Guest editorial

Citation

Ali, D.M. (2014), "Guest editorial", Kybernetes, Vol. 43 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/K-05-2014-0097

Guest editorial

Article Type: Guest editorial From: Kybernetes, Volume 43, Issue 6

Introduction: more differences that make a difference

Smart phones, swipe cards, Facebook, biometric passports, downloadable music, blogs, Twitter, CCTV, online banking, e-book readers, YouTube, cyber fraud, fibre optic cables, e-mail addresses, web pages, e-government, cyber activism, server farms, cybersex, etc. just a few of the numerous, and ever proliferating, pervasive phenomena that serve as everyday examples of the period in which we now live, often described in somewhat clichéd terms as “the information age”. The development of information and communication technologies (ICTs), especially during the last two decades, has transformed the lives of all of us - both those in “the west” as well as those in “the rest” to use an insightful formulation of the late sociologist and cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1992) which, despite continued claims for the pluralizing and democratizing tendencies associated with globalization, remains prescient vis-a`-vis distributions of power in the networked world.

Importantly, this transformation, which philosopher Luciano Floridi (2014) describes as “the fourth (or Turing) revolution” - the previous three being the Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution, and the Freudian revolution - has unfolded in a multitude of ways, from how we work (or labour) to how we have fun (or play), and a large and ever expanding body of literature already exists devoted to exploring the impacts of this development from a variety of perspectives[1]. In addition to these attempts to think about the changes effected by the ubiquity of information in the contemporary era, a number of disciplines associated with the natural (or physical) sciences and the social sciences (or humanities) have witnessed an informational shift, so much so that it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify a field that is not at least starting to describe itself in terms of the language of information[2]. Information is fast becoming - and for some, always was - the “right” way to think about reality, previously dominant materialistic or physical conceptions of a hierarchically organized phenomenal world increasingly being recast in terms of information as primordial “stuff” (see e.g. Davies and Gregersen, 2010).

Yet despite the near-universal adoption of the language of information, a satisfactory unified or unifying (in the sense of universal) definition of information has yet to emerge, assuming that this is even possible, and the extent to which different disciplines mean the same thing when using the same terms remains unclear. What this means is that there is a pressing need to understand the relationship between the manifold ways in which the language of information is used, and how information is talked about and articulated. Irrespective of whether information has the same meaning, similar (or analogous) meanings or completely different meanings at all levels of the hierarchy of phenomenal reality, clearly there are important benefits to be derived from sharing insights between disciplines.

Widespread and growing recognition of these benefits has led to a number of events in recent years, bringing together people from different fields to explore the nature of information. The Difference that Makes a Difference (DTMD) series of workshops were established with precisely that aim, namely an interdisciplinary sharing of insights on the nature of information. The first of these workshops was held at The Open University in Milton Keynes from 7 to 9 September 2011 and led to a special issue of triple C in 2013 (Chapman and Ramage 2013), and this present special issue arose from a follow-up workshop held at the same venue from 8 to 10 April 2013, with delegates from across the world and representing a wide range of disciplines (The DTMD - An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Information: Space, Time and Identity, www.dtmd.org.uk)

1. The DTMD 2013

The title of this series of workshops, the DTMD, derives from Gregory Bateson's celebrated definition of information:

[W]hat we mean by information - the elementary unit of information - is a difference which makes a difference” (Bateson 1972).

Designed to encourage interdisciplinary conversations, the second workshop followed the pattern of the first. Four main sessions consisted of a keynote address followed by four or five short (20-minute) delegate presentations, and an extended period for discussions. A fifth and sixth session were held at Milton Keynes Gallery, with the fifth session, devoted to exploring issues at the intersection of information and art, opening with a presentation by information artist Carson Grubaugh who synthesized a number of the themes engaged in the main sessions, and the sixth session opening with a plenary by Luciano Floridi, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hertfordshire and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford, followed by a concluding panel discussion featuring the session keynote speakers.

The four main sessions had the themes: information and space; information and time; information and identity; and what is information?

1.1 Information and space

Increasingly, physical spaces are being overlaid with information to help us communicate, navigate and even understand the places we inhabit, and the presentations in this first session were devoted to exploring both the cultural or conceptual meanings spatially encoded in the environment, as well as the design of new ecologies of mixed digital and physical spaces. The session opened with a keynote address delivered by Holger Schnädelbach, a senior research fellow at the Mixed Reality Lab, University of Nottingham on adaptive architecture, examining how buildings are being designed to adapt to their environments via a combination of ubiquitous computing technologies with a view to enhancing sustainability and comfort for their inhabitants. In the short presentations, Ambjörn Naeve and Carl Smith introduced the mathematically inspired idea of “spacification” which refers to the process of designing and constructing spaces that can enhance artistic experiences; Caitlin Bentley considered the political, social and cultural issues and power-relations between the various actors associated with treating information as evidence in the context of ICT4D (ICT for development) donors justifying investments to their stakeholders, and civil society organizations seeking results that vindicate aid programmes; Claudia Jacques presented a cybersemiotic analysis of aesthetics in the context of what she refers to as the “meta-environment”, a complex adaptive system constituted by the triadic relationship, interactions and processes between users, information and interfaces. Jacques argued that a reliance on an aesthetics of embodiment (or physicality) results in processes and perceptions that are limiting and linear in scope, thereby restricting information's potential and preventing a more balanced integration between the components of the relational triad; finally, Derek Jones, who also chaired the session, addressed himself to the question, where is information? arguing that although Shannon′s model of communication provides a well-defined notion of the transmission of information or data, other factors, including those that are subjective in nature, need to be taken into account to ensure the transfer of meaning, intent and a range of other less tangible elements in an architectural context.

1.2 Information and time

This session was devoted to exploring a range of topics including the changing nature of the notion of information, and the history of information-theoretical concepts; the effect of implicit or explicit understanding of the concept of information on the human experience of time; the application of information theory to dynamical systems; and critical evaluation of the changing experience and understanding of the “information revolution”. The session opened with a keynote address by John Monk, Emeritus Professor of Electronics at The Open University, who posed the question, what is time for?, pointing to various instrumental (or goal-directed) uses of the notion that resulted in its eventual commodification and depiction via spatial analogies, and its increasing role in regulating aspects of the social order. Monk went on to consider issues of temporality and sequence in relation to causality, explanation and prediction, and concluded that time, as instrumentally conceived, might not warrant the primacy it is afforded. In the short presentations, Gabriela Besler and Jolanta Szulc, whose contribution appears in this special issue, explored the notion of time as a constitutive element of information with reference to semiotic (or sign-based) systems comprised of two, three, four and five elements; Jan Sliwa discussed the temporal and spatial aspects associated with the process of knowledge production and consumption in the context of interdisciplinary research and the construction of worldviews, drawing attention to the limited information capacity of individuals with finite life-spans, trade-offs between breadth and depth of knowledge, and the need to trust specialists whose knowledge is itself subject to spatial and temporal limits; implicitly engaging with Bateson's (1972) definition, Robin Laney explored the idea of information in terms of changes in differences of meaning by pointing to the role of structural elements such as motifs which carry meaning or convey information within musical narratives; finally, David Chapman, whose contribution also features in this special issue, argued that information must be seen as constrained in time and therefore fundamentally provisional in nature, being open and possibly subject to revision in the light of other information, and presented a semiotically inspired framework for representing the processes involved in the construction of such provisional meaning.

1.3 Information and identity

In this session, attention turned from questions of where (space) and when (time) to questions of who (identity) with a view to asking what it might mean to think of identity in terms of information and conversely, what it might mean to think of information in terms of identity. Topics to be addressed included: identity as information, or how thinking in terms of information impacts on the understanding of identity; the role of information technologies and social networks in the construction of identity; and the relationship between information, identity, knowledge and power. Engaging these topics, Liesbet Van Zoonen, Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University and Erasmus University, Rotterdam, opened the session with a keynote address exploring issues at the intersection of identification, information and narrative. Van Zoonen, whose contribution with Georgina Turner appears in this special issue, argued that contemporary approaches to “identity management” (identification and authentication) which make use of memory-based, token-based and biometric/body authenticators such as passwords, pin codes, ID cards, passports, fingerprints, etc. are prone to theft and fraud, thereby motivating consideration of alternative approaches that are more narrative based. However, such approaches tend to engage stereotypes and marginalize individuality, thereby giving rise to problems of false inclusion and exclusion, not to mention power-relational concerns about class, gender and ethnicity.

The short presentations began with Robert Hunter examining how digital discourse (social media, blogs, mailing lists, comment sites, etc.) affects the ability of individuals to mould their identity and relationship to information online; Jan Sliwa, in his second workshop presentation, explored the political construction of identity from informational resources in the context of starkly polarized debates about Polish nationalism to demonstrate how information can be used for purposes other than semantically significant communication; Paul Adams presented the findings of a US survey into technologically mediated shifts in online identity, drawing attention to the utilization of online user behaviour (mouse clicks, location updates, etc.) by advertisers and consumer-driven identity construction; Karen Kear, Frances Chetwynd and Helen Jefferis examined the role of personal profiles in online learning, pointing to a relative lack of concern for self-presentation and “impression management” in such contexts as compared with social networking environments; finally, Robin Smith looked at the role of “data brokers”, agents that seek to collect information about individuals from a variety of sources and then offer that information to other companies or individuals, in the context of an explosion in the information crime economy and the concomitant threat to information privacy rights.

1.4 What is information?

While the first three sessions explored some of the increasing number and range of different fields in which the language and ideas of information are playing an increasingly important role, the fourth session was devoted to considering fundamental issues such as the nature of information, the philosophy of information and determining whether a Universal Theory of Information (UTI) is possible in an attempt at answering questions such as the following: what is information, and is the “information” discussed in the different fields the same thing? why are so many disciplines using informational concepts in their narratives?

The session opened with a keynote address by Pedro C. Marijuán, Research Professor in the Bioinformation Group at the Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud, Zaragoza, Spain, who proposed a change of perspective in the development of information science. Arguing that the problem of defining what information is has not led to the flourishing of scientific disciplines but rather to a plethora of competing and contradictory definitions that remain anchored in conceptual frameworks from the 1950s to 1960s - specifically, the formulations of Shannon and Bateson, respectively - he pointed to a disciplinary conundrum, namely a universal approach to understanding information has not been forthcoming, yet a consensual concept of information is required in order to motivate a putative information science. Marijuán went on to present his own candidate for such a concept - “distinction on the adjacent” - which is described in his contribution to this special issue, and concluded by arguing for “a new scientific culture” in which a comprehensive information science provides the basis for new forms of social cognition dynamics and a more sophisticated cultural synthesis capable of guiding society.

In the short presentations, Barbara Osimani, was to talk about genetic information as a source of influence in biological systems, and whether such influence is best understood in terms of causality or the functioning of a code. Unfortunately, due to last minute complications, Osimani was unable to attend the workshop although the paper she intended to present is featured in this special issue; addressing himself to one of the central concerns of this session, João Alvaro Carvalho spoke to the importance of asking the right question and whether this should be what information is or what it is that is being called “information” in a particular context. Unlike Marijuán and those committed to the search for and necessity of a UTI, Carvalho argued that consensus about the meaning of “information” was unnecessary for successful communication to take place and expressed doubt about the possibility of achieving consensus about the nature of information; Marek Hetmański, taking leads from both Lakoff and Johnson's cognitive theory of metaphor and Bateson's conception of metaphoric statements, addressed himself to the informational aspects of metaphors and their role in human cognition, communication and praxis as means by which to relate the features and attributes of different domains; Marcin J. Schroeder, whose contribution appears in this special issue, focused on more philosophical concerns, engaging the ontological study of information in terms of a consideration of two fundamental concepts, namely identity and state; finally, Robert Lisek spoke to the need for tools enabling analysis of, and search and data extraction within, big data collections as means by which to cope with the intense processing of huge amounts of information from diverse sources.

The workshop attracted 21 speakers from eight different countries, guest appearances from robots and Second Life avatars, and contributions from a number of artists who submitted artwork in response to a Call for Art designed to explore the ethics of information entropy and the human urge “to organize/semanticize” information: interested parties were asked to take a given work of art and transmute it in to something new using rule-based processes, algorithms, physical processes or some other transformational process (www.dtmd.org.uk/call-for-art).

Video recordings of all six sessions are available with free access on the workshop web site (www.dtmd.org.uk). Delegates were invited to submit full papers arising from their presentations for consideration for this special issue, and seven papers were accepted for publication following anonymous reviewing; an eighth paper was accepted in response to a general call for submissions related to the workshop themes.

2. Special issue papers

Pedro C. Marijuán in “On being informational: intertwining the communication and self-production flows” develops the theme of his keynote address by arguing that although information is indefinable per se, the consensual notion of information as “distinction on the adjacent” formulated in his previous work can be used to deal with information in what he designates as the “core” fields. Marijuán proposes adopting a naturalistic and empirically oriented research strategy based on the intertwining of self-production and communication flows as fundamental characteristics of informational entities such as living cells, organisms (nervous systems), individuals, enterprises-markets and societies. He further argues that this perspective enables meaning, knowledge and intelligence to be approached in a consistent manner.

Barbara Osimani in “Causing something to be one way rather than another: genetic information, causal specificity and the relevance of linear order” presents an analysis of the notion of genetic information based on the conceptual tools developed within philosophical theories of causality on the one hand, and linguistics as well as philosophy of information on the other. Critically engaging with a range of opposing positions reported in the literature, most notably teleosemantic and developmental system theoretical approaches, she concludes that genetic phenomena are causal in a very special sense, namely they cause something to be one way rather than another (causal specificity) by combining elementary units one way rather than another (linear order). Osimani ends her contribution by using the notion of genetic error as a test of this hypothesis.

Marcin J. Schroeder in “Ontological study of information: identity and sate” begins by arguing that given the lack of an agreed upon definition of information, what is important is to clarify how the term is being defined and used in a specific context, subject to a requirement for coherence. Schroeder goes on to present a formal framing of ontological aspects associated with information - specifically, concepts of identity and state - in terms of complementary notions of selection and structure against the background of a foundational philosophical concern, namely the relation of the one to the many. Developing further the formalist concept of informational logic introduced in his earlier work based on the set-theoretical notion of closure spaces, Schroeder claims that this notion of information can address both syntactic and semantic concerns, with the latter defined in terms of functions which preserve informational structure (or homomorphism). He also maintains that this approach, in which meaning is defined in terms of correspondences between information systems, makes few ontological commitments and is, therefore, general purpose in nature and scope.

David Chapman in “Information is provisional” presents a new way of understanding information based on a diagrammatic convention with a view to providing significant insights into the nature of information, and explores some features of information including the fact that it is always provisional. Chapman’s concern is with understanding information along the lines that matter and energy are understood in physics, that is, in terms of well-defined quantities within mathematically formalized theoretical frameworks; however, in this contribution he addresses himself to highlighting the perspectival nature of the difference between semantic (or extracted) and environmental (or created) information and providing a means by which to make sense of meaning in connection with information events, that is, and paraphrasing Bateson, occasions of difference that make a difference.

Jolanta Szulc and Gabriela Besler in “Time as a constitutive element of information expressed in signs” engage with a humanistic trend within research in information science by focusing on human beings as senders and recipients of information from a philosophical and semiotic perspective. Exploring how the concept of sign has developed from two-element through to five-element formulations, Szulc and Besler propose a five-element sign structure that, they maintain, has utility for information science and which consists of the sign itself, the sender of the information content, the recipient of the information content, a context in which the sign appears and a situation (or an object) in reality to which the sign refers. Crucially, Szulc and Besler insist that the arrow of time must be included in the contextual element, and conclude by apply their sign structure to the analysis of a case study and research on collecting, searching and processing information.

Arthur R. Taylor in “Postmodernist and consumerist influences on information consumption” provides a cross-disciplinary examination of the convergence of information science, postmodernism, capital markets and radical technological changes within the past two decades within the context of consumerism. Taylor identifies evidence of the impact of this convergence on the reduced quality of information being disseminated and consumed as a consequence of the commodification of cultural production, fragmentation of information, loss of information context and bias in information reporting. Attention is also given to how the breakdown of traditional information production and “gatekeeping” structures such as librarianship and publishing have been replaced by more amateur, self-produced, prosumer information production, further contributing to the erosion of information quality and an argument is made for the need to consider alternative approaches that ensure quality in a postmodern informational environment characterized by a shift in focus from veracity to availability.

Liesbet Van Zoonen and Georgina Turner in “Exercising identity” develop the themes explored in the latter's keynote address by considering the limits of the current data paradigm in identity management, which is concerned with issues of identification and authentication, and proposing a more expressive, narrative-based understanding of identity.

Finally, Carson Grubaugh in “The ethical obligations of a banal, content apocalypse” engages with a number of personal art projects, as well as the work of other artists, to set the stage for exploring the nature of humanity's relationship to informational content, in particular, technologically mediated identity narratives. Grubaugh maintains that understanding the latter presents a huge moral challenge to society in that it requires us to take a stance about our very nature as human beings. Formulating an appropriate response to this situation is critical in the face of what he perceives as an oncoming erosion of narrative, and he considers whether humans have a categorical obligation to maintain narratives, especially personal narratives of identity, or are better off evolving past such concerns. Grubaugh relates such questions to discussions about how and why human beings tend to place value on a certain amount of organization in content, semantic and otherwise, grounding this, at least at the outset, in biological imperatives for survival.

Dr Mustafa Ali
Department of Computing and Communications, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Note

1. One interesting issue, subject to ongoing exploration from a critical theory perspective informed by considerations of political economy, concerns the ways in which play and labour are increasingly intertwined in the information age, thereby giving rise to the exploitative phenomenon referred to as “playbour”.

2. Consider, in this connection, the present author's “Race: The Difference that Makes a Difference” (Ali, 2013) exploring issues at the intersection of critical race theory and information theory which was presented at the first DTMD workshop held at The Open University in September 2011.

Acknowledgements

Financial and practical support for DTMD 2013 from The Open University Department of Communication and Systems (www://cands.open.ac.uk/) is gratefully acknowledged.

References

Ali, S.M. (2013), “Race: the difference that makes a difference”, tripleC, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 93-106

Bateson, G. (1972), Steps to an Ecology of Mind, Chandler, Toronto

Chapman, D. and Ramage, M. (Eds) (2013), “The difference that makes a difference”, tripleC, Vol. 11 No. 1, pp. 1-126, available at: www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/26 (accessed 9 May 2014)

Davies, P. and Gregersen, N. (2010), Introduction: Does Information Matter? In Information and the Nature of Reality, CUP, Cambridge, pp. 1-10

Floridi, L. (2014), The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality, OUP, Oxford

Hall, S. (1992), “The west and the rest: discourse and power”, in Stuart, H. and Bram, G. (Eds), Formations of Modernity, Polity Press, Cambridge, pp. 275-331

About the Guest Editor

Dr Mustafa Ali is a Lecturer in Computing and Communications Department at The Open University. His current research focuses on the development of a hermeneutic framework that can be used to inform critical investigations of computational, informational, cybernetic, systems theoretical and trans-/post-human phenomena. The framework is grounded in phenomenology, critical race theory and postcolonial/decolonial thought and is being used to engage with various areas in computing and ICT including artificial intelligence (the Turing test, situated robotics) and ubicomp (embodiment and social embedding).