The Life of Information
Jannis Kallinikos and José-Carlos Mariátegui
25 May 2007
English: http://www.telos-eu.com/english/2007/05/
the_life_of_information.php
French: http://www.telos-eu.com/2007/05/
la_societe_de_lhyperinformatio.php
In 2003, a group of economists and information theorists at the
University of Berkeley, published their study How Much Information,
one of the first systematic attempts to measure the amount of
information produced and stored in all kind of media, among which
digital media figure prominently. Their study shows that information
is growing at an accelerating pace, doubling itself in increasingly
shorter time intervals. The numbers cause dizziness and elude the
human perception of quantity. A recent study by the International Data
Corporation (IDC) provides further evidence that information growth is
a key socio-economic development at the outset of the 21st century.
The IDC study predicts that digital information will increase more
than six-fold from 161 exabytes to roughly 1000 exabytes in 2010 (1
exabyte is around 1 trillion gigabytes). There are several drivers
to this information growth, including the migration of images to
the digital realm and the transformation of analogue to digital
information, the proliferation of mobile media like cameras and
cellular phones and the spectacular circulation and duplication of
information. Over the next few years, one quarter of this expanding
digital universe will come from cameras and video recorders. Many
organizations that rely on massive amounts of video information are
trying to make it available in digital form. For example the BBC,
one of the world¹s biggest broadcasting companies, is planning to
become Œtapeless¹ for 2010, which means it will exclusively rely on
information available on digital storage.
The proliferation alone of devices of capturing, producing and
diffusing information does not suffice to account for the phenomenon
of information growth and its subtle implications. It is interesting
to observe that organizations, major producers and containers of
information, have less than 10% of their information classified. 95%
of the content of the internet is unstructured data. As information
grows it requires efficient ways of managing it. This is one of the
reasons why information search tools like Google become fundamental
ways, if we are to believe Google¹s motto, of ³organizing the world¹s
information².
Organizing information does help people make sense of the bewildering
array of data and images populating the infospaces of contemporary
life. However, counter-intuitive as it may seem, ordering and editing
information does not reduce but rather increases information. This
happens because the organization of data items is often itself
information, produced out of the rearrangement of these items.
When your bank orders and sorts out your transactions, significant
information about your spending habits is revealed. The rearrangement
of the data items is substantially aided by the fact that digital
information is always recorded and updated while its granularity makes
it increasingly possible to recombine it with other information items,
often across data sources.
For all these reasons, digital information is frequently crossing the
boundaries of the specific domains within which it is conventionally
produced and utilized. Text, image and sound become increasingly
interoperable. Interoperability is a key motive behind the
transformation of analogue information (low granularity, low
combinability) to digital. The digital traces left out by our
internet habits (surfing and shopping on the internet) are bought by
commercial companies that recombine them into consumer profiles and
life styles to be used for targeting promotion. Insurance companies
try to combine information about individuals that is spread across
different digitized sources (e.g. banks, medical records, tax returns,
travel agencies, sport clubs etc) to produce individualized premiums
that map the risk and life profiles of individuals. Police forces
construct profiles of criminals by data mining aggregate financial
transactions and other data. Examples of this sort are encountered
across most domains of contemporary life. They attest to one of the
most interesting characteristic of current developments, that is the
production of information out of information in self-reinforcing and
expanding cycles.
Less clear is the contribution, which the short-lived character of
information makes to the phenomenon of information growth. Information
obtains its informativeness (its value or capacity to inform) due
to its adding something new to what is already known. Reciting a
statement that is already known does not qualify as information,
no matter how important such a statement may be. In order to be
informative, information has to pick up a new fact or state and convey
it. But novelty does not and cannot last. It dies out at the very
moment it is consumed. Information is today becoming perishable and
for that reason easily disposable. Market information, for instance,
that reaches stock exchanges all over the world in terms of price
changes often lasts no more than few minutes. Traffic information, so
useful in the rush hours, is of no use a little later.
Information as Niklas Luhmann suggests is no more than an event,
a semantic flash created against the background of memory and
knowledge to which it is assimilated. In so doing however the value
of information is consumed. The pending evaporation of information
triggers a complex institutional game to maintain its value through a
variety of mechanisms. Key among them is the ceaseless updatability
of technological information and the constant expansion of the data
universe it leads to. Without constant updating, stock markets, to
mention the same example, around the world would collapse or become
seriously impeded. Paradoxically, the more frequently information
is updated the faster it becomes out-dated. Thus understood, the
prevalence of information inflates the present and makes the event
and its ephemeral constitution central elements of social and
institutional life.
There is little doubt that a variety of objections could be raised as
regards the particular methodologies employed to measure and document
the growth of information. But this should not be the major point. The
recent attempts to estimate the amount of information mark the growing
awareness of which most of us bear a clear testimony: information
and the artefacts and technologies by which it is produced penetrate
deeper and deeper into the fabric of everyday life. They remake,
often quite imperceptibly, a large range of everyday tasks, redefine
the meaning of established practices and modes of doing things and
introduce new habits and activities. Looked upon at an aggregate level
and over larger time spans, these developments reshuffle the balance
between things and images, objects and representations, reality and
artifice. How many fictional or semi-fictional characters are really
created by the algorithmic techniques of data mining and profiling
(the construction of individuals out of data)? Be that as it may,
the developments underlying information growth do lend empirical
support to the speculative, albeit highly original, and dystopian
visions of Virilio, Baudrillard and others. Technological information
segments, dissolves and transposes social life to digital marks. Once
a description of reality, it is increasingly becoming reality itself.
Some of these phenomena are analyzed in significant
detail in the recent book by Jannis Kallinikos,
"http://www.e-elgar.co.uk/bookentry_main.lasso?id=3814"> The
Consequences of Information: Institutional Implications of
Technological Change, published by Elgar in 2006.
Jannis Kallinikos is Professor at the Department of Management, London
School of Economics (LSE) and leader of The Information Growth and
Internet Research (TIGAIR) project.
Jose Carlos Mariategui is an image/media art expert and member of The
Information Growth and Internet Research (TIGAIR) project at LSE.
hi everyone,
Thursday is issuedrinks again, and I wanted to provide you all with some
late "homework", to discuss in De Balie :-)
Maybe some of you know Dan McQuillan, passionate about internet freedom,
and working at Amnesty International in London, remember
http://irrepressible.info -- we met again at the Ecampaigning Forum the
week before last, and he sparked off an interesting discussion session that
lead to some interesting new insight (for me): development organisations
are understanding the need of a "free internet" for international
development, environmental organisations don't yet seem to publicly take a
stand.
That lead to an interesting exchange with several folks from Greenpeace on
why "e-campaigners" are not yet in a position to mainstream internet
freedom as integral to other campaigns.
Dan's notes on the discussion in Oxford:
http://internetartizans.co.uk/ecampaigning_for_internet_freedom
Martin Lloyd's response (head of IT projects at Greenpeace, several people
of issuedrinks know him by now) http://mrlloyd.livejournal.com/13531.html
Last Friday, the Open Net Initiative was launched in Oxford, and Dan spoke
to someone there from the Berkman Center, who had been in China for a
while, saying that the environmental movement there seems to pick up on the
issue of internet freedom.
Also, within the APC network, there are interesting experiences in
South-East Europe around an environmental information network, mainly lead
by Pavel Antonov. He commented that based on the Aarhus Convention,
European governments are kind of obliged to provide a "free internet" and
"free information".
Ergo...
It seems like Greenpeace (and perhaps other environmental organisations)
are at a tipping point to more openly take a stand on these issues. As
they've been the early adopters of internet and e-collaboration, but have
not really spoken on these issues yet, I'd like to raise the topic, and
help the "insiders" make the case on this in their organisation.
As Martin in Greenpeace says: "...with some suggestions that we simply
consider the web part of the Global Commons and therefore covered by our
traditional remit to defend said commons."
/-- Kind regards,
/--- Rolf.
--
________________________________________________________________________
Rolf Kleef http://www.drostan.org
rolf(a)drostan.org y!/skype rolfkleef icq 33833057 cell +31617232772
"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your inspiration with others."
(Robert Louis Stevenson)
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Dear Friends,
I have just read and signed the online petition:
"Protest Homofobie Polen / Protest Homophobia Poland"
hosted on the web by PetitionOnline.com, the free online petition
service, at:
http://www.PetitionOnline.com/303nl/
I personally agree with what this petition says, and I think you
might agree, too. If you can spare a moment, please take a look,
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Best wishes,
Koen Martens
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K.F.J. Martens, Sonologic, http://www.sonologic.nl/
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Fwd: opzet discussie bijeenkomst rotterdam]
Date: Sun, 13 May 2007 14:14:37 +0200
From: Bas <bas(a)softwarefreedomday.nl>
Reply-To: bas(a)softwarefreedomday.nl
To: Erik Borra <erik(a)justlol.net>
CC: Zoran Kovacevic <zoran(a)kovacevic.nl>
Hoi Erik,
Volgende week vind er een discussieavond plaats in Rotterdam rond de
openheid van overheidsinformatie.
http://www.openstreetmap.nl/archives/18-Discussie-avond-open-overheidsinfor…
Interesse om te komen?
Dit gebeurt allemaal in het verlengde van de Rotterdam mapping Party!
http://www.openstreetmap.nl/archives/19-Locatie-bekend-van-Rotterdam-mappin…
Zoran Kovacevic zal aanstaande dinsdag 15 mei een toelichting geven op
OpenStreetMap.nl tijdens de HollandOpen Netwerkborrel:
http://hollandopen.nl/agendaevent.jsp?nr=5850 .
Zie ook Zoran's artikel genaamd "Van een gratis naar
een vrij geoweb"
:http://www.openstreetmap.nl/archives/14-Van-een-gratis-naar-een-vrij-geoweb.html
--
Met vriendelijke groet,
Bas de Lange
Eeuwig en altijd bereikbaar via AltME
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Eeuwig en altijd agenda's beheren via AltME
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Eeuwig en altijd je eigen on- en offline kantoor via AltME
Download AltME (0,8MB) hier voor Windows, Mac OS X, Linux en OpenBSD:
http://www.altme.com
Vraag je persoonlijke account aan bij Bas
Dear user issuedrinks(a)sonologic.nl,
We have detected that your account was used to send a large amount of junk e-mail messages during this week.
Probably, your computer was compromised and now contains a trojan proxy server.
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importante!
- -------- Original Message --------
Subject: EFF Europe IPRED2 Update: Send Us Your Stories
Date: Wed, 2 May 2007 01:36:54 -0500 (CDT)
From: EFF Europe <copycrime(a)eff.org>
Reply-To: EFF Europe <copycrime(a)eff.org>
Organization: EFF
To: gmc(a)metro.cx
*IPRED2 PASSES FIRST READING
BATTLE MOVES TO COUNCIL OF THE EU
PLUS: SEND US YOUR STORIES*
The European Parliament voted last week to pass the Intellectual
Property Rights Enforcement Directive (IPRED2) without substantial
changes - despite growing public opposition from across the European
Union. But the final vote on the Directive was close (374 to 278 with 17
abstentions). That points to falling support for the directive in
Parliament and Brussels. If only 50 MEPs more out of the 785 total had
voted against the directive, it would have been rejected outright.
We're disappointed that IPRED2 was not defeated at this stage, but the
efforts of the over 8,000 Europeans who've taken action against the
Directive clearly made an impact. We were told by the two largest
political parties that they felt that the Directive had not been given
enough time to be properly discussed, and that our campaign had
definitely contributed to the discussion.
The fight now moves to the Council of the European Union, where it will
be considered by representatives of the national governments of all EU
Member States. Several states have started to mount resistance to IPRED2
in recent weeks, with the UK and Holland leading the charge.
We'll continue to lobby in Brussels, and we hope you'll join us in the
next few weeks to show national governments that IPRED2 could set a
terrible precedent for copyright law, and the EU legal process. If the
Council disagrees with the European Parliament's action -- which we
believe is in reach -- IPRED2 would be returned for a second reading.
We will be tracking these developments and providing opportunities to
act at CopyCrime.eu. If you have an RSS reader, you can subscribe to see
changes at http://www.copycrime.eu/rss.xml or just visit
http://www.copycrime.eu/blog/.
DID YOU SEND A MAIL TO YOUR MEP? LET US KNOW!
Did you write an email, letter or fax to your MEP? MEPs told us they
were impressed by the calm, thoughtful arguments in your messages, and
we'd like to collect the best to share with other activists. If you want
to contribute to this collection, send us a copy to copycrime(a)eff.org.
Please edit your text to remove any private information that you would
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Thanks again for your help -- we'll keep in touch!
Best wishes,
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