Ursula Hentschlaeger
Tracking a Current
Notion of Information
1999
If information is regarded as an
idependent entity, this means, first and foremost, that
information exists as such and without any exterior influence
(naturally).
If information is seen in connection with
understanding and / or meaning, however, then behind that
information there is someone who produces information
(artificially).
This fundamental distinction can be
observed even at the level of algorithmic represent-ation and,
consequently, also applies to the level of development.
BACKGROUND
From Bit to Qubit.
Online -Essay, in:
www.zeitgenossen.com/binaryartsite 2000
With the discovery of information as a new
scientific unit, the first half of our century saw the
formation of a third entity: Matter, energy and information
have been linked inseparably ever since – not least
because information always needs one or the other unit as a
carrier. In 1948, the mathematician Norber Wiener developed
Cybernetics as a scientific discipline between the various
individual disciplines and gave it its name, definition and
theory. While information theory determined the precise measure
for the content of information and defined the
„bit“ as its unit, the first computers werde built
by using the theory of automatic machines.
According to the cybernetic definition,
computers are the perfect automatic machines: They absorb,
store, process and put out information. The theory of automatic
machines led to automation, without which our present economy
would be entirely unthinkable. Control engineering maps the
processes occuring within dynamic systems. Moreover, at the end
of the twentieth century, quantum physics discovered that the
smallest unit of information does not only have two possible
states, as is assumed in classic digital computers, but that it
can also exist in a superposition of both states.
INFORMATION
AS ENTITY
INFORMATION
AS POWER
STATEMENTS
