Social Information -2

(Bob's splendid contribution has already motivated an answer. Here it
is--coming from GOTT@UFBA.BR Gottfried Stockinger. It could not go directly
into the net because its email address was new. The same has happened these
weeks with several messages... please, before sending messages from other
email addresses you have to UNSUBSCRIBE the old one. Probably I will be
able to do that from here quite soon as I am trying to get some permanent
help. I will inform about that ----Pedro)

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from GOTT@UFBA.BR Gottfried Stockinger:

I would like to introduce my approach to social information in discussion
with Bob Artigiani%s contribution on the "nature of social information".

He wrote:
>If information is the measure of reduced uncertainty an observer has about
>the world, then social information is the measure of a society*s reduced
>uncertainty.

In summa, I. is here used as a measure of order (certainty of patterns of
behaviour), from the point of view of an observer. That means, that
information (knowledge about order) decreases in case of social change
(not-order), producing uncertainty (for the observer of a system).
But: we know, that systems for themselfes increase their information
(knowledge about themselves) in case of disorder and uncertainty detected,
even if an observer does not realize that increased information flow. This
"internal" information does, in the case mentioned, deal more with
change-topics, and less with order-topics. Information works here as the
difference that makes the difference. In communication with or about this
differences, the system can self-organize.
To connect with Artigiani, we may introduce an "inner" observer, a "self",
that constitutes something like an information processor within the
system%s boundaries.

>observation is simply interaction...
>There is a record or trace left of an interaction, however,
>only when some structure can be noticeably changed as a result of a flow
>across a frontier.

I did not really catch this idea, may you clearify it? Do you say, that
interaction (observation) creates a difference, a change?

>... societies also store information in rituals and rites,
>social roles and institutions, languages and myths.

Rituals, roles etc. are "constructed", are made of information, in
permanent communication processes. The roles etc. are not permanent, they
change due to social questioning by communication. So I think one should
focus the c-process, and how it builds and deconstructs social
institutions, roles etc., which get almost irrelevant, when change ocurrs
rapidly (see the role of a lover in President Clinton%s case(s). In spite
of all the information-pressure, the traditonal role-definitions were
broken, the change to a less puritan collective mentality occured).

>Recording interactions
>with the world in, e.g., social roles means that it is changed human
>behaviors which store social information.

Question: Human behaviors = culture (?)

>... the structure of a
>self-organized society is itself the embodiment of social information, for
>the social structure remembers , ...., how much the group*s uncertainty
>about a transformed environment was reduced.

You say, that social structure is built of routines (rituals, roles,
institutions etc), as social "facts". I dont disagree, but I think it%s
worth to take look on the construction of this "routines" or "patterns"
themselves. They dont decompose in "smaller" parts of patterns, but in
communication-acts. Seen as such, sociological theory is more likely to be
connected to information-theory, and therefore to fis-topics. But that%s
not the only advantage: to look at society as composed by c-acts and not by
individuals or persons, it gets easier to detect its new quality different
from the psicological level.
In that perception, humans do not belong to social systems, but to its
environment. They "irritate" the system constantly, as they are
"spontaneaus" and get "out of the role", "subvert institutions" and do
things not "agreed" with society.

>Societies self-organize when the number of human interactions pass a
>threshold and, suddenly, become interconnected wholes greater than the sum
>of their parts. This is not mystical, for if synergies between people
>release energy into an environment which has effects disproportional to
its
>causes, feedback from the environment *selects* the whole. Although
>generated bottom-up by interacting people, once organized societies have
>top-down effects on their constituents.

The synergies are produced by the system, right? They don%t belong to the
people, but to their interactions. If interaction stops, the system
collapses. So, the energy you mentioned is something like an
information-energy, produced in interaction.

>The whole sustains itself by
>recording what it, the society, knows about the world. That cannot be
done
>in the brains and bodies of people, for then we would have lots of
>information about yous and mes but no information about the us shared in
>common.

The "us", society, the "whole" has therefore to be explained. As you say,
that cannot be done by explaining brains and bodies of people.

>People learn how to play social roles as members of societies, by
>assimilating the information stored in their structures. Social roles are
>communicated to people, in the first instance, by reenactments of
>successful collective enterprises, typically dances or games, which, over
>time, become rituals and rites.

I dont think that information is just assimilated. I. acts, is active, has
energy, which transforms values and behaviours. Its the "matter" society is
made of.

>But if individuals varied their behavior they sometime found more
effective
>ways to exploit nature, and the increased flow of resources would have
>required more specialized roles and more intimate relations to process.

Variation of behaviour ocurrs constantly, but not all variations are
"selected" for further use. Most of them are neglected, they dont
"survive", they are not "fit". As you say: just sometimes" more effective
ways are found. What happens to variations not selected. Do they go lost?

>Maps of the behaviors that map the world, VEMs are quintessential social
>information. Because they are not records of personal experiences, which
>can be communicated in terms of sensations of pleasure and pain, VEMs are
>new kinds of information.

Values, Ethics, Morals have certainly marked an achievement in societies
evolution. But also, they get in conflict with new lifestiles emerging
round the world. There does not exist (any more) a fixed VEM-structure to
"hold together" society. Their orders and commands do not function any
more, but even so societies dont get "worse" and world wars are not in
sight. The "new" world is rather "held together" by recognition of VEM%s
differences than by obeying them. This "recognition" is not a value, but a
product of a complex mass-communication process, "steered" by
information-energy.
Or, as you say:
>When communication systems improve, social systems can access
>many more states, process different kinds of flows, and make more
efficient
>use of resources.

>Social information should not be reified
>and does not DO anything.

I think it acts, it "works", it is the energy for constructing society.

Gottfried Stockinger

Vienna, !ustria.
Tel *43-1- 983 39 79
or
BelHm, Brazil
Tel:*55 -91- 225 2140
Received on Fri Sep 25 13:56:15 1998