What is information? Is it simply ideas and concepts that our language collects and expresses? Is information separate from the medium of expression? This course will begin by defining the nature of information, looking at traditional and contemporary definitions from philosophers and information theorists. The second part of the course will study the relationship between information and culture. We'll look at some new information media such as cyperspace and hypertext and try to sort through claims by information theorists about the role of information in human history and development. Finally, we'll explore some ethical issues about the handling of information in a society such as ours which values privacy, the free flow of information, and free markets.
To think about information rigorously you must read from several disciplines, since information is not the special object of study of any one field. The division in thinking about information is between more or less technical accounts which suppose that information can be studied as a distinct object in relative isolation from culture and scholars who feel that we can only talk about information in relation to a "cultural semiotic." To enter this subject, we will need a little background in communication theory. We'll recall some classical ideas from the Western Tradition (in lecture) to get the traditional view, then we'll study the main paradigm for thinking about information in communication theory, a mathematical conception of information. After reading a criticism of that approach, we'll look commentators who connect information to evolution and social practices.
This section of the course will give us a chance to raise questions about the way information technology affects culture. Perhaps the most general question of this unit is, "Is the rapid development of information technology more likely to be a negative threat or postive opportunity for the culture?" Our method in making such a large scale assessment will be to ask a more manageable, specific question about the quality of various media as sources of information. In doing so, we will develop a theoretical understanding of the "information richness" of a source. A minor but significant part of the unit will be an "immersion experience" in the culture of high tech information society. We'll surf the Internet, browse the Web, and read some state of the art hypertext fiction. Then we'll try to describe and evaluate the kind of culture that these media portend.
Some of the most profound reflections on information come as a result of thinking about specific moral quandries that information handling and technology raise. In this unit, we'll look at textbook examples of information ethics issues in an effort to sharpen our ethical analysis skills and to see how these ethical issues alert us to deeper questions about the impact of information on our lives.