Pedro's pirouette on the meaningless (but socially necessary) small talk, by which one shows that
one does not decline the communication, these polite phrases without any information remind me of
following anecdote from the world of numbers and logical relations:
There is a most usual sentence in its most usual form. This is the description of the (absolutely
nondescript) central element. This sentence does not say anything, relative to this sentence are all
other sentences saying something (different, differently), are short, long, thick, thin, clever,
nonsensical etc. In each and every dimension, it is relative to this absolutely no-news sentence
that the others get a measure of anything-ness.
For those who delight in numeric skeletons of the logical space, the most trivial (logically devoid
of info) sentence details the addition of 65 into some 16 summands. Every logical sentence (in the
natural and formal sciences) gets its meaning by its deviation to the ur-smalltalk, namely that 65
is made up the most frequently among all numbers that can be made up and that its most usual way of
being made up is by using 16 summands (which therefore average roughly 4). Nice, isn't it? The
logical zero point is calibrated on the numeric extent of 65, isn't that funny?
Like in the cold war, the Kremlin and the White House sent each other every day on the red telex a
poem by Pushkin or a speech by Lincoln. Just to show that everything is workin ok, no news at all.
Karl
-----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es [mailto:fis-bounces@listas.unizar.es] Im Auftrag von Pedro
Marijuan
Gesendet: Freitag, 14. Oktober 2005 14:37
An: fis@listas.unizar.es
Betreff: Re: [Fis] Re: What is information ?
Dear Heiner and colleagues,
Many thanks for your comment. Actually that "massage" option would be quite congruent with
the concept of "social grooming" I was advocating for the social underpinnings of
information. There was a very interesting reference in Fischer (2001) "A History of
Writing" to the recent finding of a number of wax tablets and wood tablets from a Roman
garrison (2nd Century AD) in Vindolanda military base, Scotland. Almost all of the soldier writings
were devoted just to keep alive their social bonds ("how are you?, how are the kids, I miss
you..."). The Roman brand-new communication system was used as social massage, social
grooming... Just like our flamboyant Internet or cell phones of today!
It was sort of a historical mistake considering information as stemming only from the conceptual,
rational layer, from Plato and Aristotle onwards.
Behind our conceptualizations, there is the generative reality of the human life cycle (say, the
cell cycle as I tried to schematize in my last message concerning the biomolecular realm). That
asocial, disembodied construction of rationality has lead among other consequences to the alienation
of emotions, feelings, and ethics out from the scientific realm.
Backtracking could lead us to a different and more comprehensive set of information principles. And
presumably to neat foundations for "information ethics" too.
best
Pedro
At 13:41 11/10/2005, you wrote:
>Dear Pedro
>I do not want to correct you when you cite McLuhan:
>The Medium is the Massage - not the Message !!
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Received on Mon Oct 17 21:43:51 2005
