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Exformation
Exformation (originally spelled ''eksformation'' in Danish) is a term coined by Danish science writer Tor Nørretranders in his book ''The User Illusion (book), The User Illusion'' published in English 1998. It is meant to mean ''explicitly discarded information''. Example Consider the following phrase: "the best horse at the race is number 7". The information carried is very small, if considered from the point of view of information theory: just a few words. However if this phrase was spoken by a knowledgeable person, after a complex study of all the horses in the race, to someone interested in betting, the details are discarded, but the receiver of the information might get the same practical value of a complete analysis. Meaning as proposed by Nørretranders Effective communication depends on a shared body of knowledge between the persons communicating. In using words, sounds, and gestures, the speaker has deliberately thrown away a huge body of information, though it rema ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information
Information is an abstract concept that refers to that which has the power to inform. At the most fundamental level information pertains to the interpretation of that which may be sensed. Any natural process that is not completely random, and any observable pattern in any medium can be said to convey some amount of information. Whereas digital signals and other data use discrete signs to convey information, other phenomena and artifacts such as analog signals, poems, pictures, music or other sounds, and currents convey information in a more continuous form. Information is not knowledge itself, but the meaning that may be derived from a representation through interpretation. Information is often processed iteratively: Data available at one step are processed into information to be interpreted and processed at the next step. For example, in written text each symbol or letter conveys information relevant to the word it is part of, each word conveys information rele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Subtext
Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without drawing the attention (or wrath) of Censorship, censors. This has been especially true in comedy; it is also common in science fiction, where it can be easier—and/or safer—to deliver a social critique if, e.g., set in a time other than the (author's) present. Definitions Subtext is content "sub" i.e. "under" (with the sense of "hidden beneath") the verbatim wording; readers or audience must "gather" subtext "reading between the lines" or Inference, inferring meaning, a process needed for a clear and complete understanding of the text. A meaning stated explicitly is, by definition not subtext (for lack of hiding), and writers may be criticized for failure artfully to create and use subtext; such works may be faulted as too "on the no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bicameral Mentality
Bicameral mentality is a hypothesis in psychology and neuroscience which argues that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a ''bicameral mind'', and that the evolutionary breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'', wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Mediterranean bronze age. ''The Origin of Consciousness'' Jaynes uses "bicameral" (two chambers) to describe a mental state in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. The metaphor is based on the id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ishin-denshin
is an idiom commonly used in East Asian cultures such as Japan, Korea, China, which denotes a form of interpersonal communication through unspoken mutual understanding. This four-character compound's (or ) kanji (Chinese characters) literally translates as "like minds, (are) communicating minds". Sometimes translated into English as "telepathy" or "sympathy", (, in Korean) is also commonly rendered as "heart-to-heart communication" or " tacit understanding". Silent understanding is recognized as a universal human phenomenon; however, some Japanese believe it to be a unique characteristic of Japanese culture. Whereas the Japanese concept of denotes a deliberate form of nonverbal communication, refers to a passive form of shared understanding. is traditionally perceived by the Japanese as sincere, silent communication via the heart or belly (i.e. symbolically from the inside, ), as distinct from overt communication via the face and mouth (the outside, ), which is seen as being ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tor Nørretranders
Tor Nørretranders (born 20 June 1955) is a Danish author of popular science. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. His books and lectures have primarily been focused on light popular science and its role in society, often with Nørretranders' own advice about how society should integrate new findings in popular science. He introduced the notion of exformation in his book The User Illusion. Biography Tor Nørretranders' mother is Yvonne Levy (1920–) and his father was Bjarne Nørretranders (1922–1986). Tor Nørretranders graduated at "Det frie gymnasium" in 1973 and reached a cand.techn.soc-degree from Roskilde University (Roskilde) in 1982, specialized in environment planning and its scientific theoretic basis. He lives north of Copenhagen with his wife Rikke Ulk and three children. Other academic accomplishments * The Technical University of Denmark from 1982 to 1983 * The Danish Royal Academy of Art 1990–1991 * Adjunct Professor of the philosophy of science at Copenhagen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Explosion
The information explosion is the rapid increase in the amount of published information or data and the effects of this abundance. As the amount of available data grows, the problem of managing the information becomes more difficult, which can lead to information overload. The Online Oxford English Dictionary indicates use of the phrase in a March 1964 ''New Statesman'' article. ''The New York Times'' first used the phrase in its editorial content in an article by Walter Sullivan on June 7, 1964, in which he described the phrase as "much discussed". (p11.) The earliest known use of the phrase was in a speech about television by NBC president Pat Weaver at the Institute of Practitioners of Advertising in London on September 27, 1955. The speech was rebroadcast on radio station WSUI in Iowa and excerpted in the '' Daily Iowan'' newspaper two months later. Many sectors are seeing this rapid increase in the amount of information available such as healthcare, supermarkets, and even gove ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Information Theory
Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification (science), quantification, computer data storage, storage, and telecommunication, communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940s. The field is at the intersection of probability theory, statistics, computer science, statistical mechanics, information engineering (field), information engineering, and electrical engineering. A key measure in information theory is information entropy, entropy. Entropy quantifies the amount of uncertainty involved in the value of a random variable or the outcome of a random process. For example, identifying the outcome of a fair coin flip (with two equally likely outcomes) provides less information (lower entropy) than specifying the outcome from a roll of a dice, die (with six equally likely outcomes). Some other important measures in information theory are mutual informat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telecommunication Theory
Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that feasible with the human voice, but with a similar scale of expediency; thus, slow systems (such as postal mail) are excluded from the field. The transmission media in telecommunication have evolved through numerous stages of technology, from beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light. Such transmission paths are often divided into communication channels, which afford the advantages of multiplexing multiple concurrent communication sessions. ''Telecommunication'' is often used in its plural form. Other examples of pre-modern long-distance communication included audio messages, such as coded drumb ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The User Illusion
The user illusion is the illusion created for the user by a human–computer interface, for example the visual metaphor of a desktop used in many graphical user interfaces. The phrase originated at Xerox PARC. Some philosophers of mind have argued that consciousness is a form of user illusion which argues that conscious experience does not expose objective reality, instead it provides a simplified version of reality that allows the user, humans, to make decisions and act in their environment, akin to a computer desktop. According to this picture, our experience of the world is not immediate, as all sensation requires processing time. It follows that our conscious experience is less a perfect reflection of what is occurring, and more a simulation produced unconsciously by the brain. Therefore, there may be phenomena that exist beyond our peripheries, beyond what consciousness could create to isolate or reduce them. This notion is explored by Tor Nørretranders in his 1991 Danish bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Systems Theory
Systems theory is the interdisciplinary study of systems, i.e. cohesive groups of interrelated, interdependent components that can be natural or human-made. Every system has causal boundaries, is influenced by its context, defined by its structure, function and role, and expressed through its relations with other systems. A system is "more than the sum of its parts" by expressing synergy or emergent behavior. Changing one component of a system may affect other components or the whole system. It may be possible to predict these changes in patterns of behavior. For systems that learn and adapt, the growth and the degree of adaptation depend upon how well the system is engaged with its environment and other contexts influencing its organization. Some systems support other systems, maintaining the other system to prevent failure. The goals of systems theory are to model a system's dynamics, constraints, conditions, and relations; and to elucidate principles (such as purpose, measure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Redundancy (information Theory)
In information theory, redundancy measures the fractional difference between the entropy of an ensemble , and its maximum possible value \log(, \mathcal_X, ). Informally, it is the amount of wasted "space" used to transmit certain data. Data compression is a way to reduce or eliminate unwanted redundancy, while forward error correction is a way of adding desired redundancy for purposes of error detection and correction when communicating over a noisy channel of limited capacity. Quantitative definition In describing the redundancy of raw data, the rate of a source of information is the average entropy per symbol. For memoryless sources, this is merely the entropy of each symbol, while, in the most general case of a stochastic process, it is :r = \lim_ \frac H(M_1, M_2, \dots M_n), in the limit, as ''n'' goes to infinity, of the joint entropy of the first ''n'' symbols divided by ''n''. It is common in information theory to speak of the "rate" or "entropy" of a language. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Negentropy
In information theory and statistics, negentropy is used as a measure of distance to normality. The concept and phrase "negative entropy" was introduced by Erwin Schrödinger in his 1944 popular-science book ''What is Life?'' Later, Léon Brillouin shortened the phrase to ''negentropy''. In 1974, Albert Szent-Györgyi proposed replacing the term ''negentropy'' with ''syntropy''. That term may have originated in the 1940s with the Italian mathematician Luigi Fantappiè, who tried to construct a unified theory of biology and physics. Buckminster Fuller tried to popularize this usage, but ''negentropy'' remains common. In a note to ''What is Life?'' Schrödinger explained his use of this phrase. Information theory In information theory and statistics, negentropy is used as a measure of distance to normality. Out of all distributions with a given mean and variance, the normal or Gaussian distribution is the one with the highest entropy. Negentropy measures the difference in entrop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
