As readers of this blog will know, one of my enduring interests is how the concept of information appears in different domains. One aspect of this is the much-studied relation between information and the complex, and the multi-faceted, and arguably over-used, concept of entropy; see an older paper for background. Interest in this topic shows… Continue reading “A delicate tension between physics and information”; information and entropy revisited
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Julian Barbour: timeless complexity and the records of the universe
The British physicist Julian Barbour is one of those admirable people who, having gained his PhD, realised that concentration on research and scholarship is incompatible with working in the modern university, and has had a very successful career as an independent researcher in the foundations of physics. Most notably, starting from the observation that we… Continue reading Julian Barbour: timeless complexity and the records of the universe
Lund on Documentation
Of making many books there is no end, as the writer of Ecclesiates reminds us, but occasionally a very worthwhile new one comes along. So it's a real pleasure to see Niels Windfield Lund's new book Introduction to Documentation Studies (Facet, 2024). [Full disclosure: the foreword is written by Lyn Robinson and myself.] Lund… Continue reading Lund on Documentation
Updating time and time literacy
Last year (2023), Tom Mason and I published a paper in Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology on "Times New Plural - The multiple temporalities of contemporary life and the infosphere". The open access paper is here, and a shortened 'translation' in Information Matters is here. In this paper, we examined experiences… Continue reading Updating time and time literacy
The continuing influence of Mark Burgin
In a previous post, I mentioned the death of Mark Burgin, theorist of Information, noting his many contributions to 'gap bridging' between the concept of information in different domains. Those interested in Burgin's ideas may like to know that the publishers MDPI have issued a set of Burgin's open access papers in their journals (Information, Entropy, Philosophies, Big… Continue reading The continuing influence of Mark Burgin
Overload, attention and medieval diagrams
Information overload, and its attendant pathologies of information, wrongly thought to be a product of the digital age, of social media, and the like, have received much comment in recent years. With attention focused on the ways in which the digital environment removes many of the informational frictions in the communication chain, the long history… Continue reading Overload, attention and medieval diagrams
Rocking documentation redux: rock value
In a post of some years back, I mused on how rocks and minerals could be regarded as documents, conveying information, and as informational entities in their own right, and drew attention to the way in which their documentary/informational status had been discussed by a variety of thinkers, from Suzanne Briet to Luciano Floridi. Some… Continue reading Rocking documentation redux: rock value
Mark Burgin (1946-2023)
Mark Burgin 9 January 1946 - 18 February 2023 (Photo W. Hofkirchner) Mark Burgin, mathematician and information theorist, died on 18 February 2023. He was well-known for his leadership of interdisciplinary studies of the concept of information, particularly through the International Society for Information Studies (IS4IS) and its conferences, and the affiliated MDPI open access… Continue reading Mark Burgin (1946-2023)
“Transmitted as never before”: the communication revolution and the green infrastructure, 1830 – 1880
On 22nd September 2022, I gave a presentation to an international symposium on 'The Genesis of the Green Infrastructure', celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederick Law Olmsted. The presentation is now available, along with other materials from the symposium, on the symposium website and on YouTube. This presentation reviewed developments in information… Continue reading “Transmitted as never before”: the communication revolution and the green infrastructure, 1830 – 1880
Dataome rising
Caleb Scharf, an astronomer and astrobiologist, is the latest in a series of authors to give an account of the new recognition of information as a significant, and objective, feature of the world, in his The Ascent of Information. The book gives an overview of the concept of information, not dissimilar to James Gleick's The Information… Continue reading Dataome rising
The Occasional Informationist 