Information

Information, Vol. 3, Pages 21-35: Chemical Affinity as Material Agency for Naturalizing Contextual Meaning

Koichiro Matsuno — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 00:00:00 CET

Chemical affinity involves the integration of two different types of interaction. One is the interaction operating between a pair of reactants while forming a chemical bond, and the other is the prior interaction between those reactants when they identify a reaction partner. The context of the environments under which chemical reactions proceed is identified by the interaction of the participating chemical reactants themselves unless the material process of internal measurement is substituted by theoretical artifacts in the form of imposed boundary conditions, as in the case, for example, of thermal equilibrium. The identification-interaction specific to each local participant serves as a preparation for the making of chemical bonds. The identification-interaction is intrinsically selective in precipitating those chemical bonds that are synthesized most rapidly among possible reactions. Once meta-stable products appear that mediate chemical syntheses and their partial decompositions without totally decomposing, those products would become selective because of their ongoing participation in the identification-interaction. One important natural example must have been the origin and evolution of life on Earth.

Information, Vol. 3, Pages 16-20: Introduction to the Special Issue on Information: Selected Papers from “FIS 2010 Beijing”

Raquel del Moral — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 CET

During the last two decades, a systematic re-examination of the whole information science field has taken place around the FIS—Foundations of Information Science—initiative. With the occasion of its Fourth Conference in Beijing 2010, a group of selected contributors and leading practitioners of those fields have been invited to contribute to this Special Issue. What is the status of information science today? What is the relationship between information and the laws of nature? Is information merely “physical”? What is the difference between information and computation? Has the genomic revolution changed the contemporary views on information and life? And what about the nature of social information? Cogent answers to these questions and to quite many others are attempted in the contributions that follow.

Information, Vol. 3, Pages 1-15: Self-Organized Complexity and Coherent Infomax from the Viewpoint of Jaynes’s Probability Theory

William A. Phillips — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 00:00:00 CET

This paper discusses concepts of self-organized complexity and the theory of Coherent Infomax in the light of Jaynes’s probability theory. Coherent Infomax, shows, in principle, how adaptively self-organized complexity can be preserved and improved by using probabilistic inference that is context-sensitive. It argues that neural systems do this by combining local reliability with flexible, holistic, context-sensitivity. Jaynes argued that the logic of probabilistic inference shows it to be based upon Bayesian and Maximum Entropy methods or special cases of them. He presented his probability theory as the logic of science; here it is considered as the logic of life. It is concluded that the theory of Coherent Infomax specifies a general objective for probabilistic inference, and that contextual interactions in neural systems perform functions required of the scientist within Jaynes’s theory.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 697-726: Epistemic Information in Stratified M-Spaces

Mark Burgin — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 CET

Information is usually related to knowledge. However, the recent development of information theory demonstrated that information is a much broader concept, being actually present in and virtually related to everything. As a result, many unknown types and kinds of information have been discovered. Nevertheless, information that acts on knowledge, bringing new and updating existing knowledge, is of primary importance to people. It is called epistemic information, which is studied in this paper based on the general theory of information and further developing its mathematical stratum. As a synthetic approach, which reveals the essence of information, organizing and encompassing all main directions in information theory, the general theory of information provides efficient means for such a study. Different types of information dynamics representation use tools of mathematical disciplines such as the theory of categories, functional analysis, mathematical logic and algebra. Here we employ algebraic structures for exploration of information and knowledge dynamics. In Introduction (Section 1), we discuss previous studies of epistemic information. Section 2 gives a compressed description of the parametric phenomenological definition of information in the general theory of information. In Section 3, anthropic information, which is received, exchanged, processed and used by people is singled out and studied based on the Componential Triune Brain model. One of the basic forms of anthropic information called epistemic information, which is related to knowledge, is analyzed in Section 4. Mathematical models of epistemic information are studied in Section 5. In Conclusion, some open problems related to epistemic information are given.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 672-696: Sentence Comprehension as Mental Simulation: An Information-Theoretic Perspective

Stefan L. Frank — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 CET

It has been argued that the mental representation resulting from sentence comprehension is not (just) an abstract symbolic structure but a “mental simulation” of the state-of-affairs described by the sentence. We present a particular formalization of this theory and show how it gives rise to quantifications of the amount of syntactic and semantic information conveyed by each word in a sentence. These information measures predict simulated word-processing times in a dynamic connectionist model of sentence comprehension as mental simulation. A quantitatively similar relation between information content and reading time is known to be present in human reading-time data.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 651-671: From Genomics to Scientomics: Expanding the Bioinformation Paradigm

Raquel del Moral — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 00:00:00 CET

Contemporary biological research (particularly in systems biology and the “omic” disciplines) is factually answering some of the poignant questions associated with the information concept and the limitations of information theory. Here, rather than emphasizing and persisting on a focalized discussion about the i-concept, an ampler conception of “informational entities” will be advocated. The way living cells self-produce, interact with their environment, and collectively organize multi-cell systems becomes a paradigmatic case of what such informational entities consist of. Starting with the fundamentals of molecular recognition, and continuing with the basic cellular processes and subsystems, a new interpretation of the global organization of the living cell must be assayed, so that the equivalents of meaning, value, and intelligence will be approached along an emerging “bioinformational” perspective. Further insights on the informational processes of brains, companies, institutions and human societies at large, and even the sciences themselves, could benefit from—and cross-fertilize with—the advancements derived from the informational approach to living systems. The great advantage fuelling the expansion of the bioinformation paradigm is that, today, cellular information processes may be defined almost to completion at the molecular scale (at least in the case of prokaryotic cells). This is not the case, evidently, with nervous systems and the variety of human organizational, cultural, and social developments. Concretely, the crucial evolutionary phenomenon of protein-domain recombination—knowledge recombination—will be analyzed here as a showcase of, and even as a model for, the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary mixing of the sciences so prevalent in contemporary societies. Scientomics will be proposed as a new research endeavor to assist advancement. Informationally, the “society of enzymes” appears as a forerunner of the “society of neurons”, and even of the “society of individuals”.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 635-650: Constructive Verification, Empirical Induction, and Falibilist Deduction: A Threefold Contrast

Julio Michael Stern — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 00:00:00 CET

This article explores some open questions related to the problem of verification of theories in the context of empirical sciences by contrasting three epistemological frameworks. Each of these epistemological frameworks is based on a corresponding central metaphor, namely: (a) Neo-empiricism and the gambling metaphor; (b) Popperian falsificationism and the scientific tribunal metaphor; (c) Cognitive constructivism and the object as eigen-solution metaphor. Each of one of these epistemological frameworks has also historically co-evolved with a certain statistical theory and method for testing scientific hypotheses, respectively: (a) Decision theoretic Bayesian statistics and Bayes factors; (b) Frequentist statistics and p-values; (c) Constructive Bayesian statistics and e-values. This article examines with special care the Zero Probability Paradox (ZPP), related to the verification of sharp or precise hypotheses. Finally, this article makes some remarks on Lakatos’ view of mathematics as a quasi-empirical science.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 624-634: Towards Quantifying a Wider Reality: Shannon Exonerata

Robert E. Ulanowicz — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 00:00:00 CEST

In 1872 Ludwig von Boltzmann derived a statistical formula to represent the entropy (an apophasis) of a highly simplistic system. In 1948 Claude Shannon independently formulated the same expression to capture the positivist essence of information. Such contradictory thrusts engendered decades of ambiguity concerning exactly what is conveyed by the expression. Resolution of widespread confusion is possible by invoking the third law of thermodynamics, which requires that entropy be treated in a relativistic fashion. Doing so parses the Boltzmann expression into separate terms that segregate apophatic entropy from positivist information. Possibly more importantly, the decomposition itself portrays a dialectic-like agonism between constraint and disorder that may provide a more appropriate description of the behavior of living systems than is possible using conventional dynamics. By quantifying the apophatic side of evolution, the Shannon approach to information achieves what no other treatment of the subject affords: It opens the window on a more encompassing perception of reality.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 621-623: Trust and Privacy in Our Networked World

Herman T. Tavani — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Remarking on the relationship between the concepts of trust and privacy, Charles Fried (1990, p. 56) [1] writes: Trust is the attitude of expectation that another will behave according to the constraints of morality… There can be no trust where there is no possibility of error. More specifically, man cannot know that he is trusted unless he has the right to act without constant surveillance so that he knows he can betray the trust. Privacy confers that essential right… Without privacy and the possibility of error which it protects that aspect of his humanity is denied to him. The important relationship between trust and privacy that Fried describes is often overlooked in the contemporary literature on privacy, as well in the recent publications that focus on trust and trust-related topics. The six essays included in this special issue of Information, however, give us some additional insights into certain conceptual and practical connections involving the notions of trust and privacy. In this respect, the contributing authors expand upon the insight in Fried’s classic work on the interconnection between the two concepts.[...]

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 594-620: The Online Construction of Personal Identity Through Trust and Privacy

Massimo Durante — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Constructing a personal identity is an activity much more complex than elaborating a series of online profiles, which are only digital hints of the Self. The construction of our personal identity is a context-mediated activity. Our hypothesis is that young people are enabled, as digital natives and social network users, to co-construct the “context of communication” in which their narrative identities will be interpreted and understood. In particular, the aim of this paper is to show that such “context of communication”, which can be seen as the hermeneutical counterpart of the “networked publics” elaborated by Danah Boyd, emerges out of the tension between trust and privacy. In other terms, it is, on the one hand, the outcome of a web of trustful relations and, on the other, the framework in which the informational norms regulating teens’ expectations of privacy protection are set and evaluated. However, these expectations can be frustrated, since the information produced in such contexts can be disembedded and re-contextualized across time. The general and widespread use of information technology is, in fact, challenging our traditional way of thinking about the world and our identities in terms of stable and durable structures; they are reconstituted, instead, into novel forms.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 579-593: Raising the Ante of Communication: Evidence for Enhanced Gesture Use in High Stakes Situations

Spencer Kelly — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Theorists of language have argued that co-speech hand gestures are an intentional part of social communication. The present study provides evidence for these claims by showing that speakers adjust their gesture use according to their perceived relevance to the audience. Participants were asked to read about items that were and were not useful in a wilderness survival scenario, under the pretense that they would then explain (on camera) what they learned to one of two different audiences. For one audience (a group of college students in a dormitory orientation activity), the stakes of successful communication were low; for the other audience (a group of students preparing for a rugged camping trip in the mountains), the stakes were high. In their explanations to the camera, participants in the high stakes condition produced three times as many representational gestures, and spent three times as much time gesturing, than participants in the low stakes condition. This study extends previous research by showing that the anticipated consequences of one’s communication—namely, the degree to which information may be useful to an intended recipient—influences speakers’ use of gesture.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 560-578: On Representation in Information Theory

Joseph E. Brenner — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 546-559: Interdisciplinary Research between Theoretical Informatics and the Humanities

Zong-Rong Li — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 528-545: Pearson-Fisher Chi-Square Statistic Revisited

Sorana D. Bolboacă — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 510-527: Information Science: Its Past, Present and Future

Xue-Shan Yan — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 478-509: Concept of Information as a Bridge between Mind and Brain

Marcin J. Schroeder — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 460-477: Dynamics of Information as Natural Computation

Gordana Dodig Crnkovic — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 455-459: On Symmetries and the Language of Information

György Darvas — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Many writings on information mix information on a given system (IS), measurable information content of a given system (IM), and the (also measurable) information content that we communicate among us on a given system (IC). They belong to different levels and different aspects of information. The first (IS) involves everything that one possibly can, at least potentially, know about a system, but will never learn completely. The second (IM) contains quantitative data that one really learns about a system. The third (IC) 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 (IM —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 (IC), 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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 426-454: End-User Attitudes towards Location-Based Services and Future Mobile Wireless Devices: The Students’ Perspective

Elena-Simona Lohan — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 417-425: Naturalizing Information

Stanley N. Salthe — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 406-416: Unity-Based Diversity: System Approach to Defining Information

Yixin Zhong — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 383-405: Receptive Openness to a Message and Its Dative—Materialist Origin of Time

Koichiro Matsuno — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 00:00:00 CEST

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.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 372-382: Toward a New Science of Information

Wolfgang Hofkirchner — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Currently, a Science of Information does not exist. What we have is Information Science that grew out of Library and Documentation Science with the help of Computer Science. The basic understanding of information in Information Science is the Shannon type of “information” at which numerous criticisms have been levelled so far. The task of an as-yet-to-be-developed Science of Information would be to study the feasibility of, and to advance, approaches toward a more general Theory of Information and toward a common concept of information. What scientific requirements need to be met when trying to develop a Science of Information? What are the aims of a Science of Information? What is the scope of a Science of Information? What tools should a Science of Information make use of? The present paper responds to these questions.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 360-371: Pervasive Computing, Privacy and Distribution of the Self

Soraj Hongladarom — Fri, 27 May 2011 00:00:00 CEST

The emergence of what is commonly known as “ambient intelligence” or “ubiquitous computing” means that our conception of privacy and trust needs to be reconsidered. Many have voiced their concerns about the threat to privacy and the more prominent role of trust that have been brought about by emerging technologies. In this paper, I will present an investigation of what this means for the self and identity in our ambient intelligence environment. Since information about oneself can be actively distributed and processed, it is proposed that in a significant sense it is the self itself that is distributed throughout a pervasive or ubiquitous computing network when information pertaining to the self of the individual travels through the network. Hence privacy protection needs to be extended to all types of information distributed. It is also recommended that appropriately strong legislation on privacy and data protection regarding this pervasive network is necessary, but at present not sufficient, to ensure public trust. What is needed is a campaign on public awareness and positive perception of the technology.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 327-359: Floridi’s “Open Problems in Philosophy of Information”, Ten Years Later

Gordana Dodig Crnkovic — Mon, 23 May 2011 00:00:00 CEST

In his article Open Problems in the Philosophy of Information [1] Luciano Floridi presented a Philosophy of Information research program in the form of eighteen open problems, covering the following fundamental areas: Information definition, information semantics, intelligence/cognition, informational universe/nature and values/ethics. We revisit Floridi’s program, highlighting some of the major advances, commenting on unsolved problems and rendering the new landscape of the Philosophy of Information (PI) emerging at present. As we analyze the progress of PI we try to situate Floridi’s program in the context of scientific and technological development that have been made last ten years. We emphasize that Philosophy of Information is a huge and vibrant research field, with its origins dating before Open Problems, and its domains extending even outside their scope. In this paper, we have been able only to sketch some of the developments during the past ten years. Our hope is that, even if fragmentary, this review may serve as a contribution to the effort of understanding the present state of the art and the paths of development of Philosophy of Information as seen through the lens of Open Problems.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 302-326: Experimental Approaches to Referential Domains and the On-Line Processing of Referring Expressions in Unscripted Conversation

Sarah Brown-Schmidt — Fri, 06 May 2011 00:00:00 CEST

This article describes research investigating the on-line processing of language in unscripted conversational settings. In particular, we focus on the process of formulating and interpreting definite referring expressions. Within this domain we present results of two eye-tracking experiments addressing the problem of how speakers interrogate the referential domain in preparation to speak, how they select an appropriate expression for a given referent, and how addressees interpret these expressions. We aim to demonstrate that it is possible, and indeed fruitful, to examine unscripted, conversational language using modified experimental designs and standard hypothesis testing procedures.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 277-301: Spencer-Brown vs. Probability and Statistics: Entropy’s Testimony on Subjective and Objective Randomness

Julio Michael Stern — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 00:00:00 CEST

This article analyzes the role of entropy in Bayesian statistics, focusing on its use as a tool for detection, recognition and validation of eigen-solutions. “Objects as eigen-solutions” is a key metaphor of the cognitive constructivism epistemological framework developed by the philosopher Heinz von Foerster. Special attention is given to some objections to the concepts of probability, statistics and randomization posed by George Spencer-Brown, a figure of great influence in the field of radical constructivism.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 266-276: Distribution of “Characteristic” Terms in MEDLINE Literatures

Neil R. Smalheiser — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Given the occurrence frequency of any term within any set of articles within MEDLINE, we define “characteristic” terms as words and phrases that occur in that literature more frequently than expected by chance (at p < 0.001 or better). In this report, we studied how the cut-off criterion varied as a function of literature size and term frequency in MEDLINE as a whole, and have compared the distribution of characteristic terms within a number of journal-defined, affiliation-defined and random literatures. We also investigated how the characteristic terms were distributed among MEDLINE titles, abstracts, and last sentence of abstracts, including “regularized” terms that appear both in the title and abstract of the same paper for at least one paper in the literature. For a set of 10 disciplinary journals, the characteristic terms comprised 18% of the total terms on average. Characteristic terms are utilized in several of our web-based services (Anne O’Tate and Arrowsmith), and should be useful for a variety of other information-processing tasks designed to improve text mining in MEDLINE.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 247-265: Designing Data Protection Safeguards Ethically

Ugo Pagallo — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 00:00:00 CEST

Since the mid 1990s, lawmakers and scholars have worked on the idea of embedding data protection safeguards in information and communication technology (ICT) with the aim to access and control personal data in compliance with current regulatory frameworks. This effort has been strengthened by the capacities of computers to draw upon the tools of artificial intelligence (AI) and operations research. However, work on AI and the law entails crucial ethical issues concerning both values and modalities of design. On one hand, design choices might result in conflicts of values and, vice versa, values may affect design features. On the other hand, the modalities of design cannot only limit the impact of harm-generating behavior but also prevent such behavior from occurring via self-enforcement technologies. In order to address some of the most relevant issues of data protection today, the paper suggests we adopt a stricter, yet more effective version of “privacy by design.” The goal should be to reinforce people’s pre-existing autonomy, rather than having to build it from scratch.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 217-246: Finding Emotional-Laden Resources on the World Wide Web

Kathrin Knautz — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 CET

Some content in multimedia resources can depict or evoke certain emotions in users. The aim of Emotional Information Retrieval (EmIR) and of our research is to identify knowledge about emotional-laden documents and to use these findings in a new kind of World Wide Web information service that allows users to search and browse by emotion. Our prototype, called Media EMOtion SEarch (MEMOSE), is largely based on the results of research regarding emotive music pieces, images and videos. In order to index both evoked and depicted emotions in these three media types and to make them searchable, we work with a controlled vocabulary, slide controls to adjust the emotions’ intensities, and broad folksonomies to identify and separate the correct resource-specific emotions. This separation of so-called power tags is based on a tag distribution which follows either an inverse power law (only one emotion was recognized) or an inverse-logistical shape (two or three emotions were recognized). Both distributions are well known in information science. MEMOSE consists of a tool for tagging basic emotions with the help of slide controls, a processing device to separate power tags, a retrieval component consisting of a search interface (for any topic in combination with one or more emotions) and a results screen. The latter shows two separately ranked lists of items for each media type (depicted and felt emotions), displaying thumbnails of resources, ranked by the mean values of intensity. In the evaluation of the MEMOSE prototype, study participants described our EmIR system as an enjoyable Web 2.0 service.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 195-216: Trust, Privacy, and Frame Problems in Social and Business E-Networks, Part 1

Jeff Buechner — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 CET

Privacy issues in social and business e-networks are daunting in complexity—private information about oneself might be routed through countless artificial agents. For each such agent, in that context, two questions about trust are raised: Where an agent must access (or store) personal information, can one trust that artificial agent with that information and, where an agent does not need to either access or store personal information, can one trust that agent not to either access or store that information? It would be an infeasible task for any human being to explicitly determine, for each artificial agent, whether it can be trusted. That is, no human being has the computational resources to make such an explicit determination. There is a well-known class of problems in the artificial intelligence literature, known as frame problems, where explicit solutions to them are computationally infeasible. Human common sense reasoning solves frame problems, though the mechanisms employed are largely unknown. I will argue that the trust relation between two agents (human or artificial) functions, in some respects, is a frame problem solution. That is, a problem is solved without the need for a computationally infeasible explicit solution. This is an aspect of the trust relation that has remained unexplored in the literature. Moreover, there is a formal, iterative structure to agent-agent trust interactions that serves to establish the trust relation non-circularly, to reinforce it, and to “bootstrap” its strength.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 166-194: Accuracy in Biological Information Technology Involves Enzymatic Quantum Processing and Entanglement of Decohered Isomers

Willis Grant Cooper — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 00:00:00 CET

Genetic specificity information “seen by” the transcriptase is in terms of hydrogen bonded proton states, which initially are metastable amino (–NH2) and, consequently, are subjected to quantum uncertainty limits. This introduces a probability of arrangement, keto-amino → enol-imine, where product protons participate in coupled quantum oscillations at frequencies of ~ 1013 s−1 and are entangled. The enzymatic ket for the four G′-C′ coherent protons is │ψ > = α│+ − + − > + β│+ − − + > + γ│− + + − > + δ│− + − + >. Genetic specificities of superposition states are processed quantum mechanically, in an interval ∆t < < 10−13 s, causing an additional entanglement between coherent protons and transcriptase units. The input qubit at G-C sites causes base substitution, whereas coherent states within A-T sites cause deletion. Initially decohered enol and imine G′ and *C isomers are “entanglement-protected” and participate in Topal-Fresco substitution-replication which, in the 2nd round of growth, reintroduces the metastable keto-amino state. Since experimental lifetimes of metastable keto-amino states at 37 °C are ≥ ~3000 y, approximate quantum methods for small times, t < ~100 y, yield the probability, P(t), of keto-amino → enol-imine as Pρ(t) = ½ (γρ/ħ)2 t2. This approximation introduces a quantum Darwinian evolution model which (a) simulates incidence of cancer data and (b) implies insight into quantum information origins for evolutionary extinction.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 140-165: An Alternative View of Privacy on Facebook

Christian Fuchs — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 CET

The predominant analysis of privacy on Facebook focuses on personal information revelation. This paper is critical of this kind of research and introduces an alternative analytical framework for studying privacy on Facebook, social networking sites and web 2.0. This framework is connecting the phenomenon of online privacy to the political economy of capitalism—a focus that has thus far been rather neglected in research literature about Internet and web 2.0 privacy. Liberal privacy philosophy tends to ignore the political economy of privacy in capitalism that can mask socio-economic inequality and protect capital and the rich from public accountability. Facebook is in this paper analyzed with the help of an approach, in which privacy for dominant groups, in regard to the ability of keeping wealth and power secret from the public, is seen as problematic, whereas privacy at the bottom of the power pyramid for consumers and normal citizens is seen as a protection from dominant interests. Facebook’s privacy concept is based on an understanding that stresses self-regulation and on an individualistic understanding of privacy. The theoretical analysis of the political economy of privacy on Facebook in this paper is based on the political theories of Karl Marx, Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. Based on the political economist Dallas Smythe’s concept of audience commodification, the process of prosumer commodification on Facebook is analyzed. The political economy of privacy on Facebook is analyzed with the help of a theory of drives that is grounded in Herbert Marcuse’s interpretation of Sigmund Freud, which allows to analyze Facebook based on the concept of play labor (= the convergence of play and labor).

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 117-139: Biological Information—Definitions from a Biological Perspective

Jan Charles Biro — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

The objective of this paper is to analyze the properties of information in general and to define biological information in particular.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 102-116: Information as a Manifestation of Development

James A. Coffman — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

Information manifests a reduction in uncertainty or indeterminacy. As such it can emerge in two ways: by measurement, which involves the intentional choices of an observer; or more generally, by development, which involves systemically mutual (‘self-organizing’) processes that break symmetry. The developmental emergence of information is most obvious in ontogeny, but pertains as well to the evolution of ecosystems and abiotic dissipative structures. In this review, a seminal, well-characterized ontogenetic paradigm—the sea urchin embryo—is used to show how cybernetic causality engenders the developmental emergence of biological information at multiple hierarchical levels of organization. The relevance of information theory to developmental genomics is also discussed.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 61-101: On Quantifying Semantic Information

Simon D’Alfonso — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

The purpose of this paper is to look at some existing methods of semantic information quantification and suggest some alternatives. It begins with an outline of Bar-Hillel and Carnap’s theory of semantic information before going on to look at Floridi’s theory of strongly semantic information. The latter then serves to initiate an in-depth investigation into the idea of utilising the notion of truthlikeness to quantify semantic information. Firstly, a couple of approaches to measure truthlikeness are drawn from the literature and explored, with a focus on their applicability to semantic information quantification. Secondly, a similar but new approach to measure truthlikeness/information is presented and some supplementary points are made.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 41-60: Information Pluralism and Some Informative Modes of Ignorance

Erkki Patokorpi — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

In this paper information concepts will be roughly divided into two categories: The cybernetic and the semiotic-pragmatic. They are further divided into three and four subcategories, respectively. The cybernetic conception of information, which comprises both the mathematical-statistic and the logical-semantic approaches, misses some aspects of information and knowing, that are important in economics and technology studies, among others. The semiotic-pragmatic approach presumes the existence of several modes of being of information, as well as connects certainty and ambiguity to information in a different way from how the cybernetic approach does. These two general approaches to information and knowing are strikingly different, especially in their analysis of ignorance or incomplete knowledge. None of the cybernetic conceptions, and only some conceptions within the semiotic-pragmatic approach, can vindicate the elusive intuition of the potential positive role of ignorance. This comparative, philosophical discussion of the modes of ignorance may be taken as a challenge for cybernetics and computational philosophy to make better sense of incomplete knowledge.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 17-40: Empirical Information Metrics for Prediction Power and Experiment Planning

Christopher Lee — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

In principle, information theory could provide useful metrics for statistical inference. In practice this is impeded by divergent assumptions: Information theory assumes the joint distribution of variables of interest is known, whereas in statistical inference it is hidden and is the goal of inference. To integrate these approaches we note a common theme they share, namely the measurement of prediction power. We generalize this concept as an information metric, subject to several requirements: Calculation of the metric must be objective or model-free; unbiased; convergent; probabilistically bounded; and low in computational complexity. Unfortunately, widely used model selection metrics such as Maximum Likelihood, the Akaike Information Criterion and Bayesian Information Criterion do not necessarily meet all these requirements. We define four distinct empirical information metrics measured via sampling, with explicit Law of Large Numbers convergence guarantees, which meet these requirements: Ie, the empirical information, a measure of average prediction power; Ib, the overfitting bias information, which measures selection bias in the modeling procedure; Ip, the potential information, which measures the total remaining information in the observations not yet discovered by the model; and Im, the model information, which measures the model’s extrapolation prediction power. Finally, we show that Ip + Ie, Ip + Im, and Ie — Im are fixed constants for a given observed dataset (i.e. prediction target), independent of the model, and thus represent a fundamental subdivision of the total information contained in the observations. We discuss the application of these metrics to modeling and experiment planning.

Information, Vol. 2, Pages 1-16: Some Forms of Trust

Willem A. DeVries — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 00:00:00 CET

Three forms of trust: topic-focused trust, general trust, and personal trust are distinguished. Personal trust is argued to be the most fundamental form of trust, deeply connected with the construction of one’s self. Information technology has posed new problems for us in assessing and developing appropriate forms of the trust that is central to our personhood.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 153-168: Information Models of Acupuncture Analgesia and Meridian Channels

Kang Cheng — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 00:00:00 CET

Acupuncture and meridian channels have been major components of Chinese and Eastern Asian medicine—especially for analgesia—for over 2000 years. In recent decades, electroacupuncture (EA) analgesia has been applied clinically and experimentally. However, there were controversial results between different treatment frequencies, or between the active and the placebo treatments; and the mechanisms of the treatments and the related meridian channels are still unknown. In this study, we propose a new term of infophysics therapy and develop information models of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia and meridian channels, to understand the mechanisms and to explain the controversial results, based on Western theories of information, trigonometry and Fourier series, and physics, as well as published biomedical data. We are trying to build a bridge between Chinese medicine and Western medicine by investigating the Eastern acupuncture analgesia and meridian channels with Western sciences; we model the meridians as a physiological system that is mostly constructed with interstices in or between other physiological systems; we consider frequencies, amplitudes and wave numbers of electric field intensity (EFI) as information data. Our modeling results demonstrate that information regulated with acupuncture (or EA) is different from pain information, we provide answers to explain the controversial published results, and suggest that mechanisms of acupuncture (or EA) analgesia could be mostly involved in information regulation of frequencies and amplitudes of EFI as well as neuronal transmitters such as endorphins.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 119-152: Information Operators in Categorical Information Spaces

Mark Burgin — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 00:00:00 CET

The general theory of information (GTI) is a synthetic approach, which reveals the essence of information, organizing and encompassing all main directions in information theory. On the methodological level, it is formulated as system of principles explaining what information is and how to measure information. The goal of this paper is the further development of a mathematical stratum of the general theory of information based on category theory. Abstract categories allow us to construct flexible models for information and its flow. Now category theory is also used as unifying framework for physics, biology, topology, and logic, as well as for the whole mathematics, providing a base for analyzing physical and information systems and processes by means of categorical structures and methods. There are two types of representation of information dynamics, i.e., regularities of information processes, in categories: the categorical representation and functorial representation. Here we study the categorical representations of information dynamics, which preserve internal structures of information spaces associated with infological systems as their state/phase spaces. Various relations between information operators are introduced and studied in this paper. These relations describe intrinsic features of information, such as decomposition and complementarity of information, reflecting regularities of information processes.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 74-118: Information: A Conceptual Investigation

Wolfgang Lenski — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST

This paper is devoted to a study of the concept of information. We first situate the concept of information within the context of other philosophical concepts. However, an analysis of the concept of knowledge turns out to be the key when clarifying the concept of information. Our investigations produce the ‘missing link’ for the “severely neglected connection between theories of information and theories of knowledge” (Capurro/Hjørland). The results presented here clarify what information is and have the potential to provide answers to several of Floridi’s “open problems in the philosophy of information”.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 60-73: Application of Information—Theoretic Concepts in Chemoinformatics

Martin Vogt — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:00:00 CEST

The use of computational methodologies for chemical database mining and molecular similarity searching or structure-activity relationship analysis has become an integral part of modern chemical and pharmaceutical research. These types of computational studies fall into the chemoinformatics spectrum and usually have large-scale character. Concepts from information theory such as Shannon entropy and Kullback-Leibler divergence have also been adopted for chemoinformatics applications. In this review, we introduce these concepts, describe their adaptations, and discuss exemplary applications of information theory to a variety of relevant problems. These include, among others, chemical feature (or descriptor) selection, database profiling, and compound recall rate predictions.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 28-59: A Paradigm Shift in Biology?

Gennaro Auletta — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:00:00 CEST

All new developments in biology deal with the issue of the complexity of organisms, often pointing out the necessity to update our current understanding. However, it is impossible to think about a change of paradigm in biology without introducing new explanatory mechanisms. I shall introduce the mechanisms of teleonomy and teleology as viable explanatory tools. Teleonomy is the ability of organisms to build themselves through internal forces and processes (in the expression of the genetic program) and not external ones, implying a freedom relative to the exterior; however, the organism is able to integrate internal and external constraints in a process of co-adaptation. Teleology is that mechanism through which an organism exercises an informational control on another system in order to establish an equivalence class and select some specific information for its metabolic needs. Finally, I shall examine some interesting processes in phylogeny, ontogeny, and epigeny in which these two mechanisms are involved.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 13-27: New Information Measures for the Generalized Normal Distribution

Christos P. Kitsos — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CEST

We introduce a three-parameter generalized normal distribution, which belongs to the Kotz type distribution family, to study the generalized entropy type measures of information. For this generalized normal, the Kullback-Leibler information is evaluated, which extends the well known result for the normal distribution, and plays an important role for the introduced generalized information measure. These generalized entropy type measures of information are also evaluated and presented.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 3-12: Using Information Theory to Study Efficiency and Capacity of Computers and Similar Devices

Boris Ryabko — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:00:00 CEST

We address the problem of estimating the efficiency and capacity of computers. The main goal of our approach is to give a method for comparing the capacity of different computers, which can have different sets of instructions, different kinds of memory, a different number of cores (or processors), etc. We define efficiency and capacity of computers and suggest a method for their estimation, which is based on the analysis of processor instructions and their execution time. How the suggested method can be applied to estimate the computer capacity is shown. In particular, this consideration gives a new look at the organization of the memory of a computer. Obtained results can be of some interest for practical applications.

Information, Vol. 1, Pages 1-2: Information – A New Open Access Scientific Journal on Information Science, Information Technology, Data, Knowledge and Communication

Lin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 00:00:00 CEST

We plan to expand our Open Access publishing project to encompass additional fundamental areas in science and technology and to provide publication opportunities for scientists working in these areas. To achieve these goals, we are in the process of launching new journals. [...]