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A Difference That Makes a Difference
What is information? Today’s topic being information theory. Something that changes? Data that conveys a message. Data, knowledge, intelligence (like a spy would say). Information has been defined by one person as a difference that makes a difference. Something that makes one thing stand out from another. We live in a world of information, really.…
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Body as Matter
To continue with the body as matter model… You don’t have a single channel of information, you have many. But even so, even with them all operating at the same time and in the same identifiable medium, would that explain human behaviour? Sound vibrating some of the systems, light triggering photo-response in others, heat triggering…
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Channels of Communication
Biological beings all have one thing in common. Communication. Plants through chemical signals, animals through gestural signals, humans through both. They say that human language is an adaption of forms of animal communication. Could we learn to communicate outside of that? I will give an example. I can communicate three different things. They won’t be…
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Our Information has Shaped Evolution
To date, information has had a primary direction of flow, more outside in than inside out. Some say that this is still the only direction of signal. That everything else is environmental, incidental, but things have changed. Evolution has always been about computation, processing information, finding ways to adapt. It isn’t primarily chemical. The behavioural…
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Information as the Basis of Life
Hmm, may I show you a quick video? I have been talking about this is classes, though the technological emphasis of the video is fuzzy. Cool concept. I liked when the computer chip turned in to a lotus. Slingshot … over there, but black holes? Singularities. I ponder information black holes… Cute metaphor .. for…
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Attraction of Second Life
How was culture formed? Distribution of information. Giving frameworks for information storage and dissemination? Indeed, both are true, and originally it was structured much like DNA. People develop habits for the most efficient way of living and pass that on to their children. Inheritance, institutions, traditions. A sort of blind process really, and mostly still…
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Social Cannibals
Perhaps government should determine changes based on Facebook likes and shares. There is some of that going on. The whole terms of service we are all bound to. It’s even showing up in our younger generations. For those who have grown up with social networking, their brains are literally wired differently than ours were. They…
Category: Information
Information has been defined as a difference that makes a difference. Something that makes one thing stand out from another. We live in a world of information, really. A rock is different than a tree. A tree is different than the sea. You are different from me, and so on and so on. What defines information is differentiation, form.
To date, information has had a primary direction of flow, more outside in than inside out. Some say that this is still the only direction of signal, that everything else is environmental, incidental, but things have changed. Evolution has always been about computation, processing information, finding ways to adapt. Our information has even shaped the evolution of other species. The information that supposedly exists only in our head.