Information, Volume 2, Issue 3 (September 2011) – 11 articles , Pages 383-578

Semiotics is widely applied in theories of information. Following the original triadic characterization of reality by Peirce, the linguistic processes involved in information—production, transmission, reception, and understanding—would all appear to be interpretable in terms of signs and their relations to their objects. Perhaps the most important of these relations is that of the representation-one, entity, standing for or representing some other. For example, an index—one of the three major kinds of signs—is said to represent something by being directly related to its object. My position, however, is that the concept of symbolic representations having such roles in information, as intermediaries, is fraught with the same difficulties as in representational theories of mind. I have proposed an extension of logic to complex real phenomena, including mind and information (Logic in Reality; LIR), most recently at the 4th International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science (Beijing, August, 2010). LIR provides explanations for the evolution of complex processes, including information, that do not require any entities other than the processes themselves. In this paper, I discuss the limitations of the standard relation of representation. I argue that more realistic pictures of informational systems can be provided by reference to information as an energetic process, following the categorial ontology of LIR. This approach enables naïve, anti-realist conceptions of anti-representationalism to be avoided, and enables an approach to both information and meaning in the same novel logical framework. Full article

This paper focuses on the interdisciplinary research between Theoretical Informatics (TI) and the Humanities (philosophy, history, literature, etc.). There are five main sections: 1. A brief introduction to TI and its functions in the aspects of worldview and methodology, 2. An illustration of the problems associated with dualism as set out by Plato and René Descartes by means of a theoretical model of the mutual contact and interaction between the material world and the information world, 3. An explanation of the historical view of R. G. Collingwood through informationalism, 4. A discussion of the basic concepts for Humanistic Informatics which is under construction, and 5. A proposal of some approach to the new subject in information science. Full article

The Chi-Square test (χ² test) is a family of tests based on a series of assumptions and is frequently used in the statistical analysis of experimental data. The aim of our paper was to present solutions to common problems when applying the Chi-square tests for testing goodness-of-fit, homogeneity and independence. The main characteristics of these three tests are presented along with various problems related to their application. The main problems identified in the application of the goodness-of-fit test were as follows: defining the frequency classes, calculating the X² statistic, and applying the χ² test. Several solutions were identified, presented and analyzed. Three different equations were identified as being able to determine the contribution of each factor on three hypothesizes (minimization of variance, minimization of square coefficient of variation and minimization of X² statistic) in the application of the Chi-square test of homogeneity. The best solution was directly related to the distribution of the experimental error. The Fisher exact test proved to be the “golden test” in analyzing the independence while the Yates and Mantel-Haenszel corrections could be applied as alternative tests. Full article

Early in its history and development, there were three types of classical information sciences: computer and information science, library and information science, telecommunications and information science. With the infiltration of the concept of information into various fields, an information discipline community of around 200 members was formed around the sub-fields of information theory or informatics or information science. For such a large community, a systematization, two trends of thought, some perspectives and suggestions are discussed in this paper. Full article

The article is focused on the special role of the concept of information understood in terms of the one-many categorical opposition in building a bridge between mind and brain. This particular choice of the definition of information allows unification of the main two manifestations of information implicitly present in literature, the selective and the structural. It is shown that the concept of information formulated this way together with the concept of information integration can be used to explain the unity of conscious experience, and furthermore to resolve several fundamental problems such as understanding the experiential aspect of consciousness without getting into homunculus fallacy, defending free will from mechanistic determinism, and explaining symbolic representation and aesthetical experience. The dual character of selective and structural manifestations opens the way between the orthodox information scientific description of the brain in terms of the former, and description of mind in terms of the latter. Full article

Processes considered rendering information dynamics have been studied, among others in: questions and answers, observations, communication, learning, belief revision, logical inference, game-theoretic interactions and computation. This article will put the computational approaches into a broader context of natural computation, where information dynamics is not only found in human communication and computational machinery but also in the entire nature. Information is understood as representing the world (reality as an informational web) for a cognizing agent, while information dynamics (information processing, computation) realizes physical laws through which all the changes of informational structures unfold. Computation as it appears in the natural world is more general than the human process of calculation modeled by the Turing machine. Natural computing is epitomized through the interactions of concurrent, in general asynchronous computational processes which are adequately represented by what Abramsky names “the second generation models of computation” [1] which we argue to be the most general representation of information dynamics. Full article

Many writings on information mix information on a given system (I_S), measurable information content of a given system (I_M), and the (also measurable) information content that we communicate among us on a given system (I_C). They belong to different levels and different aspects of information. The first (I_S) involves everything that one possibly can, at least potentially, know about a system, but will never learn completely. The second (I_M) contains quantitative data that one really learns about a system. The third (I_C) relates rather to the language (including mathematical) by which we transmit information on the system to one another, rather than to the system itself. The information content of a system (I_M —this is what we generally mean by information) may include all (relevant) data on each element of the system. However, we can reduce the quantity of information we need to mediate to each other (I_C), if we refer to certain symmetry principles or natural laws which the elements of the given system correspond to. Instead of listing the data for all elements separately, even in a not very extreme case, we can give a short mathematical formula that informs about the data of the individual elements of the system. This abbreviated form of information delivery includes several conventions. These conventions are protocols that we have learnt before, and do not need to be repeated each time in the given community. These conventions include the knowledge that the scientific community accumulated earlier when discovered and formulated the symmetry principle or the law of nature, the language in which those regularities were discovered and formulated, for example, the symmetry principle or the law of nature, the language in which those regularities were formulated and then accepted by the community, and the mathematical marks and abbreviations that are known only for the members of the given scientific community. We do not need to repeat the rules of the convention each time, because the conveyed information includes them, and it is there in our minds behind our communicated data on the information content. I demonstrate this by using two examples, Kepler’s laws, and the law of correspondence between the DNA codons’ triplet structure and the individual amino acids which they encode. The information content of the language by which we communicate the obtained information cannot be identified with the information content of the system that we want to characterize, and moreover, it does not include all the possible information that we could potentially learn about the system. Symmetry principles and natural laws may reduce the information we need to communicate about a system, but we must keep in mind the conventions that we have learnt about the abbreviating mechanism of those principles, laws, and mathematical descriptions. Full article

Nowadays, location-enabled mobile phones are becoming more and more widespread. Various players in the mobile business forecast that, in the future, a significant part of total wireless revenue will come from Location-Based Services (LBS). An LBS system extracts information about the user’s geographical location and provides services based on the positioning information. A successful LBS service should create value for the end-user, by satisfying some of the users’ needs or wants, and at the same time preserving the key factors of the mobile wireless device, such as low costs, low battery consumption, and small size. From many users’ perspectives, location services and mobile location capabilities are still rather poorly known and poorly understood. The aim of this research is to investigate users’ views on the LBS, their requirements in terms of mobile device characteristics, their concerns in terms of privacy and usability, and their opinion on LBS applications that might increase the social wellbeing in the future wireless world. Our research is based on two surveys performed among 105 students (average student age: 24 years) from two European technical universities. The survey questions were intended to solicit the youngsters’ views on present and future technological trends and on their perceived needs and wishes regarding Location-Based Services, with the aim of obtaining a better understanding of designer constraints when building a location receiver and generating new ideas related to potential future killer LBS applications. Full article

Certain definitions of information can be seen to be compatible with each other if their relationships are properly understood as referring to different levels of organization in a subsumptive hierarchy. The resulting hierarchy, with thermodynamics subsuming information theory, and that in turn subsuming semiotics, amounts to a naturalizing of the information concept. Full article

What is information? This is the first question that information science should answer clearly. However, the definitions of information have been so diversified that people are questioning if there is any unity among the diversity, leading to a suspicion on whether it is possible to establish a unified theory of information or not. To answer this question, a system approach to defining information is introduced in this paper. It is proved that the unity of information definitions can be maintained with this approach. As a by-product, an important concept, the information eco-system, was also achieved. Full article

Information precipitates the flow of time from scratch. Information as a noun, equivalent of the transitive verb “inform”, stands out in the contrast between a direct and an indirect object of the verb, that is to say, between the messenger of a message and its dative. The root of the contrast is sought in the occurrence of the flow of time in the sense that the flow requires both the invariant reference and the dative being subject to something flowing through against the reference. Empirical evidence of the contrast is found in the class identity kept by a molecular aggregate that can constantly exchange the constituent molecular subunits with those of a similar kind available in the neighborhood. The exchange of the subunits derives from the action of pulling-in, originating from the inside of the body holding the class identity. The action of pulling-in that underlies the synthesis of the flow of time empirically in a bottom-up manner originates in the constant update of the present perfect tense in the present progressive tense. The material aggregate preserving the class identity at the cost of the vicissitudes of the constituent individual subunits serves as the dative of information. The unfathomable depth of information is associated with the immense multitude of the messengers in their kinds toward the likely datives having the capacity of receiving them. The bottom line is that being informed is materially being receptive to a flow of substrate, so the information is being embodied by the receptor. Full article