Re: social and/or general information?

(from christian@igw.tuwien.ac.at)
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Dear FISers,

thanks for stimulating the debate on social information, Pedro.

I believe that it's the task of FIS to work out an evolutionary theory of
information that stretches from physics to biology, psychology and
sociology. It's not impossible to theorise the social level, but it is
certainly not easy because it incorporates all physical and biological
information generation and processing. On the other hand this increased
complexity doesn't mean that its impossible for us to deal with social info
on a theoretical level.

I believe there are two main paradigms concerning the concept of
information in society: The translation of the Shannon/Weaver-model into
society, social information is here conceived as a thing that is
transmitted from a sender to a receiver, exchanged, stored, processed etc.
Contrary to that, Niklas Luhmann stresses that information can't be
transmitted because it would be a quality of cognitive systems, a
difference that makes a difference that is selected in a communication
process. Information here is one of three communicative selections, it is a
property of cognition.

I think both are right. Social information is a relationship, it has both
subjective and objective aspects. On the individual level, information
exists as cognitive property, it is selected in a communicative process.
Communication means a social dimension of information. Whenever people
enter social relationships, an information relationship is established,
messages, codes, symbols etc. are exchanged. Social information is also an
objective, reflective social relationship: If actors communicate,
information exists as an objective relationship between them and this
relationship involves reflection. Reflection (Widerspiegelung) doesn't mean
the mechanical reproduction of data by a receiver, it only means that in
the case of communication there is a reaction of one communication partner
to the symbolic actions of the other partner. It is determined that he
reacts and in this reactions he makes uses of symbols, otherwise one
couldn't speak of communication. But it is not determined how he reacts
exactly, this is relatively open, but frequently also to a certain extent
predictable due to certain regularities and standardised modes of behaviour
that can be found in the social world.

Social structures are more permanent social relationships. They are a form
of social information, they store and fix knowledge and hence they simplify
actions and communications because the foundations of these processes don't
have to be produced permanently, they can be achieved by making use of
structures. They are a sort of informational brain of society. Social
information in this sense refers to what Bob Artigiani calls VEMS (Values,
Ethicals, Morals), but not only. VEMS are just the cultural aspect of
social info, but also e.g. technologies, property structures, political
power structures, laws, traditions, spatio-temporal structures,
non-codified and codified rules etc. store information about society. If
this were only the case with VEMs, one would indeed as Pédro says neglect
biological and physical structures.

But the human being is embedded into nature and there's and exchange of
matter and energy (and probably information) with nature in order for
society to exist. Man appropriates nature in order to exist, nature is a
property of society (and society a quality of nature) that gets embedded
into social structures like resources, goods and technologies. Physical and
biological information is embedded into social information structures,
human production and labour are the ways of incorporating nature, a
necessary pre-condition of society, into society.

Godó is right that communication is a new quality of information at the
social level, but I believe that there are others too like e.g.
self-consciousness, labour, production, culture, design, expectation,
anticipation, imagination, creativity, co-operation. All these activities
mean subjective and/or objective information production and the
incorporation of information from prior levels of the evolutionary hierarchy
into newly produced social information.

Christian
Received on Mon Nov 18 12:50:44 2002