Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on March 03, 1998 at 21:06:52:

In Reply to: Re: Information Theory: What Weiner Really Said posted by Yogesh Malhotra on March 03, 1998 at 20:49:58:

Review of:

Fuchs, W.R. (1971). Cybernetics for the Modern Mind, New York: The MacMillan Company.

Communication theory is thoroughly statistical and it forms the basis for a description of any cybernetic system. Communication theory is also known as the theory of measurable information (cf: Mackay 1969: "quantitative information"). The book introduces the theory of information as a necessary means of looking at facts from the point of view of cybernetics. Cybernetic systems deal primarily with communication and control. Cybernetics is the mathematics of information processing and its technical realization.

The word is not a definite unit of information. 'Communication' specifically implies "transport of information." "What is transmitted by the sender to the receiver is something like a building instruction. The commodity to be transported remains at the transmitter, whilst the receiver reproduces a closely resembling structure...Communication can therefore be regarded as some kind of building instruction" (p. 106). The binary digit (or the bit) is the basic element of information and thus represents a measurable quantity of information. In order to define the quantity of information we had to learn the fundamental concepts of an exact science -- the theory of measurable communication or information theory, whatever you like to call it. By communication we understand the type of scheme in which information is transmitted from one point to another. Information is neither matter nor energy. It is a casting mould, a scheme, a construction rule, a structure, an instruction for use depending on which aspect of the situation we want to look at. Each individual sign from a store of b different types of symbols carries the information log2b bit the amount of information increases in proportion with the number of signs participating in the message.

According to Wittgenstein, "Every instruction can be understood as a description, every description as an instruction." We cannot and should not always speak in precise and well-defined terms. This is not only very tedious but also limits our range of thinking.

The model of communication includes: transmitter, receiver, channel, common sign store and common code. [The media richness theory is driven by the information theory which disregards the interpretivist, constructivist nature of human information processing.]

The lower the bit-value for comparable typical performances the more economic the encoding. An appropriate code must take account of the signal frequency: it is important to know whether a certain signal (or sequence of signals) occurs more often than the others.

The content of an arbitrarily selected sign depends on which sign store it came from, i.e., out of how many possibilities of selection it represents a decision. The larger the availability of signs [in the sign store] the larger the amount of information carried by each sign. A sign will always represent more information the less often it appears: the letter has a 'rarity value' and carries therefore a considerable amount of information. In addition to the size of the sign store, which exists as an ordered set in the particular alphabet, the amount of information is also determined by the frequency of occurrence of the signs. Apart from the sign store and sign frequency, another decisive factor in the amount of information is the intersymbol influence (signals often occur in quite definite regular groupings).

News must have a surprise effect: the surprise effect of messages, news, etc., will be greater the less probable they are. The information is greater the less probable it is. In this sense, information is 'improbability.' The information of a signal is the measure for the improbability with which this signal occurs in a certain communication. The uncertainty is always largest when all signals appear with the same probability.

Although, strictly speaking order seems to diminish information, to act as an opponent to information, the fact is that every kind of order or regularity limits the choices which enable one to make a decision (cf: chaos creates, implications of ambiguity on the choice decisions).

• Yogesh Malhotra

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