notion of information

It is not intended here in the usual sense of a “set of laws” (as, for instance, when we speak of the Civil Code, or of the highway code), but rather in what has become an equally common meaning of a “system of signals,” or of signs, or symbols that represent and transmit information between the source (emitter) of the signals and the point of destination (the receiver). In this way, data can be stored without cluttering up the internal memory, and can also be protected from the consequences of malfunctioning (referred to as the backing up of important data). The term "information" has an obvious ordinary use: from information we obtain in our interaction with the world, we are capable of acquiring knowledge about it. The Society of Information - VIII. The rate by which it is possible to transmit a signal, codified into binary form, for example, is limited by the technical characteristics of the channel. Likewise, if we consider the question in terms of which hardware belongs exclusively to the Internet network, the answer would be none. At other times the bits are transmitted over distance by electric cables or optical fibers, or converted into electromagnetic waves and broadcasted. In this respect, even more crucial is the discovery of the genetic information that presides over the formation of new organisms. We therefore have here a different way to understand information, which no longer comes from an active subject, but is extracted, so to speak, from the object studied by the subject who studies it. And so the city and the house would no longer be regarded as material “places,” with certain dimensions and an organization of space within which to move, but rather as a network of connections in which information, rather than the inhabitants, would be circulating. Toward an alternative notion of information systems ontologies: Information engineering as a... Fonseca, Frederico T.; Martin, James E. 2005-01-01 00:00:00 Introduction The problem of constructing ontologies for organizing databases is becoming intensified as the need for efficient access to broad ranges of data derived from a variety of sources increases. The microprocessor is a device of very small dimensions that, on a surface of a few square millimeters, contains many millions of elementary circuits. The term “true” is here intended in a purely logical sense, that is to say, as a result of the rules of logical consequentiality. Hardware and software are the components of every electronic computer. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. In common meaning, the phrase “to inform” means to transmit knowledge, “to inform someone by giving them news, data, and the like.” Frequently, this term has a practical significance since whoever informs expects the listener to use the information received in order to modify his or her behavior as a consequence. | Meaning, pronunciation, translations and examples Theology, for its part, has had a specific interest in information regarding two principal aspects: the new developments brought about by the society of information, and the epistemological significance of information in the natural world. Stalnaker 1974, Karttunen 1974, Lewis 1979) saw it as a way to model the information that is mutually known to be shared and continuously modified in communication. Like every good archive, it is organized like a filing cabinet in which each folder or location has its correct place or address. The memory units conserve the data and programs and make them available to the unit of computation. ), Informatica e Pastorale (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1987); G. SANTANIELLO, Libertà etica garanzia dell'informazione (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 1997). Two important aspects appear hear. The access velocity with which the data is read and written must be comparable with the velocity of computation. The notion of information is used in a wide variety. Stretching the meaning of the terms a bit, we can speak here of an “analogical codification,” in the sense that the profile of variations of the currents is “analogous” to that of the atmospheric pressure produced by the emission of the voice. Among the various types of memory units there is, first of all, the RAM (random access memory) from which the computing unit directly gets the data and to which it returns the data once the computation is completed. But we can also discern a second significance for information as “the act by which news is given or received, that is, knowledge” or, also, “acts provided or learned about something or someone”. So the binary code, which our technology boasts of as its own brilliant discovery, is in reality not a recent invention, but a continuation of a method used by our distant ancestors! The concept of a “global village” is increasingly used by sociologists and scholars. The presence of information and of the exchange of information necessary to the functional processes of living organisms seems to be in strict connection with that unique property of life which concerns its tendency to conserve and reproduce itself. Toward a Systemic Notion of Information: Practical Consequences Nagib Callaos and Belkis Callaos Universidad Simon Bolivar, Venezuela ncallaos@usb.ve bsanchez@usb.ve Abstract Our main purpose in this paper is to start a process of a systemic definition of the notion of information and to provide some initial practical consequences of it. Finally, disks and CD-ROMs, as well as the tapes and magnetic disks used in the mainframe systems, can also be considered control devices of an “external” memory, to be used mainly as data archives. In the original workings of the telegraph, an operator would close and open a switch and so transcribe, by a succession of electrical impulses, a message that had been received in written form. One could distinguish a “theoretical informatics,” that is, the branch of applied mathematics that deals with the theory of algorithms (an “algorithm” is a sequence of operations capable of bringing about the solution to a problem in a finite number of steps) from the theory of formal languages and the theory of automation. © 2008-2021 ResearchGate GmbH. Located in United States. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form (experience) for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The person at home alone, or Alpine climbers ascending on their own, know when to call for help at any time. Science and Philosophy: E. AGAZZI E P. ROSSI (eds. It is interesting to note that, within the framework of classical Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy, these two meanings are closely linked. The entire notion of the information object thus is couched within the levels of abstraction concept. When, at the end of the 1940s, there were warnings about the need to bring order and a scientific basis to the technology of information that was being haphazardly developed during World War II, it became necessary to establish a way to measure the “quantity of information.” It was a necessary operation, albeit in some senses debatable, since information is something essentially qualitative and, in certain cases, subjective (news represents an increase of information only for those who do not have knowledge of what it communicates). Coda is a robust workplace collaboration tool that includes most of the advanced workspace … The sounds of the words are represented with graphic symbols and these, by means of a technical process, are printed on the page; whoever receives them must understand how to read what is written. If, instead, that very probable event does not occur (or its contrary takes place), it is a cause of surprise and reflection: By increasing our knowledge, it thus “informs us” all the more. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. It has already been pointed out that today it is this meaning that is, unquestionably, more common. Then the first two operators put the variables A and B into relation with a third variable, C. The expression “C = A Λ B” means that C is equal to 1 if A and B together are equal to 1: otherwise, it equals 0. In the system software, the operating systems have a very important role, such as the very widespread diffusion of Windows. But only the extremes are perceptible and significant for those who transmit and receive them: In the middle there is a “gray zone” in which the information is hidden in a form inaccessible to perception. As regards the term “information,” it includes the two principal aspects already contained in the words “inform” and “form.” The first is “an act which consist in giving substantial form (vegetative, sensitive, or intellective) to a being,” and an act which “determines the nature of a being, moving it from potency to act”. Information, notion of I. Terminological Clarifications. In fact, for transmitting knowledge that does not demand a practical and direct response, other verbs are preferred, such as “to explain,” “to describe,” and “to teach.” This practical emphasis of the verb “to inform” seems connected to the original significance of the word, which is related to the expression “to model according to a form.” In fact, “to inform” derives from the word “form” (Lat. Notion Labs. Information in the World of Living Organisms: Genetic Information 3. Even in this case, we encounter the original meaning of the term: Information is that which gives form to matter-energy and also makes the material world knowable and intelligible. The memorization of information and its transmission over a distance have posed problems for codification that are worth exploring. Every program (whether it is system or application software) is written in a “programming language.” This expression signifies (though in a rather anthropomorphous way) a system of information coding that is accessible (“understandable”) to the computer. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Meanwhile, the progress of the stock-market is determined more and more by information industry stocks rather than by those of energy. There is, therefore, an original “operative” value within the word: Information—understood as the action of informing—produces a form. Ethology has demonstrated that animals communicate among themselves, exchanging information useful to the life of the group or for their defense from aggressors. Analog information is, on the other hand, subject to deterioration. The theories evolve and thus also the concepts and notions. In this case, just like with the telegraph, the product of the codification itself is not even intelligible to the person who transmits it or to the person who receives it (moreover, it is not even perceptible to the senses); it is not generated by a human operator but rather by a machine. It is known that the human eye is less sensitive to some characteristics of an image, so that they can be disregarded, without the observer being able to distinguish the compressed images from the original one. From the preceding considerations, and from the diverse list of meanings that the concept of information evokes, some important relationships seem to emerge. The word “informatics” is a neologism, coined for its assonance with mathematics and automatics. The reason for this is simple, and is well exemplified by the CD, which is much smaller than the vinyl disk, yet nevertheless permits a much higher quality of reproduction. The first constitutes the study of the links between the theology of Revelation and communication, between the theology of the word and the philosophy of information, which has ultimately lead to a new discipline today known as a “theology of communication.” The second regards reflections concerning how the message of the Christian Gospel —characterized by personal contact, witnessing by one’s life, rejecting any kind of manipulation, etc.— can be conserved when using the modern means of production and the diffusion of information. The radio for words, and the television for images, have ensured, at least in industrialized countries, that everybody is made aware of what is taking place in the world “in real time,” that is to say, while things are actually happening or immediately afterward. Focusing on this idea, Shannon defined "information" as minus the logarithm of the signal probability (Cover and Thomas, 1991), i.e.Information = i p log − where i p is the probability of signal i.Consequently, the information expected value of an n states system would be:Information = I = ∑ − i i p p log = -EntropyFor a two states system, its information expected value will be: I (for 2 states system) = = + p … Shannon has demonstrated that there exists a theoretical limit rate (called “transmission capacity”) below which all the errors introduced by interference can be corrected, while over that rate it is no longer possible to make this correction. an artist and song catalog) while incorporating Notion’s unique properties, views and formulas . It is nowadays widely used for terms An Overall Outlook - IV. They stop at the point of input, and are returned to the message by the person who receives and interprets it. In the telephone, a different process takes place. As stated previously (see above, III.3), one could consider the information-order or the information-finality manifested by nature and its laws (in its various physical, chemical, and biological levels) as information that governs the existence and the properties of the whole universe, that is, of a unique system considered in its entirety. For this reason, the Internet is complete “anarchy”: Nobody is in control, anybody can distribute any kind of message, and the police have great difficulty in preventing it from being used for illicit purposes. This seems to be a pitiful misunderstanding of information in cybernetics, though it becomes a common sense. Inasmuch as it “forms,” information brings about order: The organism produced by the genetic code appears as an “ordered” system of tissues and vital processes, and it is, on the contrary, the biological alterations, and especially those that we define as diseases, that are perceived as “disorder.” Conversely, information is also “described” by an order: The laws present in nature describe the order of the universe. There exist, then, the ROM memories (read only memory) and their derivatives PROM, EPROM, and EEPROM which allow for the limited possibility of writing. The simplest is the “machine language,” in which the commands to be directly given to the CPU are written. It is possible to compute and transmit information in a “perfect” manner: Once digitalized, the information participates in the “perfection of number,” the perfection which pertains to mathematics. Evernote is a veteran in the note-taking space, it has evolved over the years into a (somewhat) complete solution for personal information management. But the question remains, even in this case, whether we speak in an actual sense, and not only metaphorically, of an “intelligent knowledge,” something that would seem excluded by the irreducibility of the relationship between semantics and syntax (see below, IV). n. 24). The network webs, and above all the Internet (see above VI), have enormously increased the possibility of producing and receiving culture. There is also a “technical informatics,” which regards the construction of computers, and a “practical informatics,” which studies the specific ways in which many problems can be solved by computers, employing the various programming languages and other utility programs such as, for example, operating systems and databases. Thus the concept becomes related to notions of constraint, communication, control, data, form, education, knowledge, meaning, understanding, mental … It was the product’s underlying relational databases. To refer to the content of this article, quote: INTERS – Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science, edited by G. Tanzella-Nitti, I. Colagé and A. Strumia, www.inters.org, PONTIFICAL COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS. Currently teaching at the Logic Dept. These tools have potentially cancelled the isolation of individuals, even though such tools cannot, in themselves, overcome loneliness: For this it is necessary to have a real, human culture and not only a technological one. On the one hand, it deals with not transmitting more bits than the bare minimum: to not transmit “redundant” bits, that is to say, superfluous bits that do not contribute to the information. The Codification of Information. The correspondence between thermodynamic entropy and the entropy of information is not only formal. On the other hand, affecting the information through errors must be avoided. I. Terminological Clarifications - II. Much of the automation found in industrial factories is realized with specialized microprocessors, as is the case in transport, telecommunications systems, the electronic devices used in daily life, etc., so that they appear as one of the fundamental tools of the “informatization” of society, that is, of its progressive characterization as a society of information. We will try to do that providing: 1) a conceptual definition, following … 4. This is a profound transformation that integrates technology, the economy, and society: We have passed from an energy society to an information society. The operations can easily be translated in terms of binary quantities by assigning, for example, the value 1 to true and the value 0 to false. Notion is a tool for teams and companies that want a better way to manage knowledge, projects, documents, and collaboration. The information contained in the crystalline structure of ice, for example, is represented by the reciprocal position of its atoms, that is to say, by the fact that their thermal agitation is bound to take place within the nodes of a lattice. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. It has been discovered that the life of every organism, whether simple or complex, depends in an essential way on the circulation of biochemical signals (e.g., neuroelectric signals as well as, perhaps, other types) that transmit information necessary to the harmonious development of the vital processes. In order to define information serv ice (in section 2.3), services (2.1) and infor- This is a paradox in clear contradiction with the traditional rules of technology, which would have every great technical system defined and recognizable in all of its particulars, and its functioning entrusted to an efficient, well-organized directing power. In accord with the aim of the present article, let us look at some structural characteristics of informatics that can be considered reasonably constant, at least for the near future. The original notion of CG (cf. One can speak of history beginning with the time when the diffusion of information was entrusted to the spoken or written word, to the painted, sculpted, or etched picture, and to the tools of material culture, etc. This aspect of sharing deals with the “context” in which information is placed, that is, the legacy of previous knowledge to which the information makes an implicit appeal, and which must already be known to both the receiver and to the sender. Notion definition: A notion is an idea or belief about something. Once again, it is evident that a “culture of mankind” is necessary, one that is mature and profoundly respectful of human dignity, in order to get the best from these tools of information and globalization, and that a wise vision of science and technology is also necessary to direct our future. 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