The Information - A Serious Flood

What is information? The answer to this question probably depends on who you ask. According to James Gleick, “Information is what our world runs on. Information is the blood and the fuel, the vital principle” (p.13).

The main idea I took from this book was a simple one – all information is essentially a digital entity. Obviously, this is a life I live each day as I send text messages and communicate through social media. This article puts that in perspective. Gleick said that “as communication evolves, messages in a language can be broken down and composed and transmitted in much smaller sets of symbols: the alphabet; dots and dashes; drumbeats high and low” (p.75).

So much of what we do is digital and we often take that for granted. And in many ways it is a mode of communication born out desire to simplify and make our interactions shorter and quicker. That’s why it’s all broken down into symbols that can more easily and more quickly be transmitted. The meaning and intention has almost always been the same. But the research and ideas of the mathematicians and scientists Gleick discussed let you see how the theory of information has changed. You can see how thoughts and messages are broken down, transmitted, and processed.

I think there’s little doubt that one of the most important points Gleick raises while discussing information theory is the distinction between information and meaning. He says that information theory entails the “ruthless sacrifice of meaning,” the very thing that “gives information its value and its purpose” (p. 389). But is the meaning really “irrelevant” to the problem, like Claude Shannon suggested? Is just about the “beeps” as Heinz von Foerster complained? For a group of mass communication grad students, I’d clearly say no. The danger in looking at information from a purely mathematical standpoint emphasizes the importance of speed and efficiency over that of effectiveness and quality.

A point that can’t be ignored was Gleick’s attention to the idea of “interconnectedness.” He talks about language and how our “lexis is a measure of shared experience, which comes from interconnectedness” (p.77). I believe our shared experiences do help define who we are, and our increased interconnectedness makes sharing experiences faster and easier than ever before.

We’re networked closer than we’ve ever been before. Though Gleick refers to communication technologies linking human society like a “coherent organism” and being like a “nervous system,” for us today he says that a network is “an abstract object, and its domain is information” (p.389). But are we really too connected? And are the implications necessarily always negative? I find one paradox Gleick notes interesting. He says our current network presents, that “everything is close, and everything is far, at the same time.” He says this is why cyberspace can feel crowded and lonely all at the same time.

I would like for Gleick to have touched more about how information theory has really changed everything we do, from reading and doing research, to listening and sharing music, to sharing our most personal thoughts and ideas on sites like Facebook. I also would have liked to read more about how the development of communication transmission has changed as a result of economic changes and our need to feel more connected.

So the question remains, what happens now? Are we on information overload? Are we really in danger of losing the meaning of our messages? Are we too plugged in? Once again, the answers you get to these questions will likely depend on who you ask and perhaps even when you ask.

The answers you get today may be different than the ones you’ll get in a few months and definitely in the years to come. That’s because information and the ways we communicate it will inevitably continue to evolve.