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Information & Associativity as

v1.14, 29.11.2010

Klaus Wassermann

Aspects of Urban Entanglements

wassermann@arch.ethz.ch

Associativity and other Wurban Things

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its gonna be abstract.

(partially)

... fortunately nothing (brand) new.

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Densification and its consequences

strong emergence vs. controllabilityfunctionality vs. quality

structure vs. infrastructure

What exactly is the novel aspect?

web of things

web of people WOP

WOT

web of documents WOD

Nothing New... 20 Years of W** words

web of money WOM

web of websWOW

mediality

... the Double You?

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an

urban

-

material-proto-

inter-net

in steel &

glass

The Manhattan Syndrome

the urban & the webshare „essential“ properties...

associativity

inherent heterotopia

information as driving entity

high density

mediagenicity

reasoningreasoning in the immaterial domain

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Description

The basic Thesis

City

Life Formsa variety of rather new

abstract entity

WebThe Urban

more or less

WebThe Urban

The Wurban

new modes of

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Part 1: Information

Why

How

gap between practice and theory

weak theory influences practice

to speak about it?

to conceive it?

„mathematical information“ became a dogma

pure syntactic approach

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Shannon, Weaver (1948) Information H = p log p

_

Roots (of information as a concept)

etymology (classic)

Wiener (1961)

„to inform a person, to educate her (giving a form)“

„Information is information, not matter or energy.“

measure for uncertainty in the context of transmitting a fixed and fully known alphabet

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Heterogeneity of the Concept

Warren Weaver, 1948

(1) technical (Shannon's theory)

(2) semantic (meaning and truth)

(3) “influential” (impact and effectiveness on human behaviour)

tripartite analysis of information

these aspects could not be separated from each other W.Weaver also thought that

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What is information?

How to conceive of it ?

What is info

„ “

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virtuality

Hint from Everyday Language...

information as

... interpreted data

... a set of symbols which organize potential action

semantics

How to formalize that ?

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Information

completely based on interpretation („subjective“)

information is nothing which could „exist“

...is information out there ?

...it can be found & retrieved ?

: a Candidate for Re-Design

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Information, an extended View

Dimensions of Information

Form

Effectiveness

Extension

bytes – words – images – music – behavior – narration

reliability, certainty, relative completeness

strictness of encoding/decoding requires context, thus: reference to convention, interpretation

incommensurability of aspectstechnical, semantic, influentialformal, virtual, immaterial, but

storable?

01001001 00101001 11101101 00010010

010 001 0010 1 111 101 00012 10

resolution sampling rate: 46kHz or 128kHz ...

...this can even be formalized !yet not in an „objective“ way

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Information – a 3-“dimensional“ Category

reference for translations,no quarrels about ontologies

phenomenology of information becomes constructible

it contains *any* concept of information

The unified perspective „accidential“ reductionism

allows to avoid

extension effectiveness

form

context, encoding

0010101

completeness

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Additionally: A Dualistic Embedding

modeling

decoherence

information

D-

causality

causality information

measurement

observation

single

repeated story telling

causa finalis

belief structures

interaction

behavior

...a tricky Language Game...

reversibility ir-reversibility

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Part 2: Networks & Associativity

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logistics in the (infinite)

plain(s) ideologistics

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hubs, scale-free

hierarchical

fractal

deterministic

growth by causality

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rhizomatic

growth by informational supermerge

redundant

recurrent

probabilistic

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Logistic Networks

are the great Optimizers

of identified Relations

Logistic Networks

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are the great Inducers and Inventors

of potential Relations

yet to be constructed

Associative Networks

Randolations

Associative Networks

Randomized Relation

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self-organizing map self-organizing map (SOM)(SOM) mapping of n-dimensional mapping of n-dimensional

descriptions descriptions

onto a 2-dimensional maponto a 2-dimensional map

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trafficpeople

buildings

Urban Associativity

simulations of particular networks

we „find“ associativity in

cities

informational behavior = the WEB

: A Wurban Thing

associativity creates patterns, information

by feeding ‚autonomously‘ on the dissipative

streams of the entangled bodies beneath ants

rules

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WURB

Information

Rob van Kranenburg - A critique of ambient technology (2008)

How will the next Wave of Densification look like ??<open, decentralized, „democratic,“ artful,

funny ...>?... how to deal with the current one??<as a general practice of abstract synaesthecism>?

Information is a deep concept.virtual, 3-dim, basic for associativity

Wittgenstein: Performance precedes applicable Logics. Putnam: Practice is primary.

We have to care about the Form of Life, about possible performances, and the potential of subtle & situational responses

... not sticking to logistics & rigorous identification !

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The limiting borders of my language are the limiting borders of my world.

Wittgenstein

For the world of information we

(probably) have now an extension.

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Merci!Fin et