Introduction

Churchman recognized the importance of information (knowledge) in the systems approach and cited the potential for deception throughout (Churchman, 1968). If information quality includes criteria for veracity, then information which deceives can be considered information of poor quality. Information quality perceived as an objective truth (through Churchman's guarantor perhaps) provides a useful component in the utilitarian model of information quality. But when viewed from a subjective perspective, the concept of information veracity raises complex philosophical questions concerning the ethics and values of the subject.

Representations of information quality imply a clear and understandable presentation of the information (Arazy & Kopak, 2011; Lee, Strong, Kahn and Wang, 2002; Liu, 2004). Information quality criteria include accuracy and objectivity of the author and source. Information which is accurate is considered reliable and correct, and information that is complete provides all necessary information from a utilitarian perspective. Information which is objective provides an impartial view of the topic. However, information which is false is still considered information, but evaluated under various objective criteria may not be considered quality information. Information quality is one dimension of relevance as part of information consumption (Taylor, 2012a).

Methods

The cross-disciplinary approach used here will examine the consumption of information within the context of the systems approach, information science relevance theory, consumerism, postmodernism, and significant changes in information technology which provide nearly ubiquitous access to all forms of information. Relevant arguments and theory will be presented as evidence of the impact of this convergence on perceptions of information quality in relation to subjective values, and the pursuit of an objective truth as part of a utilitarian model of information consumption.

If valuation of information quality includes truth, then a discussion of subjective perceptions of truth are warranted. Specifically interpretations of truth in relation to spiritual and ethical value systems will be examined as part of this process.

Discussion

Relevance theory in information science examines information use from a user's perspective as a utilitarian concept. A document retrieved from an IR system is considered relevant if it has utility in fulfilling the information requirement of the user. Evaluations of relevance by the user involve the use of various relevance criteria for document evaluation which include characteristics of information quality. This is by definition a subjective view of the document's relevance. Interpretations of the characteristics of the document are also subjective in this approach, and information quality characteristics including veracity, authenticity, qualifications of the author and bias are also subjective. These documents and their constituent information are therefor evaluated in the context of the subject's worldview. The notion of truth value becomes part of this evaluation. In the utilitarian view of information consumption, a false document may in fact have value and be considered relevant Additionally, a document evaluated as true based on a subject's worldview, may have an objective evaluation of false (perhaps biased) but still be considered relevant and useful to the subject.

Information production and consumption as part of a market add additional complexities and create a further perversion of the information gathering process as part of a systems approach. When information consumption is viewed from the perspective of consumerism in a market it is cast into a capitalistic economic model where information consumers may view information as yet another market product to be consumed at the lowest cost.   Information producers seek profit by lowering the cost of production and enticing consumption through production of information which suits the bias of a particular audience. Due to the confluence of these forces, information quality, including veracity, may be of limited concern where information is simply a product in a market transaction. Evidence from a variety of sources would suggest that information distributed in an economic system which values capital and subsumes or possibly ignores ethics and morality, the valuation of truth in information becomes even more suspect.

Further analysis can consider dimensions of information quality in relation to consumerism and postmodernism. Postmodern thought embraces the market and consumerism. Information production (journalism, mass media) is yet another cultural product in the market. Information production cast into the market framework is influenced by the revised sequence of capital consumer markets where demand control through advertising and marketing and pursuit of additional surplus value impact the quality of information. This leads to biased and fragmented dissemination of information. Breakdown of traditional control structures is another side effect of this convergence, leading to prosumerism (amateur) information dissemination with similar impacts on information quality.

Information is consumed from a source. Media products provide information and in a world with ubiquitous technology the Internet increasingly provides access to these media sources and thus represent a significant nexus of control. Managers at Google, the most popular Internet search engine in the world, claim to answer more than one billion search queries a day (Google-1, 2013; Sullivan, 2013). For a significant demographic segment of the general population, almost any consumption of information is filtered through an Internet search engine operated by a private business (Rowlands et al, 2008; Pew, 2012). That these search engines are owned and operated by private, for-profit businesses is yet another problematic dimension of the consumption of information.

Results

In a world where information is produced and distributed across vast information networks, information production time has been drastically shortened and the information produced has become increasingly fragmented. As an extension of the postmodern age, current technology creates a world where information from dubious sources surrounds us and pervades our senses. Interpreting this fragmented and disjointed information in relation to an internal system of values is increasingly challenged leading to further questions of truth value.

Capitalism is an amoral economic system for the distribution of scarce resources, and thus the unregulated system itself has no recognition of truth value for the information which has become a product in a market transaction. In businesses which are managed and operate with little regard for social consequences, the ethics or value of truth or information quality may be greatly reduced. In a business with profit motive, veracity or quality of information may be secondary to profit, or without social pressure to the contrary, information quality may not even be a consideration. Postmodernism acknowledges the consolidation of knowledge, technology and production and recognizes the power that information holds in this scenario.

The postmodernists readily acknowledge the subjective truth and find difficulty in the pursuit of objective truths. Consumerism converges with postmodernism in the production of knowledge in a capitalistic society. Jean-Francois Lyotard saw the growing connection between knowledge production and capital markets and saw the potential for problems. As he foresaw, knowledge is now a salable commodity in an environment where it has lost its truth value and is consumed largely on the basis of its utility value (use-value) (Lyotard, 1984). It is possible that those who have come of age with the pervasive information cacophony of the Internet gather information from fragmented, disjointed information sources of dubious value and have little concern about the veracity or authority of those sources. They evaluate information sources as subjective, not objective, and regard critical evaluation of the information and the source as a task to be managed by some other individual or by the technology involved (Gross and Latham, 2011; Taylor, 2012b, Harley et al, 2001).

Conclusions

This discussion provides some evidence that the convergence of consumerism, postmodernism and broad technical access to a variety of information sources has had an impact on both the perception of what information is and on the quality of information being disseminated and consumed. The question of moral, ethical and spiritual values within this convergence were examined. It provides a basis for further discussion and examination.

References and Notes

Arazy, O., & Kopak, R. (2011). “On the measurability of information quality”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(1), 89-99.

Churchman, C. W. (1968) The Systems Approach. New York: Dell Publishing.

Google (2013), Facts about Google. retrieved on 6/27/2013 available at http://www.google.com/competition/howgooglesearchworks.html

Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2011). Experiences with and perceptions of information: A phenomenographic study of first-year college students. Library Quarterly, 81(2),161-186.

Gross, M., & Latham, D. (2011). Experiences with and perceptions of information: A phenomenographic study of first-year college students. Library Quarterly, 81(2),161-186.

Harley, B.,, Dreger, M., & Knobloch, P. (2001), The postmodern condition: students, the Web, and academic library services. Reference Services Review, 29(1),23-32.

Harley, B.,, Dreger, M., & Knobloch, P. (2001), The postmodern condition: students, the Web, and academic library services. Reference Services Review, 29(1),23-32.

Lee, Y.W., Srong, D.M., Kahn, B.K., Wang, R.Y. (2002). AIMQ: A methodology for information quality assessment. Information and Management, 40(2), 133-146.

Liu, Z. (2004). Perceptions of credibility and scholarly information on the web.. Information Processing and Management, 40(6), 1027-1038.

Lyotard, J.F (1984), The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Pew (2012), “Pew Research Center – Search Engine Use 2012”. retrieved on 6/30/2013 available at http://www.pewinternet.org/Press-Releases/2012/Search-Engine-Use-2012.aspx#

Rowlands, I., Nicholas, D., Williams, P., Huntington, P., Fieldhouse, M., Gunter, B., Withey, B., Jamali, H. R., Dobrowolski, T., and Tenopir, C. (2008), The Google generation: the information behaviour of the researcher of the future. ASLib Proceedings, 60(4),290 – 310.

Sullivan, D. (2013). Google Still World’s Most Popular Search Engine By Far, But Share Of Unique Searchers Dips Slightly. retrieved on 6/27/2013 available at http://searchengineland.com/google-worlds-most-popular-search-engine-148089

Taylor, A. R. (2012a), User relevance criteria choices and the information search process. Information Processing and Management, 48(12),136-153.

Taylor, A. (2012b. "A study of the information search behaviour of the millennial generation" Information Research, 17(1) paper 508. [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/17-1/paper508.html]

Introduction

Ubiquitous computing is a topic in sciences for almost 3 decades and there are the very first application of ubiquitous computing in real life. People wish with ubiquitous computing to ease in work and allday routines, they hope for a rise of security and to extended their senses and memory. Every day objects would have sensors and/or RFID-tags. These sensors and RFID-tags can be read ubiquitously and personal data are inquired, computed and/or stored. Ubiquitous computing needs an infrastructure of ubiquitous surveillance.

In the future many participants, in constantly changing settings, with manifold goals in very different contexts will take part in ubiquitous computing. Systems will organize them selves, unnoticed by the ones affected, and mysterious for them.

Privacy laws of today hold for situations with few participants in their straight defined roles. They claim to establish transparency, attachments, needs, control abilities, and participation of the affected ones. But these laws are not made for situations with many participants, in a variaty of constantly changing rules, under different goals in each role. Privacy laws must accommodate to the needs of ubiquitous computing to realize a right to informational selfdetermination (9).

New Privacy Laws should address the following principles:

1. data should be fair and be computed law-abiding,
2. data should only computed on their purpose,
3. data should be appropriate, relevant and not excessive,
4. data should be precise and up-to-date,
5. data should remain as local as possible,
6. data shouldn’t be stored longer than necessary,
7. appropriate punishments must be possible (11).

To realize all this in ubiquitous computing, it is necessary to integrate privacy principles into the technology. In networks of sensors and RFID-Systems privacy is ment to the appropriate handling and transfer of the ubiquitous surveillance infrastructures they realize (9).

Surveillance has allways to faces. It is necessary and supportive for securety, crime prevention and crime detection. On the other hand surveillance changes behaviour, people fell unfree and inhibited (6,7). Because of the latter people will stay anonymous in public spaces (6, 11). Concepts like the principle of agreeing with the gethering, computing and storing of data, like we know it today, didn’t function in the context of ubiquitous surveillance. “If I couldn’t buy some thing to eat without surveillance, how can the acceptance be free?”(6). In future the Focus of privacy law should be more to the person than to the data. Privacy in ubiquitous computing and surveillance is more and more a problem of anonymity and untraceability. But anonymity of users and untraceability of each kind of “items of interest” would make a lot of applications of ubiquitos computing impossible. Though anonymity and untraceability are only senseless against attackers and not the legal users of surveillance. The legality of surveillance in ubiquitous computing and surveillance is to be ruled out in privacy law.

Anonymity

From the view of technology anonymity is the state of non identifiability within a set of subjects (e. g. people) the anonymity set. The anonymity set is a set of subjects which are able to trigger actions and/or which are addressed by actions. I. e. subjects are sender or receiver within a set of senders respectively a set of receivers. If a attacker is unable to identify the connection between a single user and a specific sender resepctively to receiver, then the user is anonymous. Anonymity is not the anonymity of senders and receivers, it’s the anonymity of users (8).

Welbourne et. al. have engineered tools for RFID-Systems with which users can delete the data the system has stored about them. The user can easily implement rules about who should read which data when, and which concatenations the system is allowed to do. With this it is possible to implement anonymity (“nobody is allowed to read personal data”), but the system functions nevertheless. Also the requirements of systems and authorities can be implemented and recorded. This is an example for technologies with which anonymity can be implemented in ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous surveillance (12).

Untraceability

Also untraceability is described from a technological view here. Therefore we define Data, Entities, Identities, Users, Objekts, Subjects, Services, Ressources, and so on, or instances of them as Items of Interest (IOI). IOI are „things“ which an attacker is interested in. IOI are untraceable, if an attacker is unable to see a relation between two or more IOI’s or to trace an IOI in a network. For instance if in a Car to Car Safety Message System there is a message exchange, then messages has to be untraceable to one of the car’s such that there is no possiblity to trace the track of the car (10,2,5,1,3,8).

The same holds when clothes have RFID-tag’s on it and when they pass different readers in a while (4).

Untraceability in this way can be implemented as follows (4):

1. the reader sends a messag to the tag with a nouce-identifier N_R.
2. the tag generates a new nouce-identifier N_T and sends this, the encrypted tag-ID h(ID) und the encrypted nouce-identifier pair h_(ID)(N_R,N_T) back to the reader. The reader passes that triple to the application system. The application system decodes with the key h and computes with the known nouce-identifier N_R the nouce-Identifier N_T. With this the application can verify the ID of the tag.
3. If the application system accepts the tag, it computes a new tag-ID. The tag also computes a new tag-ID with the same algorithm. The application system with new tag-ID generates the encrypted message h_(ID+1)(N_T,N_R) and send this to the tag.
4. The tag evaluates the message and the new ID. If the received ID is the same as the ID computed by the tag, the old ID and the nouce-Identifier N_T are erased from the tag-store.

For an attacker the tag is untraceable, because it changes its ID with each message transfer. Traceability of the tag by the applicationsystem is still possible (4).

The above examples presented for implementing anonymity and untraceability show the possibility to implement privacy in ubiquitous systems as it is required by Roßnagel (9). Needed are the legal frameworks to require such privacy features in ubiquitous systems. By defining this sort of legal framework there should be answers to the following questions:

1. Who is the owner of the data an RFID-Reader explores and an application system computes and stores?
2. Are there marking obligations for items with RFID-tags on it (e.g. clothing, food)?
3. Is it necessary to require offical approval for the installation of RFID-readers and sensors?

When CCTV in public places appeared in the 1990’iesth Gras (6) showed that it is much more difficult to regulate and rule the use of technologie when already installed, than before installation and use. Therefore it is important that legislation keeps pace with technological progress.

References and Notes

1. Arapinis, M.;Chothia, T.;Ritter, E.;Ryan, M.: Analysing Unlinkability and Anonymity Using the Applied Pi Calculus http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/csf10.pdf, visited 16.12.14
2. Blues Team: Unverkettbarkeit und Pseudonymität in der digitalen Welt, http://blues.inf.tu-dresden.de/prime/EUT_Tutorial_V0/german/german/Content/Unit2/dig.%20unlink.htm, visited 16.12.14
3. Brusó, M.; Chatzikokolakis, K.;Etalle, S.; Den Hartog, J.: Linking Unlinkability https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00760150/PDF/Unlinkability.pdf, besucht am 16.12.14
4. Dimitriou, T: A Lightweight RFID Protocol to protect against Traceability an cloning attacks, http://www.ait.gr/export/TDIM/various/RFID-securecomm05.pdf, visited 18.2.15
5. Fischer, L.: Measuring Unlinkability for Privacy Enhancing Technologies, http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/2367/1/lars_fischer_dissertation.pdf, visited 16.12.14
6. Gras, M. L.: The Legal Regulaiton of CCTV in Europe, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3375/3338, visited 17.02.15
7. Gerichtshof der Europäischen Union: „Der Gerichtshof erklärt die Richtlinie über die Vorratsspeicherung von Daten für ungültig“, http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-04/cp140054de.pdf, visited 17.02.15
8. Pfitzmann, A.; Hansen, M.: Anonymity, Unlinkability, Unobservability, Pseudonymity, and Identity Management – A Consolidated Proposal for Terminology, http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/terminology.pdf, visited 16.12.14
9. Roßnagel, A.: Datenschutz in einem informatisierten Alltag, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/stabsabteilung/04548.pdf, visited 19.11.14
10. Rost, M.; Pfitzmann, A.: Datenschutzziele, http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/814/art%253A10.1007%252Fs11623-009-0072-9.pdf?auth66=1416396902_c7935e6bcf15afa95108ffb192c1fd9f&ext=.pdf, visited 19.11.14
11. Taylor, N. : State Surveillance and the Right to Privacy, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3394/3357, visited 17.02.15
12. Welbourne, E.; Battle, L.; Cole, G.; Gould, K.; Rector, K.; Raymer, S.; Balazinska, M.; Borriello, G.: Building the Internet of Things Using RFID, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kyle_Rector/publication/220491250_Building_the_Internet_of_Things_Using_RFID_The_RFID_Ecosystem_Experience/links/0c960519d82721508d000000.pdf, visited 18.2.15

Introduction

We have heard much about the potential of networked communications to design alternative monies and payment systems in recent years. Innovations such as cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer lending schemes, mobile remittance and microfinancing solutions are often presented as technical fixes to many of the problems associated with money proper: “Can’t gain access to affordable credit? Suffering the fallout of a commercial banking crisis? PayPal blocked your account because they don’t like your politics? There’s an app for that!” The potential for technical innovations to make our money otherwise or to support the collective management of money is exciting, but this paper looks at the convergence of networked ICTs and the future of money from a different perspective. Alongside these grassroots innovations in money, many powerful stakeholders in the communications space such as Internet service providers, mobile network operators and social media services are expanding their interests towards money. The landscape they are helping to shape is a very different to the one imagined by peer-to-peer and money activists.

Mobile Money

This is particularly so in the case of mobile networks, where financial services are growing in significance. These include mobile payments, marketing, transfer services and banking facilities of different kinds. The shape these services take is very different in developed and emerging markets. In emerging markets, for example, mobile money services are already well elaborated, provisioning microfinance, loans, payments and remittances often in the absence of traditional financial actors such as banks. These include airtime trading and mobile money services like M-Pesa and Smart Money in the Philippines. More recently, technical advancements are also driving the growth of mobile payments in developed markets. These innovations include Near-Field Communications, Bluetooth Low Energy technologies and Hosted Card Emulation as well as the design of mobile wallets and point of sale innovations from companies such as Square, Apple and PayPal.

Telecommunications are the new banks

Our money now rides the ‘rails’ of mobile network infrastructure. Historically informational networks have always acted as bridges for cash, from cash carriers and pneumatic tube systems through to the histories of American Express and Western Union - a postal services and a telegraphy service respectively who turned from the transmission of messages to the secure transmission of currencies. But today this situation has intensified as communications networks build portals onto existing networks for financial transactivity. Telecommunications companies, mobile network operators, handset and hardware manufacturers, operator billing providers, software providers and social media platforms all play a significant role in the future of electronic and specifically mobile payments. Communications firms are developing their own payments propositions, going so far as to issue private currencies and new money-like instruments or even acting as de facto banks in some emerging markets. These examples include the issuance of phone credit as currencies, tweets as peer-to-peer cash transfers and Snapchat’s easy money transfer system Snapcash.

What are the implications of this convergence for the culture, political economy and governance of future monetary systems, when agencies that control the flow of information now also control the flow of value? How will the political economy of mobile networks- from algorithmic systems, through to handsets and radio access infrastructure - shape the geography of access in the mobile payments space and, in turn, the future of money?

Methods

While providing a broad overview of the political economy of the mobile payments space, this paper will focus on one core aspect of mobile money in developed markets: the aggregation and monetisation of transactional data by mobile network operators. The paper explores how this practice of data-capture is facilitated by existing enclosures and sociotechnical infrastructures in proprietary mobile networks, demonstrating how this in turn leads to new modalities of control over mobility, work and life. This falls within the remit of broader enquiries about the monetisation of user-generated data and content in the Internet and social media platforms, focusing specifically on those that are produced through monetary exchanges. 

Gateways, transactions fees and data monetisation

Questions about the interrelationship of user-generated data and money are very significant within the context of mobile services in the Global North, where advertising (particularly location based services), data monetisation and cross-selling revenues have become more significant than fee-based revenues. As society becomes 'cashless', companies have a larger business, and a more valuable one, in closing the loop for offline transactions and helping deliver customers’ to advertisers. Mobile network operators are looking to incorporate advanced data analysis into new payment innovations, capturing transactions at the point of sale. In a similar model to the 'follow the free' dictum of the platform web, linked payment data associated with a financial transaction is now much more valuable than direct payment for that service through a denominated currency. Instead, new modes of exchange such as airtime and data are the more valuable currencies of the mobile network.

One such example is WEVE, a joint venture comprising three of the United Kingdom’s four key network operators, EE, O2 UK and Vodafone UK and focused on combining the capabilities of advertising with mobile payments. Services include an interoperable mobile payments wallet, mobile marketing campaigns and targeted location-based services. The Boston-based company JANA develops a different model: while relying on user data and attention, JANA pays mobile phone customers in the operator’s currency of choice - airtime credit, in return for consuming and paying attention to branded content.

Conclusions

The effects of these systems are far-reaching. The most obvious is the introduction of targeted advertising and location-based services informed by transaction histories. In virtualising money, non-cash payments materialise previously latent informational traces of who transferred money to whom and in exchange for what. The managers of the bit-pipe can monetise these traces, but there are other far-reaching effects to the wealth of data from consumer transactions. We can identify implications beyond simply being pushed unwanted recommendations or location-based services. Indeed, monitoring purchasing information underpins new forms of governmentality in both online and offline spaces. And the effects of such scrutiny will be unevenly distributed - for example, individual purchase tracking of low-income families or of individuals who have claimed bankruptcy or insolvency.

Introduction

Music is an important component of the information society. It is known that music can render both positive and negative influence on human being and society. However mechanisms of this influence in many respects remain unclear. Network science application to the analysis of pieces of music is an effective approach of modern cognitive technologies and can play an important role in understanding not only problems of music and other kind of information impact on a person, but also other global problems facing of the present society.

The reductionism as research method dominating in modern science, assumes that the studied system can be understood if properties of its elements are described. Music belongs to number of so-called complex systems which don't manage to be described and understood formally by means of such approach.

Methods

Since the end of the last century for studying of complex systems the new effective instrument of research - the theory of complex networks [1] have been developed. Nodes in such networks represent elements of these complex systems, and links between nodes – interactions between elements. Such networks form a peculiar backbones of the relevant complex systems that allows to model such systems in general as a whole and to overcome some shortcomings inherent to a reductionism.

Results and Discussion

The purpose of this presentation is to show that works of music can be described as multilayer networks, which structural and dynamic properties can throw new light on the nature of music as complex system.

A musical melody can be easily converted into a network structure if we take the musical notes of all possible durations as its nodes. It can be easily calculated that the number of nodes in one voce in such network shall not exceed 1800. Indeed, the number of piano keys equals 88; if we multiply it by 20 – the number of all possible time durations of notes (halves, quarters, eights e.t.c.) - we get the number of 1760. Connections between nodes (notes) in the network are established according to chronological principle: if note I starts to sound at the moment in time T, when note J at this particular moment finished to sound, there is a connection between the respective nodes of the network [2].

In our approach the same notes in different octaves belong to different network layers. On an example of " Prelude in A major " by Chopin will be described relationship between melodic and harmonic structures of music. Each of these structures can be represented as networks, and music - view as multilayer network.

We constructed directed network structure for melody of F.Chopin’s “Prelude A-Dur”. Figure 1 shows melody network of the piece.

Figure 1. Melody network structure for the Frederic Chopin’s prelude A-Dur N7 . The thickness of links corresponds to time of repetitions of appropriate musical intervals.

(See PDF version for the Figure).

Harmonic structure of a musical work has qualitatively different structure of relations between notes and should be described as a separate layer. We have created a network of harmonic structure of the Frederic Chopin’s prelude A-Dur N7 as the second layer. If a piece of music has polyphonic nature, it is easy to describe this musical work as multilayer network too. Multilayer structure of musical works is the consequence of multilayer organization of the human brain networks. It is assumed to briefly discuss the possible mechanism of emotional influence of music from network science standpoint.

Conclusions

Our understanding of complex systems is always associated with incompleteness of information on their structure and properties. A quantitative measure of incompleteness of information on system is its entropy. Recently in the theory of complex networks methods of calculation of entropy both simple monolayer, and multilayer networks on the basis of generalization of the most fundamental concepts and methods of statistical physics are developed [3, 4]. We are developing entropic approach for investigation of music as complex system now.

Acknowledgments

This work is performed with assistance of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund (grant N 14-04-00369)

References and Notes

1. Caldarelli, G.; Scale-Free Networks: Complex Webs in Nature and Technology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England, 2007
2.    Liu, X., Tse, C., Small, M. Complex network structure of musical compositions: Algorithmic     generation of appealing music. Physica A 389, 2010, 126–132
3. Anand K., Bianconi G, Severini S. Shannon and von Newman entropy of random networks with heterogeneous expected degree. Physical Review E, 83, 2011, 036109 .
4. Bianconi G. Statistical mechanics of multiplex networks: Entropy and overlap. Physical Review E, 87, 2014, 062806

In everyday usage, information is knowledge or facts acquired or derived from study, instruction or observation. Information is presumed to be both meaningful and veridical, and to have some appropriate connection to its object. Information might be misleading, but it can never be false. Standard information theory, on the other hand, as developed for communications [1], measurement [2] induction [3; 4] and computation [5; 6], entirely ignores the semantic aspects of information. Thus it might seem to have little relevance to our common notion of information. This is especially true considering the range of applications of information theory found in the literature of a variety of fields. Assuming, however, that the mind works computationally and can get information about things via physical channels, then technical accounts of information strongly restrict any plausible account of the vulgar notion. Some more recent information-oriented approaches to epistemology [7] and semantics [8] go further, though my introduction to the ideas was through Michael Arbib, Michael Scriven and Kenneth Sayre in the profoundly inventive late 60s and early 70s.

In this talk I will look at how the world must be in order for us to have information about it. This will take three major sections: 1) intrinsic information -- there is a unique information in any structure that can be determined using group theory, 2) the physical world (including our minds) must have specific properties in order for us to have information about the world, and 3) the nature of information channels that can convey information to us for evaluation and testing. In the process I will outline theories of physical information and semantic information. Much of the talk will be an, I hope simplified, version of [9] and [10], and other sources on my web page, and the book, Every Thing Must Go [10].

Acknowledgments

I acknowledge the support of the National Research Council of South Africa.

References and Notes

1. Shannon, C.E. and Weaver, W. 1949. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana, University of Illinois Press.
2. Brillouin, L 1962. Science and Information Theory, 2^nd edition. New York, Academic Press.
3. Solomonoff, R. 1964. A formal theory of inductive inference, Part I.Information and Control, Vol 7, No. 1: 1-22.
4. Solomonoff, R. 1964. A formal theory of inductive inference, Part II.Information and Control, Vol 7, No. 2: 224-254.          
5. Kolmogorov, A.N. 1965. Three approaches to the quantitative definition of information. Problems of Inform. Transmission 1: 1-7.
6. Chaitin, G.J. A theory of program size formally identical to information theory. J. ACM 22: 329-340.
7. Dretske, F. 1981. Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
8. Barwise, Jon and John Perry. 1983. Situations and Attitudes. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press.
9. Collier, John 1990. Intrinsic information. in Philip Hanson (ed) Information, Language and Cognition: Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Vol. 1. University of British Columbia Press, now by Oxford University Press: 390-409.
10. Collier, John. 2012. Information, causation and computation.Information and Computation: Essays on Scientific and Philosophical Understanding of Foundations of Information and Computation. Gordana Dodig Crnkovic and Mark Burgin (eds), Singapore, World Scientific: 89-106.
11. Ladyman, J., Ross, D., with Collier, J., Spurrett, D. 2007. Every Thing Must Go. Oxford, Oxford University Press.