Lecture 15 - University of Florida · Lecture 15 . In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself. James Gleick, 2011 . The earliest historical meaning

Information

Theory, Concepts, Principles

~ space, time, and energy considerations

Lecture 15

In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself.

James Gleick, 2011

The earliest historical meaning of the word information in English was the act of informing, or giving form or shape to the mind, as in education, instruction, or training…. to give form to, to form an idea of.

Oxford English Dictionary, 1989

INFORMATION

In 1934 T.S. Eliot wrote in "The Rock"

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T.S. Eliot. The Rock (Faber & Faber 1934).

www.captainhops.com/.../

The Information Hierarchy…

Information, in its most restricted technical sense, is a sequence of symbols that can be interpreted as a message. Information can be recorded as signs, or transmitted as signals. Information is any kind of event that affects the state of a dynamic system. Conceptually, information is the message (utterance or expression) being conveyed. This concept has numerous other meanings in different contexts. Moreover, the concept of information is closely related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, instruction, knowledge, meaning, mental stimulus, pattern, perception, representation, and especially entropy.

Wikipedia...

1.  Facts provided or learned about something or someone.

2. A formal criminal charge lodged with a court or magistrate by a prosecutor without the aid of a grand jury. 3. the communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence 4. a signal or character representing data 5. something which justifies change in a construct that represents physical or mental experience or another construct 6. a numerical quantity that measures the uncertainty in the outcome of an experiment to be performed 7. the attribute inherent in and communicated by one of two or more alternative sequences or arrangements of something that produce specific effects 8. knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction

Information…definition

Information is the result of processing, gathering, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the receiver. In other words, it is the context in which data is taken.

Information…definition

Gregory Bateson defined "information" as a "difference that makes a difference".

Parainformation is the elemental, primordial type of information, the building block of any other type of information. FIRST ORDER INFROMATION

Structural information is composed of pieces of parainformation. SECOND ORDER INFORMATION

Metainformation is separate pieces of information that are merged to create more information. THIRD ORDER INFORMATION

He also suggest CODE as zero order information

Classification of Information…continued

The three types of information — parainformation, structural information, and metainformation

Andrzej Chmielecki, 1998

Information as a pattern This view assumes neither accuracy nor directly communicating parties, but instead assumes a separation between an object and its representation.

Traffic through a Web site called Valence created by Ben Fry, as part of his research into organic information design in the Aesthetics and Computation Group at the MIT Media Lab.


What are commonly referred to as data are forms of information in this sense. § When a pattern of something is transposed to a pattern of something else, the latter is information. § The gap between data and information is only closed by a behavioral bridge whereby some value, utility or meaning is added to transform mere data or pattern into information.

Information as sensory input Often information is viewed as a type of input to an organism or designed device. Inputs are of two kinds:

§  Causal Inputs - inputs that are important to the function of the organism or device

§  Information inputs: - inputs important only because they are associated with causal inputs and can be used to predict the occurrence of a causal input at a later time or place.

http://viz.cwrl.utexas.edu

When an organism with a nervous system receives an input, it transforms the input into an electrical signal. Defined this way, information does not have to be related to truth, communication, or representation of an object.


Information as an influence which leads to a transformation Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to perceive, much less appreciate, the pattern.


Consider, for example, DNA. The sequence of nucleotides is a pattern that influences the formation and development of an organism without any need for a conscious mind.

Systems theory at times seems to refer to information in this sense, assuming information does not necessarily involve any conscious mind, and patterns circulating (due to feedback) in the system can be called information.

Information as an influence which leads to a transformation

www.tom-carden.co.uk/ 2004/05/

In other words, it can be said that information in this sense is something potentially perceived as representation, though not created or presented for that purpose.



Information as Message. Information is the state of a system of interest. Message is the information materialized.

Information is a quality of a message from a sender to one or more receivers. Information is always about something (size of a parameter, occurrence of an event, etc). Viewed in this manner, information does not have to be accurate. Simply stated, information is a message received and understood.

Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001), "the father of information theory".

The view of information as a message came into prominence with the publication in 1948 of a paper by Claude Shannon, "A Mathematical Theory of Communication." This paper provided the foundations of information theory and endowed the word information not only with a technical meaning but also a measure.

“The choice of a logarithmic base corresponds to the choice of a unit for measuring information. If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits, A device with two stable positions, such as a relay or a flip-flop circuit, can store one bit of information. N such devices can store N bits…”

Log e= nits

Log10= Hartleys


Information as Message.

Shannon’s Equation…

Equivalent to entropy (generalization of Boltzman’s Eq.)

Where;

pi = probability = 1/ possibilities

( so for a coin = 1/2 ; for 2 coins 1/4)

Ludwig Boltzman 1844 - 1906


Information Theory ~ Messages

•  ni The number of individuals in each species; the abundance of each species.

•  S The number of species. Also called species richness. •  N The total number of all individuals: •  pi The relative abundance of each species, calculated as the

proportion of individuals of a given species to the total number of individuals in the community : ( ni/N )

Shannon Diversity

Information in Ecology…

Robert H. MacArthur (1930 - 1972) an American ecologist who made a major impact on many areas of community and population ecology.

A student of G. Evelyn Hutchinson, he played an important role in the development of niche partitioning, which drove community ecology and led to the development of modern landscape ecology.

His emphasis on hypothesis testing helped change ecology from a primarily descriptive field into an experimental field, and drove the development of theoretical ecology.

MacArthur introduced the concept of information as a measure of diversity that related to stability…

MacArthur, R., 1955. Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 36: 533–536.


MacArthur’s (1955), original conceptualization of Shannon diversity in ecology was directed at the determinacy of flows within a system theorizing that the flows of energy and materials between components was indicative of information transfer between components.

MacArthur, R., 1955. Fluctuations of animal populations and a measure of community stability. Ecology 36: 533–536.

www.bioinquiry.vt.edu/


The use of physical stocks (biomass, abundance, cover, frequency) of system actors as a metric of ecosystem condition began with Margalef (1961),

Margalef, R. 1961. Communication of the structure of planktonic populations. Limnology and Oceanography 6:124-128

Ramon Margalef (Barcelona 1919 - 2004). Important works include; "Information Theory in Ecology", "On certain unifying principles in ecology", American Naturalist in 1963, and his book "Perspectives in Ecological Theory" (1968)


Another important limitation of the standard Shannon diversity metric is that it ignores ecosystem food web hierarchy. Given a fixed number of ecosystem components, the Shannon equation (Eq. 1) is maximized (Hmax) when the probability of observing each component (pi) is equal.

.

Feedback Control Loops

104 103103 102 10

10105104

106

Degraded Energy

1021

(a)

(b)

Log

Ener

gy F

low

Transformity10 102 103 1051041

1

(c)

Source

Increasing Unit Size and Size of Territory

Increasing Period and Pulse Amplitude

(d)

(e)


Since only flows can actually transmit information within an ecosystem setting, their determinacy is of considerably more ecological interest than the distributions of biomass compartments (Ulanowicz, 2001)

Ulanowicz, R. E., 2001. Information theory in ecology. Computers and Chemistry 25: 393–399.


Ecological network analysis is based on input/output models of energy or material flows (e.g., carbon compound flows) through a trophic network (e.g., a food web describing which species eats which other species) (Ulanowicz, 1986; Kay et al. 1996).

Johnson, Borgatti Luczkovich &Everett. 2001. Network Role Analysis in the Study of Food Webs: An Application of Regular Role Coloration. Journal of Social Structure Vol2.


Mathematically and conceptually, this approach is strikingly similar to work in the field of social network analysis, Hubbell (1965), Katz (1963), and Friedkin and Johnsen (1990).

The convergence to date of the fields of ecology and sociology via independent invention of network concepts suggests that there may be considerable value in cross-fertilization of the two fields.


Facts -A unique bit of information that identifies an object, person, place, or date.

Concepts - A category of items or ideas that share common features.

Procedures - A series of steps that show how to make or do something

Process - A description of how something works or operates

Principles - Rules, heuristics, guidelines, criteria that predict an outcome.

Types of information

Information & the Individual

1. Data: symbols 2. Information: data that are processed to be useful; provides answers

to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions 3. Knowledge: application of data and information; answers "how"

questions 4. Understanding: appreciation of "why" 5. Wisdom: evaluated understanding.

Ackoff, R. L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9.

Types of information…continued

Information & the Individual….continued

Ackoff points out that while information ages rapidly, knowledge has a longer life-span … he considers wisdom to be “permanent” in the true sense. Ackoff, R. L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applies Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9.


Turnover Time of Information

A. H. Maslow (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation Psychological Review, 50, 370-396.

Abraham (Harold) Maslow (April 1, 1908 – June 8, 1970) was an American psychologist.



Four levels of human information Data…

Information…

Knowledge…

Wisdom

The "DIKW Hierarchy” "Typically information is defined in terms of data, knowledge in terms of information, and wisdom in terms of knowledge".

Rowley, Jennifer (2007). "The wisdom hierarchy: representations of the DIKW

hierarchy". Journal of Information Science 33 (2): 163–180.


Information value of individuals increases with age…

Scientific Information Cycle

Information at the Interface of Individual & Society…

Information Cycle…

Information sequestered in unreachable or unusable storages is of no value and often soon loses its importance or relevance. Cycling allows for the continuous maintenance of information. “Use it or Lose it.”

Tylor is considered a cultural evolutionist. His works were based on the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin.

Considered a founding figure of the science of social anthropology

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (October 2, 1832–January 2, 1917),

Culture as Information…

Culture is the full range of learned human behavior patterns. The term was first used in this way by the pioneer English Anthropologist Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture (1871).

Tylor said that culture is "that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."


There are three layers or levels of culture that are part of your learned behavior patterns and perceptions.

The first is the body of shared language, traditions, and beliefs that distinguish your specific society.

The second layer of culture that may be part of your identity is a subculture

The third layer of culture consists of cultural universals. These are learned behavior patterns that are shared by all of humanity collectively.


Leslie White (1949), treated culture as a superorganic entity, existing beyond its individual human carriers.

Leslie Alvin White (1900–1975)

White understood the world to be divided into cultural, biological, and physical levels of phenomenon.

"culture evolves as the amount of energy harnessed per capita per year is increased, or as the efficiency of the instrumental means of putting the energy to work is increased” White, Leslie 1949 The Science of Culture. New York, Grove Press.


White’s argument on the importance of technology goes as follows:


1. Technology is an attempt to solve the problems of survival. 2. This attempt ultimately means capturing enough energy and

diverting it for human needs. 3. Societies that capture more energy and use it more efficiently

have an advantage over other societies. 4. Therefore, these different societies are more advanced in an

evolutionary sense.

Gerhard Lenski expands on the works of Leslie White. Unlike White, who defined technology as the ability to create and utilize energy, Lenski focuses on information - its amount and uses.

Gerhard Lenski (1924 - >) Professor Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Lenski’s four stages of human development:

First stage, information is passed by genes.

Second stage, humans learn and pass information through by experience.

Third stage, humans start using signs and develop logic.

Fourth stage, create symbols, develop language and writing.

Fifth stage??? Computers-Internet?


Gerhard E. Lenski,(1966). Power and Privilege: A Theory of Stratification. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Materials Information

Divergence

Convergence

EnergySources

Systems of the biosphere are maintained by flows of energy that cycle materials and information. Without continual flows of input energy that build order, systems degrade away. It is through cycling that systems remain adaptive and vital.

Recall:

Matter

EnergyInformation

Emformation…

All processes require three driving energies…

Energy

(a) Non-living Autocatalytic Structures Examples: Storms, Mountains, Flames

(b) Living Structure

Structure

Materials

EnergyInformation Cycle

StructureMaterials

Operation

Operation

Recycle

The difference between non-living and living systems is the information cycle

Odum suggested…

Information as form…

Emformation…

Material Raw Material Production/Construction(E9 sej/g) (E9 sej/g)

Wood Lumber 0.59 2.43Glass 1.35 8.66Aluminum 2.16 12.68Steel 2.44 3.85

Emergy in Material and Form…

Form

Television System…

Odum, 1998

Television System…

Odum, 1998

Environmental Damage to Shared Information…

Odum, 1998

Information, Space, and Time…

Hierarchical properties of all systems increase information values as a power function…

Information, Space, and Time…

Information value of artifacts…

Rarity and time combine to increase the value of artifacts as cultural symbols

What is a social system?...

•  entities or groups in definite relation to each other,

•  relatively enduring patterns of behavior and relationship within social systems,

•  social institutions and norms becoming embedded into social systems in such a way that they shape the behavior of actors within those social systems.

A pattern of social acts in pursuit of individual and collective goals and governed by the need of the "social system" to maintain its own structure.

The human mind is not adapted to interpreting how social systems behave. Social systems belong to the class called multi-loop nonlinear feedback systems. In the long history of evolution it has not been necessary until very recent historical times for people to understand complex feedback systems. Evolutionary processes have not given us the mental ability to interpret properly the dynamic behavior of those complex systems in which we are now imbedded.

Jay Wright Forrester is a pioneer systems scientist and was professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Forrester is known as founder of System Dynamics, which deals with the simulation of interactions between objects in dynamic systems.

Social Systems…

Individual’s Role is Society…

Necessary inputs include:

Environmental support,

Material necessities,

Health care,

Social exchange and information,

Shared beliefs, and

An opportunity to contribute

Odum, 2003

Superstructure of human social organization which operates environment and economy.

Spatial convergence and divergence;

People and units of government

Energy basis for social organization.

Human Social Organization…

Odum, 2003

Forms of government...

Government is a group's system of control and sharing of information that makes people follow its organization pattern.

Symbiosis of two individuals is a simple government.

Totalitarian design…lower level supporting group supplies products and services that are controlled by the "head."

Democratic design … the head is controlled by votes of the majority that reinforce the controls that work. Empower converges to the head, but is distributed out to the group

in services.

Odum, 2003

American Football…

The sketch shows the spatial hierarchy of converging input and diverging after-effects as people assemble and disperse.

It is an information-sharing phenomenon that appears to reinforce social cohesion.

It provides a fairly harmless outlet for some of the competitive behavior that is not needed when society is in its complex mature stage.

Shared Information Can Accelerate Change…

Odum, 2007

Odum, 2003

Religion and Social Organization…

Each level has reinforcing amplification that can adapt both morality and religious institutions to meet external challenges.

Individuals have faith in the social system and therefore contribute their efforts. Faith in a religion that supports the chosen way of life is necessary to the group's effective

energy use and survival. Satisfaction with useful work may be part of inherited human nature genetically established by

natural selection in the past.

Odum, 2003

Technological Change as Social Succession…

For change to occur, there is general agreement on the importance of social context and communication.

Technological change as a social process

According to this model, technological change is seen as a social process involving adopters and others who are affected by cultural setting, political institutions, and marketing strategies.

Systems view of the spread of innovation…

Isolated units with low empower;

Monopoly with a new innovation draws high empower and control of other units;

Spread of the innovation equalizes empower support.

Spread of Innovation….

Odum, 2003

Everett M. Rogers (1931 - 2004) Pioneer of diffusion of innovations theory

Social Change…

as Diffusion of Innovation…

When graphed, the rate of adoption formed an s-shaped curve.

The graph essentially shows a cumulative percentage of adopters over time – slow at the start, more rapid as adoption increases, then leveling off until only a small percentage of laggards have not adopted.

(Rogers Diffusion Of Innovations 1983)

DOI Model…

Breaking the curve into segments leads to the segregation of individuals into the following five categories of individual innovativeness (from earliest to latest adopters):

§  innovators (2.5%) - venturesome, educated, multiple info sources §  early adopters (13.5%) - social leaders, popular, educated §  early majority (34%) - deliberate, many informal social contacts §  late majority (34%) - skeptical, traditional, lower socio-economic

status §  laggards (16%) - neighbors and friends are main info sources, fear

of debt

(Rogers, 1995).

Social Change…

as Diffusion of Innovation…

Temporal Succession of Social System Drivers…

With a common language, the industrial revolution captured the economy …. People and processes moved into the cities, transformed the chemistry of society, intensified rural production, and created a brilliance of information processing centers by the end of the 20th century. ….

The information explosion of the 21st century is based on the high emergy of the earlier industrial revolution. While the public dreams fantasies of science fiction futures, the roots that support the information wave are already declining.

H.T. Odum, 2007

Questions?

Documents

Lecture 15 - University of Florida · Lecture 15 . In the long run, history is the story of information becoming aware of itself. James Gleick, 2011 . The earliest historical meaning