Information Connects
PART 1
The message in the medium has become more complex and interactive as the technology of the medium has evolved. The message in the medium is information.
We need to understand how information works in society.
Information works through a cycle.
Information is that which informs.
1. Information is CREATED
2. Information is STORED
3. Information is ACCESSED
4. Information is INTERPRETED
- New information is then created stored and shared. This cycle forms the basis for COMMUNICATION and this is a vital aspect of media studies.
All communication breakdowns (and there are many in media) are a failure of one of these aspects of the information cycle. This also applies to social life.
1. Information needs to be discovered and created. Information about anything is not just
magically there, it needs to be found by the process of discovery before it can be revealed.
In science there is a very deliberate way that it is revealed.
There are 3 stages of the development of scientific knowledge that emerged from the
Age of Enlightenment in the 18th Century in Europe when free rational free thinking began to challenge the dogmas of the monarchy and church.
1. Perform an Injunction
2. Bring forth the new Data
3. Test the data - Confirmation via Peer Examination & Experience
1, Performing an injunction means you have to do something to know something
a, if you want to know if it is raining look out the window
b, if you want to see the moons of Jupiter look through the telescope
c, if you want to know if water is wet touch it
d, if you want to know what the Matrix is take the red pill
2, From the injunction you will have an information experience, something new will be revealed to you - Empirical Data.
3,To confirm that your new knowledge is true you must then confere with someone who has had the same experience. This varifies your experience and validates the new knowledge as true. You are then at liberty to share this knowledge as fact.
These steps will become relevent when we study journalism in order to decise what is true and what is false in news.
Access to reliable information has always been a key factor to success in life. If you have reliable information you can make good decisions.
Informed decision making is key to positive progress.
This will become more evident when we study the way in which we access the web for our information.
Information is Power.
Power is a Force.
Your smart phone is your light sabre.
May the Force (of knowledge) be with you.
PART 2
Let us take a quick look at the ways in which information has been stored.
Here we are examining the Medium in media studies
A medium is the environment in which something passes through or is stored in.
I speak to you in vocal sounds that pass though the medium of air.
Fish swim through the medium of water.
The half a million year old scratching made by homo erectus was stored on the surface of the shell, the shell was the medium. The lines didn't pass though the shell but the shell passed onto us the information that was scratched. The pages of a book do the same thing except that we can now read what is scatched written onto the page.
Cuniform writing on clay tablets
Now we call these digital devices Tablets
The Alphabet
The invention of the ALPHABET was a significant breakthrough in information creation &
storage. Our current alphabet form [design] evolved from numerous Phonencian, Etruscan, Aramaic Greek sources as far back at the 7th century BCE.
Papyrus Scroll Egypt 4000 BCE - Papyrus is a reed plant growing along the Nile river and was pulped and dried to make a durable scroll.
note now how we scroll down a page on a computer tablet [or smart phone]
Libraries - The Library of Alexandria in ancient Egypt was the most famous information storage location in antiquity, founded by Alexander the Great was destroyed in 48BC, it was reputed to hold up to 400,000 scrolls from all over the Mediteranean world.
The modern library of Alexandria houses 8 million books.
Books - Gutenberg Bible 1455
Lines and dots stored on 5 lines stave interpreted as a sound language for musical reproduction.
Signs and symbols as a mathamatical language
Genome sequence a record of our biological code
DNA strand - the medium of life's information
Digital code storage
A bit or binary digit is the most basic unit of digital computer information [storage]
A bit stores just a 0 or 1
In computer storage it all 0's or 1's
Anything with 2 separate states can store 1 bit
Group 8 bits of digital information together you make 1 byte
0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 = 1 byte
Storage capacity
1 Kilobyte = 1 thousand bytes
1 Megabyte = 1 million bytes
1 Gigabyte = 1 billion bytes
1 Terabyte = 1 trillion bytes
Any kind of information source [ document picture sound ect] can be represented as a digital sequence of bytes to be stored, then accessed and then re transmitted.
First Computer
Analog v Digital
Analog signals are continuous electrical signals; digital signals are non-continuous.Nearly all recorded music has been digitized. About 12 percent of the 500,000+ movies listed on the Internet Movie Database are digitized on DVD.
Analog data, which typically suffers some loss of quality each time it is copied or transmitted, digital data can, in theory, be propagated indefinitely with absolutely no degradation. This is why it is a favored way of preserving information around the world.
RECORDS analog music storage
Album cover art
Pink Floyd 1973 Album 42' 49'' playing time 45 million + sold world wide on Billboard 900 weeks
60,000 songs in your pocket iPod
Moore's Law of digital processing power states, that the number of transistors on a microprocessor continues to double every 18 months.
The EXPONENTIAL CURVE is a feature of the Digital revolution
1-30 linear is 30 - if you doubled the number every count you would be at a billion at the 30th doubling
Nano Computers
Quantum computers, will harness the power of atoms and molecules to perform memory and processing. Todays computers work by manipulating bits that exist in one of two states: a 0 or a 1. Quantum computers aren't limited to two states; they encode information as quantum bits, or qubits, which can exist in superposition, that is both 0 and 1 at the same time. Because a quantum computer can contain these multiple states simultaneously, it has the potential to be millions of times more powerful than today's most powerful supercomputers.
Cloud Storage
The medium of the human Brain storing information as memories .
THE NOT TOO DISTANT FUTURE
Brain Chips interface microprocessors and neurons
Human Genome coded
The information in DNA is stored as a code made up of four chemical bases: adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). Human DNA consists of about 3 billion bases, and more than 99 percent of those bases are the same in all people. The order, or sequence, of these bases determines the information available for building and maintaining an organism, similar to the way in which letters of the alphabet appear in a certain order to form words and sentences.
Digital Computer code
The information in the human genome has been coded - it can be digitised, so life as code
can be transmitted via computers - think about this
Craig Venter is one of the worlds leading biotechnologist, he engineered the first synthetic cell - “It’s the first self-replicating cell on the planet that’s parent is a computer,” says Venter, referring to the fact that his team converted a cell’s genome that existed as data on a computer into a living organism. In his book LIFE AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT he talks about if life is ever found on Mars 'faxing' the encoded dna back to Earth to be 3 d printed in a lab for analysis.
The field of BIOTECHNOLOGY will continue to expand the information super highway into a future we cannot imagine now. This powerful trend in information - creation - storage - access - interpretation is shaping our world.
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