A Philosophy of Information

Citation

Hutton, D.M. (2007), "A Philosophy of Information", Kybernetes, Vol. 36 No. 3/4, pp. 551-551. https://doi.org/10.1108/03684920710747138

This is such an enormous subject that to contemplate anything like a comprehensive study in one book is surely an impossibility. Having decided what constitutes information we are then left to contemplate it in the fashion of the great philosophers before us. In the main they were not concerned with the advent of the computer and the innumerable information systems that have been produced. There are numerous questions to ask and Bernard Smith does choose many of the ones that we as cyberneticians, systemists and management scientists would like to ask and hopefully receive answers. But the way of the philosopher is to ask more questions. There is no doubt that the author of this text has been brooding over the subject of information for a long time and has produced material that surely makes us think a little more deeply about it. Most scientists deal with information as something to be received, stored, manipulated, processed and used. Bernard Smith takes a different view, a much broader concept emerges. He introduces ideas concerning the function of memory, the dreams we all seem to have in their diffent guises. He even brings into the subject the paranormal. In the background to his thesis the computer is in evidence and the interaction between the human user's mind and machine is highlighted. What he offers us is worth reading and discussing. The problem we encounter, however is that he is providing information about information. Most cyberneticians know that it is extremely difficult to use a defining metalanguage to define itself. Even so the author surely has achieved his aim in getting us thinking about what information is and how we can deal with it.