9/24/18

“Information theory is indifferent to meaning”.

Beginning our class with a video on the mechanical mouse and the application of “boolean algebra”, we discussed the overarching idea of logic, and the main idea that you can solve a problem in logic without having any information on the contents of the problem – the issue itself doesn’t matter, the logical structure is what matters. According to Shannon, “information” as understood in information theory has nothing to do with any inherent meaning in a message – it seeks to disregard the meaning of the message so that it can communicate more effectively. In other words, information and meaning are two different things. Google, for example, does not search for words – it doesn not know the meaning of the words either. It searches for the patterns within language and spelling repetitions. Even in other programs like GarageBand, musical and cultural traditions have been reduced to plain information, stripping them of their rich history.

Shannon himself was particularly optimistic about the spread of information, and specifically the expansion of artificial intelligence. “Shannon believed it was possible for a computer to play honestly, and to play better than a human” wrote Jimmy Soni and Rob Goodman in their book A Mind at Play on Shannon and the information age. Having this much optimism about the success of artificial intelligence, and not automatically believing that the invention of robots leads to the takeover of robots, may very well be an indicator of why Shannon had the ability to be so influential in the information age. (Soni/Goodman P.211).

9/26/18

“Information wants to be free.”

The notion that there is no central point for information was a key point of our discussion, and one of the main takeaways that I took note of. The spread of information has accelerated with the invention of the internet. The ARPANET, (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which was essentially the first version of the internet, started off extremely limited, but even by the 1970s it had doubled in size. It almost seems like once the idea of spreading information quickly was widely accepted, the information itself became uncontrollable; things that were originally created by people now control the way we think and act. The spread of information is not linear, and has no specific pathway. We discussed this idea with the example of hypertext, in which potentially every word in the text is linked to some or other words. Ultimately this notion is only going to get stronger, with the advancement of technology and lodes of communication. We may have more control of the mechanics, but the information has control of us.

From past lectures and readings so far, I immediately connected this idea that information demands to be free to that of music. Music spread throughout the country like wildfire once it had the means to do so, and like any other piece of information, it has no central point to return too.

Carr discusses the “interactivity, hyperlinking, searchability, (and) multimedia” aspects that make the internet so “attractive.” Information is so readily available to us with the click of a button; there is an “unprecedented volume of information available online” (Carr P.91). Through the simplicity of finding more available information, paired with the ever-increasing convenience of our devices themselves, “our use of the Net will only grow, and its impact on us will only strengthen” Carr P.92).