Information
Technoculture as Living Technology :
Toward a New Science of Integrated Information
We propose that worldbuilding, as a (re)emerging field of interdisciplinary practice, is the most well-suited methodology & process of equitably integrating diverse human and non-human knowledge systems and ways of being into our unified understanding of the fundamental properties of the universe.
“While the Enlightenment may have helped lay the foundation for the way that I see the world in my day-to-day science, it did not leave us with a good legacy on valuing human life. We must start looking elsewhere for a new way of looking at the world of relations between living things. It may be that in tandem with this, we will find that there are new ways of seeing the universe itself. We may find that it gives us new reasons to care about where the universe came from and how it got to be here.”
- Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
Overview
What is information?
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level, information pertains to the interpretation (perhaps formally) of that which may be sensed, or their abstractions. Any natural process that is not completely random and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analogue signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation.
The concept of information is relevant or connected to various concepts, including constraint, communication, control, data, form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental stimuli, pattern, perception, proposition, representation, and entropy.
Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of digital information. The field was fundamentally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. The field is at the intersection of probability theory, statistics, computer science, statistical mechanics, information engineering, and electrical engineering.
A key measure in information theory is entropy. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a die (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual information, channel capacity, error exponents, and relative entropy. Important sub-fields of information theory include source coding, algorithmic complexity theory, algorithmic information theory and information-theoretic security.
Applications of fundamental topics of information theory include source coding/data compression (e.g. for ZIP files), and channel coding/error detection and correction (e.g. for DSL). Its impact has been crucial to the success of the Voyager missions to deep space, the invention of the compact disc, the feasibility of mobile phones and the development of the Internet. The theory has also found applications in other areas, including statistical inference, cryptography, neurobiology, perception, linguistics, the evolution and function of molecular codes (bioinformatics), thermal physics, molecular dynamics, quantum computing, black holes, information retrieval, intelligence gathering, plagiarism detection, pattern recognition, anomaly detection and even art creation. (via. Wiki)
Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information.[1] Practitioners within and outside the field study the application and the usage of knowledge in organizations in addition to the interaction between people, organizations, and any existing information systems with the aim of creating, replacing, improving, or understanding the information systems.
Historically, information science (informatics) is associated with computer science, data science, psychology, technology, library science, healthcare, and intelligence agencies.[2]However, information science also incorporates aspects of diverse fields such as archival science, cognitive science, commerce, law, linguistics, museology, management, mathematics, philosophy, public policy, and social sciences.
Information science focuses on understanding problems from the perspective of the stakeholders involved and then applying information and other technologies as needed. In other words, it tackles systemic problems first rather than individual pieces of technology within that system. In this respect, one can see information science as a response to technological determinism, the belief that technology "develops by its own laws, that it realizes its own potential, limited only by the material resources available and the creativity of its developers. It must therefore be regarded as an autonomous system controlling and ultimately permeating all other subsystems of society
Information engineering is the engineering discipline that deals with the generation, distribution, analysis, and use of information, data, and knowledge in systems.[1][2][3][4][5] The field first became identifiable in the early 21st century.
The components of information engineering include more theoretical fields such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, control theory, signal processing, and information theory, and more applied fields such as computer vision, natural language processing, bioinformatics, medical image computing, cheminformatics, autonomous robotics, mobile robotics, and telecommunications.[1][2][5][6][7] Many of these originate from computer science, as well as other branches of engineering such as computer engineering, electrical engineering, and bioengineering.
The field of information engineering is based heavily on mathematics, particularly probability, statistics, calculus, linear algebra, optimization, differential equations, variational calculus, and complex analysis.
Information engineers often hold a degree in information engineering or a related area, and are often part of a professional body such as the Institution of Engineering and Technology or Institute of Measurement and Control. They are employed in almost all industries due to the widespread use of information engineering.
Information Systems involves the effective design, delivery, and use of information and communications technologies to solve problems for companies, governments, and society. Equally, it is about understanding and measuring the impacts of these technologies on people and communities so they can be deployed ethically.
Watch : How Information Helps Us Understand the Fabric of Reality
ABSTRACT : Our Reality In Formation
Our Reality, In Formation 2022
Slide 4 highlights a video from a performance piece entitled Communication, which I created in 2013 with artist Madeline Moore as a part of my Pandrogeny exhibition. The work illustrates the inherent challenges of communication between two sources (in this case costumed avatars), it’s a concept that I only later discovered aligned exactly with the description of mathematician and information scientist Claude Shannon’s theory of information in 1948. Part of my core hypothesis is the need for an update to this theory and the resulting paradigm shift in our understanding of communication & information will lead to a revolution in information infrastructure.
The Experiment: Another World is Possible
Experiment Description:
We have created a room-scale many-bodied quantum computer, with each visitor behaving as individual entangled topological Qbits. The turbulent, chaotic nature of social dynamics in our closed environment act as insulators for the encoded information in each Qbit state vector as they enter and exit a series of gates. This, in essence, mirrors the conditions of the quantum vacuum, with fluctuations that result in an emergent spacetime fabric. The state vectors are therefore encrypted via quantum entanglement as each state represents a random number generated within a hyperdimensional matrix of the exploration space. The deltas between state vector phase transitions represent combinatorial “uniqueness”, therefore generating unique informational structures which are anti-entropic in this distributed system. This shows the potential to generate energy and exponential computational power from quantum behaviors exhibited by the distributed, chaotic and entangled nature of social network dynamics.