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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Dear Marcus and All,<br>
<br>
As usual I find a crucial element missing in both your initial
text and in the responses up to now. How can I express that
abscence in two or three lines?<br>
"Agency" is missing. It is factually minimized under the form of
constraints and uncertainty. Communication occurs because some
kind of "emitter" agent operates as a "source" and sends
"messages" via an appropriate "channel" to some "receiver". I have
put quotations to the standard Shannonian terms. My central
question: could there be any form of non-living agency? And then,
What different forms of life could receive the "agent" label? How
being alive biases the non-at-all-free communication game?<br>
<br>
These questions will be refined next days...<br>
Best--Pedro <br>
<br>
respect El 23/06/2016 a las 8:37, Loet Leydesdorff escribió:<br>
</div>
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<p class="MsoPlainText">Dear Bob, Stan and colleagues, <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left:.5in">The Shannon
formula measures "capacity" for information, *not* information
itself. Consider the "snow" pattern on a TV without a signal.
Its Shannon measure is much higher than when a picture appears
onscreen, yet we know that the snow pattern carries no
information.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black">The expected
information of a message that an event has taken place can
be measured precisely in terms of bits of information using
the Shannon formulas. As Weaver noted (and Shannon was
aware), this concept of information (uncertainty) is
counter-intuitive. It enables us among other things to
distinguish between “information” and “meaningful
information”. A screen with noise carries maximal
information, but this information is not meaningful.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black">Providing
Shannon-type information with meaning presumes the
specification of a system of reference; for example, an
observer. Different from observed information, expected
information is yet dimensionless (“a priori”). The
analytical distinction between information processing and
meaning processing enables us also to specify (perhaps
measure as redundancy) the different meanings that can be
provided to the same uncertainty by different systems of
reference. For example, the white noise on the screen may be
unexpected or not (since the antenna was not correctly
plugged in). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-left:.5in"><span
style="color:black">“</span>The concept of information
developed in this theory at first seems disappointing and
bizarre—disappointing because it has nothing to do with
meaning … I think, however, … that this analysis has so
penetratingly cleared the air that one is now, perhaps for the
first time, ready for a real theory of meaning.” (Weaver,
1949, p. 27)<span style="color:black"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black">In my opinion,
a “real theory of meaning” should enable us to
specify/measure meaning as redundancy / reduction of
uncertainty given information as uncertainty. I took this
further in: </span>Loet Leydesdorff, Alexander Petersen,
and Inga A. Ivanova, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05251">The Self-Organization
of Meaning and the Reflexive Communication of Information.</a><i>
Social Science Information </i>(in press).<br>
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Best,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText">Loet<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center" align="center"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">
<hr align="center" size="3" width="100%"></span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">Loet Leydesdorff </span><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">Professor, University
of Amsterdam<br>
Amsterdam School of Communication Research (ASCoR)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net"
title="mailto:loet@leydesdorff.net"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:blue">loet@leydesdorff.net </span></a><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D">; </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/"
title="http://www.leydesdorff.net/"><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:blue"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.leydesdorff.net/">http://www.leydesdorff.net/</a></span></a><span
style="font-size:10.0pt;color:#1F497D"> <br>
</span><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Associate
Faculty, </span><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/"><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:blue">SPRU, </span></a><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">University of Sussex; <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Guest
Professor </span><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.zju.edu.cn/english/"><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:blue">Zhejiang Univ.</span></a><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">, Hangzhou; Visiting
Professor, </span><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.istic.ac.cn/Eng/brief_en.html"><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:blue">ISTIC, </span></a><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Beijing;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">Visiting
Professor, </span><a moz-do-not-send="true" name="_GoBack"></a><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/"><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:blue">Birkbeck</span></a><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:black">, University of London;
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en"><span
style="font-size:9.0pt;color:blue">http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ych9gNYAAAAJ&hl=en</span></a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoPlainText"><span style="color:black"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. +34 976 71 3526 (& 6818)
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
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