Hi All,
>From "The Cult of Information" by Theodore Roszak:
"What we have here is an example of something that has happened many times before in the history of science. A word that has a
long-standing, common sense meaning is lifted from the public vocabulary and then skewed toward a new, perhaps highly esoteric
definition by the scientists. The result can be a great deal of unfortunate confusion, even amongst the scientists themselves, who
may then forget what the word meant before they appropriated it.
. In much the same way, in its new technical sense, information has come to denote whatever can be coded for transmission through a
channel that connects a source with a receiver, regardless of semantic content."
My Oxford English Dictionary provides four distinct definitions for the word "information", including the one that Mr Roszak is
complaining about in the quotation. I don't really have a problem with any of them, but none of them say that:
> INFORMATION is a measure of the ability to influence reality.
>From what I could see, Zeilinger's starting point was to try to relate quantum theory with information theory to provide it with
some kind of conceptual handle. That's ok, but now that the discussion has moved on we seem to be intent on finding a new meaning
for the word information, so that it will fit in with an abstract idea that I am finding a little hard to grasp. The conceptual
handle is begining to come off in my hand.
My feeling is that the poor word is a little overworked. Rather than add a fifth definition, it might be better to coin a completely
new word for the thing you are talking about. This might improve the quality of the discussion, and also my chances of
understanding what this thread is about.
Thanks
Graham
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