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
Category: information theories and philosophies
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
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)
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
Complementary understandings
I have argued for a while that the promotion of understanding is as important for the information sciences as the communication of information and the sharing of knowledge; see an earlier post on this idea. One of the difficulties in discussing this topic is the lack of clarity as to what exactly it means to… Continue reading Complementary understandings
Still waiting for Carnot: information and complexity
Back in 2015, Lyn Robinson and I published an article in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology [1], which gave an analysis of the relation between information and complexity, showing that ideas of complexity, organization, and 'interesting order', were intertwined with concepts of information, and of entropy. In particular, we noted… Continue reading Still waiting for Carnot: information and complexity
Deep down things revisited: information and physics
This post gives an update on the development of the idea of information as a constituent of the physical world, and is a companion piece to earlier posts on information in the biological domain, on the conservation of information, on quantum information, and on the theory of relativity and its informational component. All are expressions… Continue reading Deep down things revisited: information and physics
The Occasional Informationist 