Perspectives on Information Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science 1. Using the Engineering Literature Previous titles to appear in Edited by Bonnie A. Osif Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science include: 2. Museum Informatics People, Information, and Technology Using the Mathematics Literature in Museums Edited by Kristine K. Fowler Edited by Paul F. Marty and Katherine B. Jones Electronic Theses and Dissertations A Sourcebook for Educators, 3. Managing the Transition from Students, and Librarians Print to Electronic Journals and Edited by Edward A. Fox Resources A Guide for Library and Information Global Librarianship Professionals Edited by Martin A. Kesselman Edited by Maria Collins and Patrick Carr Using the Financial and 4. The Challenges to Library Learning Business Literature Solutions for Librarians Edited by Thomas Slavens Bruce Massis Using the Biological Literature A Practical Guide 5. E-Journals Access and Edited by Diane Schmidt Management Edited by Wayne Jones Using the Agricultural, Environmental, and Food Literature 6. Digital Scholarship Edited by Barbara S. Hutchinson Edited by Marta Mestrovic Deyrup Becoming a Digital Library 7. Serials Binding Edited by Susan J. Barnes A Simple and Complete Guidebook to Processes Guide to the Successful Thesis Irma Nicola and Dissertation A Handbook for Students and Faculty 8. Information Worlds Edited by James Mauch Social Context, Technology, and Information Behavior in the Age Electronic Printing and Publishing of the Internet The Document Processing Revolution Paul T. Jaeger and Gary Burnett Edited by Michael B. Spring 9. Perspectives on Information Library Information Technology and Edited by Magnus Ramage Networks and David Chapman Edited by Charles Grosch Perspectives on Information Edited by Magnus Ramage and David Chapman New York London First published 2011 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2011. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2011 Taylor & Francis The right of Magnus Ramage and David Chapman to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaf- ter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trade- marks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perspectives on Information / edited by Magnus Ramage, David Chapman. p. cm. — (Routledge Studies in Library and Information Science ; 9) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Information theory. I. Ramage, Magnus (Magnus Alastair), 1970– II. Chapman, David (David Alan), 1958– Q360.P387 2011 003'.54—dc22 2010050148 ISBN 0-203-81450-9 Master e-book ISBN ISBN13: 978-0-415-88410-5 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-0-203-81450-5 (ebk) Contents List of Figures and Tables vii Acknowledgements ix 1 Introduction 1 MAGNUS RAMAGE AND DAVID CHAPMAN 2 Competing Models of Information in the History of Cybernetics 8 MAGNUS RAMAGE 3 ‘The Information Revolution’: Taking a Long View 21 CHRIS BISSELL 4 Information, Meaning and Context 36 DAVID CHAPMAN 5 Signs and Signals 51 JOHN MONK 6 Fundamentals of Information: Purposeful Activity, Meaning and Conceptualisation 65 SUE HOLWELL 7 Using Information (and Exformation) to Inform Action 77 PAUL LEFRERE 8 Information and Libraries: Impact of Web 2.0 91 JUANITA FOSTER-JONES vi Contents 9 Three Principles of Information Flow: Conversation as a Dialogue Game 106 PAUL PIWEK 10 Quantum Information 121 TONY NIXON 11 Information Policy Making: Developing the Rules of the Road for the Information Society (or the Anatomy of a Digital Economy Act) 134 RAY CORRIGAN 12 Conclusion 154 DAVID CHAPMAN AND MAGNUS RAMAGE Contributors 161 Index 163 Figures and Tables FIGURES 4.1 Model of communication. 37 4.2 Model of communication, redrawn to emphasise layers. 42 4.3 Further layers in a communication channel. 43 4.4 More advanced use of layers in communication. 45 4.5 (a) Saussure’s model of a sign, (b) as a trapezium, (c) the relationship between data and meaning. 47 4.6 (a) A semiotic triangle, (b) encoding/decoding as triadic sign, (c) ASCII code as a sign. 48 6.1 Data, capta, information and knowledge. 74 8.1 Captive tomes. 92 8.2 Some key developments in the history of the Internet. 94 8.3 Montage of images of Digilab. 100 9.1 Two updates, P followed by Not Q, change an information state by eliminating alternatives. 111 9.2 Example of a structured context that is inhabited by a witness and two labels attached to the witness. 114 10.1 Entangled qubits carried by Alice and Bob. 127 10.2 Complementarity, illustrated by the illusion of the vase or two faces. 131 viii Figures and Tables TABLES 10.1 Alice and Bob’s Measurements 128 Acknowledgements The editors and a number of the authors of this book are members of the Society and Information Research Group (SIRG) at the Open University (OU). The stimulation of that research environment, the contribution from fellow members of SIRG and the support of the Communication and Sys- tems Department of the OU are gratefully acknowledged. 1 Introduction Magnus Ramage and David Chapman THE CRUCIAL ROLE OF INFORMATION IN SOCIETY Information is everything, and everything is information. (Beckett, 1971, p.103) We live in a world suffused with information. From our bank records to our lists of friends, from our music collections to the genetic sequence of our bodies—many things which were perceived as physical objects are now widely understood through their information content. Consider music as a straightforward example. There was a time before recording when music couldn’t be separated from people—whether sing- ing or playing an instrument, it was a person or persons doing it. Musical scores provided instructions, but the music required people. Technology broke that tie, and music was available from an object, whether it was a musical box, pianola, a gramophone, tape or a compact disc (CD). The fact that the encoding on a CD was digital was a signifi cant departure from analogue records and tapes, but it wasn’t one that necessarily had an impact on the user. The music was tied to a physical object even if it was a digital CD instead of an analogue record. Today, however, music fl oats free. You can download a fi le and use it wherever you want, transferring between laptop and MP3 player, television (TV) and mobile phone. Or you don’t even bother downloading the fi le, you just listen online whenever you want on your computer at the desk or via your smartphone. Music on a phone draws attention to a consequence of digitisation that has been developing since the telephone network started to use digital tech- nology in the 1980s and which is often referred to as convergence. Origi- nally, it was about the convergence of telecommunications and computing (telephone exchanges became giant computers, and computer data was sent over telephone links), but now all sorts of things converge because they all use digital technology. Taking telephone calls is only a small part of what a mobile phone does now. As well as playing music, it takes photographs, gets you the train timetables and allows you to pay for your parking. There’s little point in enumerating everything you can do because there will be 2 Magnus Ramage and David Chapman lots more that can be done with it in only a matter of months, and any- way sooner or later it will probably some different gadget doing all these things—the concept of a ‘mobile phone’ may itself soon be out of date. The message, though, is that more and more of these things are information, and the physical technology that gets them to us is incidental, or at least is conceptually separate from the information. Talk of what can be done with a mobile phone puts the emphasis on the individual, especially as a consumer. That is not the only area in which the focus on information is increasing though. Government documents are replaced by online information, passports are supplemented by biometric data, and movements are tracked by closed-circuit television (CCTV; for good or ill). Many have argued that the Internet will reshape democratic debate, and some evidence can be seen that this is already happening (as discussed by Castells, 2009). Frequently quoted examples include the bot- tom-up nature of the Obama presidential campaign in the United States in 2008 and the organising of the opposition in Iran via Twitter in 2009, although the popular story of transformation through technology in both of these cases has been questioned. Examples such as these lead many to describe our current period as the information age and the information society. Although there is a need to be careful how we interpret these sentiments and the conclusions that we draw from them, at the very least, we need to explore what is behind them. In particular, it is important to decipher what people are talking about when they refer to ‘information’, since it is far from obvious.