“The general notion in communication theory is that of information. In many cases, the flow of information corresponds to a flow of energy, e. g. if light waves emitted by some objects reach the eye or a photoelectric cell, elicit some reaction of the organism or some machinery, and thus convey information.”

—  Ludwig von Bertalanffy

Source: General System Theory (1968), 2. The Meaning of General Systems Theory, p. 41

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Ludwig von Bertalanffy 65
austrian biologist and philosopher 1901–1972

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“Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.”

Bruce Coville (1950) American writer

“It [knowledge] is clearly related to information, which we can now measure; and an economist especially is tempted to regard knowledge as a kind of capital structure, corresponding to information as an income flow. Knowledge, that is to say, is some kind of improbable structure or stock made up essentially of patterns — that is, improbable arrangements, and the more improbable the arrangements, we might suppose, the more knowledge there is.”

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“The flow of information it promotes is free in one respect only. The flow is expected to be freely admitted to all the spaces that its providers desire to transmit to. Otherwise there is nothing free about the information. Quite the contrary. Information and message flows are already, and will continue to be, priced to exact the highest revenues extractable.”

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“Throughout, we shall be exemplifying the thesis of D. M. MacKay: that quantity of information, as measured here, always corresponds to some quantity, i. e. intensity, of selection, either actual or imaginable”

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“Some of the same people who were instrumental in the Federalist Society’s effort to change our legal system are now working to help corporations increase their control over the flow of information.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

Speech to the Eighth Annual American Constitution Society National Convention (17 June 2010) http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=news&id=865
Context: Some of the same people who were instrumental in the Federalist Society’s effort to change our legal system are now working to help corporations increase their control over the flow of information.
If you control the flow of information, you can control the conversation around important issues. If you can control the conversation, you can change this country. … But we can’t be satisfied with stopping conservatives and their corporate clients from controlling the narrative when it comes to our legal system.
We have to fight back with our own.
In our narrative, the legal system doesn’t exist to help the powerful grow more powerful – it exists to guarantee that every American is entitled to justice
In our narrative, we defend our individual rights and liberties against corporate encroachment just as fiercely as we defend them against government overreach.

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Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Boisot, M. H., Canals, A., & MacMillan, I. (2004). " Simulating I-Space (SIS): An agent-based approach to modeling knowledge flows http://entrepreneurship.wharton.upenn.edu/research/simispace3_200405.pdf." Working papers of the Sol C. Snider Entrepreneurial Research Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

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