We live in a universe of information, thinking it's a physical universe. Perhaps we can't live without Pleroma, the physical universe, but we don't live in it; we live in the universe of information, which is minimally one level of orthogonality away from the physical universe.
Light transmits information about the physical universe to our retina where our visual cortex interprets the information. The light is data, but the information processed in our minds, though also employing data, is not data: it is macroinformation, abstract, multiple-level, complex, interpreted information.
All data is information. All metainformation is information. All macroinformation is information.
Not all information is data. Not all information is metainformation. But all macroinformation is interpreted.
There is no information in the human world (/ Creatura / Sentiens / Persona (/ Pathologica ...) /) that is not interpreted: and no interpretation is whole, complete, final ...
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
False True Information
My theory of macroinformation distinguishes information from data: information is the set, data is a subset.
Today I emphasize with a fresh example that false information (false macroinformation, macroinformation also being a subset of information) can be elicited in others via true data. In prejudice for example, racism for example, the Whatsoo can demonstrate hypocrisy in the Toozoo. The demonstration can be true. But better macroinformation would be elicited by the admission that hypocrisy can also be demonstrated in the Whatsoo.
The US of my youth laughed at Communists claims that some Communist had invented the telephone, the light bulb ... I today laugh at the US for its similar fabrications. (My offer of cybernetic libraries, cybernetic data basing, and cybernetic social networking ... implicit in my founding of the Free Learning Exchange, Inc. in 1970 not being taught by schools or universities around the world today is evidence, proof, that schools, media, and other institutions collude in fraud.)
OK. Here's some data, and false macroinformation, that pricked me to launch this post: Today's sports news blazons a new $100M baseball contract: for pitcher Lee and his Phillies. The other year Tiger was getting $100M for something. Last week Derek Jeter was getting $50M+ from the Yankees. I don't dispute the data. Neither do I scoff at Jeter or Tiger or Lee's quality, Neither do I scoff at Jeter or Tiger or Lee's right to such wealth; not in the absence of similar figures divulging the wealth of others. The Steinbrenner family's income (including capital gains, profits, earnings ... lagniappe, tips) may be at least in part a matter of public record: but it's the slave, Jeter, whose contract is blazoned publicly, not the owner(s): (the late) George Steinbrenner (and family, etc.)
In other words: there's important macroinformation implicit in what data an organ divulges and congruent macroinformation implicit in what data an organ does not divulge. Gender, class, ethnicity, and such may be expected to be involved: regardless or whether the ambient culture claims to differentiate by class or gender or ethnicity ...
We show our faces but commonly hide our tail end.
We make someone a celebrity, then show their wallet:
while not even acknowledging the existence of some millions of others.
This post starts out in the style of Macroinformation.org (and this Macroinformation blog) but soon takes on the political flavor of typical other pk domains and blogs. True. Well, I accuse my culture of informational dishonesty. Civilized media are heavily biased to notice the farts of the unwashed while politely averting the gaze for identical behavior from the privileged.
Why do we tolerate Lee's salary being headline worthy while also tolerating an absence of information about the income of other figures? Further, what does it tell about us if we have figures estimating Bill Gates's estate without also displaying figures for Ivan Illich's estate: he who proposed that cybernetic information storage and retrieval could help humans become Christian (meaning convivial in Illich's lexicon) and without also displaying figures for pk's estate: me, pk, being the guy (one of several, first of several to go public) who offered to actually try to launch Illich's cybernetic information revolution: via my 1970 Free Learning Exchange, Inc. (Note: I mention Bill Gates because he founded Microsoft years after the public declined to support FLEX's offer to develop relational data-basing software for advertising resources. We preferred to pay, to pay a great deal, for software that did considerably less than we could have gotten for "cost plus.")
Today I emphasize with a fresh example that false information (false macroinformation, macroinformation also being a subset of information) can be elicited in others via true data. In prejudice for example, racism for example, the Whatsoo can demonstrate hypocrisy in the Toozoo. The demonstration can be true. But better macroinformation would be elicited by the admission that hypocrisy can also be demonstrated in the Whatsoo.
The US of my youth laughed at Communists claims that some Communist had invented the telephone, the light bulb ... I today laugh at the US for its similar fabrications. (My offer of cybernetic libraries, cybernetic data basing, and cybernetic social networking ... implicit in my founding of the Free Learning Exchange, Inc. in 1970 not being taught by schools or universities around the world today is evidence, proof, that schools, media, and other institutions collude in fraud.)
OK. Here's some data, and false macroinformation, that pricked me to launch this post: Today's sports news blazons a new $100M baseball contract: for pitcher Lee and his Phillies. The other year Tiger was getting $100M for something. Last week Derek Jeter was getting $50M+ from the Yankees. I don't dispute the data. Neither do I scoff at Jeter or Tiger or Lee's quality, Neither do I scoff at Jeter or Tiger or Lee's right to such wealth; not in the absence of similar figures divulging the wealth of others. The Steinbrenner family's income (including capital gains, profits, earnings ... lagniappe, tips) may be at least in part a matter of public record: but it's the slave, Jeter, whose contract is blazoned publicly, not the owner(s): (the late) George Steinbrenner (and family, etc.)
In other words: there's important macroinformation implicit in what data an organ divulges and congruent macroinformation implicit in what data an organ does not divulge. Gender, class, ethnicity, and such may be expected to be involved: regardless or whether the ambient culture claims to differentiate by class or gender or ethnicity ...
We show our faces but commonly hide our tail end.
We make someone a celebrity, then show their wallet:
while not even acknowledging the existence of some millions of others.
This post starts out in the style of Macroinformation.org (and this Macroinformation blog) but soon takes on the political flavor of typical other pk domains and blogs. True. Well, I accuse my culture of informational dishonesty. Civilized media are heavily biased to notice the farts of the unwashed while politely averting the gaze for identical behavior from the privileged.
Why do we tolerate Lee's salary being headline worthy while also tolerating an absence of information about the income of other figures? Further, what does it tell about us if we have figures estimating Bill Gates's estate without also displaying figures for Ivan Illich's estate: he who proposed that cybernetic information storage and retrieval could help humans become Christian (meaning convivial in Illich's lexicon) and without also displaying figures for pk's estate: me, pk, being the guy (one of several, first of several to go public) who offered to actually try to launch Illich's cybernetic information revolution: via my 1970 Free Learning Exchange, Inc. (Note: I mention Bill Gates because he founded Microsoft years after the public declined to support FLEX's offer to develop relational data-basing software for advertising resources. We preferred to pay, to pay a great deal, for software that did considerably less than we could have gotten for "cost plus.")
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Informational Scree
My Macroinformation Brief suggests hunting for macroinformation on your own focusing on nature versus culture, surveying the informational scree from that conflict.
Here's a path I suggest that will keep you busy for millennia (if we're lucky enough to have millennia before us) (we're certainly not smart enough to deserve it!):
Look for metadifferences implicit in the major religion of the West for the past two millennia: one the one hand there's our judgment of ourselves; on the other hand, at Judgment, such judgments will be exposed as foolishness (or so Christians are supposed to believe.)
Now: think what else that might imply: an omnipotent deity might find the Temple of Jerusalem's self-image to be contradicted by in behavior: can we think of any other institutions where an omnipotent deity might find the institution's self image to be contradicted by its behavior?
In Casablanca Captain Renault lives in a secular heaven: he's in charge of the police, he gets payola every night ... After a macroinformational judgment, where would he be? Never mind the judgment of an omnipotent deity: how about in your judgment. In your judgment is any government what it says it is? Is any institution? Is your judgment the same in 2010 as it was in 2000? Do you expect it to be the same in 2020? (Do you see that those differences stimulate macroinformation?)
Never mind whether God is infinite; macroinformation is infinite. Its potential is infinitely infinite whether humans are here to think it or not.
It's so funny: I thought much of this out around 1965. I started writing it in 1999. I'm editing it a bit here 2010 11 17. But I'm still using my examples from 1965! Do people still know Kazan? Brando? Casablanca?
Macroinformation is merely potential, not at all actual, if no one is actively processing the information. Once state-coerced schooling has discouraged our minds down to zero there will be no information of any kind: except data. And meta-data. And maybe grammar.
Here's a path I suggest that will keep you busy for millennia (if we're lucky enough to have millennia before us) (we're certainly not smart enough to deserve it!):
Look for metadifferences implicit in the major religion of the West for the past two millennia: one the one hand there's our judgment of ourselves; on the other hand, at Judgment, such judgments will be exposed as foolishness (or so Christians are supposed to believe.)
Now: think what else that might imply: an omnipotent deity might find the Temple of Jerusalem's self-image to be contradicted by in behavior: can we think of any other institutions where an omnipotent deity might find the institution's self image to be contradicted by its behavior?
In Casablanca Captain Renault lives in a secular heaven: he's in charge of the police, he gets payola every night ... After a macroinformational judgment, where would he be? Never mind the judgment of an omnipotent deity: how about in your judgment. In your judgment is any government what it says it is? Is any institution? Is your judgment the same in 2010 as it was in 2000? Do you expect it to be the same in 2020? (Do you see that those differences stimulate macroinformation?)
Never mind whether God is infinite; macroinformation is infinite. Its potential is infinitely infinite whether humans are here to think it or not.
It's so funny: I thought much of this out around 1965. I started writing it in 1999. I'm editing it a bit here 2010 11 17. But I'm still using my examples from 1965! Do people still know Kazan? Brando? Casablanca?
Macroinformation is merely potential, not at all actual, if no one is actively processing the information. Once state-coerced schooling has discouraged our minds down to zero there will be no information of any kind: except data. And meta-data. And maybe grammar.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Information, Difference, Context
I have to treat this theme but can't at the moment. I place a quote to build around:
"Through Stockhausen I understood music as a process of elimination and addition. Like 'yes' only means something after you have said no." Miles Davis
"Through Stockhausen I understood music as a process of elimination and addition. Like 'yes' only means something after you have said no." Miles Davis
Friday, July 30, 2010
Binaural Beats
For years I've used the Nyah-nyah chat of children to illustrate how macroinformation allows us to hear eidetic sounds: things that aren't physically there. Today's Straight Dope newsletter introduces me to an example I hadn't known.Binaural beats (BBs), embraced in recent years by the new-age crowd, are a scientific curiosity first described in 1839 by Prussian scientist H.W. Dove. They occur when two slightly different tones are played simultaneously, one in each ear, causing the brain to perceive a beat whose frequency is the difference between those of the two tones. For example, playing a 370-hertz tone in the left ear and a 380-hertz tone in the right yields a beat with a frequency of ten hertz.
You’d notice something similar if you simply set two tone generators side by side, but it’d be a monaural beat — you could hear it with just one ear. What’s different about binaural beats is that the mixing of the two tones happens in your head. See http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2949/can-binaural-beats-improve-your-mood
You’d notice something similar if you simply set two tone generators side by side, but it’d be a monaural beat — you could hear it with just one ear. What’s different about binaural beats is that the mixing of the two tones happens in your head.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Multiple Perspective
The Macroinformation Brief, just above, gives a few brief examples of macroinformation. Here's another brief example, so fundamental I'm shocked that I hadn't used it long ago:
Look at a Cézanne still life.
Something like the following is likely to be true no matter which particular still life you've found: You see the "top" of the bottle to the right, you do not see the top of the bottle to the left; yet the bottle to the left seems to be behind as well as "higher" than the bottle on the right! How can that be?
Look at a Cézanne still life.
Something like the following is likely to be true no matter which particular still life you've found: You see the "top" of the bottle to the right, you do not see the top of the bottle to the left; yet the bottle to the left seems to be behind as well as "higher" than the bottle on the right! How can that be?
Cézanne has forged multiple perspectives! Different views prevail simultaneously!
The image is powered by contradiction, by incompatibility of view, by impossibilty.
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