[Fis] vann1936 - neophyte in the FIS community
Dear colleagues in FIS In connection with the coming FIS Conference in Moscow (May 2013) permit me to introduce myself as a geographer looking to combine information from natural and social sciences on the Earth envelop where peoples of different cultures live and change their physical environments. Vladimir V. Annenkov born June 3, 1936 in Moscow Education: Teacher in Geography 1958, Moscow Pedagogical Institute, PhD geographical sciences 1975 - Institute of Geography USSR Academy of Sciences Selected publications: International Cooperation of Geograpers, Moscow 1984 (co-editor author); The Art and Science of Geography: US and Soviet Perspectives, Boulder-Oxford, Westview Press 1992 (co-editor and author); Noosphere genesis: Content, periods, and contradictions. Soviet Geography, 31 (1990): 24-34; Problems and approaches in historical geography of global environmental change. GeoJournal, 1990, 20(2): 101-106; Organization espacial de la supervivencia humana a multiples niveles // Revista Internacional de Ciencias Sociales (UNESCO) 130 (1991) p.735-743 Fields of interest: historical geography of Noosphere, history and philosophy of science and learning, Internet for education, information science. Scholarly activities: General research in Historical Geography, information flows in Noosphere; former Chair of the IGU Commission in Historical Geography of Global Change, Secretary of the IGU Congress (1976) and Regional Conference (1995) in Moscow; admin of several net communities at www.openclass.ru. Academic positions: retired in January 2013 Address: vann1...@gmail.com; http://twitter.com/vann1936; skype: annenkovvv Best wishes to new friends Vladimir (or simply, VV) ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
[Fis] Hello from Milton Keynes
Dear Pedro and FIS people, Thank you, Pedro, for adding Chris, Magnus and me to your list and for your words about the DTMD 2013 workshop at the Open University. We are pleased that you found it good, and we in turn are very grateful for your extremely valuable participation as a keynote speaker. The video recordings of the workshop is now available on the workshop website http://www.dtmd.org.uk/ (on this page: http://www.dtmd.org.uk/webcast). You might also be interested in the proceedings of the previous workshop in this series, DTMD2011, which can be found here: http://www.dtmd2011.info/programme, and also the papers that were published following DTMD2011 as a special issue of TripleC: http://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/26 We are looking forward to participating in this discussion group but the three of us are exhausted after planning and running the workshop and have a big backlog of other jobs that need attention! So, thank you for inviting us to lead a discussion sessionand we would like to do that in the future, but I am afraid we need at least a few weeks before we could take that on. By way of introduction you can read about the three of us as well as the other members of the DTMD 2013 Programme Committee here: http://www.dtmd.org.uk/committee Best wishes, David Dr. David A. Chapman CEng, FIET, FHEA Senior Lecturer Department of Communication and Systems The Open Universityhttp://cands.open.ac.uk/ Intropy blog:http://www.intropy.co.uk/ T. +44 1908 652919 Twitter @dachapman The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302). On 13/04/2013 09:26, PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ wrote: Dear Joseph and FIS colleagues, Thanks for the friendly message. Let me introduce you all the organizing team of the Open University conference: Magnus Ramage, David Chapman, and Chris Bissell --they did a great job there and we are fortunate that they have joined our list too. As I invited them during the conference, they could chair our next discussion session, in a few weeks or days if they wish. A short text of around 500 or 800 words with some focus in themes discussed at Milton Keynes would suffice to kick off the discussion. As other people have recently joined the list, all of them should remind our_strict limitation of a maximum of two messages per week._ This is a list emphasizing slow thinking and scholarship. By the way, my management experience during all these months has lead me to think and start work on a new theme: the information flow in complex organizations. The properties or limits of natural communication (conversation) in our social groups determine the structural patterns of complex bureaucratic organizations... terrible committees included! Next weeks I will post more on that. best wishes --Pedro - Mensaje original - De: joe.bren...@bluewin.ch joe.bren...@bluewin.ch Fecha: Viernes, 12 de Abril de 2013, 7:12 pm Asunto: RE: [Fis] FIS News (Moscow 2013) A: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es, fis@listas.unizar.es Dear Pedro, Glad to hear from you. Your silence was, of course, expressive, containing much information . . . Now all of us will be waiting impatiently to learn about the the new, exciting themes that were discussed at the Milton Keynes Conference. Best wishes, Joseph Message d'origine De: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Date: 12.04.2013 11:02 À: fis@listas.unizar.es Objet: [Fis] FIS News (Moscow 2013) Dear FIS Friends, Apologies for my long silence. As I have already said several times, my science management duties are killing not only my time but also my nerve (well, not completely!). Imagine what is happening with the financing and organization of Spanish science these years... Anyhow, a couple of good news about our common Information Science endeavor. First, there has been an excellent conference in Milton Keynes, organized by the Open University, about Information (the difference that makes a difference). Quite exciting discussions on our most dear themes, and some new ones that we have rarely addressed here. The organizers, a very active team indeed, are cordially invited to lead a discussion session in our FIS list to continue with the conceptual explorations addressed in their conference. And the second news is about an imminent FIS CONFERENCE, MOSCOW 2013, the Sixth FIS, and the 1st of the ISIS organization. It will be held this May, from 21 to 24 in Moscow. This time the Russian organizers have followed a singular procedure, a relatively closed conference centered in the diffusion of information science in the Russian scientific community. At the time being, to my knowledge (I could not follow very
Re: [Fis] FW: fis Digest, Vol 570, Issue 2
Bill, if you go to http://www.capurro.de/info5.html you will find on p. 225 ff my interpretation of MacKay's information concept in the context of other theories of that time See particularly footnote 440: Information: that which determines form and that which justifies representational activity. best Rafael Dear All, I visited the von Foerster / Pask Cybernetics Archive in Vienna (which includes many MacKay texts) and went into depth related to MacKay in the spring of last year. It is very interesting to read his ideas about information as compared to the Shannon and Weaver's approach/definition. Does anyone know of a paper that systematically compares and contrasts their work - MacKay with SW ? Perhaps this is yet to be done... Sincerely, Bill Seaman On Apr 14, 2013, at 8:24 AM, John Collier colli...@ukzn.ac.za wrote: I am afraid that it was my fault. I thought I recalled a quote, but actually it is an interpretation of Mackay. Sorry about that. Amazing that it spread so much, but that probably reflects that it is endemic in Mackay's work. John -Original Message- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of Xueshan Yan Sent: 14 April 2013 10:53 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: Re: [Fis] fis Digest, Vol 570, Issue 2 Dear Pedro, Dear Joseph, About the Milton Keynes Conference, i.e., about DTMD definition, we saw this quote long long ago, but there two different sayings: One is Information is a distinction that makes a difference from Donald M. MacKay in his Information, Mechanism and Meaning (1969), and another is Information is a difference that makes a difference from Gregory Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972). Although I have checked it page by page in Donald M. MacKay's book but can't found it, whereas it is easy to find Information is a difference that makes a difference in Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind at page 230, 361, 339, etc., who can tell the accurate priority about DTMD? Best wishes, Xueshan 16:49, April 14, 2013 Peking University -Original Message- From: fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-boun...@listas.unizar.es] On Behalf Of fis-requ...@listas.unizar.es Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 12:00 AM To: fis@listas.unizar.es Subject: fis Digest, Vol 570, Issue 2 Send fis mailing list submissions to fis@listas.unizar.es To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to fis-requ...@listas.unizar.es You can reach the person managing the list at fis-ow...@listas.unizar.es When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than Re: Contents of fis digest... Today's Topics: 1. Re: FIS News (Moscow 2013) (joe.bren...@bluewin.ch) 2. Re: FIS News (Moscow 2013) (PEDRO CLEMENTE MARIJUAN FERNANDEZ) 3. Re: FIS News (Moscow 2013) (Gyorgy Darvas) -- Message: 1 Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:11:58 + (GMT+00:00) From: joe.bren...@bluewin.ch joe.bren...@bluewin.ch Subject: Re: [Fis] FIS News (Moscow 2013) To: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es, fis@listas.unizar.es Message-ID: 15776686.90091365786718476.javamail.webm...@bluewin.ch Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Dear Pedro, Glad to hear from you. Your silence was, of course, expressive, containing much information . . . Now all of us will be waiting impatiently to learn about the the new, exciting themes that were discussed at the Milton Keynes Conference. Best wishes, Joseph Message d'origine De: pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es Date: 12.04.2013 11:02 À: fis@listas.unizar.es Objet: [Fis] FIS News (Moscow 2013) Dear FIS Friends, Apologies for my long silence. As I have already said several times, my science management duties are killing not only my time but also my nerve (well, not completely!). Imagine what is happening with the financing and organization of Spanish science these years... Anyhow, a couple of good news about our common Information Science endeavor. First, there has been an excellent conference in Milton Keynes, organized by the Open University, about Information (the difference that makes a difference). Quite exciting discussions on our most dear themes, and some new ones that we have rarely addressed here. The organizers, a very active team indeed, are cordially invited to lead a discussion session in our FIS list to continue with the conceptual explorations addressed in their conference. And the second news is about an imminent FIS CONFERENCE, MOSCOW 2013, the Sixth FIS, and the 1st of the ISIS organization. It will be held this May, from 21 to 24 in Moscow. This time the Russian organizers have followed a singular procedure, a relatively closed conference
[Fis] [Fwd: information between living and nonliving circle]
Original Message Subject:information between living and nonliving circle Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 17:24:37 +0800 From: Xueshan Yan y...@pku.edu.cn Reply-To: y...@pku.edu.cn Organization: CHINAPKU To: Pedro C. Marijuán pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es CC: Wolfgang Hofkirchner wolfgang.hofkirch...@tuwien.ac.at Dear Pedro, The following are some discussions between Michel and me, the resolution about this problem is a fatal testimony that if we canextend information studies into nonliving circles or not. If you think it have some significance, you can add it to FIS mailing list! With all good wishes, Xueshan 17:24, April 15, 2013 Peking University Dear Xueshan, About FIS 1994 and 1996, Pedro is the best placed to help you. I did not read Nalewajski's book, but your question is very interesting. Information theory is a mathematical tool (probabilistic) developped by Shannon in 1948 to modelize communication by messages in computer sciences. It appears that some of maths equations he got, and particularly what he called entropy, were similar to the ones derived by Boltzmann in statistical mechanics at the end of the 19th century to modelize Clausius thermodynamical entropy (this latter goes back to defined in 1865). This formal analogy is the reason why von Neumann suggested to call entropy the quantity derived by Shannon. From this formal analogy resulted an incredible jam. Now chemists like to see information in molecular systems although, in my opinion, there is not, at least in the historical sense of communication science. Of course that does not preclude to apply information theory to molecular systems and get results. But it does not mean that information (in its original communication sscience meaning) exists in molecular systems. Adding to the jam, the definition of information is not fixed and is still debated along the years, and we know that the one from information theory is only a very particular case. So, depending on which definition of information we use, may be it applies to molecular systems or may be not. In fact I am afraid that there is a more general confusion: the one between the mathematical models and the physical systems to which these math models are applied. Let me take an example. Some years ago there was a discussion on the internet forum CCL between computational chemists. The question was: do orbitals exist ? Some people (mostly in the US) said yes, because they can be measured from some point of views. Some people said no (mostly in Europe), because it is just a mathematical tool we developped to modelize a physical system, and it is not the physical system itself. I would say no: orbitals are mathematical concepts in our head, and should not be confused with the physical systems to which they are applied. The same kind of problem may arise with information. Once we can identify several important physical situations (include the human and social ones) to which we accept to apply a common terminolgy such as information, then may be we can idealize these situations and produce a formal definition, this latter being applicable in the mentioned physical situations. All that is a problem of terminology, although not necessarily mathematical. FIS and ISIS can help to build a definition and propose it as a candidate for an official definition, at least for a time (concepts may change along the time). Let me observe that, due to the cultural diversity over the world, it could be difficult to solve terminology problems. Maths is a transcultural tool to do that, but I am not sure that it suffices: so many concepts are not maths problems. However, I am very happy to see that people from diverse countries like to discuss such topics: it is very good. I am not expert in information science (just interested in), all what precedes is just a personal opinion for discussion and possibly I misanalyzed the things. Best, Michel. 2013/4/15 Xueshan Yan y...@pku.edu.cn mailto:y...@pku.edu.cn: === Dear Michel, Thank you! I am very familiar with your FIS 2005 website long before. Have you read the Polish chemist Nalewajski's book: Information theory of molecular systems (Elsevier, 2006)？ I really want to know if there are INFORMATON that play a role between twoatoms, or two molecules, or two supramolecules as Jean-Marie Lehn said. As to FIS 2005, I need every review about all four FIS conferences held in Madrid, Vienna, Paris, and Beijing, but only a general review about FIS 2005 not be given by people so far. Best regards, Xueshan 9:59, April 15, 2013 Peking University -- - Pedro C. Marijuán Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA) Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X 50009 Zaragoza, Spain Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 ( 6818)
Re: [Fis] About FIS 2005
Dear Xueshan - re Nalewajski's conjecture that molecular systems have information I am skeptical. The word information originated with the idea of forming the mind according to the OED. Information as far as I am concerned requires a sentient being to receive and understand it. Molecules and atoms react to forces not information. They have no idea of the forces acting on them. They are not informed as they have no sentience that can be informed. Information requires an interpretant for which the signal has meaning. Shannon's information theory is merely signal theory as all he is concerned with is how well a set of symbols or a signal are transmitted from the sender to the receiver. The ability of the receiver to decipher the signal or interpret the signal has no bearing on the reception of Shannon information. Shannon information has nothing to do with meaning. A set of random numbers has the maximum amount of Shannon information and yet has no meaning. If my set of symbols have meaning for you, whether or not you agree with the premise they represent, then they are information. As for a molecule or even a flower or a penguin they are not information. In other words information has to inform as a grammatical analysis of the word information implies. A representation represents, a contradiction contradicts, a saturation saturates and in general an Xtion Xes and therefore information informs or at least has the capability of informing. So while a text in the Basque or Albanian languages might not inform me because of my inability with these languages they are capable of informing those familiar with the Basque and Albanian languages respectively and are therefore informaton. A random set of letters cannot inform anyone yet they have maximum Shannon information. Information is a tricky thing. This line of thought raises the question of whether or not DNA is information. DNA does not inform a sentient being yet it does catalyze and hence instructs how RNA is produced which in turn catalyzes and instructs how proteins are created which in turn gives rise to bodily functions. Therefore we suggested that DNA represents a different form of information from Shannon information which we called biotic or instructional information. The argument can be found in the paper Propagating of Organization: An Inquiry by Stuart Kauffman, Robert K. Logan, Robert Este, Randy Goebel, David Hobill and Ilya Smulevich. published in 2007 in Biology and Philosophy 23: 27-45. I am happy to share this paper with anyone requesting it. Bob Logan On 2013-04-14, at 9:59 PM, Xueshan Yan wrote: Dear Michel, Thank you! I am very familiar with your FIS 2005 website long before. Have you read the Polish chemist Nalewajski's book: Information theory of molecular systems (Elsevier, 2006), I really want to know if there are INFORMATON that play a role between two atoms, or two molecules, or two supramolecules as Jean-Marie Lehn said. As to FIS 2005, I need every review about all four FIS conferences held in Madrid, Vienna, Paris, and Beijing, but only a general review about FIS 2005 not be given by people so far. Best regards, Xueshan 9:59, April 15, 2013 Peking University -Original Message- From: Michel Petitjean [mailto:petitjean.chi...@gmail.com] Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2013 6:19 PM To: Yan Xueshan Subject: Re: About FIS 2005 Dear Xueshan, As far as I know, there is no longer report, but I am at your disposal if you wish to get more: please feel free to ask me. Also you may have a look at the programme, the proceedings, and all what is available from the main welcome page: http://www.mdpi.org/fis2005/ Best, Michel. 2013/4/14 Xueshan Yan y...@pku.edu.cn: Dear Michel, May I ask you a favor? Do you have any more detailed review about FIS 2005, except your FIS 2005 brief conference report published in http://www.mdpi.org/entropy/htm/e7030188.htm? Best regards, Xueshan 17:47, April 14, 2013 __ Robert K. Logan Chief Scientist - sLab at OCAD Prof. Emeritus - Physics - U. of Toronto www.physics.utoronto.ca/Members/logan ___ fis mailing list fis@listas.unizar.es https://webmail.unizar.es/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/fis
Re: [Fis] About FIS 2005
Bob, Xueshan, others, This is an issue that I think more terminological than anything else, and I think that there is no correct answer. The problem is more to find the relations between different uses of information that are current in science ( Kinds of Information in Scientific Use. 2011. cognition, communication, co-operation. Vol 9, No 2 ). For example in astrophysics and cosmology it is useful to speak of information as a conserved quantity that is related to energy but is not the same (not two sides of the same coin as some would have it). Tom Schneider has done a lot of work on molecular machines ( http://schneider.ncifcrf.gov/) in which he sees a computational model using information to keep track of computations as useful. Sure it al is grounded in energy, but this is not the most perspicacious way to view what happens in these macromolecular interactions. I have argued in Information in biological systems (Handbook of Philosophy of Science, vol 8, Philosophy of Information, 2008, Chapter 5f) that we should distinguish between the instrumental use of information in biology and a substantive use, in which information is treated as such by the system. This is a stronger requirement than in the astrophysical and cosmological uses of information (in a different substantive way, and also stronger than Schneider's use). This is a useful distinction in biology, or so I argue. However, in an earlier paper, Intrinsic Information (1990) I argued that in order to understand what it is to mean that we get information about the world, we must understand what it is that makes the world capable of providing us with information. This leads to a natural description of the world as containing information (see also Dretske, knowledge and the flow of information, and Barwise and Perry, Situations and Attitudes and following work of theirs) that flows into our minds, given the right coordination. See also Barwise and Seligman, Information Flow for a general account not mind dependent. What you want to treat as information depends very much on what you are considering and how. I would argue that a unified theory of information should recognize all of these usages, and put them in their place relative to each other. Some usages, I believe, are dispensable in some context, and some may be dispensable in all contexts. But I doubt that information talk can be dispensed with entirely in favour of energy talk when boundary conditions are important to system behaviour. This happens especially with complex systems, but physicists have found it useful in talking about boundary conditions of black holes, among other things, that aren't obviously complexly organized. John At 02:43 PM 2013/04/15, Bob Logan wrote: Dear Xueshan - re Nalewajski's conjecture that molecular systems have information I am skeptical. The word information originated with the idea of forming the mind according to the OED. Information as far as I am concerned requires a sentient being to receive and understand it. Molecules and atoms react to forces not information. They have no idea of the forces acting on them. They are not informed as they have no sentience that can be informed. Information requires an interpretant for which the signal has meaning. Shannon's information theory is merely signal theory as all he is concerned with is how well a set of symbols or a signal are transmitted from the sender to the receiver. The ability of the receiver to decipher the signal or interpret the signal has no bearing on the reception of Shannon information. Shannon information has nothing to do with meaning. A set of random numbers has the maximum amount of Shannon information and yet has no meaning. If my set of symbols have meaning for you, whether or not you agree with the premise they represent, then they are information. As for a molecule or even a flower or a penguin they are not information. In other words information has to inform as a grammatical analysis of the word information implies. A representation represents, a contradiction contradicts, a saturation saturates and in general an Xtion Xes and therefore information informs or at least has the capability of informing. So while a text in the Basque or Albanian languages might not inform me because of my inability with these languages they are capable of informing those familiar with the Basque and Albanian languages respectively and are therefore informaton. A random set of letters cannot inform anyone yet they have maximum Shannon information. Information is a tricky thing. This line of thought raises the question of whether or not DNA is information. DNA does not inform a sentient being yet it does catalyze and hence instructs how RNA is produced which in turn catalyzes and instructs how proteins are created which in turn gives rise to bodily functions. Therefore we suggested that DNA represents a different form of information from Shannon information which we called biotic or instructional
