Introduction

This presentation is the product of reflections arising from qualitative research realized with five countercultural groups in Colombia that intensively use information and communication technologies. The findings are analysed in relationship with new ways of sharing and disseminating knowledge and new forms of social and political organization. These sociotechnical practices are considered as potential forms of resistance against dominant and homogenous political and cultural models. They also show alternative forms of community and the creation of knowledge. Nevertheless they are a novelty that is observed in relation to the ambiguous power and inequality that exist on different levels within these collectives (Rueda, 2012).

For this reason, the concept of multitude as introduced by Spinoza and elaborated by Negri and Hardt (2000) and Lazzarato (2006), can be useful in understanding that while this socius is an unstable and volatile social energy, it constitutes a collective voice that resists the cultural and political order with surprising political potential. The multitude articulates affects and experiences that are the basis for political action. It is something located in between, it is multiple and at the same time conforms a singular body made up of diverse interests, experiences, feelings and relations, without a homogenous unity. Relationality and cooperation establish what is common, which in turn faces the political challenge of difference. But “modern society is characterized by antagonism of co-operation and competition. …Characteristics of late-modern society such as the colonization of the life-world and the whole society by economic logic are again reproduced in cyberspace” (Fuchs & Zimmerman, 2009:119-125).

This multitude is then also unpredictable and unstable and we believe it faces the challenge of critically confronting the inequalities and exercises of power that exist within it. In fact, this new condition of the subjective experience – individual and collective – requires us to be alert to certain social and technological determinisms that inflate the reach of both the technology as well as the movements and collectives, and suggest that, for example, connectivity immediately means collectiveness and democratisation. We cannot underestimate the complexity of this socius, which is always faced by an array of possibilities ranging from social cooperation and creativity, to new forms of domination and the capturing of desire in the service of capital.

Methods

The methodology used was of a qualitative, ethnographic nature (participant observations, in-depth interviews, life stories). Firstly, a review was made of collectives who are connected to the Internet in Colombia, of which six were selected: one in the Valle del Cauca, in Santander de Quilichao: El tejido de Comunicaciones of the NASA-ACIN indigenous community; one in Medellín: Corporación Vamos Mujer, and four in Bogotá: Niuton, Mefisto, La Cápsula and Chicas Linux. These collectives were chosen for their social, political and cultural critiques of the established and dominant culture. Monitoring was then made for a period of one year of the different actions realized by these collectives in the cities where they are located, as well as on the Internet through their respective webpages.

Results and Discussion.

These cases of new forms of sociality, of multitude, that we found in the five countercultural groups are far from conforming a coherent whole, but they can be – and are – functional bodies of knowledge, valuable for inventing for us better and more just political forms of the everyday. These invite us to unlearn social, political, cultural forms that in the past were sole, colonial, homogenising.

At the same time, however, they remind us that, despite libertarian, rebellious and non-conformist outlooks regarding the establishment, these collectives contain within them questions related to relationships of power, of gender, of race, of social class and profession that appear in an ambiguous way, that become invisible and seem to coexist in a not always harmonious way in this social context, as is the case with markedly masculine and competitive practices in certain collectives of free software, or the hierarchical relations in countercultural collectives of women who oppose authoritarian political models. In effect, we see a complex condition, of hybridity, of non-contemporary contemporaneity of cultural times. Of the ways in which dimensions of subjectivity that were excluded from modern thought (such as affectivity, desire) are rescued while simultaneously exclusions of gender, race, social class and region are maintained intact, as is notorious, we might say, in those collectives that are principally urban and middle class.

Similarly, technologies are not sufficient or determinant per se regarding social or cultural agencements, because collective dimensions of use are what constitute settings of communication, spaces for the dissemination of the sensitive and places where diagrams of social creativity and desire are described. For this reason, we examinated the power possessed by the collectives we have selected, because we believe that friendship as politics, peer learning, sharing, donating, expression and the free circulation of commons, places us before new forms of understanding the formation of subjectivity and social practices that is still not easy to define. It is in these practices that technologies and their settings for participation and collaboration – such as the social network or Web 2.0 – are of interest for their political potency.

Conclusions

While discursive categories exist that give an identity (women, young people, indigenous people) to the five counterculture collectives we’ve considered in this study, internal differences also exist within these collectives, different subject positions and partial forms of articulation to the collectives and to the social practices of resistance to power, in which individual aspirations and dreams are also in tension.

We need to find metaphors to make evident the complexity of this sociotechnical vitality and the coexistence of traditional and novel forms of social and political organisation, as well as new and traditional cultural forms and practices. Another challenge we face is to try and better understand how that tactical combination is produced between connectivity and the conformation of common(ity), network, (multitude) and how the forms of control and diverse dynamics of power (co)exist even in alternative forms of networks and multitudes.

References and Notes

Fuchs, C.; Zimmerman, R. Practical civil virtues in cyberspace. Towards the utopian identitiy of civitas and Multitudo. Schaker Verlagt, München; 2009.

Lazzarato, M. Políticas del Acontecimiento. 1ª. ed.; Tinta Limón, Buenos Aires; 2006.

Negri, T.; Hardt, M. Imperio. Harvard University Press, Cambridge; 2000.

Rueda, R. “Sociedades de la información y el conocimiento: tecnicidad, pharmakon e invención social”. Nómadas, 2012, 36, 43-55.

Introduction

The topic of this paper is comparative analysis of mathematical education in compulsory educational systems of Serbia, Croatia and Finland. Educational systems of Serbia and Croatia are very similar, due to the fact that these two countries were part of the same country. After disintegration of Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia have commenced their transition processes and comprehensive reforms. They also have commenced reforms of their educational systems. This paper analyses how far are these countries reached in the reform of the selected segment of compulsory education, did some differences created between the observed countries and gives description and explication of these differences. In addition to support, comparison also covers the situation in Finnish education system, which is taken as an example of a successful system. Finnish education system is, according to numerous studies, one of the best in Europe and also, according to PISA tests results, performance from the Finnish students were always among the best.

A detailed analysis was conducted on the example of mathematics, given the importance of this science in modern society. With the development of science and technology and comprehensive advancement of civilization, the need to apply mathematical knowledge in everyday life also increases. Therefore, an applied mathematics is being more studied and many people and due to the lack of mathematical knowledge, or incapacity for its application, many problems are being created.

Further analysis showed that the applied comparative perspective provides to identify similarities and differences in the legal regulations, duration of compulsory education, assessment systems, representation and status of the subjects. In the first part of presentation are analyzed the regulations governing compulsory education in the observed countries. It is made a comparison of duration of compulsory education and duration of individual cycles of compulsory education. Special attention is given to comparing the assessment systems of Serbia, Croatia and Finland. Particularly interesting are the differences in the representation of descriptive grades and the importance given to the descriptive grading in these three countries. It’s analyzed the presence of self–assessment in Finnish educational system and the differences between the observed countries in terms of the progress in studies from grade to grade. The subject of comparison is also the representation and status of individual subjects in the education systems of Serbia, Croatia and Finland with a special emphasis on the differences in terms of the importance given to some subjects. Using of the modern technology is in the observed education systems is also considered. By comparing the presence of the modern technologies, many differences between Serbia and Croatia on one side, and Finland on another, are noticed. In the second part of presentation are analyzed the educational objectives, contents, educational standards and requirements in terms of knowledge and skills of students for the subject of mathematics.

Methods

This review paper represents a comparative analysis, which is conducted by analyzing laws and other legal acts and another documents with regard to education in the observed countries. The emphasis was on the analysis and comparison of curricula and studying papers and books from this field, especially those related to mathematics and the use of technology in teaching. There are also studied and compared the textbooks and teaching materials for mathematics.

Results and Discussion

A comparative analysis showed some differences and similarities between the observed countries. The most prominent are differences between Serbia and Croatia on one side and Finland on another. In terms of regulations, it is noticed that Finnish education system is much more decentralized than Serbian or Croatian. It is also noticed the absence of national curriculum, the document by which are provided guidelines for organizing the teaching process. When it comes to student assessment, it is noticed greater representation of descriptive assessment and self – assessment in Finnish education system, than in Serbian and Croatian. The differences in terms of representation and status of individual subjects are not particularly noticeable.

It is found that Finnish elementary schools successfully apply modern technologies in teaching process, while in other two countries still exist problems in this field, primarily due to the lack of adequate equipment in many schools.

A comparison of mathematical education in compulsory education systems of the observed countries didn’t show essential differences in terms of teaching contents. On the other side, stand out the differences in terms of educational objectives and, especially, educational standards and requirements in terms of knowledge and skills. Among Finnish educational objectives, as opposed to Serbian and Croatian, it is emphasized development of mathematical thinking, while acquisition and application of knowledge are in the second place. In accordance with these objectives, Finnish description of good performance contain the entire group of requirements in terms of the development of thinking and working abilities. In this description it is also more insisted on application of acquired knowledge than it is case in Serbia and Croatia.

Conclusions

It is indisputable that mathematical skills and competences of Serbian, Croatian and Finnish pupils are not the same. One of the indicators is certainly result of PISA test. Regarding the mathematics PISA tests, performances from the Finnish pupils were always among the best, and performances from the Serbian and Croatian pupils were considerably lower. Described differences certainly had, to some extent, an impact to final pupils’ competences. It is expected that more intensive use of the modern technologies to support teaching and intensification requirements in terms of knowledge application could improve teaching process and final pupils’ competences in Serbia and Croatia.

References and Notes

1. Apple, M. W. Do the Standards Go Far Enough? Power, Policy and Practice in Mathematics Education, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education 1992, Vol. 23, No. 5, 412-431.
2. Brown, P.et al. Education: Culture, Economy, and Society, Oxford University Press 1997.
3. Llewellyn, A.& Mendick, H. (2011). Does every child count? Quality, equity and mathematics with/in neoliberalism. In Mapping equity and quality in mathematics education, Springer 2011, New York. 49-62.
4. Kivi, R. (2000), “New Technology and Education in Finland”, PEB Exchange, Programme on Educational Building, 2000/12, OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/830666883232
5. Muusa Korhonen (2006). The New Federalist, Foreign Languages in Finland’s Educational System. Retrieved November 11, 2014 from the World Wide Web, http://www.thenewfederalist.eu/Foreign-Languages-in-Finland-s-Educational-System.
6. National Core Curriculum for Basic Education (2004). Finish National Board of Education, Helsinki
7. Niemi, H.; Multisilta, J.; Lipponen, L.; Vivitsou, M.. Finnish Inovations and Technologies in Schools – A Guide towards New Ecosystems of Learning, Sense Publishers: Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2014

Introduction

The explosive growth in the wireless communication industry in the last two decades rests upon one all-encompassing truth for wireless providers: without access to spectrum, you cease to exist. Wireless broadband service cannot be provided without making use of the invisible, finite, publicly owned frequencies that serve as the conduit for mobile devices.

For many regulators and industry officials, it has become an accepted maxim that industrial societies are nearing a spectrum capacity crunch. Industry has argued for years that the explosive growth of mobile data, triggered by the adoption of smart phones and tablets and the popularity of streaming video, has meant that they must have exclusive access rights to increasingly large portions of the public airwaves in order to provide adequate service. Since the 1990s this allocation of spectrum has largely been done via auction.

Dallas Smythe wrote that the radio spectrum “does not rest with particular individuals or nations, but with all humanity” (D. Smythe, 1987). Smythe was the first vocal opposition to the concept of spectrum auctioning when it first appeared as a theory in the 1950s (Dallas W. Smythe, 1952; Dallas Walker Smythe, 1957; Taylor, 2013). He remained steadfast in his opposition to auctions as a method of spectrum allocation, even as they gained wider acceptance. Reflecting on that 1952 paper decades later, Smythe described it as “an article that I could not have improved 35 years on” (D.W. Smythe & Guback, 1994).

The wireless industry has been unequivocal that it cannot provide service unless larger areas of the public spectrum are opened to them. The entire drive to auction spectrum is predicated on the idea that spectrum is increasingly limited. However, despite its fundamental importance to our increasingly mobile world, this scarcity is rarely quantified. There is increasingly reason to question this theory. This paper presents the results of a unique project measuring spectrum usage in Canada’s urban core. In doing so, I explore the legitimacy of questions of spectrum scarcity using a test case in Canada's most populous city. I also explore spectrum policy approaches beyond the auction of private licenses as ways of strengthening public wireless access.

This paper explores the effects of 20 years of spectrum auctioning and places Smthe’s theory in the context of the current environment. Using Smythe as the theoretical foundation, I ask if auctions are serving the public interest.

Methods

The first section of the paper draws upon the theory introduced by Smythe in the late 1950s that auctions were a poor allocation method for the public spectrum. Smythe’s position was later supported by fellow Canadian communication scholar William Melody (Melody, 1980). This paper also draws upon work of Eli Noam (Noam, 1997), Yochai Benkler (Benkler, 2012) and the conclusions of a report prepared for the President of the United States in 2012 (President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, 2012) to argue for a more commonist approach to spectrum access.

The second part of the paper offers unique quantitative data addressing the issue of spectrum capacity in Canada. Working with Ryerson University’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, I collected data on licensed mobile broadband frequencies using a spectrum analyzer. Data was collected hourly for each licensed band in twelve-hour shifts over three days. The spectrum analyzer registered activity for a band in the top chart and density of usage in the bottom chart.

Results and Discussion

The data clearly demonstrates the inefficiencies of paired spectrum allocation – a common approach in the allocation of this resource. The research discovered large discrepancies between the transmission frequencies and reception frequencies. In short: the data demonstrates that the allocation of this public resource is poorly structured, allowing for large amounts of prime public spectrum to sit unused by incumbents.

Conclusions

Questions of spectrum management should not be the exclusive realm of engineers. Scarcity is a fundamental element of classical political economy. In the Wealth of Nations, Smith writes that scarcity is the underpinning of almost all economic exchanges, from labour, rent, to agriculture and precious metals. The spectrum scarcity argument has been allowed to exist largely unchallenged for the last two decades.

This paper questions the scarcity argument and uses the theoretical foundation offered by Dallas Smythe to probe into greater questions of spectrum and the common good.

Acknowledgments

Dr. Catherine Middleton, Ryerson University; Dr. Xavier Fernando, Ryerson University; Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant.

References and Notes

Benkler, Y. (2012). Open Wireless vs. Licensed Spectrum: Evidence from Market Adoption. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 26(1).

Melody, W. H. (1980). Radio Spectrum Allocation: Role of the Market. The American Economic Review, 70(2), 393-397.

Noam, E. (1997). Beyond spectrum auctions. Taking the next step to open spectrum access. Telecommunications policy., 21(5), 461.

President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. (2012). Report to the President: Realizing the Full Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth. Retrieved from http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/microsites/ostp/pcast_spectrum_report_final_july_20_2012.pdf.

Smythe, D. (1987). Radio Spectrum Policy and World Needs. CPRO Prometheus, 5(2), 263-283.

Smythe, D. W. (1952). Facing Facts about the Broadcast Business. The University of Chicago Law Review, 20(1), 96-106.

Smythe, D. W. (1957). The structure and policy of electronic communication. Urbana: University of Illinois.

Smythe, D. W., & Guback, T. H. (1994). Counterclockwise: perspectives on communication: Westview Press.

Taylor, G. (2013). Oil in the Ether: A Critical History of Spectrum Auctions in Canada. Canadian Journal of Communication, 38(1).

Introduction

A new approach to the analysis of a musical piece has revealed new types of relations, which we refer to as "transdimensional relations", or "transdimensionalism" (abbreviated TD) [1].

Transdimensionalism refers to the entire set of relations between spaces of differing dimensions within a multidimensional whole. ("Dimension" is the number of degrees of freedom, which allow both geometric and parametric interpretations).

Therefore, within a musical whole (a musical piece) the melodic plain (1-dimensional, 1D) is connected with 2-dimensional intervals (2D) and 3-dimensional chords (3D). An important aspect of transdimensionalism is a transition from one space to another, which can be referred to as a transdimensional transition (abbreviated TDt), using our terminology [2]. The entire history of music is a chain of such transitions: from single voice monody to two voice polyphony, to 2-dimensional intervals (X century), from 2-dimensional intervals to 3-dimensional chords-triads (XVII century), then from chords to poly-chords and poly-harmonies during the XX century. Let us look at a special case of transdimensional relations - "polydimensions" (abbreviated PD), meaning an object, which belongs to spaces of different dimensions. We will show that polydimensionalism lies at the base of music. We can look at the basic cell in modal music - the relationship between a stable tone and an unstable tone.

Main Part

The stable tone is independent from the unstable one, it is defined unambiguously, and has one degree of freedom. Whereas the unstable tone is dependent on the stable one and has two degrees of freedom: 1) it can resolve into stable tones, or 2) it can move away from it. From the point of view of musical grammar, the unstable tone is unambiguous like the stable tone (music as language). Whereas from a contextual meaning, the unstable tone is bimodal (music as speech), and is 2-dimensional.

Therefore, the pair "stable tone-unstable tone" is polydimensional, one of its parts is 1- dimensional, while the other is 2-dimensional (PD=1D:2D). The polydimension 1D:2D is the primary basic cell of transdimensionalism, which allows one to separate contextual meanings from non-contextual meanings.

The link between music and symmetry is well known. Transdimensional relations and polydimensionalism allow one to consider the pair of "symmetry-asymmetry" from a different perspective. Symmetry is the unity of preservation and change. Transdimensionalism expands the very term "change": a change in the same dimension of musical space is now complimented by the change in the dimension of that space (transdimensional transition). Another attribute of symmetry is "preservation", which also becomes more complex. Polydimesionalism expands the term "invariance", since now one is taking into account the contextual links of an object (a single melody, removed from its polyphonic or harmonic context, is simultaneously "the same" and "different"!). The connection of transdimensionalism and symmetry ("transdimensional symmetry") allows us to see a new quality (parameter) that appears during the formation of the whole.    

Let us look at the same pair, "stable sound-unstable sound" in the context of language. Here it is also polydimensional. On the one hand, both units in the pair are equal and symmetrical, differentiated only by the plus and minus signs (or by "color"). On the other, the word "un" (negation) creates a new quality (or parameter): not only the negation of a statement ("stable sound"), but also an unbreakable bond with it (since we are talking about negation not in the abstract, but of a specific statement). As a result, we find that negation is a complex unit of the pair, as apposed to the simple statement. From this point of view, the pair is polydimensional (PD=1D:2D) and asymmetrical. Therefore, all of the pairs, which are associated with negation, are polydimensional and asymmetrical (truth-untruth, to be-not to be, etc.). The second units (context dependent) of these dyads form a pair that is a "linkage" with the first units (context independent). The pair "symmetry-asymmetry" is also polydimensional!

It is common knowledge that our thinking is based on binary oppositions, which are considered as symmetrical. As it turns out, oppositions can be simple and complex (context dependent), and complex oppositions are asymmetrical! This includes not only pairs with negative, but also with reflexive units (object-subject, action-observation), a secondary action (stimulus-reaction, vibrator-resonator), synthesis inside one of its parts (horse-rider), etc.

All of these are examples of PD of the type 1D:2D or "transdimensional asymmetry". From this we get several important logical consequences. Firstly, context-independent terms are separated from context dependent ones; in particular, we find the polydimensionality (which was not so obviously till now) of logical pairs such as "yes-no", "true-false", etc. Secondly, when one takes into account transdimensional relations and polydimensionality, classical paradoxes cease to be paradoxical. For example, the barber paradox (Bertrand Russell): all inhabitants of the village are context-independent (1-dimensional), while the barber is polydimensional, PD=1D:2D. The king's order does not take this into account, thereby creating a paradox! (We can also consider other paradoxes such as "I am lying" or "I am asleep”, etc.).

Here arises the possibility of creating a new type of logic - the "logic of creativity"-, which integrates classical and non classical logic into a single whole through the use of PD=1D:2D

Let's move on to information theory, the basic cell of which is a "bit", that is the same pair as "yes-no", or 0 and 1. It was previously thought that the members of the pair are equal and symmetrical. However, this is only partly true. The negation "no" forms a "linkage state" with the affirmation, which justifies the transition to Q-bits. Let us remember, that the idea of Q-bits came from the physical sciences (quantum mechanics). We arrived at the idea from studying the humanities, which underscores the universal nature of these new relations.

References

1. Koblyakov A. Semantic aspects of self-similarity in music. Symmetry: Culture and Science, 1995, v. 6, number 2, p. 297-301

2. Koblyakov A. Theorem of transdimensional transition. Works of the International conference “Mathematics. Computer. Education”, Moscow-Dubna, 2000, p. 22-42 (In Russian)

Introduction

This paper examines the nature of ‘free labor’ (Terranova, 2004) and its compensation in today’s cognitive capitalism. (Boutang, 2011) Specifically, it tries to show how free labor involves into not only the generation of immaterial goods such as knowledge, information, culture, communication, relationship, and brand but also the production of various categories of material goods including motor cycles, medicines, musical instruments, and so on. In so doing, this paper explores how free labor of networked populations has been increasingly externalizing capital’s management function from production processes and thus reinforcing the ‘becoming rent of capital’. (Vercellone, 2008) In addition, it enquires into the exploitation of free labor in conjunction with the notion of the voluntariness of labor and the immaterial compensation (e.g., reputation or peer recognition) that could be considered as major discursive resources for the reproduction of cognitive capitalism. Furthermore, by examining various strategies coping with the gratuitous dynamics of immaterial products facilitated by contemporary digital networking environments, this article tries to seek for a fair way to compensate for the free cognitive and affective labor.

First, contents-vectoralists of music and film industries employ the legal device of ‘Digital Rights Management (DRM)’ as a way to secure their profits. And thus, they are strengthening rent-seeking economy and constraining various forms of the long-standing cultural practices among populations. Second, ‘Micropayment System’ is often regarded as a market-friendly solution to the gratuitous dynamics of digital labor by contents-vectoralists of journalism and publishing, many platform-vectoralists, and some libertarian consumer groups. Third, the concept of ‘Universal Basic Income’ could be an effective social policy for the proper compensation for free labor in the sense that it extends the logic of social and common nature of production to the sphere of distribution.

Background and Discussion

Even though free labor in digital networks may not necessarily be unavoidable (Andrejevic, 2009), it still remains as an enforced labor in the sense that agreements of users on the terms of use set up by platform providers may be interpreted as a form of socially embedded enforcement. Furthermore, products of free labor are mostly put under a platform-vectoralists’ disposal. Similar to a contract of wage labor, users’ agreement on the terms of use enables platform providers to take a whole control over products of free labor. Indeed, private appropriation of social and common products of unpaid labor became a key object of exploitation in cognitive capitalism. So, here come two main reasons to think about a material compensation for free labor. First, even though much of free labor is not only performed by immaterial motivations such as a pursuit of technical perfection, an acquirement of reputational capital, and the spread of commonism but also compensated in an immaterial manner, it is far from the socio-economic norm of a fair distribution of wealth that platform-vectoralists appropriate the value created by free labor as a form of rent. Second, it is much more necessary to compensate for free labor in a material manner so as to secure the sustainability of cognitive capitalism itself that strives to retain sources of capital accumulation from the creative and innovative free labor among networked populations.

The private appropriation of free labor has long been pursued by contents-vectoralists with an ownership of intellectual property rights and DRM might be deemed to be the most recent technological device for that purpose. DRM is mainly led by contents-vectoralists such as Disney, Warner Brothers, EMI, Microsoft, and Amazon and supported by major manufacturers of electronics including Sony, Samsung, Apple, IBM, Panasonic, and so on. Although contents-vectoralists have been trying to limit networked populations’ free access to ideas and information by introducing DRM, this privatization of digital commons may result in the blocking of creativity and innovation that are vital to the reproduction of cognitive capitalism.

With regard to the notion of ‘Micropayment System’, some argue for charging all information, knowledge, and culture that is shared on the Internet free of charge and Micropayment System often considered as a proper way to compensate monetarily those who contributed to value creation in digital networks. In spite of the past failures of start-ups such as BitPass, FirstVirtual, Cybercoin, Millicent, Digicash, Internet Dollar, and Pay2See, some newspapers actively seek for a building of payment system to each news articles so as to relieve the company’s financial burden. New York Times and Financial Times are currently running ‘Metered Paywalls’ model and many more newspaper capitals are expected to join the track. And ‘Google Wallet’ seems to providing a new momentum for the spread of Micropayment System. Meanwhile, it constitutes another reason for the idea of Micropayment System that many criticize platform-vectoralists such as Google and Facebook for their monopolization of the profits coming from the use of huge user-generated data on the Internet. Several social network services (e.g. Teckler, Pheed, Datacoup) actually run the business model which get back some of their profit to their users as a form of payment for using their personal data. Even some consumer activists refuse the highly common and idealized concept of ‘freedom of information’ and ‘free information’ since it enables, to a great extent, platform-vectoralists with a huge networking power to use and capture users’ value-creating activities free of charge. So, in order to realize information economy in which a new middle-class can emerge, we need, some argue, to renounce the familiar concept of ‘free information’ and to employ a universal Micropayment System. (Lanier, 2013), However, Micropayment System, on the one hand, must disentangle a very complicate matter of ownership of immaterial goods and, on the other hand, inevitably require the establishment of an highly intensive digital surveillance system. Thus, this market-oriented solution for the compensation could not serve as a viable alternative.

Conclusions

Basic Income, as a way for a social and common compensation, may be able to deal with failures of rent-seeking economy developing in the sphere of culture and information beyond the realm of natural resources. It may also play a significant role in the realization and spread of social value of a common cultural inheritance. The concept of Basic Income is often justified in two different ways. First, all economic wealth and value is generated by social cooperation. That is, the creation of wealth should be considered not in terms of the product of individuals’ laboring power but in terms of social bond and cooperation among individuals. Therefore, every individual is deemed to retain the right to acquire wealth from these social and common resources. Second, key elements of production (e.g. tools, technology, and knowledge) belong to a communal cultural tradition and human heritage. So, we are all just cultural inheritors of human community and have to right to receive dividends. These two justifications of Basic Income seem to have a great relevance to today’s cognitive capitalism. Its accumulation regime greatly relies upon the production of immaterial goods such as information, knowledge, and culture and its mode of production increasingly focuses on cooperation among networked populations. Furthermore, given the increasing flexibilization of employment relationships and differentiation between internal and external labor markets, universal Basic Income may play a crucial role in relieving the instability of cognitive capitalism.

References and Notes

Andrejevic, Mark. 2009. “Exploring YouTube: Contradiction of User-Generated Labor.” Pp. 406-423 in The YouTube Reader (eds.) Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderaw. Lithuania: Logotipas.

Andrejevic, Mark. 2011. "Surveillance and Allienation in the Online Economy" Surveillance & Society 8(3): 278-287.

Arvidsson, Adam and Elanor Colleoni. 2012. “Value in Informational Capitalism and on the Internet.“ The Information Society 28: 135-150.

Böhm, Steffen and Chris Land. 2012. "The New 'Hidden Abode'" Reflecting on Value and Labour in the New Economy." The Sociological Review 60(2): 217-240.

Boutang, Yann Moulier. 2011. Cognitive Capitalism. MA: Polity Press.

Bucher, Taina. 2012. "Want to be on the Top? Algorithmic Power and the Threat of Invisibility on Facebook." New Media & Society. 14(7): 1164-1180.

Geidner, Nick and Denae D’Arcy. 2013. “The Effects of Micropayments on Online News Story Selection and Engagement.“ New Media & Society.

Gillespie, Tarleton. 2006. “Designed to 'Effectively Frustrate': Copyright, Technology and the Agency of Users.“ New Media & Society 8(4): 651669.

Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri. 1994. Labor of Dionysus: A Critique of the State Form. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Hearn, Alison. 2010. "Structuring Feeling: Web 2.0, Online Ranking and Rating, and the Digital 'Reputation' Economy," Ephemera 10(3/4): 421-438.

Hesmondhalgh, David. 2010. “User-Generated Content, Free Labour and the Cultural Industries.“ Ephemera 10(4/4): 267-284.

Jeppesen, Lars Bo, Lars Frederiksen. 2006. “Why Do Users Contribute to Firm-Hosted User Communities?: The Case of Computer-Controlled Music Instruments.“ Organization Science 17(1): 45-63.        

Lanier Jaron. 2013. Who Owns the Future? NY: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.

Lee, Edwards, Bethany Klein, David Lee, Giles Moss and Fiona Philip. 2012. “Framing the Consumer: Copyright Regulation and the Public.“ Convergence 19(1): 9-24.

Lucarelli, Stefano and Fumagalli, Andrea. 2008. “Basic Income and Productivity in Cognitive Capitalism.“ Review of Social Economy LXVI(1): 71-92.

Terranova, 2004. “Free Labor." Pp. 33-57 in Digital Labor: The Internet as Playground and Factory. (edited by Trebor Scholz) NY: Routledge.

Swahney, Mohanbir, Gianmario Verona, and Emanuela Prandelli. 2005. “Collaborating to Create: the Internet As a Platform for Customer Engagement in Product Innovation.“ Journal of Interactive Marketing 19(4): 5-17.

Vercellone Carlo. 2008. “The New Articulation of Wages, Rent and Profit in Cognitive Capitalism.” https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00265584

Zeller Christian. 2008. “From the Gene to the Globe: Extracting Rents Based on Intellectual Property Monopolies.“ Review of International Political Economy 15(1): 86-115.

Zwick, Detlev, Samuel Bonsu and Aron Darmody. 2008. "Putting Consumers to Work: 'Co-creation' and New Marketing Govern-mentality." Journal of Consumer Culture 8(2): 163-196.1.

1. Introduction

Many scholars researched social informatization from different perspectives, including profession, economy and technology. In this thesis, the author will studied on social informatization from the perspective of basic characteristics of information. Firstly, the author will describe other scholars’ social informationization theories. Secondly, the definition of information and basic characteristics of information will be given. Then, the production mode informatization and life-style informatization from the perspective of basic characteristics of information will be studied on in this paper. Lastly, the conclusion will be drawn.

2. Methods

In this paper, the author has used literature research method to list some kinds of theories of social informatization. The history and current status of theories of social informatization could be found by researching different kinds of literatures. Besides, the descriptive study method has been used in this paper. The author stood on the point of view of basic characteristics of information to describe and explain the social informatization.

3. Results and Discussion

3.1. The Social Informatization

The earliest theory of social informatization can be traced back to the 1950s. In 1959, Daniel Bell, an American sociologist, used the word "post-industrial society" to describe a new social stage for the first time in an academic conference. Daniel Bell stated that information was the core competitive factors in the "post-industrial society" and named the "post-industrial society" in which information workers were the main professional group "information society".¹ It can be seen that Daniel Bell discusses social informationization from the perspective of career mobility. After Daniel Bell, another American sociologist, John Naisbitt, studied on social informationization from the perspective of career mobility, too. In his Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (1984), John Naisbitt claimed that most of people were processing information rather than producing the products in American in 1956 and believed that the year of 1956 was the starting point of the United States entering into the "information society".²

Besides, some scholars researched social informationization from the perspective of economy. For example, Fritz Machlup (1962), an American economist, presented the concept of “knowledge industry” in his The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (1962).³ After that, Marc Porat (1977), another American economist, presented and described “information industry” in detail in his The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement (1977).⁴

Some scholars measured the society on the basis of the development of science and technology. For instance, Alvin Toffler, a futurologist, divided the history of development of human society into three "waves" according to the development of science and technology in his The Third Wave (1984) and he stated that the electronic information technology contributed to “the third wave” that led to the information society.⁵ Moreover, Manuel Castells, a sociologist, claimed that “a new society” that was named as “the network society” came into being with the development of network technology.⁶

Seeing from what has been discussed above, scholars studied on social informatization with adequate grounds from the perspective of profession, economy and science and technology. Nevertheless, the author thinks that the increase of amount of information, the formation and development of information industry, the increase of workers engaging in information industry and the wide application of information technology just make the social informatization to be possible. Society is made up of people. With the development and wide application of information technology, the characteristics of information have changed people's production mode and life-style. Only if production mode and life-style have realized the informatization, the social informatization will truly be realized. So, in order to completely study on social informatization, the production mode informatization and life-style informatization should be analyzed from the perspective of the characteristics of information.

3.2. The Definition of Information and Basic Characteristics of Information

In 1948, Shannon, an American scientist, published his famous paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and had deduced the information entropy formula: by the knowledge of mathematical statistics and stated that the information entropy formula “played an important role in the information theory as a measurement of information, selecting, and uncertainty”.⁷ This kind of “uncertainty” exactly is the “uncertainty” of information sink and the information source can eliminate the “uncertainty” of information sink by sending a message. So, generally, the information given by Shannon is considered to the elimination of “uncertainty”. Though Shannon’s information theory is based on the rigorous mathematical statistics, his information theory is limited to the specific communication. Comparing with Shannon’s information theory, Wiener’s information theory has more extensive adaptability. Wiener stated that “information was neither a matter, nor energy, and information was the information, and if you did not know it, you would not know the materialism”.⁸ It was observed that, Wiener considered information as an independent existence that differed from matter and energy, however, did not explain information in detail. In contrast, Wu Kun, a Chinese philosopher, carried on the thorough thinking on the nature of information from the philosophy level. Professor Wu Kun stated that “information was the philosophical category marking indirect existence and self-display of existing way and status of matter (direct existence).”⁹ Professor Wu Kun defined information based on redistricting the field of existence and regarded information as “indirect existence” and pointed out the relationship between information and matter. It can be seen that Professor Wu Kun’s information definition is more abstract and precise than Wiener’s.

The author thinks that some scholars cannot stand on the point of view of characteristics of information to study on social informatization and mistake the wide application of information technology or the rapid development of information industry for the social informatization, because these scholars cannot grasp the nature of information from the philosophical level and just consider information as a technology. In order to study on social informatization from the perspective of characteristics of information, the author will analyze the characteristics of information based on Professor Wu Kun’s information definition from the philosophical level rather than the technology level. Though there are many kinds of characteristics of information, this paper will only choose a few basic characteristics to be analyzed. The virtuality of information, the creativity of information and the display attribute of information will be referred to in this paper.

3.3 The Production Mode Informatization

From the perspective of producers, the creativity is the core competitiveness between producers in nowadays society and that will be producers who have the creative ability indeed rather than processors who only repeat mechanical labor. The core of brainwork is the memory, processing, storage and recombination of information in the brain and is creative activities of information. So, the creativity of information gets the most centralized embodiment in producers.

From the perspective of the subject of production, nowadays, producers produce new products mainly by means of recombining the information of the subject of production and remolding the subject of production in the information level. The process of information recombination of the subject of production is precisely the creative process of information.

From the perspective of the instrument of production, with the development of technology, instruments of production become more and more intelligent. The intellectualization is exactly a kind of simulation of specific function of intelligent creatures. The simulation means the virtualization of real things or process. So, the instrument of production intellectualization embodies the virtuality.

From the perspective of the product, as products are more and more rich, people do not focus more attention on the product itself but want to express themselves by the product. People can display production capacity by the product. The product not only can be used by human, but also can display human production capacity, which is the important embodiment of display attribute of the product information.

The basic characteristics of information have penetrated into all aspects of human producing activities and human producing activities have been changed by the basic characteristics of information, which is the production mode informatization.

3.4. The Life-style Informatization

The life-style informatization is mainly embodied in basic necessities of life intellectualization, communication virtualization and consumption symbolization

The intellectualization of basic necessities of life is a trend in today's world. The intellectualization of basic necessities of life is based on virtualizing sensor and controller of intelligent creatures. So, the virtuality is changing our basic necessities of life.

Meanwhile, the virtuality is changing our communication. With the development of technology, especially the development of network technology, the face-to-face communication is less and less. For one thing, subjects of communication hide in the network and subjects of communication are virtualized by network. For another, both the language and the character of subjects of communication are converted to digital codes and are passed through the network. Therefore, ways of communication are virtualized by network, too.

With the improvement of human productivity, material products become very rich. When people consume material products, they more and more focus on symbolic consumption. Material products are displayed by symbol. People adore the symbol, not only just because the symbol display the material product itself, but also because people can display themselves and achieve self-identity by means of occupying the symbol. The display attribute of information is the real magic power of the symbol and this magic power is changing the society and human.

The life-style is permeated with the virtuality, the creativity and the display attribute that information gives us, which is the most fundamental impact on the life-style. So, the life-style has been informationized.

5. Conclusions

This paper used a unique perspective that was the perspective of basic characteristics of information to study on social informatization. This perspective was broader and more fundamental than the perspective of profession, economy and technology and the study on social informatization was deeper from the perspective of basic characteristics of information, because the perspective of basic characteristics of information was based on Professor Wu Kun definition of information in philosophical level.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my sincere thanks to all those who have helped me in the course of my writing this paper. Thank Professor Wu Kun to give me a lot of useful advices on my writing. Besides, I would like to thank the editor of ICPI 2015 to provide me some rational suggestions. Their useful advices helped me improve my paper.

References

1. Bell, D. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting; Penguin: Harmondsworth, England, 1976; 127-467.
2. Naisbitt, J. Megatrends: Ten New Directions Transforming Our Lives (Y. Mei, Trans.); China Social Sciences Press: Beijing, China, 1984; 10. (Original work published 1982).
3. Machlup, F. The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, America,
4. Porat, M. U. The Information Economy: Definition and Measurement; United States Department of Commerce: Washington, DC, America,
5. Toffler, A. The Third Wave (Z. Y. Zhu, Q. Pan & Y. Zhang, Trans.); SDX Joint Publishing Company: Beijing, China, 1984; 3-43. (Original work published 1980).
6. Castells, M. Toward a Sociology of the Network Society. Contemporary Sociology 2000, 29 (5), 693-699.
7. Li, J. H. & Pang, Y. Z. Classical Selected Academic Works in System Theory, Control Theory and Information Theory; Realistic Approach Press: Beijing, China,1989; 510-525.
8. Wiener, N. Control Theory (J. R. Hao, Trans.); Science Press: Beijing, China, 1962; 481. (Original work published 1948).
9. Wu, K. Basis of Complex Information System Theory; Xi'an Jiaotong University Press: Xi 'an, China, 2010; 109-110.

The vision of the Global Brain (Heylighen 2007, 2014), a genuine, unstoppable intelligence arising from the accelerating interconnectivity of individuals and their technological extensions, feels like the exact opposite of the world as it used to be, and—in many respects—still is today. Today, our interconnectivity is still largely impeded. What seems to constrain it most is the influence of social boundaries, which divide us into representatives of various hierarchy ranks, nations, religions, political orientations, etc. It might be tempting to agree that such boundaries have brought about more evil than good, have caused much suffering, and are top contributors to waste of human intelligence. And yet, even approaching the very topic of social boundaries we will end up representing and advocating for various paradigms, disciplines, and schools of thought. Any topic, any event, anything at all, can trigger us to draw a new line, attempt to convince our neighbours to stay at our side of the resulting boundary, and see the ones who choose not to as mistaken or ignorant. When personally engaged in such an activity we will not see ourselves as impeding humanity, we will argue the opposite.

One possible resolution of the above paradox may be to divide social boundaries into two distinct kinds: the limiting and imprisoning ones (national, hierarchical, etc.), which are to be gotten rid of, and the ad hoc constructed and freely abandoned ones, which humans set forth as their temporary means of collective self-expression, and which contribute to the advancement of the global intelligence (e.g. Weinbaum & Veitas 2014). Another approach is to see both types of boundaries as unnecessary, and to foresee their transcendence and merger until the only one ultimate boundary—that of the globe—is left (e.g. Heylighen 2007). I propose to explore yet another perspective, which assumes that the basic formative mechanism of all social boundaries—be it the old-fashioned, modern, or postmodern ones—is actually supportive to the emergence of the collective global intelligence.

I argue that dividing people and constraining their options, as deteriorating and undesirable as it is, is only a side effect of a more profound evolutionary function of social boundaries, which is to produce and fortify new collective, distributed, and disembodied loci of cognition. Not underestimating or justifying the individual costs (which, hopefully, humanity is learning to bypass), I propose that the underlying mechanism responsible for the formation of social boundaries, being essentially semiotic, not topological, resembles more a formation of an individual cell, than that of a multicellular organism. A social boundary does not arise from clustering of human agents (although this frequently co-occurs), but from the acquirement of an operational closure by an interrelated set of meanings (Luhmann 1995). The resulting cognitive membrane yields a new coherent worldview (Aerts et al. 1994, Vidal 2008), through which a new representation of the world is obtained, new challenges (Heylighen 2012) identified, and new type of action is enabled.

The mechanism is responsible for production of both kinds of social boundaries: the ones that are currently considered obsolete (nation states, social classes, genders, etc.), and the ones we are ourselves busy with sustaining (schools of thought, social movements, aspect systems of the society, etc.). The despised constraining of individuals, which invited the metaphor of a multicellular organism, was due to the fact that until recently humans were the most reliable processors of the semiotic operations, which are needed for continuous maintenance of a worldview membrane. The most certain way to ensure their involvement—from the point of view of the emergent social locus of cognition—was to ‘own’ them totally, and to disallow any opting out. But living humans were never the only carriers of a social boundary—as important were other catalysts of meaning present, such as written texts, visual symbols, music, etc.—and each major advance in this domain brought humans a new opportunity for becoming more free, should they dare to. E.g. once the social boundary of an industrial factory could be laid on contracts and operational procedures, it did not demand to own a human from his birth to death (as a social class did).

Since the internet-based communication technologies start to be able to sustain almost all operations needed for a worldview membrane to exist, humans seem to be in a position to pursue their individual freedom to an extent unthought of before. Today, a continuous operation of a cognitive membrane may be well enabled by an website alone, providing that from time to time a human being chooses to interact with it and to leave a trace of this activity for other agents. As a result, social boundaries that emerge nowadays can afford to be easily overlapped, and easily mixed, and easily crossed by individual minds. But semiotically they are not fuzzy at all. A cognitive membrane produced by, say, the Occupy movement yields as complete a worldview, identifies as much new challenges, and motivates as much action, as the emergence of a kingdom used to in the past. Even when the resultant loci of cognition become ever more collective, distributed, and disembodied, it does not mean, thus, that the essential evolutionary function of social boundaries is getting lessened.

By reconceptualisation of the mechanism of social boundary formation I invite a second thought on the role that social boundaries play in the emergence of the global collective intelligence. As their products evolve, they contribute to the emergence of more and more instances of intelligent cognition, localised ever further away from biological embodiment. This mechanism is, I believe, one of important facets of the advancing self-organization of the Global Brain.

References

1. Aerts, D., Apostel L., De Moor, B., Hellemans, S., Maex, E., Van Belle, H., Van der Veken, J. (1994) World Views. From Fragmentation to Integration. Brussels: VUB Press. Url: http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/pub/books/worldviews.pdf
2. Heylighen, F. (2007). The Global Superorganism: an evolutionary-cybernetic model of the emerging network society. Social Evolution & History, 6(1), 58–119.
3. Heylighen, F. (2012). Challenge Propagation: a new paradigm for modeling distributed intelligence. GBI Working Paper 2012-01. Url: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/ChallengePropagation.pdf
4. Heylighen, F. (2014). Return to Eden? Promises and Perils on the Road to a Global Superintelligence. In B. Goertzel & T. Goertzel (Eds.), The End of the Beginning: Life, Society and Economy on the Brink of the Singularity.
5. Luhmann, N. (1995). Social systems. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
6. Weinbaum R., D., & Veitas, V. (2014). A World of Views - Fragility and Antifragility in Sociotechnological Evolution. In Jennifer Wilby, Stefan Blachfellner, Wolfgang Hofkirchner (Ed.), Civilization at the Crossroads Response and Responsibility of the Systems Sciences - European meetings on Cybernetics and System Research (pp. 757–762).
7. Vidal, C. (2008). Wat is een wereldbeeld? (What is a worldview?). In Van Belle, H. & Van der Veken, J., Editors, Nieuwheid denken. De wetenschappen en het creatieve aspect van de werkelijkheid, in press. Acco, Leuven.

Introduction

Objectivism, supposing that information is ‘out there’ and can be accessed through appropriate research methods, is a valuable and unavoidable initial stance in field work. However, even within an objectivist paradigm, information gathered from field work can never be accepted uncritically, however rigorous the research methodology, since each step of the process from the choice of methodology onwards is driven and circumscribed by the values and beliefs of the participants.  

In response to the growing threat of climatic change researchers are increasingly utilising social surveys to access information on human-environment interactions or the operation of “social-ecological” systems, in order to preserve key functions into the future. This paper explores the sources of uncertainty which emerge as simple environmental data transfers from participant to researcher. In particular, it considers the role that values can play in determining the quality of participant-reported quantitative environmental data, presented within the framework of Shannon’s standard communication model.

Gathering information from interviews and surveys

Survey participants have a theory of the world. The knowledge they possess is dependent on this theory [1]. In the philosophy of information, the information exists in a specific level of abstract [2]. Participants’ theories encompass the values – ethical, political, social, and religious – they have developed in their life and work.

The researcher has a different theory of the world. He/she too comes with a framework equally embedded within a set of values, different from those of the participants.

In qualitative research, an interpretative stance recognises the context-dependence of knowledge:

“Interpretive methods of research start from the position that our knowledge of reality, including the domain of human action, is a social construction by human actors and that this applies equally to researchers. Thus there is no objective reality which can be discovered by researchers and replicated by others, in contrast to the assumptions of positivist science” [3]

What about accessing numbers through interviews and surveys? If an interviewed farmer tells a researcher “my yield was 8.5 tonnes”, what is the status of the “8.5 tonnes”?

To explore the status of apparently simple numerical data we model the data acquisition using the standard communication model due to Shannon [4], consisting of: a message source; encoder; noisy channel; decoder and message destination. Although the validity of using the Shannon model outside its origin in the engineering of telecommunication systems has been contested (see for example [5] and [6]), it provides a convenient structure to explore issues with research data which would need to be addressed, whatever the model.

The supposed ‘perfect’ data exists as the message generated at the source, and we explore what becomes of this message as it travels to the destination where the data is embedded in the work of the researcher.

• Issues with the source (the participants) and the destination (the researcher), including a mismatch between their respective theoretical frameworks, so that the numbers in one can never have the same meaning in the other.
• Issues with the encoding (framing, writing and talking) and decoding (extracting, reading, listening), including the use of different languages, both metaphorically and literally.
• The channel is unreliable.

Our case study is a field study conducted in the Vietnamese portion of the Mekong Delta, which aimed at quantifying the benefits local farmers receive from an environmental service, the deposition of nutrient-rich fluvial sediments during the annual monsoon.

A case study: rice farmers in Vietnam

Accessing quantitative, environmental, data through social surveys has, as a methodology, seen rapid growth in recent years, particularly as a result of approaches such as the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework [7] which are used to evaluate the success of human adaptations to environmental change (seem [8], [9] and [10]) by measuring the capital - natural, human, social, and economic - at the disposal of the participant. The work considered here was an expedition to Vietnam aiming to access information on the impact of climate change and changing farming practices on the farmers of the Mekong Delta. In April and May 2014 a native English speaking researcher teamed up with five native Vietnamese speaking researchers to conduct 434 interviews spread across 19 villages and two provinces of the Delta. The interviews were conducted in Vietnamese, with the enumerator asking closed quantitative questions, recording the response in Vietnamese, and later translating and converting it into digital format, before forwarding it to the English-speaking researcher for processing.

Among the information sought from the interviews were: farm size, amount of fertilizer used; depth of sediment following the annual flooding; and crop yields.

We can explore where and how the numbers degrade at each stage of the communication model.

1     Issues with the source (the farmer). The farmer might be thinking of the wrong number for various reasons.

• Estimation factually inaccurate due to misperceiving/mismeasuring quantity at first attempt (e.g. farmers do not have accurate weight measuring instruments, and the rice they measure will not be pure)
• Thinking of the wrong number due to misunderstanding the question. The interviewers were asking questions using technical language common to an academic environment.   In some cases farmers would not have been sufficiently familiar with this language and may have purely misunderstood what they were being asked.
• Estimation warped by exaggeration of the past (e.g. when farmers remember rates of change which have negatively affected them they tend to exaggerate when their answers are compared with the government’s own data (which of course could be wrong))

2     Issues with coding. The farmer might know the correct number but report it incorrectly for various reasons.

• deliberately increased to ‘save face’ in front of peers
• deliberately decreased to gain additional ‘handouts’ from the government
• deliberately altered to impress researcher
• deliberately altered because they think they know what answer the researchers ‘really wants’
• deliberately altered to serve a personal agenda they are pursuing
• deliberately made controversial to enhance self-importance
• deliberately altered because the participant doesn’t like researcher

3     Noise in the communication channel. The farmer might report the right number but the researcher might receive it incorrectly for various reasons such as mishearing an answer, errors in transcription (a common issue was that survey enumerators would write the answer in the wrong answer box, or not in a box at all), or errors in translation

4     Issues with the decoding or mismatch between the coding/decoding including misunderstanding units. For example, two different units of land area are used, both called Cong. One is the ‘new’ 1000m² and the other is the ‘old’ 1300m² but both are still in use. Also, misunderstanding of what the number signifies. For example, some farmers reported rice in dry weight, as opposed to wet, which substantially reduces the number.

5     Issues with the destination (the researcher). For example, asking the wrong person and/or at the wrong location – perhaps made a mistake when sampling, or just poor understanding of the issue being investigated.

Influence of the location of the interviews

In this section we go in-depth into one error formed during the farmer’s coding process. A challenge of overseas fieldwork is that it is not always possible to maintain full control over the execution of the project, and this is particularly the case in Vietnam where the political context can have a strong influence. The initial aim of this fieldwork project was to run all farmer interviews individually at the farmer’s homestead however, due to preferences of the local authority, more than half the interviews were ultimately conducted in large groups. The group setting meant farmers were subject to greater peer scrutiny while reporting their data, but perhaps less governmental scrutiny. This introduced a new potential avenue for the farmer’s values to create errors in their reported data.

In order to probe further into the impact of these particular values, some statistical analysis was conducted on the reported data. After controlling for some key factors affecting the yield achieved by rice farmers we found that the binary variable of either an individual or group setting had a significant (p<0.01) correlation with yield, with the group setting increasing the mean yield reported by 0.26 (± 0.13) tonnes (around 3%).

The role of values

While at first sight, at least, some of the sources of error are accidental (such as mishearing a number), many are also a consequence of value.

The extent to which such sources of error affect the farmer’s reported data depends on the difference between what he/she values compared to the researcher values: do they prioritise: honesty/scientific advancement (an ethical concern), fear of authority (political), personal feelings towards the researcher (including racial biases), general pride, or social standing (social).

The difference in values reported in home interviews compared to group discussions demonstrates a second-order impact of values: the data reported by the farmer depends on the farmer’s perception of the values of the witnesses.

Almost all of the researcher’s errors can be reduced through increasing the time/diligence with which the interviews are conducted. Hence, the magnitude of the error on the researcher’s side is dependent on what they value more: accuracy of the data (less interviews but more accurate data) which ensures work will stand up to scrutiny of peers, or statistical operability (more interviews but less accurate data) which may affect whether the work is publishable.

Discussion

Numbers are never value-free. Numbers only have meaning by virtue of their context, and the decision to select one parameter over another already entails implicit or explicit value judgments. The decision to investigate rice farming in the Mekong Delta was embedded in a set of values of the geography department of the University of Southampton, itself embedded in the values of several wider communities. The researcher then identifies the need for numbers, but these numbers have meaning within the abstraction of the research. They do not have the same meaning in the minds of the farmers.

This paper attempts to explore the consequences of the fact that the numbers are embedded in values. Given that the research requires specific data (amount of fertilizer used; depth of sediment; crop yields), it is suggested that the data acquired is unavoidably influenced by the values of the farmers and the society in which they live and work, by the values of the research team, and by the interaction of values of all the actors involved.

In the present context of intensifying environmental change, the use of numbers reporting on human-environment interactions accessed through quantitative surveys is only likely to increase as a fast and cost-efficient method of garnering information covering large geographical regions and populations. Furthermore those numbers are likely to be utilized by policy makers designing large-scale, expensive and often irreversible, hard and soft interventions in social-ecological systems (‘adaptations’). An appreciation of the effect of values on the reliability of the numbers (information) being examined is essential, to avoid catastrophic ‘maladaptations’. The communication model implemented above provides a valuable framework, or lens, through which to view the potential sources of bias brought about by values and indeed other factors during the number collection process.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank the staff and students at Can Tho University, Vietnam for their support in the field.

References and Notes

1. Chalmers, A. F. (1980, 2nd ed. 1982), What is this thing called Science?, The Open University Press, Milton Keynes.
2. Floridi, L (2013) “The Ethics of Information”, OUP, Oxford
3. Walsham, G. (1993), Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations, Wiley, Chichester, UK.
4. Shannon, C. E. (1948), 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', The Bell System Technical Journal 27, 379–423, 623–656.
5. Reddy, M. J. (1979), The Conduit Metaphor - A Case of Frame Conflict in Our Language about Language, in Andrew Ortony, ed., 'Metaphor and Thought', CUP, Cambridge.
6. Chapman, D. A. (2014), 'Information is Provisional', Kybernetes 43, 895-910.
7. Scoones, I. (1998). Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: A Framework for Analysis (p. 22). Institute of Development Studies, Brighton.
8. Holler, J. (2014). Is Sustainable Adaptation Possible? Determinants of Adaptation on Mount Kilimanjaro. The Professional Geographer 66, 526–537.
9. Suckall, N., Tompkins, E., & Stringer, L. (2014). Identifying trade-offs between adaptation, mitigation and development in community responses to climate and socio-economic stresses: Evidence from Zanzibar, Tanzania. Applied Geography 46, 111–121.
10. Thi, M. H. B., & Schreinemachers, P. (2011). Resettling Farm Households in Northwestern Vietnam: Livelihood Change and Adaptation. International Journal of Water Resources Development 27, 769–785.

Despite what is claimed in the title, it is generally agreed that the brain is processing data, not information. The source of this mismatch is twofold: First, the reality of the early 1950s, when digital computers have become a part of our life and the concept of the brain as a computer has become popular and ubiquitous. Computer is a data-processing machine. Consequently, the brain was announced as a data-processing device.

On the other hand, exactly at the same time, as a part of his Mathematical Theory of Communication, Claude Shannon has coined the notion of “information”, [1]. Concerned with delivering a message from a sender to a receiver (through an unreliable and noisy communication channel), Shannon defines information as an equivalent to the surprise value of the message. Defining information in terms of a signal transmission (that is, data transition), while totally neglecting the meaning of the message (that is, information associated with the message delivery) was from the beginning recognized as a deficit of the Shannon’s theory. Nevertheless, the success of Shannon’s information as a tool for the technical telecommunication problems solution, made Shannon’s information concept accepted and shared by almost all other scientific communities. However, the popularity of its use has resulted in a widespread blur and confusion between the terms “data” and “'information”, and the most of the scientific community does not differentiate or distinguish between the two today. As a rule, the terms are used interchangeably and improperly.

In attempt to avoid this unpleasant situation, I propose a new definition of information more suitable for the purposes of brain and other biotic systems research. The definition is an extended version of the Kolmogorov’s mid-60s definition [2] that sounds like this:

“Information is a linguistic description of structures observable in a given data set”.

A digital image can serve us for a definition “examination”. An image is a two-dimensional set of data elements called pixels. In an image, pixels are distributed not randomly, but due to the similarity in their physical properties, and are naturally grouped into some clusters or clumps. I propose to call these clusters primary or physical data structures.

In the eyes of an external observer, the primary data structures are further arranged into more larger and complex assemblies, which I propose to call secondary data structures. These secondary structures reflect human observer’s view on the primary data structures composition, and therefore they could be called meaningful or semantic data structures. While formation of primary data structures is guided by objective (natural, physical) properties of the data, ensuing formation of secondary structures is a subjective process guided by human habits and customs.

As it was said, Description of structures observable in a data set should be called “Information”. In this regard, two types of information must be distinguished – Physical Information and Semantic Information. They are both language-based descriptions; however, physical information can be described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is also a language), while semantic information can be described only by means of the natural human language. (More details on the subject are in [3]).

One can hardly overestimate the importance of physical and semantic information segregation. For the first time, data-based information and its semantic (language-based) interpretation are detached and now can be treated correctly and effectively.

For the first time, information is represented as a linguistic description, as a string of words, a piece of text. It does not matter that in biotic applications these texts are written in the four-letter nucleotide alphabet. The important thing is that now information is materialized, and as such can be stored, retrieved, changed, transmitted and (generally speaking) processed as any other material object.

In this way, thoughts and memories are now become materialized too, and the thinking process (as all other brain activities) must be seen now as a text processing activity.

Contemporary computers are data-processing machines and thus are not suitable for such text (semantic information) processing. The brain is doing all this effortless and efficiently, that is, effortless and efficiently it is processing information, and not data (as it is correctly specified in the title). How does it do this? – that is a good question. But with the right understanding about what information is, it will be easier for us to reach the right answer.

References

1. Shannon, C., Weaver, W.; The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, 1949. http://raley.english.ucsb.edu/wp-content/Engl800/Shannon-Weaver.pdf
2. Kolmogorov, A; Three approaches to the quantitative definition of information, Problems of Information and Transmission, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1-7, 1965. http://alexander.shen.free.fr/library/Kolmogorov65_Three-Approaches-to-Information.pdf
3. Diamant, E.; Brain, Vision, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. http://www.vidia-mant.info

Introduction

Unlike Shannon-type information—that is, the uncertainty in a probability distribution (Shannon, 1948, p. 10)—meaning can only be provided with reference to a system for which “the differences make a difference” at a place (MacKay, 1969; Bateson, 1973, p. 315). I argue that systems can be considered as densities in distributions of relations. However, the sets relate at the systems level not in terms of relations, but also in terms of correlations. Because of potentially spurious correlations among two distributions of relations given a third one, uncertainty can also be reduced in the case of interactions among three (or more) sources of variation (Garner & McGill, 1956). In the case of a third agent, each position is cor-relationally defined in terms of the vector space that is spanned—as an architecture—by the set(s) of relations. This communication at the systems level can be expressed as mutual information in the overlap among the sets—or with the opposite sign of reduction of uncertainty as mutual redundancy (Leydesdorff & Ivanova, 2014).

On top of the information exchanges and the correlations among the meanings, discursive knowledge develops by relating meanings reflexively on the basis of cognitive codes that remain mentally and socially constructed. Positions first make it possible to develop perspectives; translations among perspectives provide a third layer of the exchange on top of information processing in relations and the redundancy potentially generated when meanings are shared. The third layer develops as horizons of meaning that can be entertained reflexively, and that enable us to translate among meanings.

For example, a perspective can be used to develop discursively a rationalized system of expectations, and thus to generate knowledge at each individual level by codifying specific meanings. The codification, however, provides an additional selection mechanism: the translation among perspectives thus adds a third layer by potentially codifying communication at the supra-individual level on top of the information and meaning processing. In this context, the notion of “double contingency” (Parsons, 1968, p. 436; Parsons & Shills, 1951, p. 16) can be extended to a “triple contingency” (Strydom, 1999, p. 12). Meaningful information can first be selected from the Shannon-type information fluxes on the basis of codes that are further developed in the reflexive communications among us about expectations. This third layer enables us to develop models of possibly future states.

The three layers operate in parallel. The construction of this triple-layered system is bottom-up, but—using a cybernetic principle—control can increasingly be top-down as the feedback layers are further developed (Ashby, 1958). Whereas the three contingencies can be expected to develop in parallel, this assumption of inversion enables us to hypothesize a hierarchy among the layers that can be expected for analytical reasons. Let me stepwise extend the single-layered and linear Shannon-model (Figure 1 below) into such a triple-layered model in Figure 2.

Extensions of the Shannon-Weaver Model

As is well known, Shannon (1948, p. 3) first focused on information that was not (yet) meaningful: “Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities.” According to Shannon (1948, p. 3), however, “(t)hese semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem.” It is less well known that Shannon’s co-author Warren Weaver argued that Shannon’s distinction between information and meaning “has so penetratingly cleared the air that one is now, for the first time, ready for a real theory of meaning” (Shannon & Weaver, 1949, p. 27). Weaver (1949, p. 26) proposed to insert thereto another box with the label “semantic noise” into the Shannon model between the information source and the transmitter, as follows (Figure 1):

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of a general communication system. Source: Shannon (1948, p. 380); with Weaver’s box of “semantic noise” first added (to the left) and then further extended with a second source of “semantic noise” between the receiver and the destination (to the right).

(see PDF version for the Figure).

What if one adds a similar box to the right side of this figure between the receiver and the destination of the message (added in grey to Figure 1)? The two sources of semantic noise may be correlated; for example, when the sender and receiver of the message share a language or, more generally, a code of communication. I propose to distinguish between “language” as the natural—that is, undifferentiated—code of communication versus codes of communication which can be symbolically generalized and then no longer require the use of language (Luhmann, 2002 and 2012, pp. 120 ff.; Parsons, 1968). For example, instead of negotiating about the price of a commodity, one can simply pay the market price using money as a symbolically generalized medium of communication. One is able to translate reflexively among codes of communication by elaborating upon the different meanings of the information in language (Bernstein, 1971).^[1]

Thus, one arrives at the following model (Figure 2):

Figure 2. Three mutual contingencies in the dynamics of codified knowledge.

(see PDF version for the Figure).

In other words, one can distinguish between “meaningful information”—potentially reducing uncertainty—and Shannon-type information that is by definition equal to uncertainty (Hayles, 1990, p. 59). Shannon (1948) chose his formulas so that uncertainty could be measured as probabilistic entropy in bits of information. The mathematical theory of communication provides us with entropy statistics that can be used in different domains (Bar-Hillel, 1955; Krippendorff, 1986; Theil, 1972). Meaning is provided to the information from the perspective of hindsight (of the “later event”—that is, as a system of reference). However, the measurement of “meaningful information” in bits or otherwise had remained hitherto without an operationalization (cf. Dretske, 1981).

Perspectives

In my presentation, I explore two venues for the generation and measurement of negative entropy:

(1) Dubois’ (1998) proposal to distinguish between recursive routines with the arrow of time—necessarily generating entropy—and incursive ones against the arrow of time and thus reducing uncertainty in terms of: (i) in the case of recursion: x_t = f(x_t-1); (ii) in the case of incursion: x_t = f(x_t); or (iii) hyper-incursion: x_t = f(x_t+1). The codes as mental constructs operate in terms of structures of expectations and thus hyper-incursively on the ongoing trajectories of instantiations. The instantiations operate in the present (that is, incursively), whereas the trajectories develop historically along the arrow of time (that is, recursively).

(2) Mutual redundancy in three or more dimensions provides us with a measure of the resulting potential for options in a configuration of expectations other than the ones historically realized: Kauffman’s (2000) “adjacent others.” Mutual redundancies can be generated when the uncertainty is appreciated from three or more different perspectives in a static design or among the three layers of communication distinguished in Figure 2 dynamically, that is, in terms of recursion, incursion, and hyper-incursion. The latter dynamic requires human intelligence since one has to be able to entertain expectations with respect to the expectations of the other in a “double contingency” (Parsons, 1968, p. 436; Parsons & Shills, 1951, p. 16). The communication among perspectives (at the supra-individual level) can then be expected to provide a third contingency (Strydom, 1999, p. 12).

References and Notes

1. Ashby, W. R. (1958). Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems. Cybernetica, 1(2), 1-17.
2. Bar-Hillel, Y. (1955). An Examination of Information Theory. Philosophy of Science, 22, 86-105.
3. Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine.
4. Bernstein, B. (1971). Class, Codes and Control, Vol. 1: Theoretical studies in the sociology of language. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
5. Dretske, F. I. (1981). Knowledge and the flow of information. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Mass.
6. Dubois, D. M. (1998). Computing Anticipatory Systems with Incursion and Hyperincursion. In D. M. Dubois (Ed.), Computing Anticipatory Systems, CASYS-First International Conference (Vol. 437, pp. 3-29). Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics.
7. Garner, W. R., & McGill, W. J. (1956). The relation between information and variance analyses. Psychometrika, 21(3), 219-228.
8. Krippendorff, K. (1986). Information Theory. Structural Models for Qualitative Data. Beverly Hills, etc.: Sage).
9. Leydesdorff, L., & Ivanova, I. A. (2014). Mutual Redundancies in Inter-human Communication Systems: Steps Towards a Calculus of Processing Meaning. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 65(2), 386-399.
10. Luhmann, N. (2002). How Can the Mind Participate in Communication? In W. Rasch (Ed.), Theories of Distinction: Redescribing the Descriptions of Modernity (pp. 169–184). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
11. Luhmann, N. (2012). Theory of Society, Vol. 1. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
12. MacKay, D. M. (1969). Information, Mechanism and Meaning. Cambridge and London: MIT Press.
13. Parsons, T. (1968). Interaction: I. Social Interaction. In D. L. Sills (Ed.), The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (Vol. 7, pp. 429-441). New York: McGraw-Hill.
14. Parsons, T., & Shils, E. A. (1951). Toward a General Theory of Action. New York: Harper and Row.
15. Shannon, C. E. (1948). A Mathematical Theory of Communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27, 379-423 and 623-656.
16. Strydom, P. (1999). Triple Contingency: The theoretical problem of the public in communication societies. Philosophy & Social Criticism, 25(2), 1-25.
17. Theil, H. (1972). Statistical Decomposition Analysis. Amsterdam/ London: North-Holland.
18. Weaver, W. (1949). Some Recent Contributions to the Mathematical Theory of Communication. In C. E. Shannon & W. Weaver (Eds.), The Mathematical Theory of Communication (pp. 93-117.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

^[1] I deviate here from Luhmann’s theory. In his theory, the sub-systems of communication are operationally closed and communications cannot be transmitted reflexively from one system into another (cf. Callon, 1998; Leydesdorff, 2006 and 2010a).