Introduction

Enterprise Social Media (ESM) have become increasingly popular over the last 5 years and promise to increase knowledge sharing, facilitate global collaboration and simplify work through quicker access to information. ESM afford visibility and persistence of content, as well as editability allowing ESM users to retain some control over content produced [5]. Yet, when implementing Social Media in corporate settings, employees are often reluctant to use such new platforms and only little is known about the actual adoption and use of ESM in corporate environments. From the few examples that exist to date [2] we know that many employees consider ESM as a waste of time and yet another tool of surveillance.

In addition, and in the light of the existing social media boom of recent years, many employers take successful ESM implementation within their companies for granted. And in fact, the existing literature on digital labor has demonstrated that often individuals are willing to expense efforts and time to participate and contribute to Social Media platforms without any monetary compensation [3-4]. For many Social Media users the mere participation, socialization and the chance of building up a reputation online are reward enough [1].

Encouraged by such voluntarily given online activity, corporate managers often expect that employees will start to actively utilize ESM in addition to their daily work, without critically reflecting that using Enterprise Social Media requires both time and effort on part of the employee that is neither listed in job descriptions nor performance targets. I argue instead that employees are expected to contribute to ESM platforms under the pretext of voluntariness, meaning that the managerial communication of the platform is explicitly voluntary yet when looked more closely signs of pressure, dependency and lack of choice surface. I therefore propose that this adds a new dimension to the digital labor literature, which so far has not yet explored the effects of Enterprise Social Media in relation to digital labor.

Methods

This research draws on data collected between March 2014 and January 2015 in which I intensively studied the implementation of a new Enterprise Social Media system in a large multinational technology company based in Germany. Using a mixed methods approach I gathered both qualitative and quantitative data. Firstly I conducted ethnographic work offline in the corporate headquarters, secondly I carried out ethnographic work online using the ESM platform implemented at the studied company. Finally I conducted a large survey carried out in the 28 biggest employee communities of the company using the new platform, resulting in a final N of 2690 employees.

The offline ethnographic work mainly comprised of dozens of informal conversations I had during visits to the four different company sites to which I had access during the research period. The online ethnographic work consisted of participant observation on the platform where I actively contributed to the content created on the ESM platform, and started and participated in existing conversations online. The sample for the survey was randomly drawn after having obtained an excel list of all potential employees with access to the new ESM tool and narrowing it down to employee communities with at least 1000 employees leaving me with the 28 biggest countries. By drawing on these different methods I was able to achieve data triangulation, allowing a comprehensive picture to emerge that combined both statistical as well as in-depth qualitative insights.

Results and Discussion

From my research a complex situation surfaced, revealing an existing tension between the apparent social functions of ESM, a rigid legal context forbidding any private use of the platform and a management body caught up in the struggle to provide Social Media to employees in order to reap ESM’s often proclaimed benefits and management’s unwillingness to invest time and human resources into the success of the platform. Furthermore, the data showed that the concept of voluntariness of Social Media in a private setting does not automatically translate into corporate surroundings, where such voluntariness turned out to be a mere illusion. Instead, it became clear that ESM much rather add a new dimension of exploitation to the existing employer-employee relationship by expecting employees 1) to use Enterprise Social Media on top of their normal work duties, 2) to utilize skills that have been acquired during leisure time and 3) by deriving value from employees long after they have left the organization as their once intangible knowledge becomes manifest and permanent online.

Conclusions

In conclusion, I argue that to date the digital labor literature has left one crucial dimension unexplored, namely corporate digital labor, that is, extra and uncompensated labor in corporate settings that is increasingly expected of employees contributing to both an intensification and extension of work. In addition, as the data showed, while on the surface the corporate dimension of digital labor differs significantly from the digital labor on conventional Social Media platforms, as employees have agreed to a contractual and monetary relationship; a closer look revealed that ESM encroach on employees’ leisure time in multiple ways allowing employers to reap value from their employees during work, after work and even beyond an employee’s exit of the company. This research presents a first step in better understanding digital labor in corporate settings, yet more research in different organizations will be necessary to investigate this new dimension further. In particular, future research will be necessary to understand if and how these currently exploitative dynamics will change once ESM have become more widely used by employees.

References and Notes

1. Hesmondhalgh, D. User-generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries. Ephemera - Theory & Politics in Organization, 2010, 10, 267-284.
2. Pettersen, L. From Mass Production to Mass Collaboration – Institutionalized Hindrances to Social Platforms in the Workplace. Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies, 2014, 2, 29-40.
3. Ross, A. In search of the lost paycheck. In Digital labor: The Internet as a Playground and Factory; Scholz. T, Ed.; Routledge: London, UK, 2012; pp. 13-32.
4. Terranova, T. Free Labor. In Digital labor: The Internet as a Playground and Factory; Scholz. T, Ed.; Routledge: London, UK, 2012; pp. 33-57.
5. Treem, J.W.; Leonardi, P.M. Social Media Use in Organizations Exploring the Affordances of Visibility, Editability, Persistence, and Association. In Communication Yearbook; Salmon, C.T., Ed.; Routledge: New York, USA, 2012; Volume 36, pp. 143-189.

Introduction

Long before contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS), Marxism, pragmatism and various theories of modernity were associated with the study of technology. These were broad and often speculative theories that related technology to a social and political context. STS sought to supplant these competing approaches and has been largely successful. Today few look to Mumford or Dewey, Heidegger or Marcuse for insight into technology. However, when STS took what Wiebe Bijker called "the detour into the academy" to focus on empirically based case histories, it gave up the political concerns that had inspired these earlier approaches. This renunciation was easier to justify before the widespread controversies over medical care, the Internet and the environment directly implicated technology in so many different aspects of contemporary politics. Some STS researchers have now also become aware of the more politicized approaches favored in the developing world, especially Latin America. But how can the achievements of STS be preserved in the context of politically charged investigations of controversial issues? This talk proposes one way of doing this, the critical theory of technology.

Critical theory of technology draws on fundamental methodological assumptions of STS to elaborate themes of the earlier tradition of modernity theory, specifically Lukács’s early Marxism and the Frankfurt School. The key such assumptions are the notions of underdetermination, interpretative flexibility, and closure developed in the social constructivist tradition. In addition, the concept of co-construction drawn from actor network theory is useful methodologically, although critical theory of technology does not follow ANT to its radical ontological conclusions. The application of these notions to particular technologies is fruitful, but attempts to generalize them as a full fledged social theory, for example, in the writings of Bruno Latour, are not as successful as the case histories for which STS is famous.

The attempt to build a political theory on the basis of STS needs to confront the principle insight of the earlier tradition, namely, the strange fact that modern societies have a “rational” culture. By this is meant the generalization of methods and concepts from mathematics and natural science as a framework for thought and action in every social sphere. This is not merely a subjective disposition but is reflected in the multiplication bureaucracies, technologies and technical disciplines which effectively organize and control most of social life. A phenomenon of this scope requires a broad approach.

Critical theory of technology addresses this issue from the standpoint of the theory of rationality elaborated by the Frankfurt School. The articulation of this theory in the context of an STS-inspired approach requires significant revisions. Where the Frankfurt School proposed a very general critique of “instrumental rationality,” critical theory of technology looks to a more concrete critique of the social bias of technical disciplines, bureaucracies and technologies. The identification of such biases employs methods explored in STS and yields a critical approach to the culture of modern societies.

Methods

Following STS, critical theory of technology highlights the inherent contingency and complexity of technical artifacts masked by the coherence of technical explanations. In this context I suggest that the concept of a palimpsest can serve as a useful analogy. Technological design resembles a palimpsest: multiple layers of influence coming from very different regions of society and responding to different, even opposed, logics converge on a shared object.

Marx sketched such an approach in the "Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." There he writes that "[t]he concrete is concrete, because it is a combination of many objects with different destinations, i.e. a unity of diverse elements. In our thought, it therefore appears as a process of synthesis, as a result, and not as a starting point, although it is the real starting point and, therefore, also the starting point of observation and conception" (Marx 1857/1904, 293).

In this passage Marx anticipates the genealogical method Foucault found in Nietzsche. These de-reifying approaches treat social "things," such as artifacts, institutions and laws, as assemblages of functional components held together by their social roles. The components disaggregate and recombine as society changes. Social history cannot rely on an Aristotelian model in which an essence endures through accidental changes. It must identify these ontological differences in the construction and meaning of its objects.

The genealogical approach is useful in the case of technology. Devices and systems often retain the same name while changing components. Genealogy is especially applicable where the technical code imposed by the dominant actor is not alone in shaping design. In such cases the technology must serve a multiplicity of interests through more or less coherent assemblages of parts with a variety of functions. The interests are also translated into higher level meanings, such as ideologies and worldviews. The technocratic concept of efficiency is an example, at each historical stage translating particular interests and technical arrangements conducive to the exercise of technocratic authority. Technical disciplines and artifacts give a deceptively rational form to the multiple and ambiguous influences that appear clearly for what they are in other social institutions.

Conclusion

The writings of Marx and Foucault free us from a naïve belief in the universality of technological and administrative efficiency. In this they converge with recent Science and Technology Studies which has rediscovered the interdependence of the social and the technical. The technical underdetermination of artifacts leaves room for social choice between different designs that have overlapping functions but better serve one or another social interest. The key point is the influence of the social on the content of the artifact and not merely on such external factors as the pace of development, packaging or usages. This means that context is not merely external to technology, but actually penetrates its rationality, carrying social requirements into the very workings of the device.

References

Feenberg, Andrew (2014). The Philosophy of Praxis. London: Verso.

Feenberg, Andrew (2010). Between Reason and Experience: Essays in Technology and Modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Introduction

At least since the NSA disclosures of 2013^th “Summer of Surveillance”, internet surveillance and informational privacy and security have received widespread public attention and become a political concern for many. Taking the disclosures as a starting point, I follow up on this development and inquire into the techno-politics of surveillance and counter-surveillance. Instead of focusing on regulation applied to technological practices from outside, I investigate the socio-political dimensions of the internet infrastructure itself and the politics of concrete technological surveillance and counter-surveillance practices. I show how data infrastructures are not only regulated through policy, but can function as techno-political means which bring about a specific socio-technical structure. My question is: How do surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies operate as a form of techno-politics within the internet infrastructure? The answer to this question can enhance our understanding of the impact on the political landscape, which ubiquitous information technologies and their steady diffusion into every realm of our lives have.

Technological infrastructures and networks are of central importance to my research, as contemporary ICTs and ICT surveillance technologies operate in and through networks rather than as single artifacts. The network, one of the 21^st century’s most prominent entities, is both a potential threat and a potential point of control. Cumbers, Routledge and Nativel argue that “it is becoming increasingly difficult for ruling elites, usually located at the national scale, to play the gatekeeper role, through traditional territorialized hierarchies, with regard to information and communication flows across space” (Cumbers, Routledge & Nativel, 2008, p. 188). To exercise control then requires an “‘empire’ based upon a decentred and deterritorializing apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm” (Cumbers, Routledge & Nativel, 2008, p. 185). At the same time, networks have the tendency “to create hubs as these provide more stability and robustness. Hubs establish a kind of ‘hierarchy’ within networks and this in turn gives a certain advantage to key positions of players’” (Cumbers, Routledge & Nativel, 2008, p. 189). In my research I explore how surveillance technologies exploit the internet’s inherent hierarchies and operate through the global hubs that emerged within the infrastructure. Counter-surveillance technologies try to sabotage the centralized surveillance network this establishes. By using encryption technologies, they aim to make hubs dysfunctional for surveillance and to strengthen non-hierarchical network features. Consequently, the two antagonists are opposed in the way they use the network and are involved in a struggle over the network’s very structure and technological design.

Methods

I base my framework on pragmatist John Dewey’s approach to the relation between politics and infrastructures (Dewey, 1927) and extend it by analyzing the actual technological internet infrastructure. Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker’s work on infrastructures and Alexander Galloway’s description of different network topologies to be found within the internet provide my basis for this analysis (Star & Bowker, 2006; Galloway, 2004). It builds the foundation for understanding surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies’ operation in and on the internet and its political dimensions. In Dewey’s political thought, technological infrastructures play a major role because he held politics to be concerned with governing the channels of human interactions, of which technological infrastructures are an essential part (Dewey, 1927, p. 30). Through these channels, people can purposefully organize within society, interact through networks of communication and collaboration, and engage in joint endeavors. Technologies become the means and ends of their purpose-directed activities and signify “the intelligent techniques by which the energies of nature and man [sic] are directed and used in satisfaction of human needs” (Hickman, 2001, p. 8). Politics exercise indirect control over people’s behavior through governing technological channels and regulating infrastructural systems. It is through these systems that interactions amongst society’s members propagate and actions translate into consequences through transmission over several instances.

Even though Dewey recognized their political importance, he did not analyze infrastructures in detail. According to Susan Leigh Star and Geoffrey C. Bowker, infrastructures are that “upon which something else rides, or works” (Star & Bowker, 2006, p. 230). As the technological structures that enable social phenomena, they are always underneath – transparent, invisible and embedded. Once in place, infrastructures only call for active investigation and attention when conditions of usability are altered and smooth use is prevented; otherwise they remain outside our awareness and active experiences. Because they organize flows of exchange within socio-technical complexes, infrastructures can be understood as the technological ordering of things. They consist of a plurality of technologies, agents and sub-networks and their actual configuration is contingent and dependent on implementation. Every configuration “represents only one of a number of possible contributions of tasks and properties between hardware, software and people” (Star & Bowker, 2006, p. 234). Network diagrams describe the structural features of different configurations and visualize their inherent distribution of power and control. To describe the control structures within the internet infrastructure, Alexander Galloway uses three different network types: the distributed, the decentralized and the centralized network (Galloway, 2004, pp. 11-12 & pp. 30 ff.). The centralized network is a hierarchical network in which one central host wields power over subordinate nodes. The decentralized network is then the conjunction of several centralized networks and consists of multiple hosts which rule over their sub-set of nodes. In both networks, information flows one-directionally from the host(s) to the nodes. A distributed network on the other hand does not have a hierarchical order, but every node is an equally autonomous agent and can communicate with any other node peer-to-peer. Now, when it comes to surveillance, the centralized network is easiest, since all flows must pass through the central hub. To surveil a decentralized network, multiple host need to be intercepted, because information does not accumulate in one place. In a distributed network, surveillance is most complicated. Here, in order to access every information flow within the network, all nodes (network participants) must be monitored.

Figure 1. The centralized, decentralized and distributed network diagram.

(see PDF version for the Figure).

Results and Discussion

Within the internet infrastructure’s different technological layers, we can find both distributed and (de)centralized network topologies. On the one hand, there is what I call the internet’s “physical layer”. This layer transmits actual data signals and consists of devices, cable networks, routers, servers, etc. When looking at its global constitution, we can see that this physical layer resembles a decentralized network. Across the globe, there are a number of major internet exchange points (IXPs). These are operated by internet providers like AT&T and most are located in the United States and Europe, for example in London, Frankfurt, Paris and New York (Figure 2). Nearly all internet traffic needs to pass one of them in order to get forwarded to its destination. Consequently, the IXPs build central internet hubs. Global (undersea) cable networks support this, because cables with the greatest bandwidth connect to these IXPs (TeleGeography, 2014). As it is cheapest to route through high bandwidth, data often does not take the geographically shortest path. Instead, it is linked through different high bandwidth cables across the globe and most likely across the United States. Therefore it is not surprising that NSA surveillance technologies exploit the decentralized structure of the physical layer (The Guardian, 2013). As most global hubs are are located on US soil or on the soil of US allies, the NSA can gain access to global information flows and retrieve data doubles secretly. One example for how this is done is Room 641A in AT&Ts office in San Francisco. According to former technician Mark Klein, the NSA had installed a splitter device in the office’s internet room, which is basically an IXP (Klein, 2007). From this splitter, it directs copies of all passing internet traffic to its secret room, where the data is analyzed with latest technology. From such interception points then, the NSA feeds the data into its own network and data center. This creates a centralized shadow-network on top of the actual internet infrastructure, in which the NSA is the central hub. From this position it can monitor information flows and oversee the whole network, but peripheral network participants remain unaware. Moreover, it is potentially able to manipulate data flows, as has been the case with the program Quantumtheory (Spiegel Online, 2013).

Figure 2. Global internet routes in 2012: © Copyright 2014 PriMetrica, Inc., retrieved from http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/map-gallery/globalinternet-map-2012/index.html.

(see PDF version for the Figure).

But there is also a reason for why we often consider the internet a distributed network. Operating ‘on top’ of the physical layer, the “protocological layer” creates a network of equal nodes and bi-directional communication flows. In this layer, the rules are defined according to which data is wrapped and transmitted by the physical layer. The internet’s TCP/IP Protocol Suite logically assigns equal weight to all hubs and nodes (Cowley, 2012; Galloway, 2004). According to its predefined rules, IXPs have to route data but are not allowed to wield power over information flows. The protocols’ universal rules count equally for all network participants communicating through the infrastructure. To a potential surveiller, this distributed network is a thorn in the eye, because surveilling all flows here is very complex. For this reason, counter-surveillance technologies operate on and strengthen the protocological layer. Through encrypting data flows end-to-end, they make the decentralized physical structure dysfunctional for surveillance. Data still flows through the physical infrastructure and passes global hubs, but through encryption, communication is established peer-to-peer only. If someone intercepts the hubs, they cannot get any information usable for surveillance, because they cannot read the data. The Tor network does a similar thing (Tor Project, 2014); it hooks up to the regular internet infrastructure and allows user to access the internet. But by encrypting meta-data, surveillance of internet activities becomes impossible. In this way, encryption technologies have the power to strengthen the distributed features of the protocological layer and circumvent the decentralized physical one.

Conclusions

The results of my analysis show how the operation of surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies exploit different socio-political dimensions inherent to the internet infrastructure. Network diagrams helped me to describe these different dimensions and demonstrate how the two antagonists are engaged in a struggle over the network’s (dominant) structure and particular socio-technical organization. NSA surveillance technologies aim at establishing a centralized network in which the agency provides the central hub and oversees all information flows. Counter-surveillance technologies aim at establishing a distributed network where all nodes have equal rights and no one host has centralized control. This techno-political struggle is carried out within the infrastructure itself and through technological means. Within a Dewian account of politics, surveillance and counter-surveillance technologies then operate as a form of techno-politics, because they organize the channels of human interaction and strive to systematically regulate structures of interactions and communications through technologies.

However, Dewey still thought infrastructures to be extrinsic to political forms. In the case of governmental internet surveillance, we now see they become intrinsic, as infrastructures are employed for political purposes. In such techno-politics, political solutions are not negotiated through public discourse but through the application and operation of technologies. The people implied in the global network are affected by these techno-politics, because they structure their interactions in the network. But when political struggles are carried out on infrastructural levels that are transparent to users by their very definition, people remain unaware of these ongoing political developments. The problem this poses to democracy is further intensified by the network’s deterritorializing forces, which allow national agencies to access global hubs and wield power over a global public, while representing only a single nation state in whose interest they (supposedly) act. If technological solutions are provided to political problems, and if these solutions are applied on infrastructural levels that are transparent and invisible, then regular internet users and citizens are left unaware of political processes and cannot participate. Instead, it is technological elites who negotiate political decisions.

Acknowledgments

This paper is the result of my Master’s graduation project in Philosophy of Science, Technology and Society, offered at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. At this point I would like to offer my special thanks to my first supervisor, Dr. Michael Nagenborg, who was very enthusiastic about my project from the beginning on and provided me with the right starting points and a great introduction to Surveillance Studies. I would also like to express my great appreciation to my second supervisor, Prof. Peter-Paul Verbeek, who gave me feedback during the writing process and great support throughout the whole program. Finally, I wish to acknowledge all the people who make this outstanding Master’s program possible, my fellow students with whom I had such great discussions, and my family and friends for always supporting me.

References and Notes

Cumbers, A.; Routledge, P.; Nativel, C. The entangled geographies of global justice networks. Progress in Human Geography 2008, 32(2), 183-201.

Cowley, C. Communications and Networking, 2nd ed.; Springer-Verlag: London, United Kingdom, 2012.

Dewey, J. The Public and its Problems; Swallow Press/Ohio University Press: Athens, OH, United States, 1927.

Galloway, A. Protocol: How Control Exists after Decentralization; The MIT Press: Cambridge, MA, United States, 2004.

Hickman, L. Philosophical Tools for a Technological Culture; Indiana University Press: Bloomington, IN, United States, 2001.

Klein, M. Spying on the home front. Interview with H. Smith, Interviewer, 2007, May 15. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html

Spiegel Online. NSA-Dokumente: So übernimmt der Geheimdienst fremde Rechner; Published 2013, December 12. Retrieved from http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/nsa-dokumente-so-uebernimmt-dergeheimdienst-fremde-rechner-fotostrecke-105329-8.html

Star, S. L.; Bowker, G. C. How to infrastructure. Handbook of New Media 2006, 230-245.

TeleGeography. Submarine Cable Map 2014; 2014. Retrieved from http://www.telegeography.com/telecom-resources/map-gallery/submarinecable-map-2014/index.html

The Guardian. NSA Prism program slides. Published 2013, November 1. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/nov/01/prism-slidesnsa-document

Tor Project. Tor: Overview. Project website, 2014. Retrieved from https://www.torproject.org/about/overview.html.en

Introduction

It is possible to identify the geohistorical era (cca 650 million years ago) of appearance and some characteristics of the first multicellular living beings which were capable to intelligently interact with their environment. The birth of neuropsychological information have connected to a newly evolved ability to modify activity patterns concerning to the forecasted changes of the relevant realms of the environment.

So, information behavior was possible with only the simultaneous existence of three insular, specialized modules (group of cells), strongly interconnected by the embrionary nervous system.

The first one is dedicated to sensation/representation performance, the second is responsible for the semiosis (constitution of meaning, processing, interpreting, signification, decision making) and the third one controls and directs every intentional locomotion and body move (feedbacking the sensory input).

Without these modules there is no information behavior, and without a coexistence of them there is no full information cycle and there is no Big History (1) of Information. Representation without decision/action or decision/action without sensory input are later developments, the same as the perception of effects from the inner world and the locomotion feedback (proprioception).    

Elementary information cycle

To construct an elementary information cycle for the first ‘informationable’ beings it was enough to have a sense to perceive the difference between at least two relevant environmental occasions, having mental patterns, referring to these occasions, and an alternative set of motion types, acting upon the animal’s actual needs.  

Figure 1. Elementary information cycle.

(see PDF version for the Figure).

The information cycle of more developed animals and animal communities, Pre-Hominids, the Homo Sapiens and our whole contemporary human civilization (with its overlapping information communities and sensational information technology ecosystems) are fundamentally similar to the original, early rudimentary forms, on individual and group level, too. Of course, there are quantitative and qualitative differences in sensory and memory capacity, complexity, the size of usable information asset (stock) and the variety and effectivity of possible (re)actions, but the architecture of information behavior is just the same.

It provides a unique opportunity to define common macropatterns (“laws”) and common conceptual framework of (Big) Information History.

Nine Information History Macropattern

Highlighting the following “starter kit” of few, selected macropatterns and concepts would like to iniciate the future enlargement of these opening lists, providing vocabulary for high abstraction level theoretical research and very concrete historical reconstructions at the same time.

1. Multidimensional growth of representation power (sensory organ types, distance, speediness, size, color, resolution, sharpness, etc.). The result is better understanding and mapping of „surrounding reality” (world model), which allows more successful individual and group adaptation/behavior, broadening the channels of possible adiaphore effects, augmenting the anticipation power, maximizing the effectivity of preventive actions. The axes of continuously growing representability are: size (macro and micro level), distance and time-frame. The stages of extending representation capacity are: sensory evolution, usage of (information) tools, development of (extrasomatic) information technology.
2. The emerging inter-organismic information games are about weakening the representation capacity, decision adequacy and action potential of the ‘others’ for gaining advantage (with colourful and diverse evolutionary technics, developed by preys and predators).
3. Extension of adiaphore time leak (the time between perception of an event with relevance on future conditions and the action made to avoid lethal/unpleasant consequences of this future state). This leak have increased from a nano/picoseconds domain to years, and additionally, in the terms of perceivable space, from nano/picometers to light years. Information was originally developed to maximize individual fitness with conquering the future. Culture – defined as a survival tool by Lotman (2) – makes the same on community level. The adiaphore determination scheme was developed by Lajos Kardos (3).
4. Since the Light is the most effective adiaphore effect, the history of augmenting visual representation became the dominant form of perception, starting with the evolution of eye, following the optical technologies (macro-and microscopes and others). Later, Light also became the most effective way of sign transmission.
5. Cooperation is per se about performing common action. Coordination as an exchange of meanings is a precondition for successful cooperation.
6. The size of sign-interchanging communities and the interconnectivity rate of individuals is raising to a power the number of possible transformations, boosts the information flow, creates space for information innovation, augmenting the overall information asset and action capability of the community. We can observe the same effect every time when individuals’ density is growing locally (from hordes to the urbanization process).
7. There is a constant pressure on information accumulation (memory capacity, length of personal life, intergenerational transfer of meaning, culture, memory expanding technologies).
8. The natural environment (and later: public spaces) are also rich in (meaningful) objects as sources of information. Information architecture simultaneously means the enrichment of the environment with information/content, and the design of exformation (objectivation of information to physical form as sign on a carrier, for future usage).
9. Information metabolism can be multiplicative (when the size of information communities or the information asset of a community with fixed size is starting to grow, or separate information communities are merging), distillative (when the reproduction and flow of information is narrowing or hampered - information procedures can be reversible) and invariable. These moments are coexisting, but their role and proportion determine the adaptive power of a community.

Figure 2. Adiaphoria: Widening Time Leak as Big Information History pattern

(see PDF version for the Figure).

Conclusions

Evolution of information behavior produced more and more complex information cycles and (in the Homo period) complex social environment/culture to multiply the long-time existing and persistent patterns. However, we could identify nine macropatterns, adaptable for not only the human part, but for the whole Big Information History

References and Notes

1. Christian, D. 2011: Maps of Time. An Introduction to Big History University of California Press, First Edition
2. Lotman, Y. M. 1970: Statji po tipologii kulturü Tartu (In Hungarian: Szöveg, modell, típus Gondolat, 1973)
3. Kardos, L. 1984: The origin of Neuropsychological Information Akadémiai Kiadó: Budapest, Hungary

Introduction

Noted physicist Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington’s famous argument states reasoning suffices entropy to be comparable with beauty and melody. Entropy is the level of disorder in a system and in information theory, it refers to the measurement of uncertainty. Significance of music originates from expected uncertainties of time and musical characteristics in consequent situation resulted from estimation and evaluation of musical inheritance method possibilities by antecedent situation.

With the developments of school songs in the first half of 20th century, musical notations, both stave and numerical score, quickly spread all over and gained popularity in China. Traditional musical notations of Chinese music, because they only record pitch and either roughly or do not reflect pace, were conceptualized to be obsolete. This is the very reason traditional Chinese musical notations were abandoned. However, a traditional Chinese musical book (纳书楹曲谱), translated as Nashu Studio Theatrical Music, writes 1 very detailed notation of pace is beneficial for beginners, however it restricts people with profound understanding of music and excellent performing techniques from developing their own performing characteristics. For instance, in upper Gong Chi of Gong Chi Score (工尺谱), a form of traditional Chinese musical notation, if three Yin translate to one Ban, there can be as many as over 5 possible combinations of pace and this allows flexibility for performers to recreate the music. Jian Zi Score (减字谱) of Gu Qin, a seven-stringed plucked instrument, indirectly records pitch and even detailed playing techniques but recording of pace is nowhere to be found in such score. Pace of these scores are determined by the playing technique of different schools of performers. The same ancient score, when played by different performers, shows distinct styles. The traditional Chinese inheritance method of oral instruction and rote memory also has many uncertainties. The background, life experience, personality, a aesthetic taste and mode of teachers and learners all contribute to forming different styles and characteristics during inheritance, creating uncertainties.

Significance and information are both associated with uncertainties through probability. In any communication of information, the lower probability of a subsequent event, the more uncertainties (and information) are contained in antecedent-consequent relationship. Information is the measurement of degree of freedom in message selection. The greater this degree of freedom and volume of information are, the more uncertain that message is. Thus, the chosen degree of freedom, uncertainty and volume of information are positively correlated. If information theory is applied to the discussion of significance of traditional Chinese music score inheritance, what conclusion will it lead us to?

The value of information itself is based on representation, expressing, externalization revealing objects and their characteristics and significance. This paper combines algorithm music2 and information theory and discusses the value and significance of traditional Chinese music scores and inheritance method of oral instruction and rote memory for the purpose of discovering new methods for traditional Chinese music inheritance..

References and Notes

1. Original text: 板眼中另有小眼原为初学者而设，在善歌者自能生巧，若细细注明转觉束缚
2. Algorithm music expresses music using algorithm instead of music notations. It is a more abstract visualization of music scores. Algorithm music records the internal structure of music. Style andcharacteristics of performers can be recorded and analyzed with probability computation using computers.