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| -information
(în´fer-mâ´shen) noun 1.
Knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction. - in´forma´tional adjective |
So,
this is the Age of Information. After the assorted feudal, industrial,
stone and other ages, the ages of slavery and conquest, the nuclear
age and the anti-ageing-age (which is still not over), here we are:
drowning in information. From the human point of view, too much information
is no information at all. While I'm writing this, the office colleague
responsible for the newspaper's travel section decides to throw away
all the beautifully designed, colorfully illustrated catalogues from
travel agencies. |
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In the simplest
everyday terms, "information" suggests a practical chunk of
reified experience, a unit of sense lodged on the hierarchy of knowledge
somewhere between data and report. |
information explosion (in-fer-mâ'shen eks-plo`zhen) noun 1. The current period in human history, in which the possession and dissemination of information has supplanted mechanization or industrialization as a driving force in society. 2. The rapid growth in the amount of information available today. Also called information revolution. | ||
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At
the turn of the twentieth century, Einstein, Heisenberg, and Schroedinger,
amongst others, turned the world of intelligence on its ear; the world,
according to the new physics and quantum mechanics, is infinitely more
mysterious and strange than ever previously imagined. One outcome of
this important update was the redefinition of what constituted "information."
In light of living in a universe of greater uncertainties, information
was redefined as "the unpredictability of a message". This
means, the more unpredictable the message, the more information there
is in it. |
When
a message is transmitted through a channel, or medium, such as a wire
or the atmosphere, it becomes susceptible to interference from many
sources, which distorts and degrades the signals. Two of the major concerns
of information theory are the reduction of noise-induced errors in communication
systems and the efficient use of total channel capacity. Efficient |
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Chaos
often breeds life, when order breeds habit. |
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In all chaos there
is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order. collective unconscious: In Jungian psychology, a part of the unconscious mind, shared by a society, a people, or all humankind. The product of ancestral experience, it contains concepts of science, religion, and morality, for example. | ||
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The 23rd hexagram of the I-Ching signifies chaos, Disintegration."A chao (pronounced "cow") is a single unit of chaos...therefore, chaoboys and chaogirls wear designer genes of future myths..." from The 23 Erisian Mysteries |
The
dragon of Chaos wore a far more honorable face in the East, where it
was known as the Tao. For ancient sages like Chuang-Tzu, the subtle
order of natural chaos was rich and bountiful compared to the bankrupt
legalism and moralistic strictures of Confucian civilization -- which
paradoxically produced the very disorder it wanted to suppress. The
Taoists felt that only by tearing down the State of things -- including
ordinary consciousness -- could we return to the golden age, the mixed-up
harmony symbolized by the wonton (which derives from Mr. Hun-tun, Chuang-Tzu's
lord of chaos). If these anarchic dreams could not be realized in society
-- as Lao Tzu hoped to do -- then at least they could be realized in
the body, through spiritual and physical practices which would open
up the spontaneous chaos within.
Erik Davis, ,"Spiritual Chaos?" | ||
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Freedom
is just Chaos, with better lighting. Chaos
is a name for any order that produces confusion in our minds. |
Chaos is present everywhere in countless ways and forms, while Order remains an unattainable ideal. M.C. Escher, 29 December 1947 |
"Some
years ago", she said, "they were about so much", and
she holds her hands about half a meter apart. "I could sift thru
them, find interesting offers and bits I could criticize, compare prices,
form an opinion." Now, she sits behind a wall of paper. Because
the paper comprises too much information, it's just paper. Even in the
relatively focused world of German travel agencies, it's impossible
to keep informed. You have to rely on others to "inform" you,
meaning "infiltrate" you since they are interested parties.
Information becomes random. Chaotic. But chaos breeds life, doesn't
it? Or does the sheer amount of information and the number of connections
it gets by being hooked up to each other kind of transmogrify plain
ol'ordinary information into magical information?
transmission and storage of information require
the reduction of the number of bits used for encoding. This is possible
when processing English texts because letters are far from being completely
random. The probability is extremely high, for example, that the letter
following the sequence of letters informatio is an n. This redundancy
enables a person to understand messages in which vowels are missing,
for example, or to decipher unclear handwriting. In modern communications
systems, artificial redundancy is added to the encoding of messages
in order to reduce errors in message transmission.
Chaos
(kâ´òs´), in Greek mythology, the vacant, unfathomable
space from which everything arose. In the OLYMPIAN myth GAEA sprang
from Chaos and became the mother of all things.
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