Quotes about information
page 15

“I very well recollect the reformation which took place in the country among the various denominations of Christians-the Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and others-when Joseph was a boy. Joseph's mother, one of his brothers, and one, if not two, of his sisters were members of the Presbyterian Church, and on this account the Presbyterians hung to the family with great tenacity. And in the midst of these revivals among the religious bodies, the invitation, "Come and join our church," was often extended to Joseph, but more particularly from the Presbyterians. Joseph was naturally inclined to be religious, and being young, and surrounded with this excitement, no wonder that he became seriously impressed with the necessity of serving the Lord. But as the cry on every hand was, "Lo, here is Christ," and "Lo, there!" Said he, "Lord, teach me, that I may know for myself, who among these are right." And what was the answer? "They are all out of the way; they have gone astray, and there is none that doeth good, no not one. When he found out that none were right, he began to inquire of the Lord what was right, and he learned for himself. Was he aware of what was going to be done? By no means. He did not know what the Lord was going to do with him, although He had informed him that the Christian churches were all wrong, because they had not the Holy Priesthood, and had strayed from the holy commandments of the Lord, precisely as the children of Israel did.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 12:67 (June 23, 1867)
Young’s recollection of religious excitement and events leading up to Joseph Smith, Jr.’s first vision.
1860s

Children, Family, Way, Boy

“I was stunned. I was, and I knew it, an ordinary person who long after he was grown retained the childhood assumption that the people who largely control our lives are somehow better informed than, and have judgment superior to, the rest of us; that they are more intelligent. Not until Vietnam did I finally realize that some of the most important decision of all time can be made by men knowing really no more than, and who are not more intelligent than, most of the rest of us. That it was even possible that my own opinions and judgment could be as good as and maybe better than a politician’s who made a decision of profound consequence.”

Jack Finney book Time and Again

Source: Time and Again (1970), Chapter 22 (p. 387)

Men, People, Intelligence, Decision

“He took their facts for granted. He knew no more than a firefly about rays — or about race or sex — or ennui — or a bar of music — or a pang of love — or a grain of musk — or of phosphorus — or conscience — or duty — or the force of Euclidian geometry — or non-Euclidian — or heat — or light — or osmosis — or electrolysis — or the magnet — or ether — or vis inertiae — or gravitation — or cohesion — or elasticity — or surface tension — or capillary attraction — or Brownian motion — or of some scores, or thousands, or millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love, Music, Sex, Intelligence

“The proposition that markets drive economic efficiency is central to much of economics. Adam Smith illustrated that the “invisible hand” of the market drives efficient allocation of resources in a system of division of labor. Friedrich Hayek illustrated the central importance of the price system as an information processing mechanism more powerful than any centrally planned system could ever be. Kenneth Arrow and Gerard Debreu illustrated that complete and perfect markets deliver a Pareto-efficient equilibrium, in which no one person can be made better off without making someone else worse off. And the development of the efficient- market and rational- expectations hypotheses suggested that financial markets are in fact efficient, and that the conditions required for efficiency and for rational and stable equilibria apply even in contracts between the present and the future, which financial markets provide.”

Adair Turner, Baron Turner of Ecchinswell (1955) British businessman

Source: Economics after the crisis : objectives and means (2012), Ch. 2 : Financial Markets: Efficiency, Stability, and Income Distribution

Future, Personality, Perfection

“I can't give you answers on what we know and don't know, other than what's charged in the indictment. It's not because I enjoy being in that position. It's because the law is that way. I actually think the law should be that way. We can't talk about information not contained in the four corners of the indictment.”

Patrick Fitzgerald (1960) American lawyer

Fitzgerald News Conference from nytimes.com (October 28, 2005) http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/politics/28text-fitz.html?pagewanted=all

Law, Way, Thinking

“The relationship between governments and the press has always been recognized as a matter of large importance. Wherever despotism abounds, the sources of public information are the first to be brought under its control. Whereever the cause of liberty is making its way, one of its highest accomplishments is the guarantee of the freedom of the press. It has always been realized, sometimes instinctively, oftentimes expressly, that truth and freedom are inseparable. An absolutism could never rest upon anything save a perverted and distorted view of human relationships and upon false standards set up and maintained by force. It has always found it necessary to attempt to dominate the entire field of education and instruction. It has thrived on ignorance. While it has sought to train the minds of a few, it has been largely with the purpose of attempting to give them a superior facility for misleading the many. Men have been educated under absolutism, not that they might bear witness to the truth, but that they might be the more ingenious advocates and defenders of false standards and hollow pretenses. This has always been the method of privilege, the method of class and caste, the method of master and slave.”

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

1920s, The Press Under a Free Government (1925)

Men, Truth, Education, Way

“[Strategic account management programs include] special activities… such as pricing, products, services, distribution, and information sharing’ and that they involve ‘in addition to marketing and sales, functional groups such as manufacturing, research and development, and finance.”

Christian Homburg (1962) German academic

Source: "A configurational perspective on key account management", 2002, p. 40-42; as cited in Storbacka (2007)

“Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

Idea

“Government want to tell you things you can't say because they're against the law, or you can't say this because it's against a regulation, or here's something you can't say because its a… secret; "You can't tell him that because he's not cleared to know that." Government wants to control information and control language because that's the way you control thought, and basically that's the game they're in.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Doin' It Again, Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics (1990)

Secret, Law, Way, Game

“as I became Speaker in 1986, I made a point of setting up a public information office to respond to requests and provide information about Parliament and how it functions.”

John Allen Fraser (1931) Canadian politician

Preface, p. ix
The House Of Commons At Work (1993)

“Judas was not a monster, though his act was monstrous; he was a man, the twelfth part of humanity, and his sin was that he could betray for thirty pieces of silver, like any common informer. Jesus was uncommon, not Judas.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"The Hue and Cry"
The Writing on the Wall and Other Literary Essays (1970)

Parting

“I have laid the stick that connects people together. Now it is up to you, your generation and the generations to come, to build upon that stick a bridge that will ensure the free sharing of information and teaching between the two peoples until the day we become united again as a single people, as we were once before; before men separated us with their imaginary political boundaries of today's Polynesia and Micronesia.”

Mau Piailug (1932–2010) Micronesian navigator from the Carolinian island of Satawal and a teacher of traditional, non-instrument wa…

From Baybayan, Chad Kalepa (2010-07-29). "Piailug's greatest lesson is that we are a single people". Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Men, People

“The shift to the pre‐job pattern of self‐employment in the informal sector promises to eliminate this pathological culture in which one secures his livelihood by winning the approval of an authority figure. In my opinion, therefore, we should take advantage of the opportunity to eliminate this pattern of livelihood, instead of—as Ford proposes—replacing the boss with a bureaucrat as the authority figure on whose whims our livelihood depends. The sooner we destroy the idea of the “job” as a primary source of livelihood, and replace the idea of work as something we’re given with the idea of work as something we do, the better. And then we should sow the ground with salt.”

Kevin Carson (1963) American academic

Homebrew Industrial Revolution (2010), Chapter 3
Homebrew Industrial Revolution (2010)

Idea, Dependency

“Although world views grow organic ly and historically, they can also be developed. The construction of world views is comparable to the work of cartographers in antiquity and in the Middle Ages. They mapped out the world on the basis of information from sailors, mer chants and explorers.”

Diederik Aerts (1953) Belgian theoretical physicist

Source: Perspectives on the World: an interdisciplinary reflection. (1995), p. iv

Age, World, Lying

“Things like the proposed tech tax are actually a very good idea. The specific form of it is debatable, but the idea is that five companies are worth $3.5tn, basically because of network externalities and information monopolies, and therefore are absolutely right for efficient taxation… The marginal cost of production of AI is effectively zero. The ability to make these technologies available to the poorest countries at no cost is an evident option. So we should be taking special care to make sure that this revolution can reach everybody.”

Jeffrey D. Sachs (1954) American economist

Tech tax' necessary to avoid dystopia, says leading economist, the Guardian, 23 Oct 2018 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/23/exclusive-tech-tax-jeffrey-sachs-ai-wealth-facebook-google-amazon

Idea, Country

“[Task uncertainty is] the difference between the amount of information required to perform the task and the amount of information already possessed by the organisation.”

Jay R. Galbraith (1939–2014) American business theorist

Source: Designing complex organizations, 1973, p. 5

“A few weeks ago I read, in Sacheverell Sitwell, two impressives sentences: “It is my belief that I have informed myself of nearly all works of art in the known world…. I have heard most of the music of the world, and seen nearly all the paintings.” It was hard for me to believe these sentences, but I wanted Sitwell to be able to say them, liked him for having said them—I believed.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens”, p. 71
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

World, Art, Music, Reading

“But whatever grounds I supposed there were for authorizing such expectations, I now find they were vain and nugatory. The cloud thickens, and the prospects are daily growing darker. There is now no hope of cash. The agents are loaded with heavy debts, and perplexed with half-finished contracts, and the people clamorous for their pay, refusing to proceed in the public business unless their present demands are discharged. The constant run of expenses, incident to the department, presses hard for further credit., or immediate supplies of money. To extend one, is impossible; to obtain the other, we have not the least prospect. I see nothing, therefore, but a general check, if not an absolute stop, to the progress of every branch of business in the whole department, I have little reason to hope that, with the most favorable disposition in the agents, it will be in our power to provide for the occasional demands of the army in their present cantonments; much less, to have in readiness the necessary apparatus, and supplies of different kinds, for putting the army in motion at the opening of the campaign. My apprehensions of a failure in these respects are so strong, and my anxiety for the consequences so great, that I feel it my duty once more to represent to your Excellency our circumstances and prospects. From such a view of our situation, you may be led not to expect more from us than we are able to perform, and may have time to take your measures consequent upon such information.”

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

Letter to George Washington (January 1780)

Money, People, Hope, Feeling

“The cure to information overload is more information.”

David Weinberger (1950) American philosopher

The cure to information overload is more information. http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/004037.html, Hyperorg.com (2005-05-24)

“Some time ago a tailor in Chicago was conducting a vigorous advertising campaign. I did not suppose that his advertising was having any influence upon me. Some months after the advertising had begun I went into the tailor's shop and ordered a suit. While in the shop I happened to fall into conversation with the proprietor and he asked me if a friend had recommended him to me. I replied that such was the case. Thereupon I tried to recall who the friend was and finally came to the conclusion that this shop had never been recommended to me at all. I had seen his advertisements for months and from them had formed an idea of the shop. Later, I forgot where I had received my information and assumed that I had received it from a friend who patronized the shop. I discovered that all I knew of the shop I had learned from advertisements and I doubt very much whether I ever read any of the advertisements further than the display type. Doubtless many other customers would have given the same reply even though, as in my case, no friend had spoken to them concerning the shop.”

Walter Dill Scott (1869–1955) President of Northwestern university and psychologist

Source: The Psychology of Advertising in Theory and Practice, 1908, p. 176

Idea, Learning, Time, Reading

“This is where we get into the information war - that speculative blood became more important than the actual blood. We already can see all that terrible stuff – we know about that. Let's focus on your nightmares, how all these people might die because the government's secrets have been unleashed.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, "We Steal Secrets" 2013 Movie

War, People, Secret

“In the Atlantean period there were many energies being used and information and knowledge being used which were, for particular reasons of safety, withdrawn, shall we say, to prevent complete catastrophe, to prevent total destruction of your planet. One could say these were sort of emergency measures, if you like, to prevent the inhabitants of this planet from an untimely destruction.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: Truth Vibrations

Knowledge

“Akbar was now informed that Haji Khan, a ghulam of Sher Khan Afghan [Sher Shah], a brave and able general, was setting up pretensions to rule in Alwar and that Himu’s father and wife, and all his property and wealth, were in that country. So the Emperor sent Nasiru-l Mulk [Pir Muhammad Sarwani] with a select force to attack him. Haji Khan, in dread of the Imperial army, fled before it arrived. Alwar and all the territory of Mewat thus came into the Imperial power. The fugitives proceeded to Dewati-majari, a strong place, which was Himu’s family home. Much resistance and fighting followed. Himu’s father was taken alive, and brought before Nasiru-l Mulk, who tried to convert him to the faith; but the old man said, ‘For eighty years I have worshipped God in the way of my own religion; how can I now forsake my faith? Shall I, through fear of death, embrace your religion without understanding it?’ Maulana Pir Muhammad treated his question as unheard, but gave him an answer with the tongue of the sword. He then returned with much spoil and fifty elephants to the Emperor.”

Hemu (1501–1556) General and Chief Minister of Adil Shah Suri

Akbar-Nama of Abul Fazl, translated in Elliot and Dowson, Volume VI, p. 21. Quoted in S. R.Goel, The Calcutta Quran Petition (1999) ISBN 9788185990583

Death, God, Fear, Family

“You should not expect politicians to promote freedom of information. Why should they? They have a vested interest in controlling the public's access to information and thereby maintaining their grip on power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 285.
Your Right to Know: A Citizen's Guide to the Freedom of Information Act, 2nd Edition

Freedom

“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in The Best Advice Ever for Teachers (2001) by Charles McGuire and Diana Abitz, p. 57

Age

“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.”

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

Source: 1960s, Beyond Economics: Essays on Society, 1968, p. 142

Knowledge

“Because intersectionality is a concept (a description of the experience of multiple oppressions, without explaining their causes) rather than a theory (which does attempt to explain the root causes of oppressions), it can be applied alongside different theories of oppression--theories informed by Marxism or postmodernism, but also separatism, etc. Because Marxism and postmodernism are often antithetical, their specific uses of the concept of intersectionality can be very different and in very different and contrary ways.”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

Way

“Life is too short for me to worry about something I have no control over that I don’t even know will happen. People ask ‘if Earth is going to be swallowed by a black hole or if there is some disturbance in the spacetime continuum should we worry about it?’. My answer is ‘no’ because you won’t know about it until it crosses your… your place in space-time. Your beats come to you when nature decides it’s the right time… be it the speed of sound, the speed of light, the speed of electrical impulses we will forever be victims of the time delay between information around us and our capacity to receive it.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

WNYC Radio Podcast, RadioLab, "Shorts: What a Slinky Knows" (29 August 2012), Minute 11:33 http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/sep/10/what-slinky-knows/ 2010s

Life, People, Nature, Light

“I do not presume to preach to anyone; I do not consider myself a preacher or a teacher. Were it not that I am responsible for the book, I would prefer that my personality be not named as its author. The greatness of the subjects about which I offer information, relieves and frees me from self-conceit and forbids the plea of modesty.”

Harold W. Percival book Thinking and Destiny

Author's Forward, p. xxi
Thinking and Destiny (1946)

Books, Teachers, Personality

“One trader's move in the market can be interpreted by another trader as relevant additional information due to the uncertainty he faces.”

Didier Sornette (1957) French scientist

Source: Why Stock Markets Crash - Critical Events in Complex Systems (2003), Chapter 6, Hierarchies, Complex Fractal Dimensions, And Log Periodicity, p. 182.

“A weakness of the random-walk model lies in its assumption of instantaneous adjustment, whereas the information impelling a stock market toward its "intrinsic value" gradually becomes disseminated throughout the market place.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 299

“A decision is the action an executive must take when he has information so incomplete that the answer does not suggest itself.”

Arthur W. Radford (1896–1973) United States naval aviator

Quoted in Time Magazine: ARMED FORCES: Man Behind the Power http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,936815,00.html, 25 February 1957.

Decision

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns…
And somebody falls off…
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec—
Alec's dead."
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)

Life, Women, Men, God

“Bush, a technical advisor to Roosevelt, published in 1945 an article in Atlantic Monthly which highlighted problems in the growth of knowledge, and proposed a technological solution based on his concept of memex, a multimedia personal computer: "Professionally, our methods of transmitting and reviewing the results of research are generations old and by now are totally inadequate for their purpose…The difficulty seems to be not so much that we publish unduly in view of the extent and variety of present-day interests, but rather that publication has been extended far beyond our present ability to make real use of the record." (Bush, 1945) The world brain has continued for over fifty years to provide an active objective for the information systems community (Goodman, 1987), and memex is often quoted as having been realized fifty years later through the World Wide Web”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

Berners-Lee, Cailliau, Luotonen, Nielsen and Secret, 1994
First paragraph
Convergence to the Information Highway (1996)

Secret, World, Quotes, Communication

“If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

DNRC Newsletter #57, 2004-10-28 http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/dnrc/html/newsletter57.html,

Lying

“General systems theory is a set of related definitions, assumptions, and propositions which deal with reality as an integrated hierarchy of organizations of matter and energy. General systems behavior is concerned with a special subset of all systems, the living ones.
Even more basic to this presentation than the concept of "system" are the concepts of "space," "time," "matter," "energy," and "information," because the living systems which I shall discuss exist in space and are made of matter and energy organized by information.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969), p. 51; Opening paragraph

Behavior, Reality, Time

“Because psychoanalysis emerged as a medical specialty concerned with the healing of the sick, it focused its attention on the pathological processes arising from the disruption of the adaptive capacities, and this subject matter was taken to be the totality of significant information concerning the structure of the personality. The diagnosis and treatment of mental illness is, however, a poor basis for the empiricism which a basic science requires. Mental illness, when it is seen in terms of the symptoms and syndromes which come to the attention of the psychotherapist, presents a picture of the personality which is readily fragmented and distorted out of proportion.”

Paul Rosenfels (1909–1985) American sociologist

8. Psychotherapy and Social Welfare
Love and Power: The Psychology of Interpersonal Creativity (1966)

Science, Personality

“[C]opyright assures authors the right to their original expression, but encourages others to build freely upon the ideas and information conveyed by a work. […] This result is neither unfair nor unfortunate. It is the means by which copyright advances the progress of science and art.”

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991).

Art, Idea, Science

“By an odd amalgam of liberal economic theory and Beccaria on punishment, nineteenth-century thinkers would replicate this exceptional relationship between markets and punishment: natural orderliness in the economic sphere, but government intervention in the penal realm. This is most evident in Jeremy Bentham’s work. The contrast between Bentham’s presumption of quietism in economic matters and his arch-interventionism in the penal domain effectively reproduced and reiterated the Physiocratic duality of economy and police. On the public economy side, Bentham tended toward Adam Smith’s liberalism. His Manual of Political Economy, written in the mid-1790s, rehearsed a presumption of governmental quietism based on his stringent belief in the superiority of individuals’ information and self-interest. But on the punishment side, Bentham embraced Beccaria’s philosophy whole cloth—especially Beccaria’s notion that policing is a sphere of human activity that must be shot through with government intervention. In fact, the criminal code, for Bentham, was precisely a “grand catalogue of prices” by means of which the government set the value of deviance. The penal code was a menu of fixed prices—the polar opposite of laissez-faire.”

Bernard Harcourt (1963) American academic

Source: The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order (2011), p. 36

Nature, Clothes

“As economic libertarians, these people believe that markets should be free, formed by the rational actions of rational agents - who need only to be provided with perfect information about goods and services in order to build a stable economy. As technological utopians, they believe that everything will be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, if technology is modelled on the American dream and the American way. And as opinion formers, they claim no formal power base, operating instead by linking exhaustively to one another.”

Bill Thompson (1960) English technology writer, born 1960

" Blog eats blog: The rise of the blogeoisie. http://www.spiked-online.com/articles/00000006DDA4.htm" by Bill Thompson, May 15, 2003.

People, World, Dreams, Way

“Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature.</i”

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

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 11

Art, Nature

“I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you. Anyway, the real point is that the things that don't seem to me to be pictorially informed are not so interesting to me.”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 30.

World, Art

“Each element in the system is ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole, it responds only to information that is available to it locally… If each element 'knew' what was happening to the system as a whole, all of the complexity would have to be present in that element.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 4-5; as cited in: Peter Buirski, ‎Amanda Kottler (2007) New Developments in Self Psychology Practice http://books.google.nl/books?id=PinroXBLDkIC&pg=PA9, p. 9

“Information gently but relentlessly drizzles down on us in an invisible, impalpable electric rain.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 1, Electric Rain, Information in our lives, p. 3

“"information" is not a substance or concrete entity but rather a relationship between sets or ensembles of structured variety.”

Walter F. Buckley (1922–2006) American sociologist

Source: Sociology and modern systems theory (1967), p. 47.

“Absolutists frighten me. During all the endless discussions on my blog about evolution, intelligent design, God, and the afterworld, numbering altogether thousands of comments, I have never named my beliefs, although readers have freely informed me that I am an atheist, and agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

which I am.
Source: Life Itself : A Memoir (2011), Ch. 54 : How I Believe In God

God, Intelligence

“The distinction between right and wrong ("la distinction du bien et du mal", Fr.), is nothing else than their unyielding (or implacable) opposition; thus the moral consciousness is an innate and intimate revelation of the absolute, which goes beyond (or goes pass, or exceed) every empirical data (or given information). It is only on these principles that we will be able to establish ("pourront être édifiées", Fr.) the real basis of morality.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 60 - Hélène's Claparède-Spir underlined.

“It is quite clear that if by sudden attack by an Enemy landed in strength our Dock-yards were to be destroyed our Maritime Power would for more than half a century be paralysed, and our Colonies, our commerce, and the Subsistence of a large Part of our Population would be at the Mercy of our Enemy, who would be sure to shew us no Mercy—we should be reduced to the Rank of a third Rate Power if no worse happened to us. That such a Landing is in the present State of Things possible must be manifest. No Naval Force of ours can effectually prevent it. … One night is enough for the Passage to our Coast, and Twenty Thousand men might be landed at any Point before our Fleet knew that the Enemy was out of Harbour. There could be no security against the simultaneous Landing of 20,000 for Portsmouth 20,000 for Plymouth and 20,000 for Ireland our Troops would necessarily be scattered about the United Kingdom, and with Portsmouth and Plymouth as they now are those Two dock yards and all they contain would be entered and burnt before Twenty Thousand Men could be brought together to defend either of them. … if these defensive works are necessary, it is manifest that they ought to be made with the least possible delay; to spread their Completion over 20 or 30 years would be Folly unless we could come to an agreement with a chivalrous Antagonist, not to molest us till we could inform him we were quite ready to repel his attack—we are told that these works might, if money were forthcoming be finished possibly in three at latest in four years. Long enough this to be kept in a State of imperfect Defence.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Letter to Gladstone (15 December 1859), quoted in Philip Guedalla (ed.), Gladstone and Palmerston, being the Correspondence of Lord Palmerston with Mr. Gladstone 1851-1865 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1928), pp. 115-117.
1850s

Men, Money, Parting, Night

“Ridiculous to trust your life to these senseless AI things, he thought as he uploaded it to the net; but nowadays it was the only way you could find out anything, search through the massive information overload on the net and everywhere else.”

Jamil Nasir (1955) American writer

Source: Tower of Dreams (1999), Chapter 5 (p. 59)

Life, Way, Search

“In 1978 when the book Living Systems was published, it contained the prediction that the sciences that were concerned with biological and social sciences would, in the future, be stated as rigorously as the “hard sciences” that study such nonliving phenomenon as temperature, distance, and the interaction of chemical elements. Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science, the first of a planned series of three books, begins an attempt to fulfill that prediction…
It is our opinion that this book represents an important step in the development of a quantitative living systems science… As Simms shows, the concepts of available energy and the capacity to direct energy, as well as the causative relationship between information and behavior, are useful in the analysis of behavior…
The systems with which this first book of the series is concerned are mainly at the level of the cell and the animal organ and organism…. It will be interesting to see how the science is applied in later volumes to the complex behaviors of human being, and higher level systems.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

James G. and Jessie Miller (1999) Principles of Quantitative Living Systems Science. Foreword; As cited in: James R. Simms (2013) "Advances in living systems theory"

Books, Behavior, Study, Science

“We are beginning to find not only is intelligence not adequately defined so arguments can be settled scientifically, but a lot of other associated words like, computer, learning, information, ideas, decisions, expert behavior—all are a bit fuzzy…”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

Behavior, Intelligence, Idea, Decision

“The tax here involved is bad not because it takes money from the pockets of the appellees. If that were all, a wholly different question would be presented. It is bad because, in the light of its history and of its present setting, it is seen to be a deliberate and calculated device in the guise of a tax to limit the circulation of information to which the public is entitled in virtue of the constitutional guaranties.”

George Sutherland (1862–1942) Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, United States Senator, member of the United States House of Re…

Grosjean v. American Press Co. (1936)

Money, History, Question, Light

“I recall this sergeant's informing me and my "room-mates" of this rather deplorable fact the army didn't have any official, excuse me, didn't have no official song and suggested that we work on this in our copious free time.”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

Introduction to "It Makes a Fellow Proud to be a Soldier"
An Evening (Wasted) With Tom Lehrer (1959)

Time

“What the planning authority would have to know would not be the mere totals but the distinct, peculiar conditions prevailing in each enterprise which affect the information about values transmitted through market prices but would be completely lost in any statistical information about quantities that might reach the authority from time to time.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, "Two Pages of Fiction" (1982)

Time

“The computer makes it posible to create a central information centre of all human achievements; and for any individual, from the comfort of his own home, to interrogate that information. For example, you would like to see a picture of the tallest horse? Then before your last finger clicks the last button that photograph will be up on your screen, in your own home.”

Owain Owain (1929–1993) Welsh novelist, short story writer and poet

Home, Horse

“This is not the Cayce material, with information seemingly coming from some vast storehouse of knowledge. In those terms no such storehouse exists. Knowledge does not exist independently of the one who knows. Someone gave Cayce the material. It did not come out of thin air. It came from an excellent source, a pyramid gestalt personality, with definite characteristics, but the alien nature of the personality was too startling to Cayce, and he could not perceive it.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 417, Page 317
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 8

Nature, Knowledge, Personality

“A distinguished writer (Siméon Denis Poisson) has thus stated the fundamental definitions of the science:
:"The probability of an event is the reason we have to believe that it has taken place, or that it will take place."
:"The measure of the probability of an event is the ratio of the number of cases favourable to that event, to the total number of cases favourable or contrary, and all equally possible" (equally like to happen).
From these definitions it follows that the word probability, in its mathematical acceptation, has reference to the state of our knowledge of the circumstances under which an event may happen or fail. With the degree of information which we possess concerning the circumstances of an event, the reason we have to think that it will occur, or, to use a single term, our expectation of it, will vary.”

George Boole (1815–1864) English mathematician, philosopher and logician

Source: 1850s, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (1854), p. 243-4; As cited in: "George Boole (1815–64)" in: Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations, Edited by W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter, January 2006

Mathematics, Knowledge, Thinking, Science

“Jerison argues that we should think of brains as creating a species' version of reality. …As brains enlarged through evolutionary time, more channels of sensory information could be handled more completely, and their input integrated more thoroughly.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Thinking, Reality, Time

“A case can be made... that secrecy is for losers. For people who don't realize how important information really is. The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular, and singularly American, advantage. We put it in peril by poking along in a mode of an age now past. It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most pervasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

Secrecy, ch. 8 (1998)

War, People, Age, Support

“Theoretical research in information science is still marked by a tendency to play safe… it is still marked by timidity. It could now afford to be more boldly speculative, intellectually exciting and therefore more attractive to intelligent and ambitious students.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

Have things changed?
Source: A Long Search for Information (2004), p. 25; As cited in: Lyn Robinson and David Bawden (2011).

Intelligence, Science, Change

“[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, “Who made me?” cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, “Who made God?””

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Source: Autobiography (1873), Ch. 2: Moral Influences in Early Youth. My Father's Character and Opinions.

God, World, Question

“Strategy making needs to function beyond the boxes to encourage the informal learning that produces new perspectives and new combinations… Once managers understand this, they can avoid other costly misadventures caused by applying formal techniques, without judgement and intuition, to problem solving.”

Henry Mintzberg (1939) Canadian busines theorist

Mintzberg (1994), (partly) cited in Douglas C. Eadie (1997) Changing by design: a practical approach to leading innovation in nonprofit organizations. p. 128

Understanding, Problem, Learning, Box

“If you've ever used the crowd-sourced encyclopedia to find information on female writers (especially those from Dr. Wadewitz's area of expertise), it's likely that you've run into her work.”

Adrianne Wadewitz (1977–2014) academic and Wikipedian

Shrayber, Mark (April 19, 2014). "Saturday Night Social: The Night Belongs to Adrianne Wadewitz" http://jezebel.com/saturday-night-social-the-night-belongs-to-adrianne-wa-1565155694. Jezebel. About

“The danger is that we shall become a nation of pedants. I use the word literally and democratically to refer to the millions of people who are moved by a certain kind of passion in their pastimes as well as in their vocations. In both parts of their lives this passion comes out in shoptalk. I have in mind both the bird watchers and nature lovers: the young people who collect records and follow the lives of pop singers and movie stars; I mean the sort of knowledge possessed by “buffs” and “fans” of all species—the baseball addicts and opera goers, the devotees of railroad trains and the collectors of objects, from first editions to netsuke.
They are pedants not just because they know and recite an enormous quantity of facts—if a school required them to learn as much they would scream against tyranny. It is not the extent of their information that appalls; it is the absence of any reflection upon it, any sense of relation between it and them and the world. Nothing is brought in from outside for contrast or comparison; no perspective is gained from the top of their monstrous factual pile; no generalities emerge to lighten the sameness of their endeavor.”

Jacques Barzun (1907–2012) Historian

Source: The Culture We Deserve (1989), p. 118

People, World, School, Star

“Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: — "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.”

Henry David Thoreau book Life Without Principle

Life Without Principle (1863)

People, Drink, Thinking, Tree

“We don't know what energy is, any more than we know what information is, but as a now robust scientific concept we can describe it in precise mathematical terms, and as a commodity we can measure, market, regulate and tax it.”

Hans Christian von Baeyer (1938) American physicist

Source: Information, The New Language of Science (2003), Chapter 2, The Spell of Democritus, Why information will transform physics, p. 11

Mathematics

“Veganism started off as a willpower challenge for me from vegetarianism. … I just walked into year three, so I'm still a brand-new vegan, but I've learned so much … and it's done wonders for my entire life. Some of the changes that I've experienced being vegan: I'm no longer anemic. … I don't get sick! And my skin is clear. I lost 30 pounds. … Everything in my life has benefited me just eating natural foods, and the more information about the truths and the harsh realities of treatment of animals as well as the process of manufacturing food or meat products—including seafood, including the dairy industry, which I was oblivious to being a vegetarian—prompted me to continue this journey, which I'm very proud of, but it's impossible to turn back, because I no longer see product—I see process.”

Mýa

“Mýa, Proud Vegan: 'I No Longer See Product—I See Process'”, video interview with PETA (12 October 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rax-2smxzpk.

Life, Truth, Food, Nature

“[The process of paraphrasing or summarizing each piece of data enters information] into your unconscious, as well as consciously processing the information.”

Richard Boyatzis (1946) American business theorist

Source: Transforming qualitative information (1998), p. 45 as cited in: Eimear Muir-Cochrane & Jennifer (2006) " Demonstrating Rigor Using Thematic Analysis http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/5_1/PDF/FEREDAY.PDF". In: International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (1) April 2006.

“The graphic portrayal of quantitative information has deep roots. These roots reach into histories of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visualization, which are intertwined with each other. They also connect with the rise of statistical thinking up through the 19th century, and developments in technology into the 20th century. From above ground, we can see the current fruit; we must look below to see its pedigree and germination. There certainly have been many new things in the world of visualization; but unless you know its history, everything might seem novel.”

Michael Friendly (1945) American psychologist

Michael Friendly. " Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visualization http://www.math.yorku.ca/SCS/Gallery/milestone/milestone.pdf, at math.yorku.ca, 2008.

World, History, Thinking

“Publishers and lawyers like to describe copyright as “intellectual property” — a term also applied to patents, trademarks, and other more obscure areas of law. These laws have so little in common, and differ so much, that it is ill-advised to generalize about them. It is best to talk specifically about “copyright,” or about “patents,” or about “trademarks.”
The term “intellectual property” carries a hidden assumption—that the way to think about all these disparate issues is based on an analogy with physical objects, and our conception of them as physical property.
When it comes to copying, this analogy disregards the crucial difference between material objects and information: information can be copied and shared almost effortlessly, while material objects can't be.
To avoid spreading unnecessary bias and confusion, it is best to adopt a firm policy not to speak or even think in terms of “intellectual property”.
The hypocrisy of calling these powers “rights” is starting to make the World “Intellectual Property” Organization embarrassed.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Words to Avoid (or Use with Care) Because They Are Loaded or Confusing (1996)
1990s

World, Law, Way, Thinking

“It is difficult to pronounce on the opinion of the ministers of our Church as a body: one portion of them, by far the least informed, protests against anything which can advance the honour and the interests of science, because, in their limited and mistaken view, science is adverse to religion. This is not the place to argue that great question. It is sufficient to remark, that the best-informed and most enlightened men of all creeds and pursuits, agree that truth can never damage truth, and that every truth is allied indissolubly by chains more or less circuitous with all other truths; whilst error, at every step we make in its diffusion, becomes not only wider apart and more discordant from all truths, but has also the additional chance of destruction from all rival errors.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 225

Men, Truth, Religion, Error

“They learn that the effective management of change comes from the habit of being receptive to new information, to new paths to traditional goals, even to new goals.”

Roger Smith (executive) (1925–2007) CEO

Learning, Change

“For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.”

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909–1999) Austrian noble and political theorist

Source: Leftism Revisited (1990), p. 319

War, World, Problem, Personality

“God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. … What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter https://web.archive.org/web/19991115034104/http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/tj3/writings/brf/jefl64.htm to William Stephens Smith (13 November 1787), quoted in Padover's Jefferson On Democracy 1780s

Death, God, People, Nature

“We completely ignore the human value of the information. A selection of 100 letters is given a certain information value, and we do not investigate whether it makes sense in English, and, if so, whether the meaning of the sentence is of any practical importance. According to our definition, a set of 100 letters selected at random (according to the rules of Table 1.1), a sentence of 100 letters from a newspaper, a piece of Shakespeare or a theorem of Einstein are given exactly the same informational value.”

Léon Brillouin (1889–1969) French physicist

[Léon Brillouin, Science and Information Theory, second edition, Academic Press, New York, 1962, 0-48643-918-6, 9]

Sense

“THE ORIGIN OF ART: The discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect. THE CONTENT OF ART: Visual information of our reaction to life. THE MEASURE OF ART: The ratio of effort to effect. THE AIM OF ART: Revelation and evocation of vision.”

Josef Albers (1888–1976) German-American artist and educator

'The Origin of Art'
Homage to the square' (1964)

Life, Art, Effort

“The real issues of the information gathering and disseminating systems have more to do with what kinds of programs are made, who makes and airs them and what impact they have. The role of the developed world as consumer and the role of the developing world as the consumed may now be complicated as the latter yields its own voracious elite, but the former continues to determine taste.”

Anand Patwardhan (1950) Indian film director

Anand Patwardhan and The Messengers of Bad News - SOC American University http://www.cmsimpact.org/media-impact/pull-focus/anand-patwardhan-and-messengers-bad-news

World

“Keepe pursed his lips, nodded. “We’re already in a very strong position in this country, of course. We’ve taken over all of the antigovernment militias, most of the religious groups who think of themselves as conservative, plus what’s left of the KKK and the American Nazi party, but they’re only pocket change. We now own the Republican party. Any moderates still hiding in there have been flushed out. We’ve been managing the press for over twenty years now, and the public is accustomed to our view of the world.”
Jagger paid attention. “I didn’t realize…”
“Oh, yes. People don’t want to absorb new information. They like predictability. So as long as we don’t surprise the public with the truth, we’re free to move as we like. Very shortly we won’t even have to be covert about it. And then, of course, people are sick of issues. Civil rights, human rights, women’s rights—people are tired of all that. You understand?””

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: Gibbon's Decline & Fall (1996), Chapter 2 (p. 52; spoken by one of the leaders of a secretive neo-fascist organization)

Women, People, Truth, World

“For many of the stories told the final form resulted from a sort of informal psychological experiment. I discussed the subject with several different classes… Several passages… have been suggested by answers of my students, or… modified… by the reaction of my audience.”

George Pólya (1887–1985) Hungarian mathematician

Induction and Analogy in Mathematics (1954)

“Logic should no longer be considered an elegant and learned accomplishment; it should take its place as an indispensable study for every well-informed person.”

William Stanley Jevons (1835–1882) English economist and logician

Preface.
Elementary Lessons on Logic (1870)

Study, Learning, Personality

“As in the case of the individual, not all the information which is available to the race at one time is accessible without special effort. There is a well-known tendency of libraries to become clogged by their own volume; of the sciences to develop such a degree of specialization that the expert is often illiterate outside his own minute specialty. Dr. Vannevar Bush has suggested the use of mechanical aids for the searching through vast bodies of material. These probably have their uses, but they are limited by the impossibility of classifying a book under an unfamiliar heading unless some particular person has already recognized the relevance of that heading for that particular book. In the case where two subjects have the same technique and intellectual content but belong to widely separated fields, this still requires some individual with an almost Leibnizian catholicity of interest.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 158.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Books, Search, Effort, Science

“There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

River out of Eden (1995)

Life

“Persistance, dedication
Consistent, motivation,
resistance to stagnation of information,
distribute it free to the entire population
No hesitation, makin it public
No privitazation from corporations”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

Name of the Game (track 10)
Albums, Reflection Eternal (2000)

Motivation

“My role with England is to help develop their cricketers, and to help with how they should approach different challenges - like playing spin. The pools hadn't been decided when I agreed to do it. England didn't hire me to give information on the Sri Lankan team. They have analysts and coaches to do that. I'm quite disappointed to see those comments from the board, to be fair.”

Mahela Jayawardene (1977) Former Sri Lankan cricketer

Jayawardene on criticism from SLC president Thilanga Sumathipala, contending that his ten-day consulting role with England is largely geared toward player development and not toward providing specific tactical information, quoted on ESPN Cricket Info, "Jayawardene brushes off SLC president's criticism" http://www.espncricinfo.com/srilanka/content/story/976925.html, February 27, 2016. Quote

Disappointment, Help

“August olst. Camp Tiverton. I wrote the foregoing, and intended to have sent it by the express that went off in the morning, but while I was writing, I was informed the express was gone; and the change of situation and round of events that have since taken place, have prevented my forwarding what I had wrote, as matters seemed to be coming to a crisis.”

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

Letter to George Washington (August 1778)

Change

“The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue … that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication -- basic but insufficient.”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

Source: On Human Communication (1957), What Is It That We Communicate?, p. 10

Truth, Communication, Mathematics, Idea

“Now ACORN has been named one of the national partners, which will be a recipient again of federal money. And they will be in charge of going door-to-door and collecting data from the American public. This is very concerning because the mother lode of all data information will be from the Census. And, of course, we think of the Census as just counting how many people live in your home. Unfortunately, the Census data has become very intricate, very personal (with) a lot of the questions that are asked. And I know for my family the only question that we will be answering is how many people are in our home. We won't be answering any information beyond that, because the Constitution doesn't require any information beyond that.”

Michele Bachmann (1956) American politician

Washington Times interview http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jun/17/exclusive-minn-lawmaker-fears-census-abuse/, 2009-06-17, quoted in * Michele Bachmann claims ACORN getting money to work for Census Bureau Politifact http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/jun/26/michele-bachmann/michele-bachmann-claims-acorn-getting-money-work-c/ 2011-04-15 2010s

Money, People, Family, Home

“The odors perceived by the ant seem to lead to a highly standardized course of conduct; but the value of a simple stimulus, such as an odor, for conveying information depends not only on the information conveyed by the stimulus itself but on the whole nervous constitution of the sender and receiver of the stimulus as well. Suppose I find myself in the woods with an intelligent savage who cannot speak my language and whose language I cannot speak. Even without any code of sign language common to the two of us, I can learn a great deal from him. All I need to do is to be alert to those moments when he shows the signs of emotion or interest. I then cast my eyes around, perhaps paying special attention to the direction of his glance, and fix in my memory what I see or hear. It will not be long before I discover the things which seem important to him, not because he has communicated them to me by language, but because I myself have observed them. In other words, a signal without an intrinsic content may acquire meaning in his mind by what he observes at the time, and may acquire meaning in my mind by what I observed at the time. The ability that he has to pick out the moments of my special, active attention is in itself a language as varied in possibilities as the range of impressions that the two of us are able to encompass. Thus social animals may have an active, intelligent, flexible means of communication long before the development of language.”

Norbert Wiener book Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

VIII. Information, Language, and Society. p. 157.
Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine (1948)

Intelligence, Communication, Learning, Memory

“The genetic systems is not closed, therefore. The genes do not simply hold information without any reference to the body’s living system. It does not exist, then -- the genetic structure -- like some highly complicated mechanism already programmed, started and functioning blindly so that once it is set into operation there is no chance for modification.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 910, Page 314
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume Two (1986)

Chance

“[The computer is also the direct descendant of the telegraph as it enables one… to] "transmit information without transporting material"”

J. C. R. Licklider Libraries of the future

Source: Libraries of the future, 1965, p. 6 as cited in: Rodney James Giblett (2008) Sublime communication technologies. p. 175.

“The #1 change in Silicon Valley is information density. If you think about it, 30 years ago the only way you got info was during one-on-one meetings. You knew very little and the world knew very little. We just know a lot more now.”

Steve Blank (1953) American businessman

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

World, Way, Thinking, Change

“A person’s behavior is rational if it is in his best interests, given his information.”

Robert Aumann (1930) Israeli-American mathematician

Source: War and peace (2005), p. 2

Behavior, Personality

“This article aims at proposing some elements for a grounded theory of the network society. The network society is the social structure characteristic of the Information Age, as tentatively identified by empirical, cross-cultural investigation. It permeates most societies in the world, in various cultural and institutional manifestations, as the industrial society characterized the social structure of both capitalism and statism for most of the twentieth century.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society (2000), p. 5

Age, World

“…In the following year (AH 913, AD 1506), the king marched against Nurwur, a strong fort in the district of Malwa, then in possession of the Hindoos. The Prince Julal Khan governor of Kalpy, was directed to advance and invest the place; and should the Hindoos resist, he was required to inform the King… The King remained for the space of six months at Nurwur, breaking down temples, and building mosques. He also established a college there, and placed therein many holy and learned men.”

Firishta (1560–1620) Indian historian

Sultãn Sikandar Lodî (AD 1489-1517) Narwar (Madhya Pradesh)
Tãrîkh-i-Firishta

Men, Strong, Learning

“Decision control is measured by the degree to which any one of the participants may unilaterally determine the outcome of the dispute. For example, where a third-party decisionmaker alone may order a resolution to be imposed, the decision-maker has total decision control. Control over the process refers to control over the development and selection of information that win constitute the basis for resolving the dispute.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Source: "A theory of procedure." 1978, p. 546

Decision

“Ibn-ul-Asir says that Qutbuddin Aibak made “war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned home with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same authority, Muhammad Ghauri’s slaughter of the Hindus was immense. “None was spared except women and children." No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description …””

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Women, War, Children, Home

“The FBI may decide to leave a suspected mole undisturbed for years in order to feed him false critical information at an opportune moment or to use him to catch a bigger fish.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Fish, Falseness

“While a small domain (consisting of fifty or fewer objects) can generally be analyzed as a unit, large domains must be partitioned to make the analysis a manageable task. To make such a partitioning, we take advantage of the fact that objects on an information model tend to fall into clusters: groups of objects that are interconnected with one another by many relationships. By contrast, relatively few relationships connect objects in different clusters.
When partitioning a domain, we divide the information model so that the clusters remain intact… Each section of the information model then becomes a separate subsystem. Note that when the information model is partitioned into subsystems, each object is assigned to exactly one subsystem.”

Sally Shlaer (1938–1998) American computer scientist

Source: Object-Oriented Systems Analysis: Modeling the World In Data (1988), p. 145; as cited in: The Object Agency, Inc. (1995) " A Comparison of Object-Oriented Development Methodologies http://www.ipipan.gda.pl/~marek/objects/TOA/OOMethod/mcr.html"

“Americanization, finally, is not any one of these things alone. There may be a home stake, and in the absence of identity of economic interest, it may fail. All other elements may be present, but if the court fails, the immigrant turns away. Americanization is the bringing to bear in the life of every stranger who enters the country, the sum total of American ideals in his home, in the shop, in the neighborhood, and in the legislatures and courts. The native-born American is the keeper of these ideals. His is the spirit that will maintain the free and strong institutions of America. His reception of the immigrant and the contacts he makes with him in large measure determine the immigrant's understanding of America and his reaction towards it. It is here that we enter the field of the science of racial relations. No effective program can be made until we set our own house in order, until we attain the right attitude individually, and until we equip ourselves with the necessary information to give us the right approach to the many races who are among us but not of us, whose faces, regardless of the high wages, the luxuries, and the freedom of America, are set towards the east.”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)

Life, Home, Understanding, Freedom

“To conceive of knowledge as a collection of information seems to rob the concept of all of its life. Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

Source: 1960s - 1970s, The Design of Inquiring Systems (1971), p. 10; cited in Daniel J. Power (2004) Decision Support Systems: Frequently Asked Questions, p. 23

Life, Knowledge

Quotes about information page 15

Quotes about information
page 15