Quotes about information
page 14

“This tape is not copyrighted, it is not patented, and it is not trademarked. You are free to use this information or this tape in any way that you please. Freedom and independence is what it is all about now, and you therefore may exercise your own prerogatives regarding this tape. I will however simply state that it is true and factual and as so many other people have done in the past you will find that your own reality, your own perception and your own awarenesses over the years will prove what I am talking about in this tape as true.”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

Taped Message (1984)

People, Way, Exercises, Reality

“All of the books in the world contain no more information than is broadcast as video in a single large American city in a single year. Not all bits have equal value.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

Cosmos (2011 ebook edition)
Carl Sagan
Random House
2011
July
http://books.google.com/books?id=EIqoiww1r9sC&pg=PT312&dq=%22Not+all+bits+have+equal+value%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=yHThUrX4Ns-xoQSIr4DoCQ&ved=0CEAQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Not%20all%20bits%20have%20equal%20value%22&f=false;

Books, World

“In the new conditions created by the global economy, the information revolution and the growth of smart technologies, it is more necessary than ever for all companies to be guided by their rich spiritual inheritance, as spiritual enterprises.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 134.

“The cookbook gives a detailed description of ingredients and procedures but no proofs for its prescriptions or reasons for its recipes; the proof of the pudding is in the eating. … Mathematics cannot be tested in exactly the same manner as a pudding; if all sorts of reasoning are debarred, a course of calculus may easily become an incoherent inventory of indigestible information.”

George Pólya book How to Solve It

Source: How to Solve It (1945), p. 219

Mathematics

“Globalisation is a great thing, and the genie's out of the bottle; it's called the Information Revolution. It has a promise to bring opportunity and information to all corners of the world. It's a wonderful thing.”

Krist Novoselic (1965) Croatian-American rock musician

29:41–29:55 "Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on Punk, Politics, & Why He Dumped the Dems" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4TPRH2uK9w

World

“Two pictures painted in the year 1907 can conveniently be taken as the starting point of twentieth-century art. They are Matisse's Blue Nude and Picasso's Demoiselles d'Avignon; and both these cardinal, revolutionary pictures represent the nude. The reason is that the revolt of twentieth-century painters was not against academicism: that had been achieved by the impressionists. It was a revolt against the doctrine, with which the impressionists implicitly agreed, that the painter should be no more than a sensitive and well-informed camera. And the very elements of symbolism and abstraction that made the nude an unsuitable subject for the impressionists commended it to their successors. When art was once more concerned with concepts rather than sensations, the nude was the first concept that came to mind.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. IX: The Nude As an End in Itself

Art, Painting

“To date, most research on information technology (IT) outsourcing concludes that firms decide to outsource IT services because they believe that outside vendors possess production cost advantages. Yet it is not clear whether vendors can provide production”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Natalia Levina and Jeanne W. Ross (2003) "From the vendor's perspective: exploring the value proposition in information technology outsourcing." MIS quarterly p. 331

“The establishment of "The Times" newspaper is an example, on a large scale, of a manufactory in which the division of labour, both mental and bodily, is admirably illustrated, and in which also the effect of domestic economy is well exemplified. It is scarcely imagined, by the thousands who read that paper in various quarters of the globe, what a scene of organized activity the factory presents during the whole night, or what a quantity of talent and mechanical skill is put in action for their amusement and information.”

Charles Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

Source: On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures, 1832/1841, p. 270; Ch. 28 "Proper circumstances for the application of machinery."

Imagination, Time, Reading, Night

“The ancient Greek philosopher, Democritus, propounded an hypothesis of the constitution of matter, and gave the name of atoms to the ultimate unalterable parts of which he imagined all bodies to be constructed. In the 17th century, Gassendi revived this hypothesis, and attempted to develope it, while Newton used it with marked success in his reasonings on physical phenomena; but the first who formed a body of doctrine which would embrace all known facts in the constitution of matter, was Roger Joseph Boscovich, of Italy, who published at Vienna, in 1759, a most important and ingenious work, styled Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis ad unicam legem virium, in Natura existentium redacta. This is one of the most profound contributions ever made to science; filled with curious and important information, and is well worthy of the attentive perusal of the modern student. In more recent days, the theory of Boscovich has received further confirmation and extension in the researches of Dalton, Joule, Thomson, Faraday, Tyndall, and others.”

Roger Joseph Boscovich (1711–1787) Croat-Italian physicist

Alfred Marshall Mayer, Lecture-notes on Physics (1868) Part 1 https://books.google.com/books?id=hqsLAAAAYAAJ

Imagination, Science, Success, Parting

“The question is not whether Total Information Awareness (TIA) is here to stay; the real question is whether TIA is a one-way street or a two-way street.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

Way, Question

“I believe that consciousness is the way information feels when being processed.”

Max Tegmark (1967) Swedish-American cosmologist

On Math, Matter and Mind http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0510188v2 Piet Hut (IAS), Mark Alford (WashU), Max Tegmark (MIT), Foundations of Physics 36 (2006) 765-794

Way, Feeling

“The Helsinki Treaty confirms yet again the principle of freedom of conscience. However, a stern and relentless struggle will have to be carried on if the contents of this treaty are to be given reality. In the Soviet Union today many thousands of people are persecuted because of their convictions, both by judicial and by non-judicial organs, for the sake of their religious beliefs and for their desire to bring their children up in the spirit of religion, for reading and disseminating - often only to a few acquaintances - literature which is unwelcome to the State, but which in accordance with ordinary democratic practice is absolutely legitimate, e. g. religious literature, and for attempts to leave the country. On the moral plane the persecution of persons who have defended other victims of unjust treatment, who have worked to publish and in particular to distribute information regarding the persecution and trials of persons with deviant opinions, and of conditions in places of internment, is particularly important.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Nobel Peace Prize Speech (1975)

Children, People, Religion, Literature

“Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.”

Mike Huckabee (1955) Arkansas politician

US embassy cables culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee
Haroon
Siddique
Matthew
Weaver
The Guardian
2010-12-01
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/01/us-embassy-cables-executed-mike-huckabee
2010-12-02
regarding leak of 250,000 US diplomatic cables to the website WikiLeaks

Penalty, Thinking

“Information establishes a relation between things and agents.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 12

“I would query about what do you mean in terms of civil liberties. … Do we exchange information in ways we did not before? Absolutely. You can say that that is a -- to the extent that you exchange information between CIA, FBI, NSA and the like -- you could characterize that as somehow giving up liberties. But the fact of the matter is, it's understandable and absolutely necessary if you want to protect the security of the United States.”

Robert Mueller (1944) Sixth director of the FBI; American attorney

CNN Interview (2013)

Way, Understanding

“The military front in its traditional meaning has disappeared and has been replaced by something structurally different. As a result of a set of variables such as globalisation, information technology, international finance, etc., we have now moved from a geopolitics based on space to a geopolitics based on flows.”

Corrado Maria Daclon (1963) Italian journalist and scientist

From Geopolitics of Environment, A Wider Approach to the Global Challenges, La Comunità Internazionale, no. 4, (2007)

“Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Frontpage Magazine interview http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=19293 (August 31, 2005).

People, Way, Thinking, Reality

“Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 514
1970s

People, Loss

“Iranian intelligence services have acquired information that show the United States, Britain and Israel have been behind the unrest in various parts of Iran, including Khuzistan, Kurdistan and West Azerbaijan in the past few years.”

Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi (1960) Iranian politician

As quoted in Hostages caught in Tehran-Washington crossfire, The Guardian, 31 March 2007 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/mar/31/simontisdall.uknews4,

Intelligence, Past, Parting

“If the intensity of the material world is plotted along the horizontal axis, and the response of the human mind is on the vertical, the relation between the two is represented by the logarithmic curve. Could this rule provide a clue to the relationship between the objective measure of information, and our subjective perception of it?”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 10, Counting Digits, The ubiquitous logarithm, p. 85

World

“I do not say the mind gets informed by action, — bodily action; but it does get earnestness and strength by it, and that nameless something that gives a man the mastership of his faculties.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 5.

“Sober alkies are often asked: “When did you hit rock bottom?” but a more informed question might be: “How many times did you hit rock bottom?”

Craig Ferguson book American on Purpose

American on Purpose (2009)

Question, Time

“I must confess at the outset that I never felt at ease in dealing with Smith. Perhaps my insecurity stemmed in large part from my youth and lack of much previous experience in dealing with management people. Beyond this, Smith was known even to his associates as “a hard fellow to get to know.” He did not encourage informality. My meetings with him were generally held in his office, with an atmosphere of strictly business. Even when we had lunch together, the businesslike atmosphere prevailed. Had I been able to see him more than once a month, it might have been possible to reduce these barriers, although I am convinced that much of the problem would still have remained.
I now feel that my approach to Smith was too indirect and cautious. While I found many shortcomings in is pattern of managerial leadership, I never discussed these with him directly. Our talks centered on what he should do with Kraus, how group meetings might be stimulated, and so on—all matters in which Smith necessarily played a prominent role. No doubt he could infer from things I said some criticisms of his own behavior, but in our discussions I never confronted him with these criticisms.”

William Foote Whyte (1914–2000) American sociologist

Source: Making Mondragón, 1965, p. 176-177; As cited in: Ickis (2014)

People, Youth, Behavior, Feeling

“The primitives of a representation are the most elementary units of shape information available in a representation.”

David Marr (1945–1980) British neuroscientist and psychologist

Source: Representation and recognition of the spatial organization of three-dimensional shapes, 1978, p. 274

“Virtually all informed observers agree that a fair and equitable resolution of the plight of the Palestinians would considerably weaken the anger and hatred of Israel and the US in the Arab and Muslim worlds – and far beyond, as international polls reveal. Such an agreement is surely within reach, if the US and Israel depart from their long-standing rejectionism.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Interview by Merav Yudilovitch in Yedioth Ahronoth, August 4, 2006 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3286204,00.html. Quotes 2000s, 2006

World, Anger

“It was very personal. Political comes from the viewing process. Nothing is ever political if it's genuine. In the reaction, yes, it can be political. But the motives were based completely on a deep need to communicate and share information. The film language has evolved enough that you should get people interacting with the film. It's exciting for us to exhibit it, and it's exciting for people to watch it…I think it's very important for the gay community to have random characters that represent nothing more than people…I think it's part of a wave that will set a precedent of some sort so that you will no longer need a label.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

On My Own Private Idaho, The Face, (1992)

People, Communication, Motivation, Thinking

“Information Engineering is the application of an interlocking set of formal techniques for the planning, analysis, design, and construction of information systems on the enterprise wide basis or across a major sector of the enterprise.”

James Martin (author) (1933–2013) British information technology consultant and writer

Source: Information Engineering (1989), p. 1; cited in Karl E. Kurbel (2008) The making of information systems [electronic resource]. p. 176

“The war between freedom and slavery is not just a fight to be waged by Congressmen, the President, soldiers and diplomats. Fighting Communism, Socialism and the subversion of constitutional government is everybody's job. And working for the expansion of freedom is everybody's job. It is a basic American principle that each individual knows better than anyone else what he can do to help once he has become informed. No citizen will have to go far from his own home to find a faltering battle line which needs his aid. Communist influences are gnawing away everywhere and thousands of confused citizens often aid and abet them by operating in a vacuum of their own ignorance. The task is therefore to become informed and then move out for action!”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

War, Home, Communication, Freedom

“Has not experience demonstrated quite recently that Jack the Ripper performed his exploits under the eye of the London police — a most active force — and that he only left off killing when the population of Whitechapel itself began to give chase to him?
And in our every-day relations with our fellow-citizens, do you think that it is really judges, gaolers, and police that hinder anti-social acts from multiplying? The judge, ever ferocious, because he is a maniac of law, the accuser, the informer, the police spy, all those interlopers that live from hand to mouth around the Law Courts, do they not scatter demoralization far and wide into society? Read the trials, glance behind the scenes, push your analysis further than the exterior facade of law courts, and you will come out sickened.”

Peter Kropotkin (1842–1921) Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, scientist, revolutionary, economist, activist, geogr…

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)

Law, Thinking, Reading

“The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

" "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore" In These Times (26 August 2004) http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/979/

People, Faith, Boy, Evil

“Information wants to be free. (Excerpted from: "On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other."”

Stewart Brand (1938) American writer

Whole Earth Review, May 1985, p. 49.

Life, Change, Time, Fight

“There comes a stage, however, as the system becomes larger and larger, when the reception of all the information is impossible by reason of its sheer bulk. Either the recording channels cannot carry all the information, or the observer, presented with it all, is overwhelmed. When this occurs, what is he to do? The answer is clear: he must give up any ambition to know the whole system. His aim must be to achieve a partial knowledge that, though partial over the whole, is none the less complete within itself, and is sufficient for his ultimate practical purpose”

W. Ross Ashby (1903–1972) British psychiatrist

Source: An Introduction to Cybernetics (1956), Part I: Mechanism, p. 106, as quoted in: " An Introduction to Cybernetics http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/nurcap/cybernetics198803.htm," at ecotopia.com

Knowledge

“Lacking much historical information and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices, … then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.”

Robert Nozick book Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Source: Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), pp. 231-232 http://books.google.com/books?id=fVITAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT138

“Objects are the real and conceptual things we find in the world around us. An object may be hardware, software, a concept (e. g., velocity), or even "flesh and blood." Objects are complete entities, i. e., they are not "simply information" or "simply information and actions." Software objects strive to capture as completely as possible the characteristics of the "real world" objects which they represent. Finally, objects are "black boxes," i. e., their internal implementations are hidden from the outside world, and all interactions with an object take place via a well-defined interface.”

Edward V. Berard

Source: Essays on object-oriented software engineering (1993), p. 335; as cited in Edward V. Berard (1995) " A Comparison of Object-Oriented Development Methodologies http://www.ipipan.gda.pl/~marek/objects/TOA/OOMethod/mcr.html". The Object Agency, Inc.

World, Box

“God's commandments are not grievous. God put them in the garden, said "You can eat of any tree except that one tree, The Knowledge of Good and Evil." It's real simple, Adam. Enjoy the garden, have lots of kids, and don't learn about evil. […] Parents, don't teach your kids about all the evil things. Don't have drug education classes where you show them, "Hey, this is marijuana. This is how you smoke it. Now don't you do that." Duh. Don't put them in sex ed classes in seventh grade, it's a plumbing class at that time. Don't do that, okay? Let them be ignorant. Let them learn it from mom and dad, not from some heathen, okay? It's real simple Adam. Enjoy the world and have lots of kids and don't learn about evil. Don't learn all that stuff. The Lord said, "Hey, have you eaten off that tree I told you not to eat from?" God is not asking for information. He's asking for a confession. And the man said, "The woman (he passed the buck) whom thou gavest to be with me. Now God, this is really your fault, you know. If you hadn't given her to me I wouldn't have this problem." He said to the woman, "Have you done this?" She said, "Well, the snake that you made…." We still do the same thing, nothing changes, okay? Fear God, keep his commandments. Just like the taking of life is very important in any culture. Murder is serious. Giving life is important. That's why God put certain rules down for reproduction, okay? Follow his rules. "Thou shalt not commit adultery. Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge." Don't even look and lust or you've committed adultery already in your heart. By the way, ladies, that's why it's important how you dress, okay? My daddy always said, "If you're not in business, don't advertise."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Women should dress in modest apparel. That's what the Bible says, alright.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Life, Women, God, World

“As with any graphic, networks are used in order to discover pertinent troups of to inform others of the groups and structures discovered. It is a good means of displaying structures, However, it ceases to be a means of discovery when the elements are numerous. The ﬁgure rapidly becomes complex, illegible and untransformable.”

Jacques Bertin (1918–2010) French geographer and cartographer

Source: Graphics and graphic information processing (1981), p. 129: About why draw a network?

“Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd Edition), 2014

“Data is discrimination between physical states of things (black, white, etc.) that may convey or not convey information to an agent. Whether it does so or not depends on the agent's prior stock of knowledge.”

Max Boisot (1943–2011) British academic and educator

Source: Knowledge Assets, 1998, p. 12

Knowledge, Dependency

“Mass communications analysts concentrate on “who sends what information, for what purposes, through what channels, to which people, with what effect”. The information profession is more interested in “who seeks what information, for what purposes, through what channels, from which people and sources, with what success”.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information history – an introduction (2009), p. 246.

People, Communication, Success

“I repent and ask for forgiveness for greed. I longed for riches, not thinking that this is to the detriment of others. Covering my sins with the words "historic moment," "brilliant combinations" and "tremendous opportunities," I forgot about my fellow citizens.… I repent and ask forgiveness for trampling free speech. Justifying myself with the desire to save Russia from the red-brown plague, I defined the policy of the country's chief information mouthpiece, neglecting democratic values.… I repent and ask for forgiveness for bringing Vladimir Putin to power. I should have seen, but could not see in him the future of a greedy tyrant and usurper, a man who trampled freedom and stopped the development of Russia. Many of us did not recognize it then, but that does not excuse me. I'm sorry.”

Boris Berezovsky (1946–2013) Russian mathematician

Facebook posting (26 February 2012)

Forgiveness, Thinking, Freedom, Future

“The tape is astonishing. And here's what's frustrating to me. And you asked specific questions, for example, about what people knew about Bill Ayers, you know, and who they voted for, the coal power plant comments. And these were really significant issues. And it seems that Obama voters, if you don't listen to talk radio, if you don't watch the FOX News Channel, you are not anywhere nearly as informed as people that are just hearing the bumper stickers, the slogans, the snippets of the commercials of the media so, journalism died in 2008, and it influenced a lot of people on the way out.”

Sean Hannity (1961) American television host, conservative political commentator

Hannity and Colmes (2 December 2008) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,460964,00.html

People, Way, Question

“Even [Marx], whose information about people came mainly from books, must have known that the Manifesto’s depiction of the relations between men and women was grossly distorted. His rage was therefore—as is so much modern rage—entirely synthetic, perhaps an attempt to assume a generosity of spirit, or love of mankind, that he knew he did not have but felt he ought to have”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

How—and How Not—to Love Mankind.
City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Love, Women, Men, People

“This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model-- the structurational model of technology--is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the limits and opportunities of human choice, technology development and use, and organizational design. Implications for future research of the new concept of technology and structurational model of technology are discussed.”

Wanda Orlikowski American computer scientist

Source: "The duality of technology" 1992, p. 389; Abstract

Understanding, Study, Future

“Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union–based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "Configurations of marketing and sales: a taxonomy", 2008, p. 133; Abstract

Knowledge, Study, Strong, Success

“There seems to be a general consensus among informed observers that genuine cases of predation are very rare birds.”

William J. Baumol (1922–2017) American economist

William J. Baumol. "Predation and the Logic of the Average Variable Cost Test." Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. XXXIX, April 1996, p. 51.

Bird

“The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?”

Vannevar Bush book As We May Think

As We May Think (1945)

“One cliché endlessly offered up by the people supporting government surveillance is that there needs to be a “trade-off” between security and privacy. But this is a trade that goes only one way. It’s clear that we’ve lost control over what personal information is public and what we prefer to keep private. The new reality is that they see us, but we can’t see them.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

Against Authority: Freedom and the Rise of Surveillance States (2014)

People, Way, Support, Reality

“Having been informed of events by Vice-Chancellor von Papen, President Hindenburg summoned General Goering, in his capacity of Chief of Police, and myself to Neudeck. Our instructions are to consult with you on the measures to be taken to ensure internal peace. If a complete relaxation of tension does not immediately take place (and to this end we must avoid any ministerial crisis), martial law will be proclaimed.”

Werner von Blomberg (1878–1946) German field marshal

Quoted in "Hitler and I" - Page 186 - by Otto Strasser, Gwenda David, Eric Mosbacher - Germany - 1940

Peace, Law

“In the years after 1936, whilst Hayek was working on The Pure Theory of Capital, most economists were convinced by Keynes, whose theory had an elegance and simplicity that Hayek’s did not. Keynes’ theory lacked Hayek’s theoretical rigor in that it was not based on equilibrium (on individual rationality), and there were places in the argument where Keynes relied on loose, informal arguments, preferring to put his trust in intuition rather than formal theory. Keynesians did not solve the problems with capital theory that Hayek had identified: they just bypassed or ignored them. According to Hayek’s methodological criteria, Keynes’ theory was decidedly inferior. Against this, Keynes’ theory provided opportunities for mathematical and statistical analysis that Hayek’s did not. Indeed, though Hayek paid some attention to data, he did so only minimally: he certainly made no attempt to test his theory against statistical data. The choice of Keynesian theory was, at least in part, a methodological one.”

Roger Backhouse (economist) (1951) British economist

"Hayek on money and the business cycle", 2006

Mathematics, Problem, Parting

“For them, in a time when the individual has lost significance (despite loud assertions to the contrary), an informed, rational, and intellectually adventurous individuality must take precedence over all else. In their seeming disunion lies their real strength.”

Robertson Davies book A Voice from the Attic

A Voice from the Attic (1960)

Time

“Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? …We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap [a term due to J. Levine, "Materialism and qualia: The explanatory gap" Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 64:354-61, 1983] between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it.”

David Chalmers (1966) Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist

"Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness," 1995

Feeling

“What would your ideal exec ass't let you know - & when - & where? That should inform your best #GTD system.”

David Allen (1945) American productivity consultant and author

25 June 2012 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/217464360359043072 Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

“Not long after riots broke out in Ferguson late last summer, I asked my staff to tell me how many people shot by police were African-American in this country. I wanted to see trends. I wanted to see information. They couldn’t give it to me, and it wasn’t their fault. Demographic data regarding officer-involved shootings is not consistently reported to us through our Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Because reporting is voluntary, our data is incomplete and therefore, in the aggregate, unreliable.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

People, Summer, Country

“When we encounter a face, we view it as a whole, by a process of integration of the parts, which takes place, as some scientists and physicians understand it, in the optic nerves long before any transmission reaches the brain. The otherwise dizzying abundance of information that hits the retina is distilled in this tract of fibers behind the eye into a sign that our intelligence can absorb. When we see a strip of letters, a billboard slogan, for example, we cannot help but read the word; we do not see each letter separately, but rather, instantly, we grasp the whole word and, moreover, its meaning.”

Zia Haider Rahman British novelist

In The Light of what We Know (2014)

Intelligence, Understanding, Reading, Help

“The media should objectively inform about abuses associated with loan agreements when they occur, particularly instances of evictions, destruction of the environment, child labour and corruption.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the adverse impact of World Bank policies on human rights and the realisation of a democratic and equitable international order
2017, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

“A more viable model, one much more faithful to the kind of system that society is more and more recognized to be, is in process of developing out of, or is in keeping with, the modern systems perspective (which we use loosely here to refer to general systems research, cybernetics, information and communication theory, and related fields). Society, or the sociocultural system, is not, then, principally an equilibrium system or a homeostatic system, but what we shall simply refer to as a complex adaptive system.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Society as a complex adaptive system (1968), p. 490.

Faith, Communication

“Evolution is a technological, mathematical, informational, and biological process rolled into one. It could almost be said to be a law of physics, a principle that reigns over all created multitudes, whether they have genes or not.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Law, Mathematics

“1905
Tsar Nicholas II made inept efforts to mollify his angry people by granting basic liberties and allowing a parliament (Duma), which he kept dissolving. Meanwhile he ruthlessly suppressed the people’s rising. Royal troops fired ona peaceful march of workers in St. Petersburg on January 9, known as Bloody Sunday. Anti-Jewish pogroms were rampant. The Russian edition, published by Dr. Nilus, of the “Protocols of Zion” was widely circulated. Monarchists frequently read it aloud to illiterate peasants.
1914
The start of World War I led to Russian military defeats. A failing economy brought about terrible civilian suffering. Loyalists openly spoke about a “Jewish plot”.
Food riots, strikes, and the tsar’s panicky dissolution of the Fourth Duma exploded into revolution. By November, the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction of the former Social Democratic workers’ party) had seized control of the government. Royalist Russians began a civil warand were defeated. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and was executed, along with his family, by Bolsheviks in 1918.
Russian aristocrats fled Russia and dispersed throughout Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East. There they settled as expatriates. Most had little work experience. In order to earn money, they frequently sold valuables. Some of these items provided information on the Russian use of anti-Semitic literature.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Money, War, People, World

“Any such material, received through the board, through automatic writing, or voice communication, should be carefully studied. Generally speaking, if your messages claim to originate from famous dead personalities, you can discount them as valid information. In all probability, they are creative fabrications of your own personal subconscious.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: How To Develop Your ESP Power (1966), p. 31

Communication, Study, Personality, Dead

“We all have tremendous potential, and we all are blessed with gifts. Yet, the one thing that holds all of us back is some degree of self-doubt. It is not so much the lack of technical information that holds us back, but more the lack of self-confidence. Some are more affected than others.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki (1947) American finance author , investor

Rich Dad Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money-That the Poor and the Middle Class Do Not!

Confidence, Self-confidence

“LISP is now the second oldest programming language in present widespread use (after FORTRAN)… Its core occupies some kind of local optimum in the space of programming languages given that static friction discourages purely notational changes. Recursive use of conditional expressions, representation of symbolic information externally by lists and internally by list structure, and representation of program in the same way will probably have a very long life.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy (1979) " History of Lisp http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/lisp/lisp.html," as quoted in: Avron Barr, Edward Feigenbaum. The Handbook of artificial intelligence, Volume 2. Addison-Wesley, 1986. p. 5 1970s

Life, Way, Change

“But what started out as a liberating stream has turned into a deluge of chaos. …matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems. …The tie between information and action has been severed. …It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.”

Neil Postman (1931–2003) American writer and academic

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Problem, Personality

“[T]he Constitution does not guarantee the right to acquire information at a public library without any risk of embarrassment.”

William H. Rehnquist (1924–2005) Chief Justice of the United States

ibid.
Judicial opinions

“Industrial age companies created sharp distinctions between two groups of employees. The intellectual elite—managers and engineers—used their analytical skills to design products and processes, select and manage customers, and supervise day-to-day operations. The second group was composed of the people who actually produced the products and delivered the services. This direct labor work force was a principal factor of production for industrial age companies, but used only their physical capabilities, not their minds. They performed tasks and processes under direct supervision of white-collar engineers and managers. At the end of the twentieth century, automation and productivity have reduced the percentage of people in the organization who perform traditional work functions, while competitive demands have increased the number of people performing analytic functions: engineering, marketing, management, and administration. Even individuals still involved in direct production and service delivery are valued for their suggestions on how to improve quality, reduce costs, and decrease cycle times…
Now all employees must contribute value by what they know and by the information they can provide. Investing in, managing, and exploiting the knowledge of every employee have become critical to the success of information age companies”

Robert S. Kaplan (1940) American accounting academic

Source: The Balanced Scorecard, 1996, p. 5-6

People, Age, Knowledge, Time

“There is a proper role for referendums in constitutional change, but only if done properly. If it is not done properly, it can be a dangerous tool. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who is no longer in the Chamber, said that Clement Attlee—who is, I think, one of the Deputy Prime Minister's heroes—famously described the referendum as the device of demagogues and dictators. We may not always go as far as he did, but what is certain is that pre-legislative referendums of the type the Deputy Prime Minister is proposing are the worst type of all. ¶ Referendums should be held when the electorate are in the best possible position to make a judgment. They should be held when people can view all the arguments for and against and when those arguments have been rigorously tested. In short, referendums should be held when people know exactly what they are getting. So legislation should be debated by Members of Parliament on the Floor of the House, and then put to the electorate for the voters to judge. ¶ We should not ask people to vote on a blank sheet of paper and tell them to trust us to fill in the details afterwards. For referendums to be fair and compatible with our parliamentary process, we need the electors to be as well informed as possible and to know exactly what they are voting for. Referendums need to be treated as an addition to the parliamentary process, not as a substitute for it.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

House of Commons Debates (Hansard), 26 November 2002, column 201 https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2002-11-26.201.7 On democracy and referendums

People, Thinking, Change, Housing

“My position is to listen to my constituents, learn from the best information available and ultimately make sound, rational decisions that are going to be beneficial to the people of the 8th Congressional District.”

Gabrielle Giffords (1970) American politician

On her political positions during campaign — [Stephanie Innes, Giffords: Too soon to settle on a plan for health care, The Arizona Daily Star, August 11, 2009, A1, Arizona]

People, Decision, Learning

“If you're older, you're smarter. I just believe that. If you're in an argument with someone older than you, you should listen to 'em … even if they're wrong, their wrongness is rooted in more information than you have.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

Oh My God

“The flat tax I got on my first meeting with Margaret Thatcher, who I admired very much and who was a great admirer of Milton Friedman. I met her first when I had been prime minister I think for some months and so on, and when I told her what I am planning to do, she looked at me with these big eyes and said “you are one brave young man.” And then a little bit introduced me on the realities of the Western world on which I was not very well informed. But I didn’t stop.”

Mart Laar (1960) Estonian politician and historian

Interview with Stephen J. Dubner, for 'Freakonomics Radio' podcast (24 March 2010), when asked how he learned the fate of Friedman's policies in the Western world.

World, Thinking, Reality

“One can even go beyond know-what into know-whether. This involves the evaluative structure of the human mind which enables us to make decisions and choices among different images of the future. Human behavior cannot be explained without this further development in the hierarchy that starts with simple information. This actually goes back a long way in evolution. Even the amoeba knows whether to absorb a piece of grit or a piece of food.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Kenneth Boulding (1984) In: Meheroo Jussawalla, Helene Ebenfield eds. Communication and information economics: new perspectives. p. vii
1980s

Food, Way, Behavior, Decision

“Soon, the enterprise of the information age will find itself immobilized if it does not have the ability to tap the information resources within and without its boundaries.”

John Zachman (1934) American computer scientist

Source: Extending and Formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture, 1992, p. 613, cited in: Nik Bessis, Fatos Xhafa (2011) Next Generation Data Technologies for Collective Computational Intelligence. p. 84

Age

“Men in general are very slow to enter into what is reckoned a new thing; and there seems to be a very universal as well as great reluctance to undergo the drudgery of acquiring information that seems not to be absolutely necessary.”

William Playfair (1758–1824) British mathematician, engineer and political economist

Observations on the Trade with North america, Chart V, page 29.
The Commercial and Political Atlas, 3rd Edition

Men, Universe

“Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four.”

Bruce Schneier (1963) American computer scientist

Computer Crime Hype, 2005-12-16, Schneier, Bruce, Schneier on Security blog, 2006-09-08 http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html, Politics and societal issues of the digital age

“Dear Reichsführer, among 10's of millions of Jews in Europe, there are, I figure, at least 2-3 millions of men and women who are fit enough to work. Considering the extraordinary difficulties the labor problem presents us with, I hold the view that those 2-3 millions should be specially selected and preserved. This can however only be done if at the same time they are rendered incapable to propagate. About a year ago I reported to you that agents of mine have completed the experiments necessary for this purpose. I would like to recall these facts once more. Sterilization, as normally performed on persons with hereditary diseases is here out of the question, because it takes too long and is too expensive. Castration by X-ray however is not only relatively cheap, but can also be performed on many thousands in the shortest time. I think that at this time it is already irrelevant whether the people in question become aware of having been castrated after some weeks or months, once they feel the effects. Should you, Reichsführer, decide to choose this way in the interest of the preservation of labor, then Reichsleiter Bouhler would be prepared to place all physicians and other personnel needed for this work at your disposal. Likewise he requested me to inform you that then I would have to order the apparatus so urgently needed with the greatest speed. Heil Hitler! Yours, Viktor Brack.”

Viktor Brack (1904–1948) SS officer

Letter written to Heinrich Himmler (23 June 1942).

Women, Men, People, Disease

“The transition from the concept of information in the technical (communication engineering) sense to the semantic (theory of meaning) sense was indeed difficult, if not impossible.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport (1956), as quoted in: Richard C. Huseman (1977) Readings in interpersonal & organizational communication. p. 35
1950s

Communication, Sense

“They [free market policies] were never based on solid empirical and theoretical foundations, and even as many of these policies were being pushed, academic economists were explaining the limitations of markets — for instance, whenever information is imperfect, which is to say always.”

Joseph E. Stiglitz (1943) American economist and professor, born 1943.

"Bleakonomics" http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/books/review/Stiglitz-t.html?_r=2&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&ref=books&adxnnlx=1191080508-xgqHp+i170M7vW5X5Q4Yeg&oref=slogin The New York Times Sunday Book Review (2007-09-30).

“Bayesian networks [is] a term coined in Pearl (1985) to emphasize three aspects: (1) the subjective nature of the input information; (2) the reliance on Bayes' conditioning as the basis of updating information; (3) the distinction between causal and evidential models of reasoning, a distinction that underscores Thomas Bayes' paper of 1763”

Judea Pearl (1936) Computer scientist

Source: Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, 2000, p. 14

Nature

“Egyptologists say they have no idea what Khufu was doing when he was not building pyramids, since he left no inscriptions describing his daily activities, and they would give a good deal to know. Then they say he had six wives and a harem full of concubines. They do not seem to make the connection, but you get it and I get it. We do not need any hieroglyphics to inform us that Khufu dropped around occasionally to see how things were getting along and to tell the ladies how many cubic yards of limestone he had laid that afternoon.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), Part I: It Seems There Were Two Egyptians, Cheops, or Khufu

Idea

“Intelligence has two parts, which we shall call the epistemological and the heuristic. The epistemological part is the representation of the world in such a form that the solution of problems follows from the facts expressed in the representation. The heuristic part is the mechanism that on the basis of the information solves the problem and decides what to do.
[…]
The right way to think about the general problems of metaphysics and epistemology is not to attempt to clear one's own mind of all knowledge and start with 'Cogito ergo sum' and build up from there. Instead, we propose to use all of our knowledge to construct a computer program that knows. The correctness of our philosophical system will be tested by numerous comparisons between the beliefs of the program and our own observations and knowledge.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

John McCarthy and Patrick J. Hayes. " Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial Intelligence http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/mcchay69.html", Sect. 2.1, Machine Intelligence 4, ed. Donald Michie (Elsevier, 1969), p. 463 ff., ISBN 0444197443 1960s

World, Way, Intelligence, Knowledge

“Assessing the value of information technology (IT) has never been easy. Delayed benefits, unintended uses, business changes, and hidden support costs inhibit meaningful evaluation of individual TT investments. This was true when most investments were focused on the support of a single business process or functional area. It is even more true as business executives ponder implementations of shared technologies like data warehouses and networks, replacement of large legacy systems, and reskilling of the IT staff. Although firms introduce some systems to reduce costs and can evaluate them in terms of their success in doing so, they want many IT initiatives to support a firm's objectives. The value of these initiatives rest in their contributions to a firm's competitiveness, which is often non quantifiable and uncertain.”

Jeanne W. Ross (1958) American computer scientist

Jeanne W. Ross, Cynthia Mathis Beath, and Dale L. Goodhue (1996). " Develop long-term competitiveness through IT assets http://layoftheland.net/archive/web/mis-575/course_docs/topic_4/ross.beath.goodhue.ITassets.pdf." Sloan management review Vol 38 (1). p. 31.

Business, Support, Change, Success

“You know, we can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles -- it's something I strongly support -- we can't be so fixated on that that we are unable to think about the reality of life that millions of Americans face on streets that are unsafe, under conditions that no other nation—no other nations—has permitted to exist. And at some point, I still hope that the leadership of the National Rifle Association will go back to doing what it did when I was a boy and which made me want to be a lifetime member because they put out valuable information about hunting and marksmanship and safe use of guns. But just to know of the conditions we face today in a lot of our cities and other places in this country and the enormous threat to public safety is amazing.”

Bill Clinton (1946) 42nd President of the United States

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at the Adult Learning Center in New Brunswick, New Jersey http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=46264, March 1, 1993 1990s

Life, Hope, Boy, Support

“Organization structure must perform the major functions of facilitating the collection of information from external areas as well as permitting effective processing of information within and between subunits which make up the organization.”

David A. Nadler (1948–2015) American organizational theorist

Source: "Information Processing as an Integrating Concept in Organizational Design." 1978, p. 615

“I’m very much a free market capitalist, actually. I don’t agree with a kind of totalitarian, one government or sort of universal law. I think what will happen and what is happening now is, in the same way as… In the way that countries make themselves attractive to investors through different pieces of legislation they offer, whether it’s secrecy in the case of the Cayman Islands or Switzerland, I think the fact that some countries now are offering very robust publishing laws, it will be that as information is global, what you might see is that these big internet companies like Google or Facebook, that have their servers, will start to relocate those servers to countries where they have less interference. In a way, you’re creating a kind of free market of freedom of information law.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, Chatham House Talk (September 28, 2011)

Law, Way, Thinking, Freedom

“In order to understand information, we must define it; bit in order to define it, we must first understand it. Where to start?”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 3, In-Formation, The roots of the concept, p. 18

Understanding

“The most likely reason for the adoption of a relatively small number of discrete intervals as the tonal material for music is that discretization or categorization is a typical, if not universal, strategy used by animals in order to reduce information overload and facilitate processing when subjected to the high-information-conetent signals and/or high information rates from a highly developed sensory system (e. g., Estes, 1972; Terhardt, 1991). An obvious example is the processing of speech information by humans, wherein each language selects a relatively small portion of the available timbral-differences that can be produced by the vocal tract as information-carrying units (phonemes) in the language. A related reason for discrete scales, and another obvious analogy with speech perception, lies in the social aspect of music. Music first developed as, and still largely remains, a social phenomenon associated with religious or other rituals that, like language, necessitated an easily remembered common framework.”

Edward Burns (1968) American actor and director

Burns, Edward M. (1999). "Intervals, Scales, and Tuning", 'The Psychology of Music second edition, p. 218. Deutsch, Diana, ed. San Diego: Academic Press. ISBN 0122135644

Music, Universe, Animals

“A truly democratic country must proactively inform the public so that the public can decide on spending priorities.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order exploring the adverse impacts of military expenditures on the realization of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/IntOrder/Pages/Reports.aspx. 2015, Report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council

Country

“Information systems, at any level of complexity above that of speech, necessarily involve technologies such as printing, telecommunications, or computers. However, to information science technical potentialities and constraints are of importance mainly in that they affect the social relations concerned.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Source: Information Science in Theory and Practice (1987), p. 14.

Science

“Let Massachusetts continue to regard with the greatest solicitude the well-being of her people. By prescribed law, by authorized publicity, by informed public opinion, let her continue to strive to provide that all conditions under which her citizens live are worthy of the highest faith of man. Healthful housing, wholesome food, sanitary working conditions, reasonable hours, a fair wage for a fair day's work, opportunity — full and free, justice — speedy and impartial, and at a cost within the reach of all, are among the objects not only to be sought, but made absolutely certain and secure.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Law and Order (1920)

People, Health, Faith, Justice

“Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do."”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: The Analects, Chapter V

“The preface to the first edition of this book… shows that in 1958 the classification ideas in it were felt to controversial, needing to be championed. A few years before, the had issued a memorandum proclaiming "the need for a faceted classification as the basis of all methods of information retrieval'. As part-author of this memorandum, I must now judge the claim to have been too bold, even brash.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Preface to third edition; Partly cited in: Vanda Broughton (2011) " Brian Vickery and the Classification Research Group: the legacy of faceted classification http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/broughton.pdf" p. 6 Classification and indexing in science (1958)

Books, Idea, Parting

“In a society which is producing more people, more materials, more things, and more information than ever before, systems engineering is indispensable in meeting the challenge of complexity.”

Harold Chestnut (1917–2001) American engineer

Source: Systems Engineering Tools, (1965), p. vii; as cited in: Joseph E. Kasser (2010) " Seven systems engineering myths and the corresponding realities http://www.synergio.nl/media/59286/7_myths_of_se.pdf"

People

“The field of 'information theory' began by using the old hardware paradigm of transportation of data from point to point.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 111

“And what is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Train In The Distance
Song lyrics, Hearts and Bones (1983)

Life, Heart

“[There is a] basic problem … of building a mathematical model of thought processes, and in particular of those aspects of thought which are concerned with information and decision processes. The perceptron is one type of model -- a set of memory devices connected in random fashion-- which has not yet achieved useful results but certainly seems to be a promising approach. The self-adaptive feedback control system which goes beyond the normal servo function of controlling its output, and in addition controls the parameters by which it controls its output is another which has already achieved pragmatic results in equipment control. It may be that the question of self-adaptation is a key to the whole question of how the human functions in a decisioning situation. For in many cases the ability of the human mind to adapt itself to a changing and complex environment is beyond our present aims in model construction.”

Robert E. Machol (1917–1998) American systems engineer

p ix-x
Information and Decision Processes (1960)

Mathematics, Fashion, Question, Problem

“Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.1, p. 36

Life, Knowledge

“To be an atheist you have to have ten thousand times more imagination than if you are a religious fundamentalist. You must take the responsibility to acquire information, digest and use it to understand what you can.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Cineaste, 1991
Interviews

Imagination, Understanding, Time

“From the enemy's motions, I should be apt to suspect they were retreating from your army, or at least altering their operations. Mr. Lovell, who is at last enlarged from his confinement, reports that Colonel Allen, his fellow prisoner, was informed that transports were getting in readiness to sail, at a moment's warning, sufficient to transport fifteen thousand men.”

Nathanael Greene (1742–1786) American general in the American Revolutionary War

Letter to George Washington (7 October 1776)

Men

“I don't know. There are many theories about it. The most interesting theory that I've heard so far, which is nothing more than a theory, I can't—think it can't be proved, is that he was warned ahead of time by the Saudis. Now, who knows what the real situation is, but the trouble is that by suppressing that kind of information, you lead to those kinds of theories, whether they have any truth to them or not, and then eventually they get repeated as fact. So I think the president is taking a great risk by suppressing the clear, the key information that needs to go to the Kean commission.”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Describing a theory held by some that President George W. Bush knew about the 9-11 attack coming to America. The Diane Rehm Show, public radio station WAMU, December 1, 2003. Quoted by Timothy Noah, "Howard Dean: Whopper of the Week" http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/2003/12/whopper_howard_dean.html, December 13, 2003. Retrieved May 12, 2016.

Truth, Thinking, Time

“What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence, away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligence. The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking.”

Nicholas Carr (1959) American writer

Is Google Making us Stupid in The Atlantic, July 2008.

Intelligence, Thinking, Loss

“In another place in Kashmeer was a temple built by Raja Bulnat, the destruction of which was attended with a remarkable incident. After it had been levelled, and the people were employed in digging the foundation, a copper-plate was discovered, on which was the following inscription : —
“ Raja Bulnat, having built this temple, was
“ desirous of ascertaining from his astrologers
“ how long it would last, and was informed by
“ them, that after eleven hundred years, a king
“ named Sikundur would destroy it, as well as the
“ other temples in Kaslimeer.”
The King was surprised, though vexed, that the Hindoo prophet should have predicted the truth, and declared, if they had placed the plate against the wall, he would have preserved the temple to belie the prophet. Having broken all the images in Kashmeer, he acquired the title of the Iconoclast, “Destroyer of Idols.””

Sikandar Butshikan

Tarikh-i-Firishta, translated by John Briggs under the title History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, first published in 1829, New Delhi Reprint 1981, Vol. III p.268-69

People, Truth

“By simply moving information and brushing information against information, any medium whatever creates vast wealth.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

1990s and beyond, "The Agenbite of Outwit" (1998)

Wealth

Quotes about information page 14

Quotes about information
page 14