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Foundations of Information
- throwawaysea 6y agoI love the table of contents - initially this sounded vague but it’s a great breakdown of the entire landscape of “information”. It’s also very useful to have estimated reading time next to each topic. I wonder what the “next level deeper” looks like, since the author frames this as introductory material.
- syntaxing 6y agoLooks extremely interesting! I originally it mean information theory but this is more about the spread of knowledge(?). I wish there was a ePub of this!
- for_i_in_range 6y agoThanks for posting this. I’ve been interested in the field of Information Science/Studies since discovering it recently. First via Semantic Web and Linked Data, then Taxonomy and Knowledge Management, then PKM and Zettelkasten. Just finished Cataloging the World about Paul Otlet. It’s a fantastic book.
- ProfHewitt 6y agoExcellent start! You might want to refer to the mathematical foundations of information that is in disagreement since empirical information is always subject to disagreement.
- Executor 6y agoTLDR: muh White supremist.
- jimmyed 6y agoAnother book which talks about this: Information. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_Theory,_a_Flood https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_...
- crancher 6y agoHighly reccomended. I’ve read it several times, and learn something new every time.
- chisquared 6y agoSkimmed through some of the chapters. Was disappointed to find no references to Shannon's theory of communication, or to some ideas about the economics of information (e.g. moral hazard, adverse selection). That's probably just a function of my personal interests, though.
- op03 6y agoInstead of skimming genius use the index.
- chisquared 6y agoSorry, these websites-as-books are still foreign to me :) There are indeed references to Shannon. Still nothing about the other stuff, though.
- thunderbong 6y agoI've not gone through all the chapters, but in Chapter 3 - Data, information, knowledge, Shannon's theory is mentioned [0]. >> Entropy is a measurable physical property of a state of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. For example, the sequence of letters aaaaa has low entropy, conceptually, as it is the same letter appearing multiple times; it could be abbreviated to just 5 a’s. In contrast, the sequence of letters bkawe has high entropy, with no apparent pattern, and no apparent way to abbreviate it without losing its content. Shannon’s view of information was thus as an amount of information, measured by the compressibility of some data. [0]: https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/foundations-of-information/#/information https://faculty.washington.edu/ajko/books/foundations-of-inf...
- chisquared 6y agoYup, noted in my comment below [1]. Thanks for the pointer though! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26939479 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26939479
- 0-_-0 6y agoNo reference to algorithmic information theory either, or Kolmogorov. All the interesting aspects of information are missing.
- delegate 6y agoThank you for the work, I've read a couple of chapters and skimmed through a couple more, I will return to continue it as it has many interesting concepts. Some distinctions about Data which are not mentioned (or which escaped my skimming) are: Data is physical (not ephemeral, like information). Every bit of data can be mapped to a point in 3D space where it is ‘stored’ on some piece of matter (tape, disk, flash memory). In other words, data has location in space, it can be weighted. Encoding information as data actually means altering matter (the storage medium - piece of paper, disk tape, CD, RAM) in a way in which we can later infer data by examining the state of the physical storage medium. And Data is in time It has a T0. Every single bit of data that exists ‘appeared’ in space (on storage) at a precise moment in time. Every bit flip in the stored data has a point in time, so we can derive a 'history' time axis for data. Data has an implicit refcount - the number of physical storage mediums where it is encoded. Data is lost when the last medium is damaged. Just planting some seeds in case someone finds these distinctions useful.
- 1_person 6y agoYeah that's really interesting but information is exactly equivalent to energy and matter, with conservation relations and everything. Information which is not present in spacetime literally does not exist. That said, I invite you to communicate some of this other kind of information which exists outside of spacetime to me to demonstrate otherwise. I'd be waiting here, but alas, without time and space...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sdevonoes 6y agoI can recommend one of the referenced books: James Gleick (2011). The information: A history, a theory, a flood. Vintage Books.
- thundergolfer 6y agoI couldn’t get into it and stopped reading about 40 pages in. Does it get better and I should just retry?