and new information. i
suggested to you to look into information theory where information is the
difference between two states of uncertainty, before or after something was
read or attended to.  when conceptualizing information this way, it makes no
sense to speak of old and new information or gathering information, or
organizing information."<endsnip>



-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Tuesday, 30 September 2008 12:36 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Organ, Organize, Organism

ken, terry, eduardo and others,

the discussion of the meaning of "organize" is a distraction from the point
of not treating information as entities that one could find, gather, sort,
organize, and process.

one can find pebbles on the beach, gather documents in preparation for a
meeting, organize a file, separate old from more recent correspondence, and
scan documents to be edited on a computer, but one can't do those things to
how people reduce their uncertainties, become more clear in their judgments,
know what they should be doing -- information.

associating design research with gathering or organizing new information
created a cognitive trap right from the start. this is why i suggested --
merely to highlight the difference between (re)search and design:

this is why i seriously suggested:
(1) (re)search is the creation of information.
information is what someone believes to be arguably correct and is committed
to take it as such.  the arguments involved may well include the use of
acceptable methods.  the emphasis on arguability renders information a
social phenomenon, not an exclusively cognitive one, one of con-sensual
coordination with others.

(2) design is creatively extending, elaborating, questioning, and overcoming
existing conceptions in view of the future realities they promote for others
to live in.
in my experiences design needs to find a delicate balance between accepting
certain information and violating what everyone seems to take for granted
and convince stakeholders in a design of its virtues.

klaus