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From: ken@uswat.uswest.com (Kenny Chaffin)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <14385@uswat.UUCP>
Date: 14 Jan 91 23:21:03 GMT
References: <2753@infinet.UUCP-> <37618@cup.portal.com> <2755@infinet.UUCP> <5745@barn.COM>
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Organization: US WEST Advanced Technologies, CO, USA
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In article <5745@barn.COM-> jsl@barn.COM (John Labovitz) writes:
->In article <2755@infinet.UUCP> sena@infinet.UUCP (Fred Sena) writes:
->>I don't think that you can just assume that you know the difference between
->>"noise" and "data".  It depends on what you are looking for.  [...]
->>Information that was not there,
->>all of a sudden is there, because we not care.  I guess information is in the
->>eye of the beholder.
->
->Exactly.  A blob of data means nothing except when put in context.  If I
->give you a book, but it's written in a language you do not understand,
->that book is not information to you.  If I teach you the language in
->the book, it will then become information.
	That is certainly one interpretation of information. I however 
disagree. I believe that the informaition is there. After all to a person that
reads the language it is certainly information. What changes about the book
when someone who doesn't know the language tries to read it? Nothing. 
The difference is in the "meaning" of the information, not the information 
itself. After the information in the book was placed in a specific order
and sequence by someone--just because certain others do not understand the 
language does not change the information that was put into the book.
In other words to me information is independent of meaning. A structured set
of data is information whether it has meaning to a human observer or not.
->
->I think the ultimate computer system would let you take any data and
->organize it any number of different ways.  You could build systematic
->structures of the data, and link those structures with other
->structures.  It's difficult to do this with today's databases; it's
->easier with hypertext, but still not quite right.
	Those structures are information.
->-- 
->John Labovitz		Domain: jsl@barn.com		Phone: 707/823-2919
->Barn Communications	UUCP:   ..!pacbell!barn!jsl

KAC

"Anybody want a drink before the war?"
                       Sinead O'Connor
 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Kenny A. Chaffin                      {...boulder}!uswat!ken
U S WEST Advanced Technologies                (303) 930-5356
6200 South Quebec
Englewood, CO 80111
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