Weaving the Web (1999)
Context: In an extreme view, the world can be seen as only connections, nothing else. We think of a dictionary as the repository of meaning, but it defines words only in terms of other words. I liked the idea that a piece of information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning. The structure is everything. There are billions of neurons in our brains, but what are neurons? Just cells. The brain has no knowledge until connections are made between neurons. All that we know, all that we are, comes from the way our neurons are connected.
“The discovery of new knowledge for ourselves, then, means the assimilation of public information into our unique context of thought. ie can establish relations between ideas and concepts which are not available to anyone else, because no-one else has precisely the same system of information available.”
Librarians and Information Systems (1995)
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Douglas John Foskett 24
1918–2004Related quotes
“Information establishes a relation between things and agents.”
Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 12
Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992)
Context: The relationship between information and the mechanisms for its control is fairly simple to describe: Technology increases the available supply of information.... control mechanisms are strained... When additional control mechanisms are themselves technical, they in turn further increase the supply of information. When the supply of information is no longer controllable, a general breakdown in psychic tranquillity and social purpose occurs. Without defenses, people have no way of finding meaning in their experiences, lose their capacity to remember, and have difficulty imagining reasonable futures.
"Easy Access?" by Spencer Michels, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer (August 7, 1997)
Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 249
Source: 1960s, Management misinformation systems, 1967, p. 148.
Source: Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969), p. 51; Opening paragraph
“Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.”
Source: Timescape (1980), Chapter 14 (p. 182, known as Benford's law of controversy)
Context: It was an example of what he thought of as the Law of Controversy: Passion was inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.
The Structure of Information Retrieval Systems (1959)