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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72"><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Dear FIS colleagues,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>As a newcomer to FIS, I feel myself very uncomfortable when I have to interrupt the ongoing discourse with something that looks for me quite natural but is lacking in our current public dialog. What I have in mind is that in every discussion or argument exchange, first of all, the grounding axioms and mutually agreed assumptions should be established and declared as the basis for further debating and reasoning. Maybe in our case, these things are implied by default, but I am not a part of the dominant coalition. For this reason, I would dare to formulate some grounding axioms that may be useful for those who are not FIS insiders:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>1. <b>Information is a linguistic description of structures observable in a given data set</b><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>2. Two types of data structures could be distinguished in a data set: primary and secondary data structures.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>3. Primary data structures are data clusters or clumps arranged or occurring due to the similarity in physical properties of adjacent data elements. For this reason, the primary data structures could be called physical data structures.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>4. Secondary data structures are specific arrangements of primary data structures. The grouping of primary data structures into secondary data structures is a prerogative of an external observer and it is guided by his subjective reasons, rules and habits. The secondary data structures exist only in the observer’s head, in his mind. Therefore, they could be called meaningful or semantic data structures. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>5. As it was said earlier, <b>Description of structures observable in a data set should be called “Information”. </b>In this regard, two types of information must be distinguished – <b>Physical Information and Semantic Information</b>. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>6. Both are language-based descriptions; however, physical information can be described with a variety of languages (recall that mathematics is also a language), while semantic information can be described only by means of natural human language.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>This is a concise set of axioms that should preface all our further discussions. You can accept them. You can discard them and replace them with better ones. But you can not proceed without basing your discussion on a suitable and appropriate set of axioms.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>That is what I have to say at this moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>My best regards to all of you,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Emanuel.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal> <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>