Informational Dimensions

from 1999, recap

Information can usefully be analyzed as multi-dimensional: on analogy with space (and time). I relegate data to one dimension, metadata to a second dimension, see grammar as minimally three-dimensional, and macroinformation as minimally four-dimensional.
Information₀the possibility of difference
Information₁any perceived difference: dataforeground / background
zero / one
Information₂metainformation of the simplest kindmetadata: information about the information
Information₃metainformation one level beyond metadatagrammar, for example: where a noun functions differently than a verb
Information₄metainformation more complex than both metadata and grammarmacroinformation: a product of metadifference

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Note that my numbering system is borrowed from Gregory Bateson's Learning₀, Learning₁ ...
Physicists since Einstein have talked of time as a dimension, convention making time "the fourth dimension"; except that Kaluza-Klein space (initially resisted by Einstein) offers a dozen or so dimensions without needing to mention time. Time is certainly essential for macroinformation, and, following Prigogine, I posit that time existed before space came to exist (contradicting physicist-mathematicians such as Hawking). But for the purposes of this introduction I leave time and macroinformation for later development, in other Macroinformation modules.

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Individual information dimensions I develop in posts to follow immediately: but while still here, consider my concept of multi-complex multi-dimensional information in relation to the multiple levels of existence I just discussed in terms of Bateson's universe-subsets: Pleroma, Creatura ... Difference may exist in Pleroma: energy frozen out as matter is different from energy just whizzing about; but information by Bateson's definition (and by mine) can only exist in Sentiens. That is, information is perceived difference. An observer is required. To talk about information we must live in Bishop Berkeley's universe: the falling tree has to be heard by something self-aware.